Mr. Chair, once again thanks to our colleague, the member for South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, for an excellent contribution to tonight's debate, which will help us close tonight's debate.
My question for the member is about the solutions. He has gestured at many of them, one being to continue that work with a united front on all of these issues, certainly to give voice to the repression of religious minorities, about whom all of us have expressed concern tonight, and the systematic abuses of rights we have all identified in tonight's debate. He mentioned the nuclear threat at the end of his speech, which is certainly there.
In my own experience, as well as recent advice from wise voices on all sides with regard to Iran, the human rights issue in many respects will weigh more heavily with the regime and with the population than our direct intervention politically on the nuclear issue. The two are linked, and in many ways the human rights approach is the more powerful approach.
Would our colleague take that reasoning one step further and agree with me that one of the most powerful weapons we have in addressing human rights issues in Iran is the fact that Iranian culture, history and tradition are themselves sources for the values and principles many of us identify as universal today? Whether it is the pre-Islamic history or the Islamic history, whether it is Iranian literature or Iranian law under the law-based regimes they have had in their ancient past or more recent past, we can use Iranian tradition itself to shame this regime into better forms of behaviour, and we have a duty to use this among all other forms of legal leverage available to us. Would my colleague agree with that?