Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Cooperation for her speech. I would like to begin by making a clarification. Some members seem to be confused when I spoke earlier. I did not say there was a program for refugees from Syria. I said that Canada supports and respects the international consensus, which I assume they all know about, which is reflected by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' recommendation that resettlement of Syrian refugees not take place at this time because they deem it to be too early in the crisis for other durable solutions to be ruled out and they cannot begin to address the scale of the situation.
It is a commonly understood and internationally agreed recommendation that when a country is in a crisis, we do not automatically resettle the refugees. We want them to go to their homes once the crisis has ended. We are hoping that this crisis will end and those people will be able to return to their home. We do not want Syria to be depopulated by any minority groups.
The Liberal Party has suggested that Canada should engage in a more comprehensive way with the Syrian rebel forces. Can the parliamentary secretary point out to us some of the difficulties in determining whom among the Syrian rebel forces Canada should be supporting?