Mr. Speaker, I do not think that I suggested we should stand on the sidelines. I just think that whatever we do should not make matters worse.
I will start with the first part of his question. Yes, I acknowledge that Canada has been one of the major contributors to humanitarian relief, but it is a drop in the bucket when we see the four million refugees in Jordan, in Lebanon, in Turkey.
I also want to acknowledge that when the minister was Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, I came to him with personal cases. I have many constituents trying to get relatives out of Syria, and he assisted in reuniting some families. However, now the same families are coming to me with stories of getting across the border with children loaded in the back seat of the car, making it all the way to Beirut, but not being able to get to the Canadian Embassy and being sent back into Syria.
There is an ongoing humanitarian crisis, and our efforts so far have not been even remotely sufficient. The budget of the UN commission on refugees to deal with this crisis is coming up short. It is one of the biggest humanitarian and refugee crises the world has ever seen.
To the second part of his question, responsibility to protect, as I mentioned in my speech, is complicated by needing the support of the UN Security Council. I hoped I made it clear that one of the ways we made matters worse was by contaminating and potentially fatally hobbling responsibility to protect forever by using it as an excuse to get into Libya and then shifting to regime change.
The reality is that we have ignored the crisis in Syria, but now we are interested in protecting people from ISIS. Who will protect them from Bashar al-Assad?