Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague and friend for her question. I thank her as well for the extraordinary work she has done on this file as the Liberal critic for national defence.
The fact of the matter is that Canada has a long tradition of being a safe haven for people in war-torn parts of the world. It is not just out of the goodness of our hearts. It has also been because it has been tremendously beneficial to have a country built on the hopes and dreams of people trying to create a better future for themselves, their community, and mostly, future generations.
Time and time again, Canada has stepped up and has done way more than its size would mandate in the community of nations, whether it was drawing in the boat people, as I recognized, or whether it was Ismaili Muslims fleeing the ravages of East Africa under Idi Amin, or in more recent times, Tamils fleeing the civil war. More recently it was Iraqis. The fact is, Canada is a country that welcomes people from the world and understands how important it is.
It is unfortunate that the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration has not been able, over the past year, to be very clear about how many Syrian refugees we have accepted and how many more we will accept , which is why Liberals have been unequivocal that we need to accept 25,000 more refugees from this area.