Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that the member cites this tired talking point about allegedly more of the money going to one religious group or the other. For clarification for the hon. member, many of the projects of the office are not public because it is working in very sensitive countries or it cannot release details of the project. Therefore, it does not really make sense to try and do an analysis of who is getting more of the money when a lot of the projects are not public. That is totally the wrong way to go about this anyway, to try to pit groups against each other in this way. The office puts out calls for proposals, does important work and it engages on the proposals that it receives.
Further, is the member aware that Jewish, Sikh, and Muslim leaders have been among the most vocal about the need to renew the mandate of the office? Clearly there is not a bias only toward Christians if we have Sikh, Jewish and Muslim leaders being so vocal in support of the office. Why won't the NDP and the government won't listen to these groups and renew the mandate of this office?