Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague, who has been very active in the context of the genocide prevention parliamentary group. These are issues he follows closely.
He mentioned this not becoming a failure of the international system. I would argue, quite frankly, that it is already, to a substantial extent, a failure of the international system. It is not that we cannot act now, but up to this point, it has already been a failure in that so many people have been adversely affected.
Speaking on the broader question of genocide prevention, this is something that has been a long time coming, the removal of citizenship and the denial of the legitimacy of a people to be in their homeland, a place they are indigenous to. There has been this gradual incremental escalation. We should have seen this coming. This is an issue that has been raised in the House for over a year and a half. Specific actions were asked of the government in the spring that were not taken then. Some of those actions have been taken now, in the fall, in light of this stage of the escalation.
How do we act differently in terms of responding faster to these kinds of problems? I especially note that the Canadian ambassador has been to Rakhine, but I have raised in the past in the House that the public comments after those visits have not at all emphasized the urgency of the problem. They have referred to inter-communal violence leading to displacement, but they have not at all pointed the finger where the finger needs to be pointed. How do we get the Canadian government, other governments around the world, and the international institutions to actually notice those warning signs and act earlier, before these situations have already reached what is effectively a crisis point? It is very difficult to act fast enough if we only start at that crisis point.