Madam Speaker, I want to thank all colleagues who have participated in this evening's emergency debate on the situation in Lebanon. Time and again we have witnessed crises engulfing the Middle East escalate and consume countless innocent civilians. Many Canadians, some with family ties to the region, are paying close attention to the current crisis and are rightly demanding that our government take any action and all diplomatic action to de-escalate the conflict, to collaborate with other members of the international community to secure an immediate ceasefire, and to ensure that all Canadians and their loved ones in the region are assisted to safety.
We are blessed to have a sizable Lebanese community in our country, a long-standing one that has settled in every community across our vast country. Lebanon is also a focus country of Canada's Middle East strategy, and for that reason, Canada has committed over $548 million to Lebanon since 2016 in humanitarian assistance, development assistance and counter-terrorism capacity-building programs.
Several days ago, our Minister of Foreign Affairs stood before the General Assembly of the United Nations to explicitly call for de-escalation and the protection of civilians from the horror of the escalating violence in Lebanon and Israel. To quote Minister Joly, the conflict—