Foreign Affairs committee  People know how I feel about Burma. I'll move on.

Foreign Affairs committee  What might come out of that, one would deduce, is that one of the ways of dealing with the crisis is investment or not. That's why you do a study. I'm wondering if we go back to the original motion and substitute Sudan for Darfur, take out the all-parliamentary group and add whatever it was, NGOs and civil society, if that would be acceptable to Mr.

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, and it's a focus on experts and NGOs, etc., and it reports its findings to the House. In other words, what I'm suggesting is to substitute Sudan for Darfur and take out the all-party parliamentary group and add the NGOs and civil society and take it from there.

Foreign Affairs committee  To be clear here, the changes would be as follows: “That pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, as part of its ongoing concern for the crisis in Sudan”--that's a change--“in consideration of issues of CSR, invite officials from DFAIT, CIDA, and other relevant departments, as well as non-governmental organizations and civil society, to appear before the committee to share their knowledge about what Canadian public and private funds are currently invested in Sudan and to explore legislative initiatives the Canadian government could put forward to set regulations for such investments, and report to the House on its findings.”

Foreign Affairs committee  Chair, the way the motion was originally written, which was actually the motion that was put before this committee and passed, I might add, was to acknowledge there is a concern about the crisis in Darfur, and change it to Sudan. Then it listed what could be looked at and addressed and was focused on investment.

Foreign Affairs committee  Chair, I don't want to lose this motion at this point. I think if Mr. Martin would be willing to simply drop the genocide.... The crisis is what we initially had in the motion. I think it's interpretive. If we can drop “genocide, crimes against humanity” and go back to what was the intent of the motion, we'll get on with it.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, Chair. In response I would just suggest that the government's recent actions in this area—to go back to Burma—obviously suggest that what we're doing here is congruent with what they've announced on Burma. I say that because they're talking about no new private investment as well as government investment.

Foreign Affairs committee  To me they're both friendly amendments, and I have no problem with them.

Foreign Affairs committee  Point of order, Mr. Chair. I think it's important to note that recently the government--in fact it was the foreign affairs minister--announced economic sanctions against Burma, or Myanmar. I was going to speak to this later, but I think it's important to bring it up now. This is where it should be.

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, I would, Chair, and I won't take long. This is actually a bring-forward from the previous committee's business and work. Chair, I think it's well known that the humanitarian crisis in Darfur has been called by many a genocide in slow motion. We need to be able to look at different ways to positively affect and change what's going on in Darfur.

Foreign Affairs committee  I'm going to echo some of the comments made. The understanding at committee, I believe--correct me if I'm wrong on this, Chair--was that we were talking about having a preliminary report. So it was just an omission in the text. That's a common sense thing to do. I'd like to add that if we are able to have that interim report, what we're doing is actually adding to and contributing towards this special panel, which I think Canadians want to see.

Foreign Affairs committee  It's for Bill C-6, the bills and voting.

Foreign Affairs committee  We haven't heard yet. We haven't had notice. It's the procedure and House affairs committee. They haven't given us a schedule on that one.

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, Chair. I just wanted to turn it over to amendment by Madame Barbot, who had, I think, brought forward to the clerk what we'll call a friendly amendment. This was simply because there were two motions, one by the New Democratic Party and one by the Bloc, and it was a matter of putting the two together.

Foreign Affairs committee  Great. I just want to make sure they're on the list, and that was it. Thank you very much.