Citizenship and Immigration committee  Not to my knowledge; we don't have a Yazidi-specific program at this time.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. The UNHCR would not have the legal authority to refer internally displaced persons to Canada; that's not part of their mandate. We would therefore be working with other partners. I believe the Germans, for example, did some work with the International Organization for Migration.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  These are difficult and quite complex questions of policy design. When the source country program was designed, it was designed very much to solve the sorts of problems that have been before the committee over the last few weeks. The source country program had a listed number of countries in the regulations so that each time one wished to either remove or add a country to the list, it was controversial, cumbersome, and led to a whole lot of discussion.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In my mind the public policy provisions effectively do that. I don't see that there's additional legislative or regulatory authority required to meet some of these objectives. Perhaps I misunderstood your question, Madam.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  What would be an effective way?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In my view that's what the current public policy does. The challenge isn't in identifying needy populations. The challenge is making the very hard and heartbreaking decision as to which 0.1% of extremely vulnerable people globally Canada will assist. That's the heartbreaking challenge, whether they are refugees or internally displaced persons.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's what we're examining. It's not quite that simple. The mechanisms to do so right now are quite complex. We're working within a sovereign state. There are a number of security considerations in the area, and the fine-tuning of what is the best policy and how it's designed, if the government wishes to proceed with that among its many other humanitarian priorities, are the sorts of things that we are in the process of analyzing, as a government, as a department.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, certainly.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There are the authorities in the act to develop a public policy on that basis. The operationalization, the processes to identify where resettlement is the best option for individuals, and putting in place mechanisms in the region to ensure the safety and security of everyone involved are the issues which the department and the government are looking at, at this time.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The legal mechanism already exists.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't know if it's doable. It depends on the situation on the ground at any given time, so that's what we're analyzing. I just don't want you to say that I said it's doable.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't know. I have no knowledge of what the situation in Erbil will be like a month from now.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely, and Canada is an integral part of the resettlement working group in Geneva. We have previously, on multiple occasions, chaired the tripartite consultations on resettlement, which involves the entire humanitarian and non-governmental sector, as well as the member states of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the agency itself.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not sure that I fully understood the question, Ms. Kwan, but certainly Canada has identified sexual orientation as one of its resettlement priorities for a number of years. We have always been front and centre at the United Nations in saying that if you have persons in need of resettlement who are members of the LGBTI community, think of Canada.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Would be...?