Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you. I don't have what you would call a concrete answer for you, because I can't see this committee coming up with certain things that will be monitored. I think it should be in terms of encouraging and even incentivizing that encouragement to all sorts of organizations—be

Canadian Heritage committee  I think that would be a great idea. That recommendation would be phenomenal. It would save us a lot of work, because we have to get engaged in fundraising now to do this curriculum stuff. The idea of the government being behind it and encouraging it, and even supporting it, I say

Canadian Heritage committee  Absolutely.

Canadian Heritage committee  Just give me an opportunity to address what David Sweet mentioned a little while ago. When APIF was still alive—and I hope it will experience a resurrection—we actually had instituted some sort of award that was given on a yearly basis by every MP to someone in their riding who p

Canadian Heritage committee  The power of the clergy is enormous, and getting together sends a loud and a potent signal that we are together. Going back to the fateful day of September 11, what we did here as a community was that all the faith leaders got together and announced publicly, at a time when the a

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you very much. Unaccustomed as I am to speaking for less than 10 minutes, I'll do my best. It's good to be here with all of you. I'm actually not representing any organization. I'm really not representing myself, either, just sharing with you the experiences I've had ov

Canadian Heritage committee  Okay, good.

Foreign Affairs committee  What I see though, is that what you're spelling out doesn't seem to fit into the whole idea of rapid. I'm a big fan of having alert systems out there just because it's better than having nothing.

Foreign Affairs committee  But on the other hand, I really think that if we're serious—I know we are serious—and if we're focused on really preventing this in the future, we have to have something that is robust, something that has teeth in it, that is more than just an alert system. I don't know if this

Foreign Affairs committee  Okay. I would be in favour of that for sure.

Foreign Affairs committee  In the end, our experience has been that the only real guarantee of religious freedom is when countries are democratic. I know it's a long shot, but our ultimate goal has to be to create governments there that are answerable, that are accountable, that are democratic, and that ar

Foreign Affairs committee  There are a number of ways, but the messaging has to come from the people on the ground, for example, getting leaders of the various communities to come together, extolling Canada, being welcoming, and basically messaging how important it is to have inclusivity, to work together

Foreign Affairs committee  Right, it's precisely that. I'm happy you brought that up. It's precisely because it seems like an endless thing, and the tragedies we've had have been on a massive scale. We talk about every life being precious, but you're talking about hundreds of thousands, millions of people.

Foreign Affairs committee  If I had all the answers to that, I would have...it's not clear in my head. It's an idea that needs development. The natural place for this would be the United Nations. I don't see their movement in that. I think that anyone who steps up to the plate, who has international statur

Foreign Affairs committee  That's a critical question. We're looking at the issue in the context of our veneration of the idea of free speech. I don't even think that today we have a clear line that separates freedom of speech from responsibility to respect life. We probably haven't climbed that mountain t