Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and honourable members of the committee. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak before you on the endless possibilities on the strengthening of bilateral relations between Canada and Somalia. I am very pleased to know that your colleag

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much, honourable members. Thank you for your support for Somalia. In 2016 and 2017, as you rightly said, we had an election process, which resulted in the election of the Parliament, the lower house. For the first time we have put together an upper house, which is

Foreign Affairs committee  I will answer in two parts. First, we have a draft constitution, which is undergoing a review process. We have to review 15 chapters before 2020. We have already finalized 10 chapters. We are on the last five chapters and we hope to finalize those in the next few months. Once w

Foreign Affairs committee  Al Shabaab is a threat not only to Somalis; it's a threat to all societies, all of us. We are not aware of particular funding sources that are going to al Shabaab. We would be very happy and willing to co-operate with anyone who could tell us who is funding al Shabaab and who i

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, honourable member. It's difficult to tell exactly the number of Somali Canadians who are on the ground in Somalia today. What we know is that we have eight cabinet ministers. We have, I think, over 20 members of Parliament, including the Deputy Speaker of Parliament.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, honourable member. I think part one is generally that when you look at the statistics, you see that 91% of the Somalian population is under the age of 40, and 75% of the population is under the age of 30 years old. We can safely say around half of the Somalian populat

Foreign Affairs committee  Absolutely, yes. Indeed, it's something that we're very much interested in. It would be really helpful if you can organize that kind of conference in Canada so we can build on the success we had in Vancouver and other parts of the world. Thank you very much. It's a very good su

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you. When you look at the situation in Somalia, you see it's quite a bit different from the situations of some of our African brothers and sisters, and it is the same when it comes to challenges. We have a culture of bringing up and nurturing and supporting our girls and

Foreign Affairs committee  That's absolutely a yes. We will adopt any policies that will empower our women, our girls. We can call it any name. It doesn't have to be a feminist foreign policy. It can be any policy that will empower them, and we will ensure—for instance, we are obligated to have gender main

Foreign Affairs committee  What is happening in Yemen is unfortunate. As soon as the conflict in Yemen started, we had more than 30,000 Yemeni refugees and Somali returnees back in Somalia, especially in the northern regions of Puntland and Somaliland. We were supported by IOM and UNHCR. Most of the people

Foreign Affairs committee  That is true. I think it was a week ago that our Minister of Petroleum and Minerals went to South Africa and attended an oil conference. He announced that Somalia is ready to award over 200 oil wells offshore, not onshore, and that is different. When you look at the offshore, t

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you. In terms of the internal security situation, if you looked at Somalia two years ago or three years ago and then today, you would see a huge difference. We are making significant progress on the security situation. For example, two years ago I moved back to Mogadishu,

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, it definitely does, and beyond that, in the regions surrounding Mogadishu. Most of the country is free of al Shabaab. There are pockets outside in the rural areas where they do hit and run and pockets where they are in control. Compared to a few years ago, you see, by and

Foreign Affairs committee  I think that's a really good question. Security and economic growth are interlinked. You cannot have one without the other. What we have done so far.... When we came into office we had over $5 billion in debt from many years ago, and we still have. What we initiated is we put to

Foreign Affairs committee  We all pay taxes from these payments. We have instituted value-added taxes for the first time. The tax brackets went up in some other areas that had never been taxed before. You can see that the economy really went up, if you look at the government's revenue. The GDP has increase