Justice committee  I would just say that specific protection of religion has merit, given the reality that communities of faith have been under threat pretty significantly in recent years. The Quebec mosque attack is one example among many. The other reality is that the celebration of religious rig

Justice committee  I think you're correct in assuming that the awareness of the public with respect to section 176 is very weak. We'd argue with our colleagues at the Canadian Interfaith Conversation—which includes the Evangelical Fellowship—that robust religious dialogue in public is an important

Justice committee  Mr. Chair and committee members, here are our recommendations. The members of the Canadian Council of Churches are not of one mind regarding whether or not to retain section 176 of the Criminal Code. Frankly, many of our members had not been alerted in a timely fashion to the r

Afghanistan committee  That's where a level of local engagement in security solutions is critical. Security is a comprehensive basket that certainly includes the participation of security forces but also good governance delivery at that local level. It's a chicken and egg scenario in certain cases. Nev

Afghanistan committee  I can't evaluate that.

Afghanistan committee  Again, security is an augment of this full factor that we're talking about. We're concerned, again, with a full balance of a mission. Security forces are one element of that. But concentrating, again, at the local governance level all the way up the chain, where civil society is

Afghanistan committee  You've heard testimony at this table from both CARE Canada and from the ambassador. Both of them were quite articulate on this point. One particular passage that I reviewed this week from CARE Canada is very instructive; that is, their concerns about the vulnerability of women's

Afghanistan committee  I'll be candid. We certainly don't have numbers at our disposal, nor is it the appropriate place of the church to do so. Nevertheless, there are some fairly clear recommendations in the brief that you'll see that we think can well be costed and, in an incremental way, build what

Afghanistan committee  John's already acknowledged that there is certainly a place for security forces. The emphasis that we're talking about is the softer side of security, where creating new stability at the local level through the amelioration of those non-ideological conflicts, the conflicts over l

Afghanistan committee  Indeed. It's fair to say that the Bonn process that formed the current government structure we're looking at was a meeting of victors, essentially, that was not broadly inclusive of all representatives of that diverse society that we've already talked about. So the exclusion of b

Afghanistan committee  What we're talking about is village-level elders, village-level mullahs, district authorities that are similar. It's traditional and informal structures, which are very difficult to define. Nevertheless, they have traditionally been, as I said, an element of the power structure w

Afghanistan committee  Indeed, that's a fair comment. In terms of a broader reconciliation agenda, we're saying that the al Qaeda factor addresses sort of the broad national and more regional context. Communities are vulnerable to the influence of insurgency. And to drive down to successes in local gov

Afghanistan committee  We've followed the local reconciliation agenda through the reconciliation priority, which, from our perspective, has been led by the Afghan task force at the Department of Foreign Affairs. To be honest, I don't have a lot of information or analysis on CIDA programming. Neverthe

Afghanistan committee  Just as a quick follow-up on that, the Canadian Foodgrains Bank did have an active program in Panjshir in 2003.

Afghanistan committee  We did get a response--a letter several months later--thanking us for the intervention.