Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It was good to hear your presentation, and I commend you on the work you are doing.
I know Alex has indicated that we should bring in more Iraqi refugees than we have been. The minister recently announced that Canada will welcome between 1,800 and 2,000 Iraqi refugees in 2008, up from the 900 in 2007. So it's more than doubling those numbers.
Certainly when you look at that in terms of what actually exists for refugees, the numbers are very small, but as you were saying, Alex, about two million have left Iraq and are in Jordan, Syria, Egypt, or the countries around there.
My sense is that notwithstanding that Canada is reshaping its refugee goals to focus more on the Iraqi refugees, the fact is that there are millions of them out there, really, and I'm wondering if the focus should be on not just bringing some in, a small percentage, but helping the countries that are taking Iraqi refugees and that have really hundreds of thousands or millions of them there. What's your sense on that, on focusing your resources towards helping those countries that the Iraqi people are fleeing to?
I'll hear from both of you.