Would that I had the wisdom to be able to summarize the extraordinary knowledge, experience, and wise words that we have heard today from a variety of different perspectives, from a variety of different experts, and from the experience of the people in the audience. I don’t possess that wisdom. I certainly don’t possess the wisdom to summarize it in a fifteen minute period, so my comments of necessity will be brief and somewhat simplistic. What I’ve tried to do is frame the day’s discussions, but I simply have not captured the nuance, the value and the creative sense, and the experience of today. I have tried to capture the suggestions I have heard today. The following recommendations or suggestions were not necessarily the ones for which there has been a general consensus. These suggestions fall into three categories. First, what could we do as a country? Second, what could we as citizens do? Third what could we do as an individual, group or community? What are the next steps? For example, one of the recommendations from the audience is that we have some more focussed talking circles about the various next steps. I think it is also incumbent upon all of us in this room to think about and decide what we can add with our expertise, our interest, our passion. What can we add to the discussions today, and how can we try to contribute to the peace that we hope may come in the end.

First of all today, we heard a superb overview of the history of Iraq. We heard about the historical colonization by the English and the French driven by commercial purposes, and then as a result of the Cold War. I thought that it was extremely important in a fundamental way to begin with history, because I think "we may our ends by our history know." It is always very important to know not just the facts as they exist now, but to know where they have come from. We keep talking about culture, but culture is very much a product of history. To have any understanding of another culture, it is extremely important to have a sense of that country’s history. I thought that was a wonderful start to the day.

We then looked at the issue from the perspective of Muslim minority rights. I think we got a very clear sense that it is essential both in Canada and certainly in Iraq that we give voice to Muslims particularly at this time. They have a right to speak out about how they feel about the issues, about how they perceive the issues and they should not in any way feel silenced. Because of another project that I have been involved in, I have been hearing very disturbing reports across Canada about how Muslim people and Iraqis and Arabs are feeling very threatened and scared, as are Jews. I think it is very important that our society ensures support is given to the Iraqi people and allow them to have a voice. Clearly, and very importantly, they should be given not just a major voice, but the only voice in reconstructing their own country at this stage. While I will not be able to quote everyone, it is extraordinarily important to listen to Arif Babul who said to us that "We have before us the beginnings of a great tragedy or a unique opportunity." I think it will be up to a great many players to decide the outcome. Sometimes we say that we are completely impotent, but I think that merely tries to absolve us from responsibility. I think that it is important that we see it as a unique opportunity. We have to try to make sure that it does become the unique opportunity rather than a great tragedy. George Irani also told us how important it is to listen to Arab narratives, and we were referred to some websites that we should start looking to and some of the books that we should start to read.

That was the context and framework for starting to examine the difficult issues we grappled with for the rest of the day. We moved on to the question: "What can Canada do as a country?" A number of clear suggestions were made. First and foremost, there is the clearly urgent and passionate need as we heard from the very eloquent Iraqi woman in the audience who spoke from her heart about the urgent need now for clean water, for food and for safety. We heard from the last panel that we need to be able to ensure that there is safety in Iraq so that humanitarian aid can be given, and that clean water and food supplies and electricity can be restored. We need to get Canada to act. We know that Canada has set aside 100 million dollars. Clearly that is a start, but there will a great many politics involved in deciding where that money goes, like the UN’s role, the US’s role. I think that while those politics are played out people will die. We need to be aware of upholding the principles of humanitarian aid, but we have to be very aware of the urgency because people are in jeopardy now. They are dying there; they do need the resources. So there are some very short term quick things have to be done, and perhaps we do have to sacrifice some principles to save some lives.

One great suggestion was to have a peace and reconciliation conference in which different faith groups come together to have the dialogue that we have tried to start today. I would say that this must become an iterative process whereby we sit at round tables and across the country where people can speak to each other. This has to be the start of a dialogue in which people think they are going to be supported as they move forward through it, that something will come out of their recommendations and their deliberations. Canada is uniquely placed to start up the type of interfaith dialogue that hopefully can spread throughout the world in due course.

We have heard time and time again from a great many knowledgeable people about the need to look at, restructure, rebuild or renew the United Nations, or perhaps start completely new international institutions. The situation of the UN can be seen as a great tragedy or as a unique opportunity. And it may be that the UN could use this challenge as a way toward making some enormous reforms that are clearly needed to this very important but sometimes ultimately impotent body. Clearly there needs to be some sort of enforcement mechanisms as we move forward in building our international institutions. And it may be (and this is just my own view) that the UN is just too monolithic to do all those things at once. It may be that we need different structures. Whether or not we like globalization (we may prefer "globalism") we do need to have global institutions because the world is nearly running away from us without any structure or order. We need to look at law as well, including international law, which some leaders seem not to believe in.

We heard very clearly and eloquently that we had a good refugee system, and yet we are changing it. And why are we changing it? We are changing it to fit the expediency of security considerations. These considerations are important, but not overwhelming, and certainly not within the refugee system. We need to make our voices heard to the Canadian government about how the refugee system is changing with particular respect to what we heard here today, including the legal aid issues. We heard that BC legal aid is to be cut for immigration matters in 2004 even though it is actually a legal requirement to provide legal aid to refugees. In fact, legal aid has already been cut back considerably. It is very important that we do not let even seemingly small local issues get out of our grasp.

What can we do as citizens? We heard about letter writing. We heard about lobbying governments, about being aware as citizens, and being aware of what the government is doing so that we can participate.

What else can we do? We can certainly send money, those of us who are lucky enough to have some. We can send money to organizations that we were informed can sometimes triple it, quadruple it or even match it nine times through matching funds. It is clearly important to decide what types of organizations we think are important, what issues are important to us, and start sending money. We can collect money. Try going around to friends of yours who may have some money. In addition, or if you can’t give money, maybe you can volunteer for organizations. Organizations are always desperate for people to write letters, lick envelopes and many other volunteer activities. I’m not saying these are the only ones, but the Red Cross or Red Crescent, Médecins Sans Frontières, Oxfam – a wide array of organizations that we have in this country that have done terrific work overseas.

We also heard that if we really want to change things, we need ways to take on the one big superpower, the United States of America. To do this, we need one big citizenry. This is a much, much bigger challenge that was thrown out to us today. This has started happening though with the peace marches that happen, not just in Victoria and Vancouver, and Montreal and Toronto, and across this country, but around the world. There was an amazing sense of community created by doing this. In speaking to Arab and Muslim friends of mine, the effort of walking in peace marches is also very important to their people back home. They felt that it wasn’t the Western world against the Arab world; that it wasn’t Christianity against Islam; that maybe it really was about what particular administrations are doing. This was not just a message to governments, but also a message that starts the dialogue across continents that will become increasingly important as we move through what I think will become a very difficult and challenging time.

We also heard about writing, and getting involved in politics. We also heard about what a useful tool the internet can be. We heard about how one could use good communications: you should have a vision, you should be strategic, you should keep messages simple, decide who your "audiences" are and then decide how best you can meet their needs.

We also spoke about what we can do as individuals, families or group members. We heard that we can sponsor refugees, if we choose to do so. I think that we heard that it only took five people. There are a number of people who are waiting on the list for sponsors. We were also urged to remember not just Iraqis but third country nationals (TCNs) who are now being dispossessed or have been dispossessed. Even if we don’t have the emotional energy or the strength to do this, maybe this is something about which we could tell other people in our communities. We might want to tell or e-mail our friends about what we have learned today.

Many good recommendations were made. I do apologize for rushing and for missing so many other wonderful recommendations. One recommendation was to bring the younger generation into the discussion more strongly. There are some young people here, but not as many as we would like. I know it is exam time, and so I am not remotely criticizing people. It is difficult, but I think that it is very important, if we are trying to make change, to recognize that change will not happen in the short term. It won’t happen in the next couple of years. It is going to take generations. The future generations need to be brought in. They have to be part of the dialogue and debate as we try and look forward to what type of society we want to have in Canada, what type of world we want to live in, and what type of international institutions we want. It is crucial to start bringing in and engaging the younger generation. We heard from George Chandler that we need to do this through our education system. We have to keep bringing people into the dialogue continually as parents, as grandparents, as aunts, as uncles, whoever we may be.

There were specific recommendations about areas in which Canada might have some expertise. We heard about the need for educational initiatives including building partnerships between universities in Canada and Iraq about which Budd Hall spoke. We heard about the need for the reconstruction of the legal system and Canadian experiences with multiculturalism. We heard from IMPACS about the excellent work that they have been doing with respect to developing pluralism in media internationally. Thus, there are some specific Canadian initiatives that could be put forward.

It was also said that there should be an emergency session of the UN General Assembly and/or the Security Council. I have already said that we should ensure that the people in the country that is being rebuilt can make their own decisions as to how it should be rebuilt. We should try to provide the necessary support to do that.

We also heard very articulately from a member of the audience about the need to put forward a feminine side to the dialogue, a feminine side to the discourse both about war and about peace, which seems to be very much lacking. This was very much like Carol Gilligan’s notion about the female attributes of taking caring, intuitive, empathetic approaches. These seem to be left out of the current debate. We talked about waging peace as opposed to waging war. We talked about the difference between globalism and globalization. There is a very strong difference there, although it may seem like quite a small nuance.

We talked about the possibility of next steps, perhaps some smaller, more focussed discussions such as round tables for people to talk in more depth about some of the specific issues that were raised today.

Lastly, it is important to talk about some of the challenges. This is clearly an extraordinarily complicated area. This is not to say that we shouldn’t do anything, but we should tread carefully. We need to be aware of the complexity of the situation, the uncertainty and the continuously evolving uncertainty, and the likelihood of regional destabilisation that will probably happen in an economic, a political and a military sense. We need to keep in mind what I call the law of "unintended consequences." Sometimes even with very good intentions we do things that have bad consequences. For example, we heard that in the humanitarian sector we may unintentionally make people dependent on aid for food, and thus unintentionally destroy an agricultural sector. We have to learn from people who do understand these issues and who can move into those areas in a careful and thoughtful way.

It bears repeating that it is a long term process. We may be able to get food and clean water quickly there (probably not quickly enough). But if we want to make the world a safer place, it will take generations. I think we are in a very challenging time. One member of the audience also informed us that "we need to be kind to the American people, tough on the President." We have to be careful about the militarization of aid. We have to be careful of the impetus to make aid programs try to cure all ills, or be used to proselytize to a certain religious grouping, or to a political grouping or to a certain ideology. It is absolutely essential that we respect the culture and the custom and countries that we are trying to support and give assistance. We need to involve the beneficiaries and partners of the country and within the framework where we are working.

We also need to engage the broader community. There are lots of people with different backgrounds and experiences here today. If we could have heard more of these people’s experiences, it would have provided a greater diversity of views. We have to think of ways to reach out and engage people in broader dialogue. It is absolutely crucial that we ensure that in whatever we as individuals, communities, groups or as a country undertake, that we ensure that we respect the dignity of others, as opposed to just having "tolerance."

To finish off, I would like to remind us of what George Chandler said in the last presentation. We have today looked and analysed the "what" and then we have asked "so what" and have analysed some ideas. Now, as we go forward we need to ask "now what?" We have to interrogate ourselves about that question as we go through the next few weeks and start working out what the next steps should be. I will end with two quotes. One is from Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was a US jurist. He said: "If we aspire to be a good citizen, we must immerse ourselves in the agonies of the time." I think we are probably in one of the biggest agonies of any time that people of my generation have been in. I think now is the time to stand up and be counted and to do what we can do. My last quote, and I usually end on a Gaelic quote, is an old Irish farewell that my mother always says to me when I am leaving Ireland after my visit every year. Roughly translated to put it into this slightly different context, it means, "May we all be in a safer place this time next year." Let’s hope so.