Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the indulgence of members of the House in allowing me to say a few things before the debate wraps up.
Members of the Canadian Alliance are concerned about the situation in Afghanistan. The situation there is as dire as it is in many countries around the world. We have seen people in many countries torn apart by war, famine and poverty. There are many situations that are completely untenable. There will always be a need for humanitarian aid. That is a sad fact. We will always have, I am sorry to say, famine, poverty and those kinds of things in the world. There will always be a need for humanitarian aid. There is no question about it.
Where would we get a figure like 0.7% of GDP? Where does that number come from? It seems it was drawn out of thin air. What is the basis for that number? In Canada's case this would mean an increase in foreign aid of $5 billion a year. That is a tremendous amount of money. It comes at a time when we already have big demands for new spending to strengthen our military, hire more people to screen our borders and hire more people at CSIS. All these are demands on the treasury.
The UN has asked for $584 million U.S. or about $900 million Canadian to help with the problems in Afghanistan. It is pretty clear that other countries would be expected to contribute. The money is not all for Afghanistan, obviously. However even if we had all that money we could not help Afghanistan right now because the country is torn apart by war.
We could help some of the people who make it to Pakistan. Maybe we could help in the northern part of Afghanistan. There are refugee camps on the border with Turkmenistan and other places. The situation in those places is not good. In one refugee camp last year I read that when it turned cold it dropped to 25° below zero and 150 people froze to death.
There is no question that we can help, but we could not possibly spend all that money right now in Afghanistan. The country is so ripped apart by war that we would not be able to help a lot of the people behind enemy lines. There is no way we can help all those people, unfortunately.
I will wrap up by asking my colleague one final question. Canada imposes tariffs on textiles and food to less developed countries like Afghanistan. Does my colleague think that is an appropriate policy given the level of poverty that countries like Afghanistan and others face?