Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her interesting speech.
For the most part, my colleague's speech was thoughtful. I disagree on a few points. I will say, though, that the best statement by Quebeckers in this whole thing is the statement by the Van Doos in terms of their mission accomplishment, and we should be very thankful for that.
Training and development were among the things the member talked about. We have been doing that all along. It is accelerating. The further along we get, the more capable the Afghans are. I have a question for her, but first I have a couple of points.
The member talked about providing more aid to Afghanistan. We could always do more, but we are giving over $1 billion in aid to Afghanistan. It is our largest single recipient of foreign aid.
She talked about a lack of economic growth. In fact, the average wage for Afghans has doubled and the GDP has tripled since 2002. It started from a pretty low base, but that is growth and there is progress.
I am pleased to hear that she believes we should be there in a continuing role for development and so on, and I think she agrees that there needs to be a security umbrella over that, although we may disagree about who should provide it.
The question I have for the member relates to how she talked about Pakistan, the influence of Pakistan, and the ability of the Taliban to hide there. With regard to the recent elections in Pakistan, particularly the election in the northwest frontier province, where the Taliban-friendly party was in fact booted out of office and the ANP was voted in, which will be much less Taliban friendly, I would like her to comment on how she thinks that might influence the ability of the Taliban to operate as freely as it has been historically.