Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you.

Foreign Affairs committee  We didn't get into what they should be teaching them in schools. It's so basic at this point. We met with a group that was very proud of their school having been built, but their main concern was that it was inadequate in size. There were so many children that they could only att

Foreign Affairs committee  And I'm used to having officials write them down.

Foreign Affairs committee  This time we won't get to your question.

Foreign Affairs committee  In my day there used to be pads provided. I guess too many witnesses stole them when they left, so I've been writing on my sleeves. I'm trying to remember these questions. Actually Mr. Chan's and Mr. Martin's questions do relate to one another. Oh, here comes a pad. It's too la

Foreign Affairs committee  Well, the first thing I'd say is that it's right that—

Foreign Affairs committee  First, I want to underscore the importance of the upcoming election, in part because one of the things we're trying to instill is democratic institutions, but also because the past elections are a benchmark for how these elections will be run. By every measure, I think they were

Foreign Affairs committee  And in development, we've talked about these targets for years. I'm happy to say that I brought in an 8% annual recurring increase for development assistance when I was Minister of Finance. I'm sad to say that in the testing the department does on what focus groups think of the b

Foreign Affairs committee  Mr. Chairman, take it off our opening comments.

Foreign Affairs committee  First, I entirely agree that we've been deficient in the resources we've made available on the other Ds. But I'd have to say, although we have kind of the image in Canada that we're doing all the heavy lifting and the military is dominant, let's face facts here. We have 2,500;

Foreign Affairs committee  Mr. Obhrai, of course I don't do party politics. And we didn't try to write a report in any way written from a partisan point of view. I think most fair observers have said that we were critical of governments--plural--of different political stripes in some of the things we said

Foreign Affairs committee  Who is it?

Foreign Affairs committee  For us, that was a fundamental principle and we tried to explain it clearly in our report. Security and reconstruction are linked and we cannot forget that. At the moment, it is not possible to advance the cause of reconstruction and development in Afghanistan without having the

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, Ms. Deschamps. I do not know what Ms. Joya is basing those statements on. I first visited Afghanistan in January 2002 when I was deputy prime minister. When I was in Kabul, I visited a CIDA project run by the NGO CARE. That was the reason why I agreed to become invol

Foreign Affairs committee  We may run a little over. Those are important questions, and they're not easy questions. Let me start by saying that I think the committee entirely agrees that those four pillars Mr. Martin referred to need to be accomplished. We need to have reasonable expectations of what s