Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and fellow members. It is an honour to appear before you today. I greatly appreciate your interest in this matter because it is very important to Canadians.
First, I will make a brief statement, and then I hope that you will share with me your suggestions and the areas that you would like me to address further. It is my hope that a meeting such as this one will foster a better understanding of the situation and perhaps give rise to ideas on the best way forward.
As you know, ladies and gentlemen, with regard to Canada's participation with the 42 nations related to Afghanistan, our reporting process is unique. We have scanned the other 41 nations that are participants in Afghanistan. We believe we are the only ones who produce a quarterly report as we do, and you have the copies here. We also have information packages for you at the end of the meeting, should you so desire. We're handing some of these out right now.
Taking guidance from the independent commission and independent report that was headed up by the Honourable John Manley some time ago, we have identified, as you are aware, benchmarks of progress, and we have also identified six priority areas along with certain signature projects, infrastructure related, where we can measure what we are doing in Afghanistan. We can see whether we're making progress in each of the six areas or in fact if we're not making progress, and we do that on a quarterly basis. These reports are very transparent. They are tough. They are not embellished in any way. I'm sure as a committee you have gone through these quarterly reports. You'll see that we're clear where we did not hit a certain benchmark that we were hoping to hit. That's clearly identified. We try to identify the reasons for it and how we're going to move on.
This quarterly report covers the time from January 1, 2009, up to March 31, 2009. You may have some questions related to activities that have gone on since then, and I'll try to address those. With the quarterly report, there's obviously always some delay time because we go to that end point, accumulate all of the material, and publish the report. When we release the report, the report is released in Parliament. We also do a full news conference so that the media also has all the details, so they are able to ask questions.
Some of the overall highlights include the following. One of our main infrastructure signature projects is related to the Dahla Dam. When this dam is completely reconstructed and rebuilt—our goal is to have that done by the end of 2011—it will provide irrigation, it will provide power all through the valley, and literally hundreds of thousands of people will be the beneficiaries of that infrastructure. In this last quarter, a bridge that is necessary to transport heavy equipment onto the dam site was completed, so that work can begin. The contracts for this were all let in the previous quarter, so work can continue to progress. We also saw the completion of two more schools. We have a goal to build 50 schools. Twenty-five are under construction. With the completion this last quarter of two more schools, we're now up to five that have been completed.
In another area, a target area for us being the eradication of polio, close to 350,000 more children were vaccinated with the polio vaccine. We're pleased to see overall progress, as over five million children now have been vaccinated against polio.
These are very significant developments, along with the progress that we continue to make on the education side. We've seen reported since January, and this was included in the report in January, that some 11,000 more people—these are all within our area of jurisdiction in Kandahar—have taken the course of basic literacy, a majority of those being women. We have seen another 300,000 registered on the eligible voters list. The period of official registration is now over in terms of the work to be done, but the registration list itself is still open so that people can register for the August elections. That brought to a total of 4.4 million registered that we have been involved with, and that means some 12.6 million people are registered to vote in Afghanistan in the elections that are coming up.
The elections, as you would expect from elections anywhere, appear to be advancing in a very robust manner, with candidates out there at a variety of levels talking about what they are going to do for the people. There is a familiar ring to that. The debate among candidates seems to be robust, with the usual supportive and questioning comments among candidates as far as their policies and what they think they're going to accomplish for the people.
We are being very careful not to be involved, other than supplying $35 million for the election process, and that involves security. We are not in any way indicating preferences for candidates, whom we would like to see or not like to see. We're just very encouraged to see that the democratic process is emerging in Afghanistan and we have had a significant part to play in that.
I'm looking forward to your questions, advice, suggestions. The report, as you'll see, is fairly detailed, but it's designed to be a relatively easy read for anybody who is interested in progress in Afghanistan. You'll see it's laid out under each of our six areas of priority, what our target is, the benchmark we used to measure any progress or lack of progress, and the result. Those are read in a linear fashion, so it's relatively easy to follow.
I should also tell you that we can produce for you, if you haven't seen it--every month there is a series of public presentations by a wide variety of groups across the country in terms of what is going on in Afghanistan, and we need to make Canadians aware of this. A website is set up, of course, for people to gain this information.
I appreciate your involvement, your interest, your suggestions, and your questions. Mr. Chairman, I would turn it over to your honourable members at this time.