One of the great things about this country is that you and I can both have opinions, and we can express them freely. We can have disagreements publicly. We can debate them on the floor of the House of Commons and here at committee.
People inside Afghanistan didn't have that right five years ago. To suggest that there are warlords, that there are people still involved in some of the bodies that are still functioning inside Afghanistan who are committing atrocities--nobody denies that. But what we're there to do, obviously, along with a UN-backed NATO mission, is to bring about the type of stability that will allow democracy to flourish; that will allow further development; that will allow the important work of the provincial reconstruction teams to take hold; that will allow the provision of aid, micro credit, infrastructure spending, the building of institutions, including a judiciary, a police force, and an Afghan army; and--back to Madam Barbot's question--that will eventually allow the people of Afghanistan and their democratically elected government to walk on their own. Then, and only then, can we talk about an exit strategy. I would suggest that to do that prematurely is to abandon the very things we believe in, in terms of promoting democracy and everything that flows from it.
On CIDA, our commitment remains very real. In fact, we've increased CIDA's budget by 8% a year, and it will double by the year 2012. We are still very much moving toward the 0.7% commitment. It's clear to me that CIDA's programs are making a difference in many corners of the world, just as, I would suggest, a lot of Canadians are who work in NGOs and in other organizations, even those that are not necessarily originating in our own country. The International Red Cross has a lot of Canadians working abroad. Many youth organizations are the beneficiaries of Canadian participation.
Do we have an obligation to do more? Is there progress being made? Yes, absolutely there is. It's not perfect. It's not fine-tuned perhaps to the extent that everyone would want it to be, but it's done with the best intent. I would suggest that the talented and very committed people in CIDA are always looking for ways to do more with the resources they have at their availability.
On your last question, about Mr. Arar, let me just say that it was horrible. It was absolutely deplorable what happened to him, what they did to him in Syria, and we communicated that very clearly. How that came about was a subject of another democratic principle that we embrace in this country, which is to have judicial and public inquiries when there have been instances when our system breaks down and fails Canadian citizens like Maher Arar, and we have to improve upon that based on lessons learned.
There is another principle here, and that's the rule of law. Mr. Arar has a $400 million lawsuit against the Government of Canada. I'm not going to say anything today that's going to jeopardize that lawsuit.