I'm just saying to you that the reality right now is that we cannot afford to undertake a major land mission for a few years, until we rebuild the army.
Right now we can keep our commitment in Afghanistan going to the end of February 2009, and depending upon decisions, we could keep it going into the future. But what we can't do right now is undertake another major mission. The 1,200 troops is a major mission because it has to be sustained; we can't do that. When I entered the department, the military briefed me very quickly that we couldn't do such things.
I'm wondering if the briefing note you're talking about may have been given to the previous minister, Minister Graham. I don't know, because I didn't get such a briefing note.
Madam, with respect to the other question you raised about starving children, in fact I quickly contacted our people in Kandahar because I saw that report by the lady who made the statement. In recent times, we fed about 8,500 people in the area, down in the Panjwai. Our military staff went around the whole area looking for people and giving them food and blankets, etc. Either they were unfortunate and missed some group on a road or something, but they're not aware of any substantial number of people in their area who are starving.
What I would appreciate is if the lady who gave that evidence could tell us precisely where she's talking about, then we would make sure that our military go there and give them food. We have been giving food and blankets out to people on a regular basis.