Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It's disappointing that on one hand we show great concern about that region and its stability. We talk about central Asian pipelines without mentioning Iranian pipelines or India and Pakistan. We talk about our mission in Afghanistan. We talk about border security. We talk about deployment. We talk about terrorism. Yet for some reason my colleagues across the way do not want to acquaint themselves or inform themselves, through experts and others, and will base their judgments and questions, I'm sorry to say, on superficial information--like my colleague here said, “40 million Taliban”. That is not even the total population of Afghanistan, 40 million. Somebody mentioned about the nuclear aspect of Pakistan—it's a risk, they read in some headline in some newspaper over there. There are command-and-control centres in place. Everything is absolutely secure.
We need to get educated on this, and if there is not interest in that, I guess it basically will put this committee at a disadvantage to understand. This is an opportunity to bring in experts who can educate this committee on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the whole region: some real experts, not just NGOs, but people who know, people who have acted with them and who understand the situation. So when the debate happens or otherwise, we as a country and as parliamentarians representing our constituents have the proper knowledge and insight. If they don't want it, it's up to them, but I have to say that I'm really disappointed.