Thank you, Chair, and thank you to our guests for the work they have done and for being here today.
Just to clear the record--and I'll speak for myself as an opposition member--it wasn't not wanting to have you at committee, it was the way in which you would present yourself at committee. Initially, the government came forward and said we should have a joint committee of defence and foreign affairs and have you present as well as government members and be televised and then go to the House. We said no thank you; we have our work as a committee, and we are independent from the government. This is how we arrived at your being here today. I thank my colleague for his comments on that.
Let's turn to the task of your report. I echo my leader and others who have said they encourage all Canadians to read this report. It's extremely important for the aforementioned reasons.
I think it's safe to say that the question before us, before Canadians, before Parliament, is not whether Canada should help Afghanistan, but how. I say that as someone who is from a party that has a different view from the government and the official opposition on how to do that. One of the recommendations we've already touched on is to provide a thousand more troops from another NATO country. It's not a surprise to me, and I think this has already been agreed upon, by the way. I think it's a matter of where they come from. If not France, it looks as if it's probably the United States.
One of the concerns I have is command and control. I'm a new member of Parliament, and one of the first debates we had was on the extension of the war to the current deadline, which we'll vote on tomorrow, and it looks as if there will be an extension to 2011. During that debate, many people were not aware, and I include members of Parliament, that we were under Operation Enduring Freedom command and control, and that didn't end until July, you noted in your report.
My first question is, if we receive the extra thousand troops and they happen to be from the United States, how does that work in command and control? We know the Americans will not go under the command and control of another country. Does that mean that Canada will then be under American command and control, or will they have a separate command and control? This leads to other questions about the comprehensive nature of how the mission is going. Of course, that's one of the issues you've touched on.
Mr. Manley, maybe to you first.