Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank our guests for coming here today and providing us with updates and insight on the mission in Afghanistan.
One of the concerns our party has is that the mission we're currently in, the counter-insurgency kind of search-and-kill mission, is not helping. In fact it's doing more harm than good. We're hearing that today. According to local reports, 14 workers who were engaged in building roads were killed by NATO bombs today. We hear about civilians being killed, not by the Taliban, sadly, but by allied forces. To be clear about that, this is not the intention, but this is the result.
My concern is when we hear statistics like that of the investment of the Canadian government of $1.36 billion in official development assistance in Afghanistan over a one-year period and that only about 31% has a local impact. I think it speaks to the problems you've outlined. We're having problems plugging in the money. In other words, we don't seem to know, notwithstanding the money and the commitment, where to put the money.
I'm hearing from you, as a group, that we need to look at grassroots. We need to look at NGOs to help plug in the money. I couldn't agree with you more.
We talked about the compact. I must remind friends from the other side that part of the compact is to promote regional cooperation, to combat corruption, and to ensure public transparency and accountability. I'm not seeing that from our own government in terms of accountability and transparency of where the money is going. I'm sure the intent of the compact is to do what you're advocating for.
How do we get over this dilemma of having security trumping development? How do we plug in at the local level?