Thank you.
You have touched upon three very interesting topics that are also close to my heart, in one way or another.
Yes, Canada has a strong presence of Afghans. Our Afghan Canadians have been here for 20 to 25 years in most cases. The numbers run somewhere between 100,000 to 120,000 people, mostly concentrated in the greater Toronto region.
As an expatriate myself, who in 2001 left exile and decided to go back and serve my country, I can tell you that one of the most effective ways to build capacity and transfer knowledge and skills to this newly redeveloping country, and to be a bridge between the new home and the old home, is to reconnect the Afghans, who had to leave their country under duress over the past 25 to 30 years, to their homeland.
I have talked to my colleagues within the Canadian government on many occasions, especially in CIDA, about looking at ways to facilitate the return of some qualified Afghans who are willing to go--and spend whatever period of time they would like--and be of help. I think that help will not only go a long way to assist Afghanistan, but it will also go a long way to assist Canada and other countries where we have large communities of Afghans.
On the opium cultivation issue and the Senlis Council proposition, as you know, our government does not think it is the best and most effective way of tackling this humongous problem. I have to tell you that 30 years ago, prior to the Soviet invasion, and the subsequent crises it underwent, Afghanistan was not a major opium-producing country. As I mentioned, even today, 6% of our arable land is being used by less than about 15% of the farmers for this cash crop. Interestingly, they do so in the most volatile regions of the country. They do so, to a large extent, as a result of war weariness, of poverty, and because they have no other alternatives.
One of the solutions we are seriously looking toward with our partners, especially the U.K., which has the lead in this field, and now the Americans, who are playing an important role, and many other countries, including Canada, which, for instance, provides a certain amount of assistance toward alternative livelihoods in Afghanistan, is a strategy that works for Afghanistan. It could work for a region that is also affected by it, and the world at large, because the product ends up on your streets as well. It is a shared problem that we need to tackle together. There is the supply-side issue and there's the demand-side issue. We hope that everything between the supply side and the demand side can also be addressed and that not all the pressure is put on the supplier.
As a result, we think that the new approach we'll be taking, which will also be backed by very large amounts of monetary support, will provide the Afghan farmer with a clear decision--namely, if you continue, these are the consequences. We do not want to punish you right away. The purpose is not to punish you. The purpose is to help you move to other crops and an alternative means of livelihood. Of course you need certain things from us, as the government or as the international community, to be able to make that move. Whether it's rural development, roads, schools and clinics, agribusiness, and access to markets, we will do our share.
Now, when we say that we will do our share, we need to deliver. On a couple of occasions in the past few years, we told the Afghan farmers, “Here we are, and we are going to help you move to a licit means of livelihood”, but then we failed to deliver.
That would be the disastrous scenario for all of us, to promise and not be able to deliver.
This is the way we are going to take. We are looking at all kinds of alternative crops. They are things that may not compete with opium or heroin on the markets, but they will come close to it. I am of the belief--and the latest polls show--that the Afghan people are opposed to poppy cultivation as a matter of principle, and almost 70% of Afghans are opposed to it.
In our culture it is prohibited. In our constitution it is prohibited. So the first answer I have for Senlis is that...why are you trying to impose something that is illegal--culturally, legally, constitutionally, religiously--for the Afghans? That would be a recipe for many other problems.
Let's not take that route. Again, their little amount of work in Afghanistan has shown that wherever they went and proposed this idea, we saw a sudden surge in poppy cultivation.
Is that the answer to Afghanistan's problems? From all sides, the answer to that is, no, it is not.