First of all, on the North American issue, I think we should emphasize a trilateral arrangement. I think the Canada-U.S. arrangement is very important and requires a lot of our attention. A lot of our challenge has to be to keep getting their attention. I don't think that would benefit from hiving off Mexico.
I wanted to avoid speaking of the past, but the first issue that came to me as foreign minister in 1984 was a request by Mexico for help in getting into the GATT. So in 1984 our NAFTA partner was not a member of the GATT. What's interesting is that they wouldn't go to the United States for help; they came to us. I think there are a multitude of reasons for us to maintain that tripartite arrangement.
I think the very tough issue for Canada and this committee is going to revolve around the issue of how we make the tough choices and where should the spending go. Within the envelope of spending on development and diplomacy, where should it go? The other side of that is, where should it not go? The questions are tightly allied. I hope you have the opportunity to take a very close look at both of those questions.
The Afghanistan question is very interesting, because, among other things, there has been a side to the military demonstrated that not many people knew about. It is a side that has real proficiency and skill in development and in other non-traditional military capacities. But that's not their first job, and they're naturally going to take an approach to that through the lens of what their first job is. I suspect that even though we have had enormously able people from Foreign Affairs and CIDA operating and working with DND in Afghanistan, our approach to the development side, the post-conflict side, if you will, of Afghanistan, would have been stronger had there been a greater sense of morale, esprit, and confidence among the Foreign Affairs and CIDA people who were part of that approach.
You know there is a very active debate in the U.S. as to whether development issues should be led by military personnel or not. We haven't had that debate, and we don't tend to have those kinds of debates here. We didn't debate whether or not there should be an increase in military spending. No vote, no debate.