Sure, I'm happy to. Thank you for the question.
I think you had former Prime Minister Joe Clark appear before the committee as well. We had him at our annual dinner, and he gave an absolutely gripping presentation outlining the spending reductions that have been incurred by the Department of Foreign Affairs. So if it's any wonder how we are punching far below our weight instead of above it, follow the money, as they say in the movies.
In terms of a negotiated settlement, it was actually back in 2006 that I participated in the first press conference here in 130-S, calling for a negotiated settlement. It was clear what was happening in Afghanistan was in fact a civil war that was going on that had never been resolved properly. On September 11, the war on terrorism was laid over the top of it. Really, what we needed to do was to address the local grievances of many of the aspects of the insurgency.
The strategy had to be one of peeling off those elements within the insurgency that we could bring under the government, by trying to redress some of the complaints and issues they had, which are mostly local. There would probably be some spoilers, as they say, and maybe by training the Afghan national forces—the police and army—they would be able to deal with that and provide enough security for the country that then we could get the development and aid going.
I'm still firmly a believer in that, that a negotiated settlement is the way to go, and I think it has been remarkable that the discourse around this issue has slowly come around to that over the last few years, to the point now where we even had President Obama taking a fresh look at the situation and identifying this.
So I think a negotiated settlement is definitely the way to go.