Mr. Chair, I have three comments.
First, concerning the ISAF coalition, I can assure the hon. member that our goal is a humanitarian one. Our operations are within the coalition now, but the purpose of our presence, along with our British and other colleagues, is precisely to transfer authority to ISAF before our mission is over.
I will come back to the comments made by other hon. members on geopolitics and related issues, and what we are doing about it. This is a very important aspect for us and for the Afghan government, which wants the international community to be present in its country, not a group of countries like a coalition. Mr. Karzai himself has said this.
Second, our presence in Afghanistan is a good thing for us, in order to regularize our status as members of the international community as a whole, particularly since this is a NATO mission under UN authorization. As for the PRT, I agree with the hon. member that there is at present an imbalance between the presence of troops and the development assistance they have to provide. I visited the PRT recently, and I hope the hon. member and others will have the opportunity to do likewise. If so, they will see, as I did, that the people living there want stability and they want it now. They want assistance. They realize, however, that there will be no assistance until there is stability. At the moment, the focus is on stability, but we are also working on assistance and good governance.
Third, for the question from our colleague concerning prisoners. This is not a formal presentation, but I would like to share with the House the new policy I am trying to draft in conjunction with the Afghan government. We are in Afghanistan working for the good of the people and their government. We are not there to serve our own interests.
When I was over there, I attempted to reach an agreement with the Government of Afghanistan on the transfer of prisoners to the Afghan government, with guarantees of supervision by both the Red Cross and the Afghan human rights commission itself, in order to guarantee the status of these prisoners. We are in the process of negotiating this and I hope the agreement will be concluded before our troops are sent in for more extensive duties.