Mr. Chair, I want to thank all members for giving their speeches and interventions on this extremely important and serious issue of Afghanistan and the involvement of our Canadian Forces in this endeavour. We wanted to open up the debate so the public would be informed, aware and knowledgeable about not only what our troops are doing but why they are doing it in a place that is so far away and so forlorn.
Above all else, I want to thank not only the Canadian Forces members who are in Afghanistan today and their families who make the supreme sacrifice of giving up their loved ones to work half a world away, but also the Canadian Forces members here in Canada who support our troops far away, the civilian workforce at the Department of National Defence and all of the people who ensure that this very large and important organization in our country, the Canadian Forces and our military, are able to engage in the work they do not only here at home but also abroad.
Our Canadian Forces are true Canadian heroes who exercise their duties with the highest level of professionalism, courage and behaviour. It is something I have witnessed as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence. I must say that it has been my honour to serve the members in the forces who are the best and finest people our country has to offer.
I want to clear up something that the foreign affairs critic for the Conservative Party mentioned about the amount of moneys being spent. I thought I made myself clear when I said that we put $500 million into the budget this year for our forces. We now have $1.3 billion in the supplementary estimates that will only pass if the opposition members allow them to pass.
These moneys include $418 million for equipment, $322 million for pay increases and health benefits for our CF members, $278 million for this Afghanistan operation, and $71 million for troop expansion because we will be increasing the numbers by 5,000 in the regular forces and 3,000 in the reserves. I want to emphasize that this is merely a down payment for what we will do to strengthen our Canadian Forces.
Why Afghanistan? Many comments were made earlier as to why we are half a world away. The reality is that the country is situated strategically in such an important area. It is surrounded in part by nuclear capable countries, other areas of great uncertainty, particularly the CIS states that are close by, and it is close to the Middle East which is an area of great instability.
Our forces are in Afghanistan because to allow Afghanistan to go back to being a failed state would not only be a regional disaster but an international disaster. We must not forget that the Taliban was in power and that it was an area where the Taliban was supportive of al-Qaeda, the group responsible for terrorist activities around the world. We cannot allow Afghanistan to become a staging point for terrorist activities in the region or, indeed, here in Canada.
We are in Afghanistan with troops from other countries because failed and failing states, as we know, can and do breed terrorist activities. That is what will happen in Afghanistan and that is what did happen. We as part of the international community are determined not to go back down that road.
One of the major dangers and threats to the country, quite frankly, is the fact that more than half of the GDP of the country is due to heroine coming from the production of poppies and opium. We have had some success. Afghanistan has seen a 21% reduction in opium production but there is much more to be done. Warlords get involved which provides insecurity in regions and opens up the country to going back to a failed state. Kabul, the capital, will lose control over the country and all the work we are trying to accomplish at the end of the day to allow Afghanistan and Afghanis to maintain control over their country and provide the basic services and a sustainable economy for the long term will be for nought.
There is no doubt that our troops are engaging the Taliban in full combat actions, which is dangerous and their lives are in danger. However we have given them all the equipment and the best equipment they need to do their job. Nothing is perfect and that is an unfortunate situation but they accept those realities. However our job as the government is to ensure they have the personnel, training and equipment to do their job and we have done that. Whatever else they need they will get.
We also need to ensure there is a demobilization of former armed personnel. We need to demobilize and integrate the former troops as part of rag tag rebel groups. We need to reintegrate people who were part of the Taliban in the past. We also need to remove and destroy those weapons because that is part of our role.
We also need to ensure there will be an alternate economy, which is why CIDA is there, and our Canadian Forces are there to ensure that CIDA can work effectively and safely in the country.
We also need to ensure the Afghani people have security on the ground. If we cannot teach and train the Afghani people to have their own viable, effective force to provide security on the ground, we know that without security a country becomes a felled state. Our RCMP officers are doing a yeoman's job of training Afghani police forces but they are not only doing it for Afghanistan. I had the privilege of visiting our RCMP officers in Ahman, Jordan this past summer where they are training Iraqi police forces for Iraq. Without effective police forces on the ground, a country cannot have a sustainable economy.
Comments were made earlier today about the need for troops in Afghanistan. Afghanistan has one of the worst education systems and one of the worst health care systems in the world but a committed population that wants to change that and a committed international cadre of countries that also want to change that.
It is, as I said, a very dangerous mission, but it is one that we must succeed in at the end of the day, which is why our troops are on the ground. It is all part of, as we heard before, the three Ds.
One of the previous speakers wondered why so much investment had been put into our military and somehow suggested that all that work was combat. It is not. Part of it certainly is, but on the sharp edge of where our forces are in Kandahar, where there are insurgents, where the lives of our troops are in danger and where we are trying to give Afghanis a secure health care system and a better economy, then our troops need the combat capabilities to do their job. They will be engaged against these insurgents. Some of our allies have been murdered in Kabul through bombs. These are ongoing and omnipresent threats to our troops. Our responsibility as the government is to do all we can to ensure our troops are protected while they are there and that is our commitment. We can do no less.
Comments have been trotted out about the under-investment in our Canadian Forces. I freely admit that historically our Canadian Forces have been underfunded and the investment has not gone into them as it should have. However we have turned a significant corner over the last year and we have managed to put nearly $13 billion into our armed forces over five years. The reason it is ramping up is that we have the agreement of the Chief of the Defence Staff that those moneys will be given to the forces in a way that those moneys can be used effectively. The $1.3 billion in the supplementary estimates right now are for extra needs that the forces can use immediately.
In closing, I want to again thank our Canadian Forces for the work they are doing abroad and at home. On behalf of all Canadians, we honour the commitments they make for our country and their courage and bravery. We give thanks to those veterans who served before, as we just did on November 11. They are Canadian heroes.