Mr. Chair, my colleague the Minister of National Defence, who has kindly agreed that I open these discussions tonight because I have some other obligations, will deal with this more extensively.
I want to reassure the member that this is the reason why we are having this debate tonight. We will begin discussing this issue. This is a realignment of our presence in Afghanistan following our commitment of a few years ago, and in deep discussions with our international partners in NATO and with the other countries that are involved there.
We discussed who should do what in Afghanistan. We distributed the roles among ourselves. It was thought that Canada could do the best job there. The Minister of National Defence will have the opportunity to explain this more extensively.