Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. minister for his speech, which I might say, in all respect and friendship to the minister as a colleague, I found some traces of an earlier speech that was made in the House on this subject last November around these issues.
I am very pleased that the government agreed to this debate tonight. We, on our side of the House, do not consider this a debate. We believe this is an opportunity to allow the Canadian public to better understand this mission.
I want to start by echoing the minister's words about how we support our troops. We are very proud of them.
There are few people who can appreciate, unless one is actually in Afghanistan to see our troops, challenged as they are, the job they do. As the minister pointed out and as anyone who has been there will know, they are able to fight when they have to fight, but they are there primarily to help the Afghan people. A young officer like Lieutenant now Captain Greene almost lost his life because he went to a village shura and was sitting down with the very people that he was there to help. That is the image of Canadian troops.
It is a different way of going about this mission. We are confident they will do it in a way where, yes, they can fight, but at the same time they will establish links with the Afghan people so the Afghans will know they are there to serve them, and Canadians can do it better than anybody else in the world.
My question to the minister is this. There has been a lot of comment in the press about the fact that this mission is coalition-led, that this is an American mission we are participating in, not a NATO mission. Is it not correct that in June of this year this will become a NATO mission? The Afghan government wished this to be a NATO mission and Canada, by taking the lead in this mission with our Dutch and British colleagues, is enabling the very thing which the critics of the mission ignore; that is a transfer from being a coalition American mission to a NATO mission. In fact, it is the courageous acts of the Canadians that will allow this to become a truly international mission in Afghanistan for the interests of Afghans.