Mr. Chair, talk about confusion. The Conservatives have a lot to answer for. I wonder what the public safety minister would say if someone said that we needed to talk about withdrawal, about costs, about the mission, about a possible vote and about bad morale of the troops, if we had a debate in the House.
I remind the hon. member that those words came from the Conservatives, not the New Democratic Party. If there is confusion on anyone's part, I suggest they look in the mirror and try to clarify this for Canadians.
However, that kind of rhetoric will not solve the concerns we have in Afghanistan. I have a very serious question for the public safety minister. The previous Liberal government, when we were serving in the Balkans, took an awful lot of money out of the capital defence budget and moved it into operations thus starving the military of equipment purchases.
My question is for the hon. member who is in cabinet. What is the government doing about the financing of this mission in Afghanistan and any future involvement that we might have? Where is the money coming from? Is it coming from the capital expenditures of the military or is it new moneys so we do not starve our military in terms of training and equipment purchases for the future? Could he give us at least us an estimate of the financial cost of our mission in Afghanistan?