Mr. Speaker, my comments follow up on the speech delivered by our parliamentary leader. I will talk about the fact that, in our opinion, Canada has an obligation to leave the region of Kandahar and to focus on international assistance and reconstruction, so as to truly help Afghanistan achieve its objectives.
In a speech that was very well received at CERIUM, in 2004, our leader said:
What the international community is doing in Afghanistan is a test for the United Nations, for NATO and for the future of multilateral interventions in the world. The deployment of armed forces there is enshrined in international law, in multilateralism.
Until the decision was made by Canada to go to Kandahar, support for the mission in Afghanistan had been really strong, both in Quebec and in Canada. Why are we on a mission in Afghanistan? Why are we on a mission in Kandahar? We thought we were in Kandahar because General Hillier had convinced Bill Graham, then Minister of National Defence, and the member for LaSalle—Émard, who was then the Prime Minister, to go there. However, former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien recently said that it was probably because the then Prime Minister and current member for LaSalle—Émard had not made a decision soon enough and could not get another region.
The fact is that since Canada has been on a mission in Kandahar, we have had a trumped up vision of events in Afghanistan. Why? Because the Kandahar region is where Pashtuns come from. This is where the Taliban, with Mullah Omar, gained power all over Afghanistan, after the forced withdrawal of the Russians, for which Saudi Arabia and the mujahedeen worked so hard. Some of them stayed in Afghanistan, while others settled everywhere.
This whole region is the former Pashtun breeding ground, except for the City of Kandahar and the perimeter enlarged by Canadians, who had to do it all over again, because that ground was lost in the past year. In light of this situation, that whole region is not favourable to the democratic project and to the future that Afghanistan hopes to have. In fact, voter participation in the election was very low. This is a tribal region that provides very good support to the Taliban, and that region itself was prepared by the Pakistanis and the infamous ISI. Therefore, we must leave Kandahar.
A motion brought before the House by the Liberals, supported by the Bloc Québécois, nearly passed. Unfortunately, the NDP did not support it. If it had supported it, the entire international community would already know that the Parliament of Canada decided that Canada should leave Kandahar in February 2009. Unfortunately, the NDP did not support us in this measure, otherwise, it would be a done deal.
This would have allowed all members of this House, as I myself did at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in July, to indicate to their counterparts from those European countries that are participating in the mission in Afghanistan that this mission's success will be achieved through a more equitable sharing of political weight, casualties and cost. There have been debates in Germany, others are being held in Denmark, and NATO is having a meeting today. When I took part in the debate at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, I said that Afghanistan must not be abandoned, but that the weight and sacrifice must be shared more equitably.
Newspapers often give the impression that Canada is responsible for what is happening in Afghanistan. No, it is NATO that shared the responsibility. It is a first for NATO and it is important that it be successful.
This is why the government should have said that we would pull out of Afghanistan in February 2009 and that, until then, we would try to convince the international community to replace us, so that we could turn our attention to those interventions we excel at.
Why are we on a mission in Kandahar? As I said, I thought it was General Hillier who wanted to go there, but it was for other reasons that had nothing to do with Afghanistan.
It has something to do with the transformation of the Canadian army—to which General Hillier has dedicated a great deal of effort—and the militarization, or remilitarization, of the Canadian Forces. Hence, the many purchases of very expensive equipment that will be used for what afterwards? We do not know. Before changing our foreign policy we changed our defence policy. We have always been critical of this move.
We are not saying that we can just leave. This has been accepted. We are saying that we must give notice in order to leave in 2009. We cannot just leave because we do not want to give the impression of having been defeated. We must not do this. We have an international responsibility, even though Parliament adopted the motion to go to Kandahar with a majority of only five votes. By five votes, I told the international parliamentary assembly.
We nevertheless wanted to fulfill our international obligations, but we cannot do more than that. It would be ill-advised because we are not providing a sense of Afghanistan's true state of development, of what is happening elsewhere.
I met an Afghan parliamentarian who came to Montreal. He said that one of the population's serious problems is that it sees a lot of money in the military and also in international aid. They believe major projects will materialize and then, as they are tendered, they turn out to be small projects. The money does not reach the people. They feel that the money comes from the outside world but it does not reach their little world. That is a very significant problem.
Coordinating international aid for the reconstruction plan is an extremely difficult problem. We are familiar with torture by Afghan police—no one is denying it. There is the problem of corruption and the enormous problem of drugs, which provide a living to small farmers.
Often, the main difficulty for these farmers is that they have no credit. If they did, they could plant other crops rather than borrowing from the war lords or other racketeers who buy the drugs they grow in their fields.
There are many problems that need to be dealt with, and the war is not the way to solve them. Security is necessary, but responsibility for security must be shared. As much money as possible and as many resources as possible have to be invested in improving Afghans' living conditions and enabling them to plan for the future. Only then can the important role NATO has taken on in this region succeed.
We must not forget that when it comes to foreign affairs, we cannot think only about Afghanistan. What are the neighbouring countries? To the west is Iran, which borders Iraq. This is a little Middle East. To the north are the countries of central Asia, which have huge deposits of oil. There is also Turkey, China to the east and Russia to the west. This is the area where the future will be played out. It is important that NATO succeed, but for that to happen, the countries have to share responsibility for security more equitably. They have to learn to work together, coordinate international aid and make sure all the money they seem to have can reach the people in other ways.
The Taliban are very present in the Kandahar region. Farmers cannot support Canadian soldiers, even though they may be better than the rest, because they will be caught in the crossfire.
We therefore must give up our nearly exclusively military role. Observers have said that the effects of Canada's international aid are not visible. The various NATO countries must really work to reconstruct this country, and each must shoulder its fair share of the work.