Mr. Speaker, we cannot say that the Minister of Defence is a model of clarity.
He says that we are in Afghanistan to seek vengeance and that we will remain until progress becomes irreversible. He is now talking about violent conflicts such as Afghanistan for the next 10 or 15 years.
In his nostalgia for the cold war, he is spending $650 million on tanks that he wants to send to Kandahar, a strategic error if ever there was one.
Can the Minister of National Defence tell us, rather than always having to clarify his position, whether or not his real intention is to have Canadian troops remain in Afghanistan beyond February 2009?