Mr. Speaker, I have a comment and a question. The hon. member started his comments by suggesting to members of this House and to the Canadian public that by having this debate we are somehow being disloyal to our troops and giving comfort to the Taliban.
I would suggest to him that if that logic takes place, we will never be able to ask in committee a question of the Chief of the Defence Staff as to whether or not the operational tempo of our troops is being stretched. We will never be able to ask a question of any of our operational leaders as to what the nature of the success of the mission is. It will always be hidden under the pretext that we are giving comfort to the enemy.
I would suggest to hon. members that as members of this democratic institution we will have lost this war today if we give to the Taliban the control as to what we can debate in this House of Commons. We should never allow ourselves to go there.
This motion recognizes the fact that our troops are often stretched in these missions. We have committed, as our leader said, for the longest period of time. It is a reasonable proposition for us to debate.
Here is what I would like to ask the hon. member to say from his departmental point of view. If we had the commander of the forces in the south in this House or before the committee, would he say that CIDA is delivering the type of aid and the amount of aid necessary for them to conduct an anti-insurgency operation?
Our understanding is that we are not delivering the level of aid necessary to do that, and while we can say that there are some successes, those successes are not sufficient to allow us to win what is not a military war but an insurgency matter, which requires an approach of aid, of diplomacy, of governance and of winning the war against opium trafficking and corruption and all the other issues in the Afghan government.
If we do not have that coordinated approach, we will never succeed at this, because it is not a military operation. Our leader made that clear in his speech and that is the thrust--