Mr. Speaker, we are not attacking the government on mismanagement or anything. The government is giving ambiguous responses in terms of the commitment we made until 2009. Different signals are being sent to the country as a whole as to whether we are going to be there or not beyond 2009.
We simply want to know if the government is going to keep that commitment, or if it is going to extend it beyond 2009. We do not want the government to give us only another six hours of debate. We do not want the government to put us under the gun. We do not want the government portraying all parties, the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc, as being unpatriotic and supposedly not supporting our military just because we ask tough questions. That is really what we are asking.
The Liberal government of the day made a commitment because we are international participants in these initiatives, as we were in the former Yugoslavia conflict. We had an international obligation to participate. We made that commitment under the three D policy, defence, development and diplomacy, until 2007.
The then prime minister, the member for LaSalle—Émard, made a commitment on television that after the Gomery report we would have an election within 30 days. The New Democratic Party chose to renege on it, overthrow the government, and thus gave the Conservative Party the opportunity to do what it wished, and it extended the mission.