Mr. Speaker, the first thing that the member should remember is that it is the defence minister of the Conservative government who has been flip-flopping. We made a decision to stay until 2009. The defence minister kept saying it might be 15 years. It would be better if the government would remove an incompetent defence minister from the House.
Second, in terms of the successes that we want from Afghanistan, when a people do not have the ability to feed themselves, if they do not have economic security, then they must have economic security. We need to be able to help them feed themselves and find alternatives, which is what the government has not done.
In fact, the previous Liberal government put in money for diplomacy and development. It is through those developmental efforts that Canada went in with the NGOs to build schools, build infrastructure, but we need to do more to help the Afghan people. We have to ensure that the Afghan people understand that we are there with them to develop sustainability and transfer knowledge. We have to be there in a diplomatic and a development role.