Mr. Speaker, the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has said that he would, if he could, give the order to shoot down the coalition aircraft that are bombarding villages and causing numerous civilian deaths.
The Canadian Minister of National Defence's reaction to this is to say that President Karzai is running for election, so what he said needs to be taken with a grain of salt. This is trivializing the matter rather than admitting that intervention in its present form is headed straight for disaster.
Does the Minister of Foreign Affairs realize that his government's strategy of focusing more funding on the military aspect than on humanitarian aid and diplomacy is more than dubious and verging on dangerous?