Mr. Speaker, it is far too easy for members on the opposite side, who wish to oppose the mission, to stand up and say that Canada's is but a peacekeeping mission. That is the paradigm we have created in our country.
While it is true that we are the founders of peacekeeping, we are also the founders of another paradigm called the responsibility to protect, which talks about our responsibility as a free and democratic country to have a role in the global world. Afghanistan is clearly a place where we need to demonstrate this role. It is a place where we need to help lift up other people of another nation. To do that, sometimes the responsibility to protect very clearly shows that we have to use security forces to enforce peace.
I do not know of any aid workers from my area who would want to go to Afghanistan if they did not have protection from those security forces, some of the best trained men and women in the world.
I have had the privilege of talking to many of the men from Edmonton Garrison. Just the other week I talked to a sergeant who did an original rotation in Afghanistan and just finished a rotation this summer. He said that the difference he felt that he and his colleague had made in Afghanistan in those seven years was far more and outweighed anything he could have done anywhere else in the world, including at home in Canada. He is proud to be a part of that. Every one of the men and women of our bases, to whom I have talked, is also very proud to be a part of that.