Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the speech by the hon. member. I would say to her that a lot of progress has been made in Afghanistan, especially with regard to women and children. In Afghanistan six million students, including many girls, are now attending school. Not many girls were attending school when the mission started.
Another important point is the giving of financial tools to women so that they can build their own economy with micro-financing. More than 400,000 women in Afghanistan at this point are taking advantage of this program. Their repayment rate is 90%. This is no surprise because we know how well women take care of money.
We asked for a debate in the defence committee. We wanted an open debate on the Manley report because we think this mission is important. It involves not only our reserves, but our Canadian men and women in uniform. They are taking tremendous risks. We think it is very important to have an open and frank debate on the mission and its future.
Development and diplomacy are very important in that mission but they can only occur if there is security. I think our role as members of Parliament is to provide security to the Afghan people. In that way we can build for their future.
Should we put greater emphasis on diplomacy, reconstruction and governance? Then the military mission could increasingly shift to the training of the Afghan national security forces. In that way we would not be saying that we just want to leave, but it would be because the Afghan people would be living in a safe country.