Mr. Speaker, with the greatest respect to the member, and I know the work that he has done on behalf of our armed forces, it took the opposition, this member and our critics to force the government to acknowledge after several weeks that wounded soldiers were having their pay docked simply for being wounded.
We had the embarrassing spectacle of a father who had to come here, cap in hand, and ask to please be paid for extra funeral expenses. It took the national media to expose these things and to expose the shortcomings in the department. I do not mean to be critical of the member, but let us look at how long it took to get these things resolved. It was not done as quickly as he has suggested. It took dragging and screaming. It took getting the former defence minister to acknowledge it.
The hon. member also talked about the issue of the Middle East and our position in the world. He sits right beside the Minister of Foreign Affairs who understands full well, and who should understand full well, the importance of diplomacy, the importance of how to deal with a people who have been oppressed and betrayed.
We are not just talking about Afghanistan. We were so concerned about Afghanistan many years ago but we simply forgot. At the end of my comments, as I think the member will recall, I said that Afghanistan was virtually abandoned by the world. We made promises that when Afghanistan got rid of the Russians we would invest and build the country's economy. Successive presidents and the UN made these comments, these commitments and undertakings. The moment the Russians left, so did our commitment.
I am saying for the hon. member from Edmonton, the parliamentary secretary, that we cannot confine what we are doing in Afghanistan to doing it in complete isolation and indifference to the rest of the Middle East. It is extremely important to recognize what has happened in Palestine and what continues to happen in Iraq. It is extremely important to recognize what we did over the past 10 or 15 years and how the people in Iraq felt when half a million of their children starved. It was not Canada's doing, but we have to acknowledge why we are in Afghanistan and what the response was. We also have to engage Pakistan. There is a number of countries, of course, and we are hoping for greater promise there.