Mr. Speaker, the member is on the foreign affairs committee with me. He is a former vice-chair. I have been working with him on the foreign affairs committee for a long time and I respect his judgment on the foreign affairs committee.
However, I have some questions for him in light of what his associate foreign affairs critic said yesterday in this House in reference to the study the foreign affairs committee is doing on Afghanistan.
As part of the whole study on Afghanistan, it is important to listen to all voices so that the committee can get all the facts and figures and make the right judgment. One of the key elements of that is the bipartisan panel headed by Mr. Manley. That panel was mandated to take a comprehensive and unbiased look at the mission and come back with recommendations, which we now see the government has adopted in this resolution, and now we find enough common ground with the Liberal Party.
When we in the committee asked for the Manley panel to come in front of the committee, the Liberals refused. Why they refused, I do not know. It came to me to ask them why they were afraid of the Manley panel, why they would not listen to the Manley panel.
We have put forward a request that the Manley commission come before the committee. I have submitted those names as witnesses. I hope that at committee the Liberal Party will agree to have the members of the Manley commission come before the committee so we can listen to them. They are free to ask any questions.
What I fail to understand is that yesterday the member's associate foreign affairs critic said that the Manley commission members should have talked to us beforehand. Why would they talk to us? We are not the experts on Afghanistan. We are studying the issue on Afghanistan. Why would they come beforehand and listen to the committee? It should have been the other way around. I am extremely amazed that the Liberal position is that the Manley commission should have listened to us before going out. We are not the experts. In fact, we listen to the experts.
Perhaps he could explain what his associate foreign affairs critic said yesterday.