There are only a few of them in the House but I remember the member used to be a member of the Reform Party and they came to Ottawa to do things differently and one of the things they were going to do is not heckle. I would really appreciate if the member would remember his roots.
It is good that we are having this debate and most members who want to speak are able to speak. There is no question that we have many viewpoints coming forward and different parties are presenting different viewpoints.
Before I get into the debate, it is important for all of us to realize the very heavy toll that is being borne by our engagement in Afghanistan. Seventy-nine soldiers have been killed, along with a diplomat and thousands of people in Afghanistan who became casualties of this war, civilians I might add. It is a very difficult situation on the ground in Afghanistan.
I recall meeting with a mujahedeen in the eighties in my riding of Kitchener—Waterloo. That gentleman was involved in fighting against the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. I mention that because it is very important that, as we try to help the Afghans establish a civil society, we recognize that it is a country that has undergone a great deal of hardship and occupation. It is also important that we, as part of a NATO force, be seen as people who are facilitating the Afghan people in establishing a civil society.
The soldiers who paid the supreme sacrifice carried out the mission that we as members of Parliament and the government of the day set for them. Let there be no question that every member of this House supports our soldiers. Whether we agree or disagree with the mission, we all support the soldiers. In recognizing their sacrifices, it is important that we honour their service at the point in time where we might have casualty, as was very strongly suggested by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services, by commemorating the occasion by lowering the flag in the morning and having a moment of silence in the House. It is something that the previous government did.
That is important because we as Canadians mourned with those troops and mourned with their families. There is no question that it should not be a situation where we try to keep the public away from the repatriation of the bodies, which thankfully was changed. The price we pay for having this engagement should not be downplayed.
When we talk about issues related to how we deal with detainees in Afghanistan, we need to recognize that while we are there to establish a civil society and set in place institutions, it is important to deal with human rights and with detainees.
When one supports an internationally accepted norm for dealing with detainees, it is important that the international norm be observed. However, it should not be used to say that one is supporting the Taliban instead of our soldiers, because let us be very clear that there is nobody in this House who does not support our troops.
I listened to the comments earlier on by the member of the Conservative Party, the caucus chair. He talked about his experiences in Uganda under Idi Amin. He talked about how thousands of Asians who settled in Uganda were uprooted because of their race and ended up being expelled. He mentioned that he was still a baby when he was a refugee coming from Uganda. He talked about the price paid by the people who were expelled and who were ostracized in that country.
Canada took his family in, as Canada has taken in many families. He mentioned how important it was, how he looks at Uganda now and how he very much appreciates the evolution that has been taking place.
Many people know my situation. Fifty-one years ago, I came here as a refugee after the Hungarian revolution. On October 23 of last year I returned there with a parliamentarian delegation led by the now defence minister who was the foreign affairs minister at the time.
I recall vividly the revolution in November 1956 when the Soviet tanks came back into Hungary, having withdrawn at an initial stage, and the prime minister of the time, Imre Nagi, asking for help and the call going unheeded. It resulted in 200,000 Hungarians fleeing Hungary. It occurred to me at the 50th anniversary, as all the members of NATO and people from around the world were there, that they came 50 years late.
I was very pleased to see the developments in Hungary and eastern Europe and the democratization. However, the reality is we are no longer caught in the cold war as we were before. It is not a question of either side controlling client states. The situation we are in now is we will have failed states. Afghanistan was a failed state. There are a number of other failed states such as Darfur and Zimbabwe that we in the international community need to pay attention to.
Our legitimacy in Afghanistan and trying to establish civil society is not just doing something for those people over there. It is the world coming together collectively under the United Nations umbrella, in this case NATO. What we are doing is trying to deal with a failed state because it is going to deal with the security of the whole world. We need to get used to the idea that we will need to go into failed states and do these kinds of activities.
The biggest problem I have had with the Afghan mission is that Canada cannot be doing the heavy lifting forever. We are caught up in Kandahar and our casualty rate is higher than anybody else's casualty rate. Now that we have a clearer timeline on rotating out, I think it is great. It is something we can all support. The fact that we will be putting more emphasis on diplomacy and development is also very good. I would venture to say that all members of the House agree that we should put more emphasis on development and diplomacy.
As I talk about the world community and how collectively we will need to ensure each other's security, it is important to mention that collectively we will need to try to bear some influence on the United States to ensure it does not go off and undertake unilateral missions, as it did in the case of Iraq.
That mission has really undercut us, the United States and the rest of the world in dealing with Afghanistan. There is no question now in the United States that the war as turned out to be very unpopular. It is not fulfilling the mission that it was set up to fulfill. All the Democratic candidates have said that they will take the troops out of Iraq. The debate now is how quickly they will do it.
The lesson learned is we have to ensure that when we operate in the international forum and when we deal with failed states and try to bring them into the family of democracy, we do it under the umbrella of the United Nations and in alliances, not in unilateral missions.