Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member realizes, and I am sure everybody in the House does, something terrible happened on September 11. We were not going to shy away from the problems that were happening on the world scene. We knew we had an obligation to deal with it. We knew we had to do some kind of a mission in Asia to find out where the terrorists were coming from and how they were being funded.
We worked with the UN. We did not go in tandem with the United States. We worked with the UN and NATO. We said that would help and go to Afghanistan. It was a good decision.
We are in tough area. Canadians are not scared to do the heavy lifting and take on the tough areas, especially when some of the other countries in NATO were holding back. Therefore, we had to show some leadership, and we did it.
That is not the issue today. The issue is not why we are in Kabul and why we are in Afghanistan. We know why we are there. We are not like the NDP. We know we have to do our duty on the international scene, so we stepped up to the plate and sent our men and women over there.
My entire speech today dealt with aid. We would have been a lot more successful in Afghanistan if when the military went in, the aid immediately followed and was disbursed quickly. Then we would have seen results. The people of Afghanistan would then have seen what Canada was all about.
Why are we debating this? Because the Conservatives took over as government. The next thing we knew no time lines were in place and no results from the aid were provided.
The Conservative government is fortunate that the Liberals are open-minded and flexible enough to work out an agreement. Our caucus put forward some concrete proposals. The wisdom of the Conservative government has taken most of them into consideration. It also had to get a former Liberal minister to make recommendations.
We have bailed out the Conservatives again and we are willing to work with them in Afghanistan. However, we also have to put the government's feet to the fire on issues like aid and others. We do not believe in running and hiding. We want time lines and we want to see results. That is what we are pushing for today.