Mr. Speaker, I am glad this has been brought up, because I am not saying for one minute here that we can succeed in Afghanistan without defence. To the contrary, we cannot succeed in defence, in the military operations, unless we have the proper aid and the proper development aid, the aid that is happening on the ground, so that if one is a soldier there protecting the people, the people also have to see the aid coming into their villages. It has to go in tandem. We must have both working together. We cannot have just the aid working without the defence helping it, without the military side by side.
That is why we have not been as successful there as we could have been over the last two years. If we would have had both working in tandem, our results would have been better. They would have been at a better place right now.
That is the whole premise of my speech here tonight: the military has to be there, but the aid has to be there with the military. If both are working together, we are going to see results. We are going to see the Afghan people looking at Canadians doing the right job for them and helping them to go from being a poor and very stressed country to being a prosperous country. But they have to be working together.
I am not saying for one minute that defence should not be there over the next year. It should be, but the defence is not going to be able to do its job unless the aid is coming in there with it and going in tandem.