Mr. Speaker, when the member is speaking, as many people have, about the purported reasons for being there and continuing to be there, it is important for us to look at the path and general direction of what is happening in Afghanistan.
I wonder if it is the member's contention that things are improving when we have report after report out of NATO describing that the opium production has grown greater and that the violence within Afghanistan has continued to grow. The question then fundamentally becomes whether the mission in which we are engaged goes in the right direction. Is it the right mission not only for Canada and Canada's position, but is it the right mission for the Afghanis who she is talking about and the Afghani Canadians who hold concerns?
The current ratio is 10:1 of military dollars to spending in aid programs. Of that $1 being spent in aid, the accountability and transparency has been almost nil. We cannot even track the dollars that are supposedly going toward building the schools and helping the people she is talking about.
We must understand that the counter-insurgency mission as constructed will only continue down this path with the vote that she will cast tonight and that the General Petraeus model, which was used in Iraq, will be applied in greater stead in Afghanistan. Canadian soldiers will be going beyond the wire more often. There will be more risks taken. This is absolutely the Petraeus model that we know and have seen in effect and will be handed over as the marines come in with another 7,000 or 8,000 troops.
Some have the notion that if we simply add a few more helicopters, 1,000 more troops and the Patraeus model, things will improve, but all evidence is to the contrary. The contestation from the NDP is that the counter-insurgency mission, as constructed and designed by the government and her government previously, is the wrong mission both for Canada and for the success that she hopes for, for the Afghani people, and must be ended.