Mr. Speaker, it is a little strange to me that we are debating for a number of hours today this motion, when there seems to be all party agreement that this is something that should happen. We are talking about a procedural motion in effect that could have easily been worked out and done much more expeditiously than spending a full day of the House's valuable time to discuss a procedural kind of motion.
That being said, we are now into this discussion and a number of comments have been made today that are very important to follow up on. There seems to be an ongoing confusion on part of members of the government who do not seem to appreciate that there is a difference between a mission in Afghanistan that is led by NATO and how that might differ if the United Nations were actually leading that mission.
Conservatives do not seem to appreciate that the United Nations' mandate has been given to NATO to lead this mission, but that it is the United Nations with its considerable resources, its civilian resources, and its different attitude than a military organization like NATO might bring to the leadership of the situation in Afghanistan.
I wonder if the member for Ottawa Centre might comment specifically on what difference it would make to have a United Nations-led mission in Afghanistan as opposed to the mission led by the military organization NATO.