Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Yukon is right. The New Democrats have raised in the House, at the defence committee and at the foreign affairs committee over and over again the issue of aid to the people of Afghanistan and the imbalance of our commitment militarily where it is 10 to 1 in terms of the aid to Afghanistan. We find that to be out of whack and we need to look at ways of getting that aid effectively to the people of Afghanistan.
Right now, in Kandahar province, the increase in the insurgency, in the IEDs and in the deaths is preventing any aid from getting through at this point. All of the aid agencies have left that province. They are not able to operate because of the increased insecurity in opposition to what many government members would have us believe, which is that Canada is improving security for the people in Kandahar province. Actually, the opposite is taking place. The insurgency has grown. There are more IEDs and more suicide bomb attacks are going on in that province now than there were even a year or two years ago.
I know Sarah Chayes, who was a national public radio reporter in Afghanistan, was there right after the fall of the Taliban and has continued to stay there with a small development group that is producing soap in Kandahar province. She said that when she was first there she could drive on the road from Kandahar to Kabul, even though it was a dirt road, bumpy and a terrible road. She now says that she can no longer drive from Kandahar to Kabul on a paved road because security has deteriorated so badly that she is not safe.