Mr. Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right. I know I touched on a lot of the health issues and the reconstruction issues but none of this could be done without the security provided by our brave men and women in uniform.
We think of how hard it is to even institute some of these programs in a country as resource rich as Canada and in an environment as easy as the on in Canada, but to go to a country that is starting from scratch, where roads and bridges did not exist and where no infrastructure was left and having to rebuild from there is hard enough, but it is even harder when it has to be done under the fire of the Taliban and under the security situations that are there.
I have had the opportunity to speak to young men and women from the 31st Combat Engineers Regiment from my own riding in the Elgins. The engineers in this case are helping to rebuild parts of Afghanistan but they are also spending a great deal of time removing landmines. Imagine sending our kids out to play and not knowing where or what type of landmines there might be. Afghanistani is inundated with landmines and that is one of the other important jobs we do.
People ask why our forces there. They are there because security needs to be there so we can go about doing the good jobs for health, for rebuilding the economy and for putting kids back in school.