Mr. Speaker, I want to point out a couple of inaccuracies in the hon. member's remarks.
First, as a general comment, members will note that there was no acceptance of responsibility whatsoever by the member acknowledging that his government was in office for five years with respect to the mission. In fact, when we took office, we had to improve upon the now universally accepted fact that there was a failure, there was a shortcoming, there were deficiencies in the transfer arrangement even though the hon. member in 2006 stood and said that it was fine, that it was all going well.
What I would like to ask him, though, specifically, is whether he thinks it was responsible and whether he thinks it was in fact acceptable that his government began this mission by sending the Canadian Forces there with forest green uniforms, inadequate protection, jeeps that were light armoured, the equivalent of a Volkswagen Rabbit, whether in fact he felt that the Canadian Forces were properly prepared for the mission that awaited them in Kandahar province.
He also went on to talk about how we did nothing for 17 months. Did he think we could flick a switch upon coming to office in 2006 and improve the justice system there? Was it a matter of painting the walls at the Sarposa prison? Was it a matter of just automatically changing the culture within moments of taking office, where his government had been there for five years and were unsuccessful in doing so?
We undertook significant efforts to go about improving the monitoring, to having Canadians able to go into the prisons, to do the important things that actually build capacity within the Afghan system, in addition to improving the failed, inadequate transfer arrangement left by his government, even though--