Madam Speaker, it is the constitutional right of Parliament to demand information and it is the supremacy of Parliament that trumps other provisions of the laws. The fact is that what the Conservative government member said is utterly wrong.
We are not asking for information on operations or information that is going to detail the operational needs or the current situation of our Canadian Forces members. We do not need to find that out, but we do need to find information that is specific to these events. We also need to make sure that this does not happen again. That is the issue, but it also goes to our ability to win in this mission and to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.
Our Canadian Forces members are doing their job there. The members of the provincial reconstruction team are doing their job. Our allies are doing their job. However, if Canadians are put in a situation where they are doing things that are going to harm these efforts, because of failure in the political doctrine of the Conservative government, then, in effect, the Conservatives are harming the very mission that so many of our men and women have given their blood, sweat and tears for, and to which the Canadian public has given significant amounts of money.
I do not think it should be seen in some superficial way, but I think the government also needs to utilize this as a springboard to deal with the larger issue of the mission in Afghanistan, what it is doing, what its objectives are, how it is doing it and how it is integrating with other groups while looking at the political strategy for the mission in Afghanistan in a broad regional context. Only in the regional context will we be able to deal with this mission and ensure some semblance of security for the Afghan people into the future.