Madam Speaker, I want to congratulate the minister on his speech and for bringing this issue before Parliament, allowing us an opportunity to debate the relevance of and need to extend this mission by another 90 days.
I appreciate his comments that we want to make sure that we can provide support for governance, to help them mature the next government that comes into play, and to make sure that we address the issue of humanitarian assistance.
Really, what we are talking about is that the situation still requires some military action, because we have to make conditions right to be able to get the relief agencies on the ground to provide that humanitarian assistance and to put the diplomats in place, so that we can provide that instruction on governance in helping the Libyans transition as they go through this change, we hope, away from Colonel Gadhafi and his regime.
I want the minister to address that need and to talk about the leadership that Canada is showing in the NATO alliance, with the air strikes being orchestrated under the command of General Bouchard, and talk about the care that has been taken to ensure that we are targeting hard assets and Gadhafi's military.