Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for his speech and I thank him and his staff publicly for the extensive and candid briefings within the limitations of open source material. Both Ambassador McCardell and General Vance have been very fulsome in their briefings to us, both privately and publicly. I thank the minister for his contribution in arranging those briefings and keeping us all in the loop, so to speak.
We want to not only thank the brave men and women of the armed forces, but also the brave men and women who are serving us in the diplomatic corps led, in this case, by Sandra McCardell, and those who are serving with the humanitarian relief as it gets into the country.
I have a question for the minister with respect to the larger issue, which is going forward. This is a critical time for Libya. It is a rough neighbourhood, shall we say. There are countries there that have no democratic traditions whatsoever. We have put a lot of effort into ensuring that the National Transition Council has an opportunity to set up a stable formal government, possibly even a democratic form of government. There are cultural sensitivities there.
I had the occasion to be in South Africa a couple of weeks ago. We certainly got an earful about neo-colonialism and triumphalism and, unfortunately, Prime Minister Cameron and President Sarkozy were on the front page of South African newspapers.
I want to put to the hon. minister the core question of going forward. How do we ensure that the gains that have been secured by our people in the military, in the diplomatic corps and with the humanitarian relief are not squandered by inadvertent triumphalism, neo-colonialism and those sorts of things that can actually be counterproductive to what has, to date, been an absolutely first rate effort?