Mr. Speaker, for me, this issue is about learning from past mistakes. Our government sent Canada to lead the air campaign against Libya in 2011. For those who listened to General Vance on the weekend, he reiterated that he thought there would need to be military action in Libya once again.
Back in 2011, we destroyed the Libyan power structure and created a vacuum. We created a vacuum because we had no follow-on plan. All we were going to do was go there and destroy things, but we had nothing designed for what the next steps were. Now look at what has happened. Four years later, we are talking about having to go back into Libya again. We do not want that to happen again in Iraq. It happened the first time in Iraq in 2003. We are back in Iraq now, but we are going to have a follow-on plan, because that is what we need in order to create long-term stability. Carrying out the air campaign and leaving is just not good enough.
Our CF-18s made significant contributions, of course, but now Canada has a vision and wants to focus the coalition to make sure it follows through with these long-term plans.