House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2006, with 43% of the vote.
Business of Supply May 29th, 2008
Mr. Chair, as part of the package of materials that will be brought before the parliamentary committee and will form part of our reporting publicly, we will be getting more current data on the costs and the different elements of costing. We will be happy to share that with him as it becomes available.
Business of Supply May 29th, 2008
Mr. Chair, it is not going to be there explicitly. We are going to have to fish it out of a combination of salary and operating expenses, but we can attempt to extract the data and provide it for the member.
Business of Supply May 29th, 2008
Mr. Chair, earlier I said that we would provide some material that would enable him to have a reasonable assessment of what we were doing.
Business of Supply May 29th, 2008
Mr. Chair, as I indicated to the hon. member, a strategic review was done. It was done at the cabinet level with Treasury Board. It was done in a budgetary context.
We have certainly produced a strategy for foreign affairs that will involve reshaping the way we run the business, if I might call it that. It will involve certainly more of our personnel being out in the field. It will involved a principled, values-driven approach to our foreign affairs. It will involve a major trade agenda.
Business of Supply May 29th, 2008
Mr. Chair, we are in early days. The military has achieved the training of something like 35,000 security people in Afghanistan, but we have a long way to go. We are putting a strategy in place for getting that done and for measuring progress across that and many other areas as we move to 2011.
Business of Supply May 29th, 2008
Mr. Chair, I think the Government of Canada has been very transparent and very clear that the military mission will end in 2011. There are communications going on at a variety of levels, ministerial, first ministerial. Officials have been over there communicating our thinking on the evolution of our role there. The role of the military is scheduled to change as the Americans and others move in, in disproportionately large numbers.
I do not think there is any mystery at all as to what Canada's plans are.
Business of Supply May 29th, 2008
Mr. Chair, we are very active. I know the ambassador was before the committee, I think it was yesterday. We have been diplomatically very active with the Afghanistan government. We have been very concerned about the corruption issue. As the member knows, weeding out corruption is very difficult. It is a long term proposition. Some of the specific initiatives include assisting to ensure that, for example, the pay for the Afghan national police is competitive and does not leave them so dependent on corrupt practices. There is also the training of public servants, the professionalization of the public service--
Business of Supply May 29th, 2008
Mr. Chair, I will have to move very quickly.
Clearly, we have a cabinet committee right now reviewing the plans and strategies for Afghanistan. There is a parliamentary committee, of which the hon. member is a member. We will be presenting quarterly reports to Parliament. We will have a communications strategy in Afghanistan to communicate with the people in Afghanistan. We will have a communications strategy here in Canada to convey a sense to Canadians as to what the important objectives are for the people of Afghanistan. We will have a diplomatic strategy to ensure--
Business of Supply May 29th, 2008
Mr. Chair, the answer is yes. Earlier, one of the members mentioned a strategic review. Part of that strategic review involves a plan for the department which will result in our moving from a world where we have one and a half people abroad for every one in Canada to a goal of two people abroad for every one here in Canada.
We will be staffing up quite significantly in a number of priority spots around the world as well. We will be changing the complexion of the people that we are retaining and putting out in the field, because the nature of the trade game has changed very fundamentally in the last five or ten years.
Business of Supply May 29th, 2008
Mr. Chair, there are a number of different perspectives to take on security in Afghanistan. If we are talking about security in the eyes of, let us say, the United Nations or several civilians doing development work, we have one perspective on security. If we talk to the military, we have quite another. It is a very fluid situation.
Our approach at the moment is to make sure that our focus on security is around creating--