Gordon O'Connor

[Afghanistan, September 18th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the absolute worst thing we could do is pull our troops, bring them back home and leave the Taliban to have Afghanistan. It is only a little while since the Taliban were there and they were carrying out a murderous regime of punishments on women, with no children going to school.

I find it hypocritical for the NDP to be asking us to pull our military out and replace them with the Taliban.

[Afghanistan, September 18th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I find that really strange coming from the NDP, who want us out of Afghanistan. Only they and the Taliban want us out of Afghanistan. We will stay the course. We are committed in Afghanistan till the end of February 2009 and we will stay the course.

[Afghanistan, September 18th, 2006]

No, Mr. Speaker, this minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs are not making a mistake and we are not conflicting with each other. As was promised in the earlier debate on Afghanistan, at an appropriate time we will return to the House and give an update on Afghanistan.

[Afghanistan, September 18th, 2006]

No, Mr. Speaker, the minister was not wrong. The minister was explaining the concept that we have to tackle the Taliban from the point of view of military security, improving governance and development. The Taliban can only be defeated when all three operations are in synchronization, and that is what we are doing.

[Afghanistan, September 18th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the report that came out in the press which said that we said we were sending troops to Pakistan is totally false. What we were discussing was exchanging one liaison officer with the Pakistan army. We have no intention of changing the tasks or the activity within Afghanistan.

[Afghanistan, September 18th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, these are two separate issues. One is that our troops on the ground said that they needed some improvements to improve their security, and we have done that. Quite separately, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and I are approaching NATO to encourage NATO countries to provide more resources to Afghanistan.

[Afghanistan, September 18th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to offer my condolences to the military families and their friends relating to the four casualties we had last night. It is a very sad event for the military.

In response to the question, the military made an assessment that it needed additional infantry and armour and engineers to fulfill its requirements in the area to provide better security for both our reconstruction effort and for our security forces. We have provided the military with what it needed.

[National Defence, June 22nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned earlier, there is a great case of envy over here. The Liberals had 13 years to straighten out the armed forces and instead they hollowed it out. They only had three major projects in 13 years.

We have only been in office four months and we will move on the military and give the military what it needs.

This is just sheer envy.

[National Defence, June 22nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the opposition for all that clapping.

As usual, the member opposite is chasing a mirage. Why those members are chasing a mirage is that they are against the accountability act, which is going to bring in new rules to control lobbying and funding. The prime example of lobbying is that the previous prime minister used a whole room of lobbyists to select his cabinet. His cabinet was selected by lobbyists. We are going to prevent that kind of thing in the future.

[National Defence, June 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, this government is for peace. We are always for peace. We have made no changes to the previous government's policy with respect to ballistic missile defence. There have been no changes. We recently had a Norad agreement, which added maritime surveillance but did not make any other changes, so we are in a status quo.