Mr. Speaker, the situation in Afghanistan remains a cause of grave concern for members of the House and the Canadian people. The men and women of the Canadian Forces and our civilian personnel are continuing to earn our respect and pride. However, we are failing in our responsibilities to them. We do not constantly seek to evaluate the wider picture in terms of the current NATO policies and programs, as our parliamentary colleagues across the world are doing.
We know that NATO's objective of building conditions so the Afghan people can enjoy a representative government and self-sustaining peace and security is honourable but we cannot shy away from the realities of the daunting tasks faced by our troops and personnel in Afghanistan.
In 2001, Canada sought to utilize the 3D model in Afghanistan: defence, diplomacy and development. Being the critic for CIDA, today I want to speak to the latter, development, and voice my concerns in common with legislatures from other forces and other nations about where we are with development assistance in Afghanistan.
We know from committee testimony and from the antics in the House that the Conservative government is keen to distract attention and divert scrutiny when it comes to the Afghan mission. Members who dare to exhibit some concern, the Conservatives call them a Taliban lover.
We cannot deny that there has been some progress in Afghanistan. Some roads, hospitals and schools have been built and more women are going to school. Education in the political process is taking place and security sector reform has helped in the process of reconstituting the army and the police force. NATO's and Canada's approach to providing long term security and stability requires a comprehensive strategy that encompasses reconstruction and development, as well as military operations.
However, the coalition, Canada included, has taken on a mammoth task. We need to know that we have the equation correct in determining the proper mix between civilian and military activities. It is critical that we know that Canadian development aid is going to do the utmost before any possible pullout in 2009.
Do we need to be doing more to extend our developmental footprint before 2009 rolls around? Should we not look, at the very least, to match our military expenditures in Afghanistan with development assistance dollars?
The former Afghan finance minister, now advisor to Karzai, has recently said that Afghanistan has reached a tipping point, warning that the population could turn against the international community if the economy and access to housing, employment and basic services are not improved. This sentiment has been echoed by Dr. Abdullah, a former Afghan foreign minister, saying that the Afghan people will not remain patient forever.
Afghanistan remains one of the poorest countries in the world. Five years after the international community came to Afghanistan, only 6% of Afghans have electricity. It has been estimated by the UN Refugee Agency that there are 130,000 internally displaced people, although that figure may be higher given the food and security problems in the south at present. We have not been able to address essential needs, including sustainable health clinics, sustainable provision of clean water and sanitation across the board.
Afghanistan is the largest recipient of Canadian development assistance at present, with nearly $1 billion pledged up to 2011, but we need to do the job before 2009. The government, in playing with smoke and mirrors, recently announced $200 million in reconstruction and development funds, which in reality were part of the existing pledge. However, the international community's spending per capita on development assistance is significantly lower than what was spent in Bosnia.
The Afghan government is limited in its capability to spend this assistance and, of the vast majority of aid set aside for Afghanistan, nearly 83% is spent by the international community on its projects.
A lot of donors chasing a variety of objectives, tying up aid and failing to coordinate, too often has a negative effect on a country's institutional capacity. It is even more negative when it is a fragile state like Afghanistan. Canada must pursue a strategy that is focused, with the real needs of the Afghan people in mind, and it must be coordinated.
I want to talk about the Kandahar province, which, in common with the other southern provinces, is teaching the international community that unless we can deliver services and provide protection to the civilian population, just the military operation alone will not suffice. It has also illustrated the major difficulty in the NATO mission tasking security cannot be achieved without development and yet development cannot be implemented without security. They go hand in hand.
Where NATO has not been able to extend effective governance away from the major urban centres, such as Kabul and Kandahar, the threat of renewed violence will always be there. Southern Afghanistan continues to be affected by extreme poverty and has recently suffered from drought. The system of food aid distribution has been erratic at best.
There is a real concern that the local disillusionment with ISAF troops may help to fuel a grassroots insurgency. Mr. Seth Jones with Rand corps, after two weeks in Kandahar, has claimed that while Kandahar city and two other districts are seeing reconstruction, virtually nothing else is taking place in the rest of Kandahar province, mainly as a result of the security situation.
We need to ensure that our troops' safety is not jeopardized by a lack of impact of Canada's broader aid development policies that must address the real needs of the Afghan people, nor that a weakness in the reconstruction effort prevents the consolidation of tactical gains, as recently pointed out by Dr. Rubin in the journal of the council on foreign relations.
Sterling work has been done by our PRT in Kandahar province but let us not forget that PRTs are military organizations, not development organizations. They are designed to deliver quick impact projects, not to replace sustained long term development.
Qualifying efficiency in terms of the total amount of dollars spent and the number of projects completed has been problematic for some of the other PRT teams and we must be cautious not to fall into the same trap in deciding on the real impact of the work that we have already done.
Our developmental efforts in Afghanistan cannot be undertaken with just our own priorities and poll numbers in mind, as the government seems to believe. An effective developmental assistance program is about addressing Afghan's real needs, not what sells a story.
A lot of work still needs to be done in Afghanistan before 2009 and Canadian troops have already demonstrated a thousand times over their dedication, professionalism and cool-headedness under the most difficult situations. It is time the government really ramped up Canada's developmental assistance program and ensured that the Canadian mission is 100% successful.
