Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much. I agree with what everybody has said so far, even those parts that contradicted each other.

Foreign Affairs committee  That came from 38 years of being careful with people.

Foreign Affairs committee  I'll start with some contentions. The situation has deteriorated, but it isn't lost. NATO, the UN, and the Afghan government cannot succeed by business as usual. A much greater effort is needed, proportionate at least to that of the Balkans. Canada's contribution to success can

Foreign Affairs committee  Speaking specifically to the UN, there are two or three factors that explain the current situation. One is that the UN was attacked in Iraq in 2003, and I don't think they have quite got over it—not yet. They lost some of their best and brightest, and it made the UN, as a secreta

Foreign Affairs committee  You made a number of contentions, not all of which I would share. It's not obvious to me that the Canadian population is massively against the military effort in Afghanistan, if I understood you correctly. And it's not obvious to me how you're going to carry out a development eff

Foreign Affairs committee  That's why I was saying there are a couple of considerations. One is that I think, as a responsible member of the international community, we have to be conscious of the fact that we could be decisive to failure. As I said, I don't think we can do enough to win, but I think we co

Foreign Affairs committee  Well, there are two things. One is that when we and the international community and the UN started in Afghanistan and we had Mr. Brahimi as the head of the operation, we had a truly exceptional man running the operation. Even at that time, when we in Canada were trying to say t

Foreign Affairs committee  I don't want to take the time of the committee, but I have two points. I asked Mr. Brahimi, if he had a decision to make over again, what it would be. His decision would have been to include the Taliban from the outset in the efforts to create a new state. We left them on the o

Foreign Affairs committee  I don't think we've answered the question Mr. Chan asked earlier, which was the question of rotation. It's a yes in principle, but not quite a yes in practice is what I would say. When we got involved in the Second World War, there was no rotating out. We were in and we stayed

Foreign Affairs committee  Merci, mesdames et messieurs. I looked at that list also, and I came to the conclusion that I would try to answer one or two of the questions. I very much agree with what Bessma has been saying. She and I have worked together on many things for a long time. Maybe we've come to

Foreign Affairs committee  The Permanent Joint Board on Defence has been around since the Ogdensburg agreement. In its earliest days, it was, I think, a more vital organization than it is now. At the same time, it's useful. Military and political diplomacy is particularly helpful right now, because, among

Foreign Affairs committee  What can Canada do about the uncertainty that Trump creates, and what impact does that have on Canadian foreign policy with the emphasis it puts on multilateralism—the World Bank, the IMF, the UN, and NATO? NATO is now not obsolete, but it could be obsolete again soon if the Russ