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10 - The Oakville Beaver, Wednesday March 12, 2008 www.oakvillebeaver.com Liberals will vote to extend mission Continued from page 8 "What they did is commendable," said Turner. "It is rare these days that people will actually take a stand for an issue." Brown was similarly impressed after learning of the protest at her office. "I applaud the efforts of citizens to put their viewpoint forward, and it is particularly important in this case," she said. "It's possible we're going to vote on the extension of the Afghanistan mission on Thursday night, and the national con- versation on this has been somewhat flat, and here we have some people who have an opinion and they are on the side of peace." Brown said this initiative is a good one because the Department of National Defense's 300 public relations people and the defense companies that sell war materials have very loud voices that threaten to drown out all other viewpoints. Having praised the protesters, the NEED HELP FINDING A JOB? Employment Solutions Every 56 seconds of each workday, a Goodwill around the world connects someone to a good job. If you are out of work or under-employed and need help finding employment, then contact us. All job seeker services are FREE Burlington · Georgetown · Milton · Oakville 1-866-557-8324 Employment Ontario projects are funded in part by the Government of Canada MPs added that listening to them and voting `No' on the proposed mission extension may not be an option. "I am with the compromise that we reached," said Turner. "The Conservatives and the Liberals in Ottawa spent a long time hammering this out. The Conservatives wanted the mission to go on without any kind of end date and they wanted it to remain a combat mission. The Liberals wanted the combat mission to end at a specific time and they wanted the combat to turn into reconstruction and humanitarian work." Turner said the two sides finally ended up with a compromise to vote on that would see the entire mission end in 2011 with the Canadian focus of moving towards reconstruction and redevelopment beginning after 2009. "So both parties had to put a little water into their wine, but we now have for the first time in six years a date at which all our troops are going to be out of there," said Turner. "I think that's a pretty honourable way to deal with this. We are not going to abandon the Afghan people. We're not going to walk out and leave a void for "We are not going to abandon the Afghan people. We're not going to walk out and leave a void for the Taliban. We are going to continue to help those folks, but we'll be giving NATO a real specific date as to when we're out of there." Halton MP Garth Turner the Taliban. We are going to continue to help those folks, but we'll be giving NATO a real specific date as to when we're out of there." Brown is less enthusiastic about this compromise as the Conservatives have yet to take any steps in seeing it through. "I was hoping to delay the vote until I got some indication from the government that indeed they were willing to live up to the conditions of Mr. Dion's motion, but they missed a huge opportunity a couple weeks ago when they presented their budget," she said. "If they agree with us, that the mission has to change, and there needs to be more emphasis on development and reconstruction and more emphasis on diplomacy, there would have been an indication in the budget that that was going to happen." Brown noted the recently released budget still has the money spent in Afghanistan largely going towards combat, but also pointed out that because the combat mission would not end until 2009 the shifting of funds towards reconstruction could still take place in next year's budget. With the government's willingness to truly move towards reconstruction unclear, Brown is currently unsure what she will do if the vote on the extension is called for Thursday. "I haven't 100 per cent decided on this, I would like to vote against it, but that might be idealistic," she said. "One has to be practical and one has to realize that we're not the government and if we were I'd have a much bigger voice in this. I think my leader did the best he could with this government, which has now laid out a pattern where the budget for the Department of National Defense will soon be at $20 billion a year. When we left office it was around $13 billion or $14 billion."