Liberal MPs spent a long time at their national caucus meeting. When it finished, interim Leader Bill Graham had this to say about tonight’s debate and vote on whether to extend Canada’s mission in Afghanistan:
Our caucus is totally and utterly united around that mission and around that objective. The problem that the caucus has and … is that we’ve had a gun put to our head and without knowing all the details of why a two-year prolongation is being made at this time. We are being told we will have a vote tonight. We find this process abusive. We find this process strange.
We find it difficult to ask parliamentarians to go into the House tonight and say we must listen to this government and in the course of a debate of a few hours in the House make up our minds on an issue of this importance to Canada and Canadians and to our troops. But that is the situation we are in.
We will not play politics with this and we will attend the debate in the House tonight and our members will listen and our members will consider what the government says and those members who believe that the government has made a case that the prolongation must be decided at this time by this House will vote in accordance with that. And for others who believe that it is not appropriate to be doing it at this time we must give them an opportunity to vote with their conscience as well.