Everyone in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a potential target. My heart goes out to the UN family in Afghanistan: in spite of everything, they are showing fortitude. But they will need the support of the whole world at this difficult time.

We Canadians need, as a country, to be much more present globally than we have been today.

The plant goes down. The industry is weaker. The price of the commodity has lagged. Any of those things can push people into unemployment or lower income categories, and that hurts.

As Believers, we shine brightest in a sad and dark world; like a diamond that illuminates best when placed on black velvet.

The story of Taliban recovery and resurgence begins in the places where they took refuge after 2001. And as long as those leadership structures and training structures operate outside of Afghanistan with relative impunity, the conflict will continue.

We are involved in a historic restructuring of the world economy. Virtually every country that matters has been striving to pursue the same economic model, and has bought into a set of market-based principles that has brought new players on the stage and new markets. We have to take full advantage.

We need to give the private sector many more powerful incentives to do research and development, to bring ideas and new discoveries to market in Canada, and commercialize them here, and stay here through successive stages of growth. But they can only do it with better government policies that give them more powerful incentive.