Canada's military commitment in Afghanistan will end in 2011 as scheduled, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper said Wednesday.
Harper, speaking to reporters during a sit-down breakfast in Toronto, said 10 years of war is enough.
Last March, Parliament overwhelmingly passed a motion to extend the military mission in Afghanistan to 2011.
"You have to put an end date on these things ... we have to say to the government of Afghanistan that there is an expectation that you are going to be responsible for your own security," Harper said.
Harper said Canadians have no appetite to keep soldiers in the country past the agreed pullout date. He also added that military leaders, although they won't say so publicly, feel that a decade of war is enough.
Still, one analyst warned the announcement could be a ploy to win votes through pledging to end an increasingly unpopular war.
"I think people have to realize that there's an election going on, and there's going to be a lot of promises," said Steven Staples, president of the Ottawa-based Rideau Institute, a public policy think-tank.
"He's likely to say whatever he can to win a majority," he told CTV.ca.
Staples also said that making such a commitment is irresponsible.
That sentiment was echoed by retired Canadian Maj.-Gen. Lew Mackenzie, who said announcing such a deadline publicly gives "too much warning" to the Taliban.
"Personally, I don't like deadlines," he told CTV Newsnet. "I'm not in favour of announcing to anybody other than ... our allies, when we are leaving."
Mackenzie added a 2011 pullout would "leave a very large hole" in Afghanistan, since Canada has played such a large part in the mission.
Although the bulk of the troops will be out by 2011, Harper did say there may be a few Canadian soldiers who stay in the country as advisers.
On Tuesday, the Taliban said they wanted Canada's next prime minister to pull Canadian troops out of Afghanistan.
Harper said Wednesday the Taliban had no influence on his decision.
Carbon tax attack
Later Wednesday, Harper continued his attack on the Liberals' plan to bring in a carbon tax.
In a speech to the Indo-Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Harper said the tax is a bad idea because it would be permanent and would have a negative economic impact.
Harper added the tax remains unclear and has no clear environmental objective.
Harper said the Liberals have "voted against every single tax reduction measure that this government brought in" in the past two years.
"They have demanded literally tens of billions of dollars in new spending... and they have condemned even the smallest savings we've enacted in government programs," he told the crowd gathered in Vaughan, Ont.
"Now, instead of a thought through plan, they propose to finance this set of ad hoc economic policies by advocating a new, permanent carbon tax."
Pooping puffin
Harper's statement on Afghanistan comes just one day after his diesel tax announcement was overshadowed by a pooping puffin and the resignation of a Tory candidate.
On Tuesday, Harper issued an apology for an animation on a Tory website that showed a puffin pooping on Liberal Leader Stephane Dion.
"It almost blew his message off the page yesterday," CTV's Tom Clark said Wednesday in Toronto.
Meanwhile, a Conservative candidate in Halifax who quit earlier this week after her criminal record became public said she resigned because she wanted to go back to her old job, and not because she was fired.
Rosamond Luke said she pleaded guilty to uttering a threat two years ago, but that this wasn't an issue in her resignation Tuesday.
Instead, Luke said she quit because she wanted to return to her old job helping female immigrants in Nova Scotia.
However, the prime minister's press secretary Kory Teneycke said Luke resigned after the party confronted her about her criminal past.
Hand-picked to run in a riding with no incumbent, the Conservatives announced Luke's candidacy just two days prior.
In a press release Wednesday, the Liberals said the Conservatives Atlantic campaign was in "shambles."
With files from The Canadian Press
