Mr. Speaker, in 1979 when Flora MacDonald was Canada's foreign affairs minister and Joe Clark was prime minister, it was one of Canada's proudest moments. Under a lot of urging from the NDP, from the community, and from churches and synagogues, Canada started the Vietnamese boat people program. It was a proud moment of leadership. I think those Progressive Conservatives would be embarrassed today to listen to what I just heard.
We are talking about 125 refugees. Their lives have been in limbo. They have been forgotten by the world and the Conservative member was just talking about technicalities. How can we become so small that we cannot even accept them as refugees? We have to find a way to accept them. We are talking about 125 refugees. How could we pit one group of refugees living in a refugee camp to another group of refugees? How could we possibly get to that kind of level in this House?
We have lost our way in both the Liberal and Conservative governments. I recall that this House, under the former Liberal government with the support of the NDP and the Conservatives at the time, agreed to accept these few boat people, but instead of accepting 500, we have accepted 23. The Liberals did not do anything at that time and the Conservatives now are not doing anything. Why are we failing our international obligations? Why are we abdicating our leadership and why are we letting these legitimate refugees flounder?