Thank you very much.
I too am in favour of the amendment.
I want to acknowledge that I don't think there's a member of Parliament I admire more than Madam Lalonde, for her good work and endless energy and goodwill, but I disagree with some of the things she has in her motion, and I want to mention a couple of them.
In the second paragraph, it says the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs “Questions the government's delay in implementing an evacuation plan”. To implement a plan you have to create one first. And I think the government did a great job in that. I don't know what organization you could call and say we want to transport 13,000 people from a war zone, halfway around the world, in two weeks and have it happen. And given the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, there were no casualities involved in any of that, in any of those 13,000 evacuees, and although I'm certain it was very uncomfortable and inconvenient to a lot of them, they all made it, and I think it's a tremendous success.
I also take exception to the comment that Canada has destroyed its reputation as a trusted third party. I don't believe that's true at all.
And just to make one other point here, her motion says that the committee “Strongly deplores that, by taking sides, the government has prevented Canada from playing a conciliatory role”. All we've done is take sides against Hezbollah, and we did that in 2002 when we passed in Parliament a law that states that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization.
I'm supporting the amendment because of those, but I also want to say that my colleague said in his remarks that the State of Israel has a right to exist, and I agree with that. But I also believe that the State of Palestine has a right to exist. I believe that until there is a State of Israel and a State of Palestine with a safe, secure environment, there's not a hope of avoiding what's happened in Lebanon now.
Canada is not a superpower, but I've always felt we could do a lot more in the Middle East than we do. And I hope that maybe we can, going forward, and I hope we can help there to be a safe and secure State of Israel and a safe and secure State of Palestine.
Thank you.