Thank you, Madam Chair.
I just want to respond. I think that this motion is important. It responds, for example, to the comments of the minister, when she made her initial presentation that questioned the honourable members on this side of this table for putting questions forward on the inclusion of a carbon tax.
She implied that somehow we were helping Vladimir Putin by causing some kind of delay. It was an audacious statement for her to make. I mean, we've had the ambassador here talking about what it's going to take for Ukraine to successfully come out of this war, and successful it will be. It discusses $411 billion in key areas: energy, infrastructure and agriculture. She mentioned IT military technologies as well. What we need to do as a country is support Ukraine, including through this free trade agreement, so the inclusion of this motion is fair. I think we need to examine this.
To my colleague's point, if the government is saying it can include aspects of a carbon tax, I would ask Mr. Trew with regard to his suggestion that this be amended now. We can include provisions with regard to energy security. Why would we not try to defend one of our strongest allies? Remember that it was Canada that was one of the first countries, one of the first Western nations in the world, to recognize Ukraine. We were there in 2015 with Operation Unifier. We struck that free trade agreement in 2017 with regard to Ukraine.
What we're trying to do is respond to some of those audacious comments from this government that somehow we're supporting the Russians by asking questions about what could be put into a free trade agreement.
You know, a former colleague I knew at Queen's Park, a member of the provincial parliament, Bob Runciman, served in the Senate. When trying to respond to comments like that, he would suggest that the member had more nerves than a canal horse. I mean, how does one equate asking questions with regard to what can be included in a free trade agreement with our support of Ukraine? It's ludicrous to make that suggestion. In fact, I think that this motion shows that we do support Ukraine, and we support it militarily as well.
I support this motion, Madam Chair.