What it does is it probably restricts governments into the future to join missions of which we have no advance notice or whatever. It ties the hands of government.
If you say we should only prepare for peacekeeping missions--if you can get somebody to define what that means--and if peacekeeping means small arms weapons, no fighter planes, and so on, then what you're doing is the opposite of what Paul Martin, Sr., said of Canada at the end of the Second World War, that we wanted to play a role in the world and we had the teeth to do it.
A lot of people since then have said that Canada ought to play a role in the world, and we're going to gum them to death, I guess; we don't have any teeth.
The more serious thing is that when people say we should do peacekeeping, does that set the policy for the next government and the next government and the next government? It does, in a way, if the first government--perhaps Pierre Trudeau's government--disarms the armed forces. Then the next government can't do anything, because they don't have the resources.
Canadians should decide what portion of their wealth will be devoted toward international affairs, building capabilities for that, building capabilities to defend Canada first, to defend Canada, with the United States, in North America, and then maintain that level. That's what I would advise, but then, I'm not in your position.