Mr. Speaker, I listened with a great deal of interest as I have for many years to my colleague from Renfrew. He has been an ardent and very convincing supporter of giving the Canadian military establishment the tools to do the job we have asked of it over the years. I cannot think of a more articulate proponent for the men and women who have chosen to serve our country through the Canadian Armed Forces than the member who just spoke.
I want to ask him a very specific set of questions. Even after one term, compared to my hon. colleague I am still a rookie when it comes to matters such as this one. One thing that deeply concerns me with the situation in Bosnia is the impotence or the seeming impotence of the United Nations in using its collective voice to try to force the aggressors in Bosnia to stop, cease and desist and to find some diplomatic, non-military, non-aggressive means to try to bring the situation to a head, to find a resolution.
It has been going on for far too long. We have had far too many children killed. We have had far too many people dislocated. We have heard of far too many rapes and acts of brutality, the likes of which we had not heard since the second world war. Time and time again the United Nations, that great and venerable institution, has passed resolutions but it seems to have forgotten to put some teeth into the resolutions. It seems not to have found the ways to enforce the resolutions so that the atrocities we have heard all too much about would have ceased. Indeed I want to quote what the outgoing UNPROFOR commander, Belgian Lieutenant General Francis Briquemont, said. This was in the Globe and Mail of January 24: ``There is a fantastic crisis now because the politicians are writing and voting I do not know how many resolutions, but we have no means to execute them''.
The question I ask of my colleague is: what is it that he believes Canada can do? What leading role can we take to ensure when the United Nations chooses to pass resolutions and actions in cases like this that in actual fact they are adhered to and there are teeth behind the resolutions? What role can Canada play to strengthen those resolutions?