Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the hon. member for Saint John on her maiden speech. It was a very thoughtful speech and indeed she listed some of the arguments that I want to make myself.
I will be brief because we have had a long debate today. Again, I want to congratulate the government on having this debate before the decision was taken. That leads me to the point brought up by the member for Burnaby-Kingsway who said we should take our decision now, a negative decision on cruise missile testing and then have a defence review.
It seems to me that the proper way to proceed is in fact the opposite to within the context of a defence review to examine cruise missile testing and in fact all other agreements and all other defence arrangements that Canada has.
We should be very clear that this is not a debate about a nuclear weapon as has been pointed out earlier. This is a weapon system and it can have a nuclear warhead or it can have a conventional warhead. Therefore, the debate is not about nuclear weapons. In fact, nuclear weapons are not allowed on Canadian soil. That was an initiative that a Liberal government took and it is the law of the land at the present time.
This is not a debate-we have to be very clear about that-about nuclear weapons, but it is about the testing of a weapons system that belongs to a partner of ours in North America, to a colleague of ours in NATO and to a partner of ours in NORAD. I think we should think very carefully about how we treat that particular partner and indeed about how we treat this particular weapon.
It may be that we do not want to continue and there is no need to continue all of the arrangements that we have with the Americans at the present time. However, I repeat that the proper examination of that is within an overall defence review and the Liberal Party did commit to a defence review when it was in opposition and it is committed to a defence review now. I submit that that is the proper context in which to determine the future of cruise missile testing. We may not want to continue to test cruise missiles forever.
However, I think we should be very careful about the discontinuing of any weapon at the present time. The fall of the Berlin wall and the end of the cold war has not brought stability. Rather, I think, we can argue that there is more instability in the world now than ever before. Our forces took part in the gulf war some time ago. It has already been pointed out that a cruise missile was very effective in bringing to an end that war.
There will be more gulf wars and Canada will be involved in them with our partners. NATO was an important part. It was not there with the NATO flag but it was an important part of the gulf war. The unity, training and coherence of NATO was a very important factor in bringing that war to an end. We have to think very carefully about dismantling the weapons and the alliances that we have in view of the instability that is in the world at the present time.
What is the success story? The success story is that our way of life, beliefs and philosophy have gained pre-eminence because of the strength that we had and the strength we were able to demonstrate, but not to exercise. NATO never went to war. NATO is the most successful military alliance in history and it is arguably the best equipped and best trained military alliance in history and yet it never went to war. It was successful simply because it was there and everybody knew it was there and everybody knew what capability it had.
The success we have had is because we have been able to demonstrate strength. We have to think very carefully before we start to weaken our capability. I think it is important to negotiate from strength and not from weakness.
Part of that strength clearly has to be the strength of the United States itself. The United States is not universally popular and there are many people who resent the growing role of the U.S. as the world cop. I would prefer to see the UN become that cop, but it is clearly true that in all of our alliances we in Canada and other allies on both sides of the Atlantic depend heavily on the might of the American military machine for our alliances. We have to think very carefully about reducing the strength of that machine and those alliances in the present circumstances.
I do not think it is necessary to draw this debate out for a long time. I simply want to repeat in closing that the proper examination of cruise missile testing is within the overall review of defence policy. Clearly I think that is the way to proceed and my counsel to the government would be to maintain our agreement. It is a signed agreement and whether it is with the United States or any other partner I think we have to be very careful about our own credibility if we simply break agreements unilaterally.
The proper examination of whether to go ahead with cruise missile testing or not in the future is within the defence review and not at the present time.