Madam Speaker, I would like to start by complimenting the government on having this the second open debate which I presume is sincerely that, open and not as suggested by our colleague the hon. member for Burnaby-Kingsway that the fix is already in. I choose to believe there is honour on the other side and that we are going at this in an open manner.
I would also like to address a word to the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce who alluded to the fact that maybe those in this corner of the House were in collusion and we were not having an open debate. Nothing could be further from the truth. In our debate yesterday on peacekeeping we had sincere differences of opinion even though there was some hanging together.
I assure the House it is entirely so with this current debate on the cruise missile. We each have our own opinion. It may happen that it sounds much of the same tune, but it is entirely our own version of what should be done.
The cold war is over. I have heard a lot of comments today about the cold war being over. Let us remind ourselves that we in the west won the cold war and we won it by being prepared. We did not have to shoot off weapons, missiles or anything of the sort. We won it through peaceful means but that meant being prepared and being armed and being armed better than the other side. So it is a successful strategy for peace.
Has the threat in the world diminished? Not on your life it has not. The world is in greater danger today. It is more unstable today than it has been for a long time.
I hear some debates in this House that are very idealistic in nature and I think we should preserve that to the degree that we can. Have our idealists. Have them say we should have peace. We all believe in peace. The soldier is the first one who will throw his arms on the pile if we can ever achieve that moment when we have agreement in the world to have peace. In the meantime the world is a rough place. Let us see how rough.
The Senate of this Parliament had put out a report, "Meeting new Challenges-Canada's Response to a New Generation of Peacekeeping" and I read from that: "The current crisis has its roots in the proliferation of states which followed the second world war. At the end of that war there were barely 60 states. Through decolonization that number increased to almost 160 states by 1988. With the break up of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union the number is over 180 and climbing".
If you do not believe that, take a little tour of the world with me in your imagination. Let us go across the Pacific and look at the situation between northern Japan and Russia. It always has been tense. Move over a little to North and South Korea. They are still at odds. Look at all of China. We have not even begun to count the factions within China that are a potential problem. In fact look at the Chinas, the People's Republic as well as the other one.
If we go through Indo-China, Cambodia and Laos, what do we see? We see more potential problems. We could go to Indonesia and look at the problems it has had. If we flip over from there to Sri Lanka, we see a problem in Sri Lanka that has been there for a lot of years. If we go to India or Pakistan what do we see? Tension. We could go from there to the Middle East. I do not even have to describe the Middle East. It is there. It has been there over, over and over again. If we go from there to South Africa, the Republic of South Africa and all the countries of Africa, what do we see? We see potential for problems.
From there we can cross the Mediterranean and look at what we have in Europe today. We have the situation in the former Yugoslavia that we discussed yesterday. If we traverse the Atlantic Ocean, to finish our tour, and look at the Caribbean we still have trouble spots. We could look at Central America, a continuing problem, and even South America. Chile is quiet now. There is no war in Argentina. We do not hear much about the shining path in Peru, but we can bet our boots we will hear about it again.
The world is an unstable place. Until something magic happens to unite human beings to say that this is the way to peace, we must be prepared.
Let us go back in history a bit to look at our situations before World War I and before World War II. We have to relearn the lessons of history. We say: "This war is the war to end all wars. It is all done". It is not done. Until I see something very special come along I will know it is never done. Therefore let us be prepared.
We are talking about weapons systems such as the cruise. Several people have already differentiated between the fact that it can carry a conventional warhead and a nuclear one. Much of
the argument here has been concentrated on nuclear. It carries a conventional weapon and as such it is another excellent weapon in our total arsenal. We cannot predict which weapon in our arsenal we are going to reach for.
We could look at Vietnam. We saw the Americans bringing back C-47 aircraft and mounting Gatling guns in the open doorways. That tells us, if we look at that situation and at the gulf war, that we need a complete set of weapons in our arsenal. We do not know which one we will have to pick.
Thus it is incumbent on us to allow the Americans to continue the testing of this specific weapon in case it is needed. We have the technological lead in the west. How long will we continue to have that lead? We do not know. There are all sorts of other countries or groups working to exceed what we have. If we have a lead, hang on to it.
Finally I ask this question: Has Canada contributed its share to democracy or the defence of the west over the last number of years? If I look at my time before and after being in NATO, I think the answer is no. We have been cheapskating. We have always been down around Luxembourg. This gives us a chance as a country to pay off some of our debts.
I will leave it at that except to reiterate the point made by the hon. member for Saint John concerning proliferation. This refinement of the missile is a means to prevent proliferation if that happens to us.