Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Saint John touched on two aspects that are of particular interest to me. She talked about potential job losses in her shipyard. She also talked about using cruise missiles with more accurate guidance systems. I will address this second point before going back to the first one and asking the hon. member for Saint John for her comments.
The need to make the cruise missile guidance systems more accurate is a very subtle indication that these missiles will not be used to transport nuclear heads. Missiles carrying nuclear heads do not have to be very accurate as any hit within a kilometre of the target is considered a bull's eye, but great accuracy is required to deliver a conventional head for a "surgical" operation. Therefore, the tests requested by the Americans promote the denuclearization of conflicts. That is how I see it and I would ask the hon. member to respond and let me know her views on this issue.
Let us now talk about jobs. We have been talking about war and peace for several hours but, in my opinion, the real issues are jobs and technology. There will be no war in the near future thanks to the diplomatic efforts being made on several fronts to resolve certain conflicts. In the meantime, however, the huge military-industrial complex needs contracts and the Americans are very good at feeding that beast. As a Liberal member was saying this afternoon, it would be interesting to implement the conversion of the defence industry to civilian uses. The technologies we are talking about, namely the recognition of patterns through computerized programs, could easily be used for computer-assisted work in our plants. There are jobs in all this, as the Americans have been quick to realize while we are talking about war and peace. What does the hon. member for Saint John think of all this?