Mr. Speaker, I will make it very clear. The debate today is about policy direction. We have a legal agreement with the United States but I am quite certain that a sovereign Government of Canada, if it felt it was the will of the Canadian public or part of an overall framework on defence policy that they could not fulfil a commitment, our neighbours to the south would understand and hopefully allow us to abrogate it.
I am saying I support this agreement. However I do not want to prejudice the debate that will follow. It has to be an unencumbered debate that will take place during the defence review. I do not think you walk into a defence review saying we have decided ahead of time that 14 of these things are sacred cows so they cannot be touched, that 22 bases cannot be touched and you cannot talk about cruise missile testing in Canada.
We want to engage parliamentarians and Canadians, both inside and outside the defence establishment, to develop a defence policy which first and foremost looks after the sovereign needs of Canada. I would hope that defence policy would focus quite heavily on things such as fisheries patrol, on drug interdiction in our coastal waters and on our commitment to the international community through the UN on peacekeeping.
From my view what we have to do is say that the agreement that is in place is one we will uphold but let our American counterparts know there will be an open and free debate in this country about what it is we want to do as a nation with our defence policy.