Madam Speaker, I listened with interest to my colleague's comments about Canada's reputation in the world and the fact that it might be threatened. She listed in her arguments what we might call a tripod of this recognition of Canada's contribution to the world being foreign aid, peacekeeping, and respect for human rights.
Then in her remarks she simply addressed herself to one of those three issues, making clear that on the basis of the fact we have fallen short of our .7 per cent target in foreign aid somehow our reputation is about to be greatly threatened and undermined.
Could I remind the hon. member that we are second to none in the world today in our efforts in peacekeeping. We ought to be very proud of that fact, and I am sure we all are. In the matter of human rights, again Canada has a loud voice and is a champion for better human rights both at home, as we have heard day after day in the responses of the minister of immigration to certain sentiments that we do not share on this side of the House about welcoming people to Canada, and in our efforts to encourage other governments to respect human rights where it is not the case in their own countries. Just a few days ago I raised in the House the matter of the situation in Chiapis, Mexico, and the concern of many Canadians about it.
The hon. member has made reference to these three points. She castigated the government in saying that we were only at .4 per cent and that somehow this was threatening our reputation in the world. She then went on to speak about interdependency among countries, what one might call supranationalism.
I applaud that and I certainly second her sentiment there. However it is amazing to hear that from a member of a party with a political agenda to return to the petty nationalism of the 19th century which preached that a nation must be based solely on the fact that those who speak a language must therefore in and of themselves become a nation and would seek to destroy the new experiment in nationalism represented in Confederation, a neo-nationalism that Macdonald and Cartier along with many
other Canadians had the vision to put forward in this great country.
I listened with interest to the hon. member and to the leader of her party earlier today. I was saddened to hear their arguments based on a type of nationalism that is at least a century and a half out of date. Indeed it was the dream of the 19th century and became the nightmare of the 20th century with some of the most destructive wars in the history of mankind. It is amazing to me to hear such sentiments of interdependency of nations, which I applaud, coming from someone who is a member of a party with such a destructive political agenda, at least very destructive for this country.
Does the hon. member not believe that if the Bloc's agenda was achieved and Quebec did tear itself apart from the rest of Canada, Canada without Quebec and Quebec without Canada would certainly fall far short of what we would achieve in the world by being together as a nation? Does she not see that as perhaps the greatest threat to our reputation in the world, and it comes from her own party?