Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his remarks. I know he is very well informed. As chair of the foreign affairs committee, he is in the loop. He knows all the inside stories.
I know that he thinks that the third party is somehow not in favour of sending troops overseas or some such thing. But if he could just grab the nub of the argument. He says the troops will be in much better shape this time when we send them over because they will be so much better equipped to defend themselves in the case of aggression. I hope that is true. I have been calling for that since the last time I saw one of our guys chained to chain link fence. I wanted them to be better equipped and have the ability to defend themselves.
Can the member not understand that is the problem? He says, and maybe he knows because he is part of the inside circle, that we are going to have better equipment, a better opportunity to defend ourselves and so on. What we are asking is that we merely be told what we are going to do when we get there. What are we going to send? Are we going to send 20 F-18s? Are we going to send tanks? We do not have tanks so I guess it is not tanks. Are we going to strap Eaton's catalogues around our guts to try to keep them from being blown up? What are we going to do?
We are just asking for a list of what it is we are sending over there so we know that our troops will be well looked after. That is all we are asking. If the member knows something more than what is in this motion and he can tell us, then maybe we would vote in favour of it. Saying that we hope the guys get over there and tying a Canadian flag to the end of a World War II musket in the hopes they do not get their guts blown out is not good enough. We need some more assurance before we start sending our guys over there.
If the government wants to assure us, just tell us what equipment we are going to send over. It is not going to be tanks because we do not have tanks. Is it going to be submarines?