Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for a presentation that certainly relates to the debate. I want to make a couple of comments with respect to the more pointed nature of my feelings on what he had to say.
I certainly do understand his concern as a member of the opposition about the possibility of changing the structure, the participation, the withdrawal, or the future of any NATO force and the Canadian participation without a debate in the House. I would at the same time quickly remind him that his leader was a member of the government who not more than four years ago participated in committing a very large Canadian force to the Persian Gulf without
as much as one word of debate in the House. I will tell him that if that has to happen, I would ask him to be considerate because it is not without precedent.
The previous government, of which his leader was a cabinet minister, used the phrase that it was not expeditious and propitious to do that. It is not always propitious and expeditious, so I would ask him to have understanding for these kinds of things.
I was expecting to hear from the parties opposite some comment on the size and structure of the force. I will give the hon. member credit, he talked about the possibility of surveillance and communications troops. But he did not give any indication of the scope of money he or his party were prepared to support.
The opposition parties, both the main opposition and the third party, have been mouthing off to the press. They have been going through a great litany and lexicon of rhetoric about not having a debate. Now that the time has arrived, lo and behold, they do not want to tell us what is on their minds. I have not heard a member of the opposition, with the exception of the possibility of surveillance and communications troops, say anything about what they would like to have in the way of whether it should be military, quasi-military, should we be a member of the commission, what kinds of rules of engagement we should have, what kind of a force we should have that is tailored to this kind of a mission, what kinds of conditions we should have in place to withdraw.
The conditions are right for the members of the opposition to stand up and put their money where their mouths are and tell us what they want to do. Do not be afraid. We will consider it. We may not do it to the letter of the law, but give us some range. What do they have in mind? What are we good at doing? Should we continue doing what we were doing before or should we do something differently? What other areas of expertise would they like us to use? Mr. Speaker, ask them to tell us what they would like to do.