Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to the member for Perth-Wellington-Waterloo. I agree with many of his comments. I am concerned with the repeated suggestion in the House today from the government that the inquiry is broadly based.
Mr. Speaker, if I may I would like to quote from the committee directive:
-to inquire into and report on the chain of command system, leadership within the chain of command, discipline, operations, actions and decisions of the Canadian forces and the actions and decisions of the Department of National Defence in respect to the Canadian forces deployment to Somalia and without restricting the generality of the foregoing, the following matters related to the pre-deployment, in theatre and post-deployment phases of the Somalia deployment.
Unquestionably I agree that fallout from the report will extend far beyond the Somalia commitment. I do believe that the Somalia investigation will concentrate primarily on that and will not expand its base to encompass the things I would like to see and which the motion we have made goes to.
The problem I see is that I am not sure the Minister of National Defence really appreciates he has problem. That is my concern. The member mentioned the minister has been very good at seeking advice. He has not sought advice from our party on our commitment to Bosnia nor to Croatia. He has not sought advice about committing 474 members of the Canadian forces to Haiti. I suspect that he has not approached the members of the official opposition either. Is this the way the minister consults, gets input and appreciates the situation? I do not think so.
We are sitting right now with eight days to go before the end of our current mandate in Bosnia-Croatia. The minister has not consulted us about this. Are we going to extend or not? We are told they do not know yet. Surely this cannot be the case. If it is, it is a dismal failure on the part of the government.
Does the member think the minister of defence has really consulted adequately? Does he think the minister has taken every opportunity to allow parliamentarians to have input into commitments which put the lives of our forces at risk?