Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. friend for the very important question. There is no way we in this party would support an increase in spending in foreign affairs and in defence.
I do not accept the hon. member's premise that it will cost us more to do the things I mentioned. They do not all have to be done at the same time but can be worked into our foreign policy and our defence policy over time.
The cost of inaction today is far greater than the cost of preventing a situation. If we had been involved in the Rwanda situation with other countries earlier it would not have cost us the hundreds of millions of dollars it has today. Similarly it would not have cost us the billions of dollars in the former Yugoslavia if we had gone into the situation earlier and prevented those conflicts.
The key is prevention. We might spend a dollar today but we will save much more in the future. These costs are involved in a number of different areas. When a conflict occurs we have the migration of populations to our shores. This costs us in terms of immigration claimants, in terms of foreign aid, in terms of our defence and foreign affairs budgets if we do not address these problems in a preventive fashion. As we all know, the costs of getting involved in a conflict are far greater than the cost of preventing those conflicts.
My hon. friend has made many interesting and wise suggestions in the House. I am sure we will get together sometime in the near future to discuss this further. The bottom line is prevention is better than waiting for a conflict to occur and action after that. Furthermore, our involvement in prevention is predicated on the fact that other countries will involve themselves in prevention as well.
I reiterate that these involvements are in a multinational fashion, done with other countries and therefore will be much less expensive than in reacting to conflicts in the future.