Mr. Speaker, I note that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence wanted to use this period to begin his speech ahead of time. I do not hold it against him.
The arguments he raised are totally irrelevant to the speech I just made. He intimates that we do not in our speeches recognize the worth of the job done by the military on bases and in missions around the world and, particularly, in the case of the mission to Somalia.
That is not the issue. This week, I heard the Minister of National Defence giving a member of the Reform Party a dressing down, saying that she lacked respect for the military because she raised the question.
We are not questioning the quality of the work the military does here and throughout the world, but rather the quality of the work of this government, which is taking away the credibility of the Canadian military.