Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for both his comment and his question.
His comment is well taken. Because of the importance of the bill, in my own way I was smacking the government's hand a little. However, he spelled out pretty clearly and bluntly that the government faces the danger of making committee work just busy work. That is, as soon as we start to get into the nitty-gritty our work is either trumped by the government or discarded.
We have seen some moves in committees over the last week or so where chairmen who have confronted and challenged the government have been moved aside. It is very unfortunate and very de-motivating for people who come here thinking that their opinion is going to count to find out that instead they should just take a number and wait to be told what to do.
Time and again this has happened with our peacekeeping efforts. We often read about a situation in the papers on the weekend. Then we come here on Monday and hear the minister ask parliament to endorse the position he has already taken, which is to send troops overseas, into harm's way. Those of us on this side of the House, and I think many on the government side too, might have liked to have a debate before the minister signed on the dotted line. I might have liked to have expressed my views. I would have listened to the arguments. We should have true debates instead of set speeches that basically spell out what is going to be done anyway and tough toenails.
That would democratize foreign policy especially. Foreign policy deals not just with Canadians, but with our international relations. We have a right to enter that debate and we have an obligation to our constituents to show that we have an interest. Those members of parliament who say they are only interested in what happens in their own constituencies could be shown for the parochial bunch they are. Let us flush them out. Let us make them treat foreign affairs with the importance it should have.
The second issue concerns whether there should be an international protocol of some sort to track fissionable material. The member pointed out a very huge problem. We have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in Canada alone trying to figure out what to do with our own nuclear waste and we still do not know what we are supposed to do with it. We still do not have a plan. We still keep it in the swimming pool and hope that nobody dives in the deep end. Even in Canada, which has some of the highest standards, we do not have a protocol. We can certainly track it, but we do not know what to do with it.
Take that and expand it to other countries in the world that do not have the resources to even handle it properly. We need a method to track it and to help those countries that cannot deal with it to deal with it in some way that best mitigates the problem. I certainly support that initiative.