Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for the question. Actually I could go a lot further than that and say the long term goal is total elimination of nuclear armaments of any kind.
In the meantime—and this is not in the short term—we are still stuck with the dangers out there, with the rogue countries that will develop nuclear arms. If they are sitting there with nuclear arms we need a deterrent. As I mentioned, the Americans are still looking at their star wars project right now because they know they have to protect themselves. They need an alternative.
The long term view is that we would be very happy to see them completely gone, but in the short term that will not happen so we still have to keep them as a deterrent. Hopefully over a period of time we will eliminate them.