Mr. Speaker, I was trying to examine, as I was sitting here listening to the last speaker, why exactly I am here tonight. I was at home. I was ready for bed. I have had several late nights. I am one of those MPs who has to travel from the west so it does get very tiring when one goes back and forth on a continued basis.
I think I am here to speak in part out of guilt and the guilt has nothing to do with the military. The guilt links to something else that occurred tonight. Yet it all ties together into why we are having this debate right now.
My guilt is because tonight we had a vote on a different matter. We had a vote on compensation for people who have had a tragedy enter their lives. We lost that vote and they lost. I left from here and I went to a reception. I had a drink. I had some good food. Then I went home. As I was sitting there getting ready to go to bed I started thinking how unfair life was. Here I am. I had my reception. I had my good dinner. Life goes on, but for those people their lives do not go on. They have suffered a tragedy and they got no help from parliament tonight.
I was about to turn off the TV but I changed a couple of channels and happened to fall on CPAC to see a bit of this debate. I thought how ironic it was for us to debate such an issue tonight after the vote that took place. I started thinking why we were talking about Bosnia.
Is that what we are really doing? The decision is already made. It is not like the government is coming in here and saying this is what it is thinking of doing and asking whether it should. The government made that decision, so why are we here?
The decision to have the debate on Bosnia, this take note speech or whatever it is called, is a simple diversion because of Liberal embarrassment about the vote we had in this place tonight. This is an opportunity for them to stand after having done that and say “Aren't we good? Can't we be proud? Can't we reflect the pride of our military, of our peacekeepers back on us by the great thing we have done of simply authorizing them to be there?” The answer is no, they cannot do that. I could not go to bed and allow them to do that.
We heard the justice minister talk in the House about why there was no compensation for people who contracted hepatitis C prior to 1986. He said there was no way that government should be compensating people, that it had no obligation to pay for people who had a problem that was not the result of government negligence.
Bosnia is not the result of the government's negligence. Hate is not the result of the government's negligence. Cyprus was not the result of the government's negligence or any of the other places we went. Desert storm 1 and the almost desert storm 2 were not the result of government negligence, but when people were in need the Canadian government responded.
Tonight people were in need and the Canadian government did not respond. It responded to the flood in the Saguenay. Was that the fault of the Canadian government? It responded to the flood in Manitoba. Was that the fault of the Canadian government? How about the ice storm?
It is despicable that the Liberals have the temerity to raise this subject in the House tonight as a deflection of the vote that took place. It demeans the good name of our Canadian military. It is absolutely disgusting.
I have a reserve unit in my riding, the 44 field squad, an engineer squadron. It has served in Bosnia. It has helped when there have been natural disasters. It has done an infinite number of good and meaningful deeds in my riding and around the world.
I received a letter recently from someone in my riding who is a conscientious objector. She objects to the military and to her tax dollars going to the military. She wanted to know whether there was some way she could have her taxes go to some special fund instead.
I wrote to her and suggested that I understood her position, her abhorrence of war, and would hope we would all abhor it but sometimes have to stand up for people who through no fault of their own were being victimized. I suggested to her that our military had a strong tradition of things other than violence such as peacekeeping and helping when disasters hit the people of this country. That is what we should be focusing on. We should not be using that to deflect what happened in the House tonight.
Perhaps we should truly help the military and do something good for it instead of pontificating about its role over there and how proud we are that we sent the military there. Somehow it is suggested that it makes us greater than them because after all they are just the grunts who went there; we are the wonderful people who sent them. Instead, maybe what we should be doing in the House is looking at their lack of equipment, at their lack of training and at the bases that have been shut down.
Some of the best bases in Canada have been closed. An almost new base in Chilliwack was rebuilt, almost completely overhauled. It was closed and the people were transferred to a base in Alberta that does not have enough room for them and they have to start adding additional facilities there.
What the government does to the military makes no sense. Yet it somehow feels it is right that its members should come to the House and suggest that they are good because they have sent troops over to Bosnia.
I do not know if it does any good to speak tonight. Maybe I would have done myself more good had I gone to bed and caught up on my sleep, but I just could not do that. It seemed somehow important to me to get this off my chest.
I did not expect any more of the justice minister. I did not expect any more of the Prime Minister or of the government whip. However I expected more of some of those backbenchers. I know they were opposed to the government's bill. I know some of them are people of integrity.
I have often said to people in my town hall meetings that Ottawa is not what they think: “As I stand tonight as a Reform member of parliament I will say something that will seem strange coming from me. There are a lot of good Liberal MPs in Ottawa. It is not the people. It is the system”. I am not going to say that again because it is not true. Tonight, wipe that out. Tonight, completely wipe that out.
I saw people on those backbenches who were opposed, who felt that the victims of hepatitis C, of tainted blood were entitled to compensation, and yet they knuckled under. They ignored the victims. They ignored their constituents. They ignored their duty to the country.
They had the temerity to come here and suggest that they were good and wonderful because they sent our troops to Bosnia. Is that timing not just a little curious? It was right on the heels of the vote they knew was coming on which they were going to take a lot of heat. What unbelievable timing. What an uncanny coincidence that it should happen tonight.
I do not believe it. I do not think the Canadian people believe it. I hope it took a lot of soul searching by the Liberals in terms of this incident. If they truly feel what they have spoken tonight about the military, I hope they will do something meaningful in terms of equipment, in terms of bases and in terms of training.
If they want to send them into harm's way, they should give them the proper tools to do it. If they want to take pride in something, they should make sure that notwithstanding the vote tonight they do something for those victims, the people who relied on them and whom they let down.