Mr. Speaker, I think all of us were certainly touched by the comments of the member for Churchill River.
It is fitting to end the debate on that tone when we are talking about the lives of Canadian men and women and active military missions. We should not mix it up. We are all proud of our forces. We should not mix up the ice storms and various other disasters.
We are talking about going to war and we are saying that the Canadian parliament should decide that. We owe that to our troops. We owe that to the morale of our troops. We should let them know that 301 of us are behind them when they go on a mission like this. That is the purpose of this motion. To change it in any other way is simply wrong and misleading.
We support peacekeeping missions. We support peacemaking missions. We believe that our troops do exceptionally well at them. We are simply asking that when lives are being threatened, bring it to the House so we can debate it here.
I go back to the foreign affairs minister and remind members across the way that prior to 1993, as the foreign affairs critic, he made the point over and over again that the previous government did not bring the decision to parliament when we decided to send troops into war. He condemned the government for that. I have read those speeches over and over again. I thought he meant it.
Again, last week when the Prime Minister said we were sending troops to Kosovo, our foreign affairs minister contradicted him by saying “No, we should go to parliament”. I still believe he has that mission.
I hope that on Tuesday when we vote I at least see the foreign affairs minister stand on what he has said so many times and as recently as last week.