Mr. Speaker, I extend my support and speak in favour of the private member's motion that has been brought forward by the hon. member for Red Deer.
The motion speaks to our democratic right as members of parliament who represent the constituents of the country. All 301 duly elected members of the House represent Canada.
My first experience was the debate on the deployment of troops to the Persian Gulf. As a young member of parliament coming to the House I was not struck by the immense responsibility I had as an individual in voting to deploy our young men and women to a war zone.
Entering a war zone is a very unique situation. A lot of us have never experienced it. We have never taken up arms. We have never sacrificed our lives or have been ready to take somebody else's life. These are the issues we are talking about.
The hon. member has highlighted active military mission. That is a confrontation where anybody's life could be taken at any time. Other missions are not active military missions. Cleaning up the storm struck regions of South America or an ice storm or a snow storm are not active military missions but can be done world-wide.
I take this responsibility further and share with members a vision of Canada that I have been generously sharing for the last while. I refer to the unity, the symbolism and the design of this democratic structure. The House was designed so that both sides were two sword lengths apart. The symbolism of war designed the architecture of this room. There is no unity in this room. We are designed to fight, the government and the opposition. Even the words are antagonistic and protagonistic.
We have a budget to renovate this room over the next 15 years. Why do we not renovate the library? The building is a circular one. We could take the books off the shelves and store them in a safe place on the Hill. If we cleared out that room we would have a circular room in which to make decisions in a non-partisan way on sending our men and women to war. We could shed our political stripes. As a member representing the people of Churchill River I could cast my vote on whether to send troops to an active military front. It would be not as a New Democrat, a Reform member or a Liberal member. We could shed that at the door. A crucial issue of calling our men and women to war should be done in a united Canadian way.
Our system of government was adopted from Britain. A symbol of the circle has been held sacred by the aboriginal people for generations on the land that we occupy now. Why can we not adopt a symbol of that unity to unify the country to collectively make a conscious decision when we send members of armed forces to active military missions?
Other decisions could be made in that room. I want to draw attention to one.
The new millennium is coming. Our young men and women, our children and the generations to come, for the youth who might take their rightful place here, let us design structures of governance that involve them without any strings or preconditions attached. We must make decisions in that way.
My support for the motion comes from our making decisions as members of parliament to send our people to war. Let us envision ourselves in our places of decision making and maybe that is a rightful place.
By using the wooden mace yesterday we acknowledged that this place burned down and only the library was left standing. It persevered a test on the Hill. For that strength of collective unity in this country, let us consider it.