Mr. Speaker, I have experienced this hon. member before and his inaccuracies far outnumber anything useful that he might ever have to say.
He also talked about the China veto keeping NATO from acting. It was the China veto that kept the UN from acting. That is a problem and it is something that we pointed to in our speeches today. We have a problem at the United Nations.
NATO is made up of 19 countries, some of them the most powerful countries in the world. Instead of using the incapacity of the UN as a reason for expanding its own role in the world, one of the things NATO could have been doing for a long time is playing a role at the UN in reforming the UN so that the UN itself could act. But one of the major leaders in NATO, the United States, has done exactly the opposite. Instead of saying that it has a problem in the United Nations with the vetoes on the security council, and the difficulty it has in acting, so let us reform the UN, the U.S. has basically walked away from the UN and tried to create its own institution for the enforcement of international law. In this case that appears to have become NATO. That is one of the concerns we have. I think it is a valid concern and it is a concern expressed by a lot of people who have a great deal of respect for international law. They see the dangerous precedent that has been set or that could be set.
The action by NATO could go two ways. It could be a breakthrough by which we set a precedent, albeit this time with the wrong institution, NATO, whereby we declare that human rights violations happening within sovereign nations are no longer beyond the reach of the international community, or it could be a breakaway on the part of NATO by which it seeks to establish itself as the policeman of the world. That would be a mistake and would set precedents that would be used by other super powers that we would not find very attractive.