Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question. We are lacking in leadership in the world today. In the post cold war situation we have to develop a new framework within which to work.
Some people have made the mistake of believing that NATO can get involved in conflicts as far away as Africa and the Far East. NATO's obligation is within its name, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It deals with that area of Europe and North America.
As the member alluded to, we have to engage in ways to deal with conflict all over the world. There are three bodies that can do this. The first is the United Nations. Kosovo demonstrates the failure of the UN. The security council rooted in its 1945 organization needs to be revamped. The IMF and the World Bank are the other two organizations that make up the three organized at Bretton Woods in 1945. They can engage in economic actions against a country that is engaging in behaviours that compromise international and regional security.
The argument in support of that is that countries engaging in a flagrant abuse of human rights and local or international security are an economic threat to those areas. They are engaging in bad economics. Why should the international community put money into countries that might use that money to buy arms to abuse people or engage in or support a conflict in their area? They do not have to. Within the IMF, the World Bank and the United Nations lies the tools that can be utilized. I might add that the United Nations is the toughest nut to crack.
While we are on the security council we need to have the courage to articulate the tough solutions that have to be put forward to enable the United Nations to change from being completely and utterly unable to deal with conflicts in a proactive manner to a body that can. There are many arguments to be made for that from a humanitarian argument to a cold-hearted economic argument.
The bottom line is that we have been on the security council for a year and a half. I implore the Minister of Foreign Affairs to talk very forcefully about revamping and restructuring the security council to broaden its number of members and to remove the veto from all of them.