I am sorry, Leviticus, the hon. member says, a biblical scholar among the Liberals.
In any event the notion we find in the Hebrew testament about jubilee is something which I think more and more Canadians are certainly willing to consider. They do not see the point of driving these poorer countries further and further into situations which are in the final analysis destructive of their environment, destructive of the social fabric of their respective countries, and in the end destructive for all of us, to the extent that these countries are driven to convert their economies to export economies and to the extent that they have to destroy their own environment to do that. If they have to destroy their rain forest, for instance, to create pasture to grow beef in order to export it, that is the only way they can get hard currency to pay off their debts, instead of having an economy that might better service the food and the social needs of their own population.
We are not getting anywhere if in the end all the debts are paid and all the banks are happy but we cannot breathe the air and we cannot go outside because the ozone layer has been so depleted. What shall it profit us if the banks gain the whole world and we lose our ability to actually survive on the planet because we have driven all these countries into a way of behaving that is destructive, not just of their environment but of our common environment? That is certainly one of the concerns I have and one of the things we need to look at when we look at reform of international financial institutions.
Finally I will say a word on the United Nations. I do not think anybody would dare get up in the context of this debate and with what has been happening in the former Yugoslavia and suggest that somehow the United Nations is adequate to the circumstances which the world is experiencing. We have a very serious dilemma precisely because of the failure of the United Nations to be able to act in the former Yugoslavia. There is an inability of the security council to come to any kind of agreement as a result of the vetoes that exist there and the lack of any long term will at the UN to develop a capacity to react to these kinds of situations, even if there were agreement.
Even if the UN had been able to agree to do something in Kosovo, it would have had to depend on national military capacities and not on its own military capacity. One of the suggestions that has been made over the years is that the UN have this standing capacity in its own name.
We need to look at democratizing the United Nations so that we do not have the situation where those who were considered to be the great powers after the second world war still have exclusive veto over world affairs through the UN. A lot of things need to be looked at.
One of the problems in the current situation in Kosovo is that we have things being done in the name of the international community. I will repeat what I said the other night. Unfortunately the international community through the UN was not able to act, but that does not make NATO the international community.
It causes problems for people who may at some level want to support what is going on in Kosovo when they hear NATO setting itself up as the international community because it clearly is not. Not only that, NATO is being led in this case by a country, the United States of America, which has clearly done all it can over the years to marginalize the UN. It does not pay its dues. It has a significant element within its Congress that regularly attacks the United Nations.
There is a lot to be further debated. It is regrettable that some of the countries which now hold up NATO as the international community are not doing more at the UN to make sure that the UN can become the authentic voice of the international community.