Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question. It gets to the heart of the debate before us today and the matter with which we have been struggling for the past two weeks in parliament. If we give up on searching for peaceful solutions we will be in deep trouble as a society and our goal of preserving the peace of the planet will be in jeopardy.
We have tried through the ages to be consistent. We have tried to promote the idea of non-violent, peaceful responses to acts of war, and in this case acts of terrorism. We recognize this was a crime against humanity. Through our traditions and our involvement in the United Nations we follow the rule of law. We will abide by international law and do everything in our power to bring to justice the criminals who executed thousands on September 11. That is fundamental.
However it would be absolutely wrong, as my leader has said, to turn to violence as a response to the terrorism. We would be feeding the agenda of the evil doers. David Matas, a well known lawyer from Winnipeg who deals with immigration and refugee cases, said it best in the aftermath of September 11: “Our answer to barbarity is civilization, not a descent into barbarity ourselves”. Those words are important.
We propose today to talk about concrete plans of action to deal with the direction provided by the UN security council resolution. We must ensure we do whatever we can in Canada about incidents of racism and enforcement problems with our immigration and refugee law.
We must also take precautionary measures against other threats such as bioterrorism, an area I did not have a chance to mention. Canada is ill prepared for the threat of biological or chemical warfare. However there are actions we can take to ensure we get to the root of the problem and the tragedy we are dealing with today.