Madam Speaker, I had an opportunity a year or so ago to travel to the former Yugoslavia. I went to witness Canadian development projects trying to remove one million landmines still remaining in Croatia, a small part of the former Yugoslavia.
That does not refer to the reconstruction efforts in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It also does not refer to the misery inflicted on the people of Kosovo, the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo, some of whom I have met and some of whom are here in Canada as we speak. Some may even be listening to the speech the hon. member has just made.
Could the member in good conscience explain to the people of a wartorn country, with all the misery inflicted upon them, why she feels it is appropriate to make fun of the misery that they endured in order to make a cheap political point? How could she make an accusation, and a ridiculous one at that, against the Prime Minister of the greatest country in the world that greeted and welcomed those refugees of the misery perpetrated according to the international tribunal in The Hague and possibly inflicted by Milosevic? We are not making those accusations. A worldwide tribunal has said that.
How will the hon. member explain her statement to her constituents, to other Canadians, to everyone who works in international development, to people who work for the Red Cross and to people who risk their own lives to defend democratic values? How could she make fun of them like that? I do not know whether she has ever had the opportunity of seeing what life over there is like but if she has not, it would be well worth the trip. She perhaps would then refrain from making those kinds of remarks in the future.