Mr. Speaker, I compliment the minister on his remarks and for acknowledging the response of Canadians. Before I get into my question I will mention a small group of incredible firefighters from a little community in my riding called River Hebert that went immediately to New York with no indication as to whether or not their services would be accepted. They volunteered to go and take whatever action they had to. They are down there now.
The minister referred to the most important alliance we have. About two weeks ago the leader of our parliamentary coalition, the member for Calgary Centre, led a small group of us to meet with the vice-president of the United States. He proposed two actions to the vice-president. One was that the vice-president send officials from the department of defence and the department of state to Canada to brief parliamentarians on their missile defence system. The vice-president seemed very open to the idea.
Another suggestion he made to the vice-president was that the Canadian and American governments re-establish regular quarterly meetings of key ministers such as the foreign and finance ministers with their U.S. counterparts and alternate the location of the meetings between Canada and U.S. Such meetings used to be in place but were discontinued.
He also proposed a series of biannual meetings between the Prime Minister and the President of the United States.
Considering that things have changed dramatically in the last week, could the minister express his opinion on those two proposals? Would he consider extending an invitation to the U.S. to send a contingent to Canada to present Canadian parliamentarians with its actions, positions and plans with respect to the missile defence system?
With respect to American plans to counteract terrorism in the world, would the minister also consider the proposal by the leader of our coalition to re-establish ongoing regular meetings between the ministers and the leaders?