Madam Speaker, I think the member spoke very well, but I do have a problem.
I will ask everyone to picture this. The World Trade Center has been attacked and 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 people, who knows, have been murdered. President Bush asks the Prime Minister to come to an urgent meeting in Washington the next day to lay out a strategy and asks for military support. The Prime Minister tells the president to hold that thought because he has to go back to Ottawa in order to convene parliament and have a discussion with House members on whether or not Canada will participate and support its allies and friends. That is the preposterous nature of what is being proposed here.
The member said in his speech that we should debate whether we would deploy military forces in any action. I think he mentioned civilian risk and that there are degrees of that and no guarantee that people will not be hurt. The question for the member is whether he believes that perhaps this discussion should not be a discussion on a specific event such as the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington but rather should be a debate in the House.
The question for the member is whether in fact the motion should have said in the event that a situation occurs where our NATO allies or friends request military action, what are the rules under which the House would ask the government to guide it in its decision making so that we can in fact participate in a timely and constructive fashion?