Mr. Speaker, I know I have a short time to respond to the hon. member but I want to make three quick points.
First, he has reminded me again of how absolutely repugnant it is for his party to keep portraying the notion that somehow the New Democratic Party, or our forerunner the CCF, failed to stand up against Hitler, failed to support the war against Hitler. I must say that I take great personal offence to that because my mother spent her years during the war as a single parent raising two babies while my father was serving in the armed forces. In fact, he proudly left his job with the CCF here in Ottawa on the Hill and went into the air force to serve proudly, and subsequently after the war ran in uniform for the CCF, with not a hesitation about having been so proactive in standing against Hitler. I take personal offence and so do a lot of other people at the misrepresentation that has wilfully been put forward again and again over the recent weeks.
Second, we are not debating some philosophical point. I cannot believe that the member said that this is a debate about some philosophical point. We are debating something that has to do with life and death, the potential death of millions of people. Let us be very clear. We are not only talking about a war that is illegal and immoral, but most importantly, we are talking about a war that was preventable. That is the tragedy of what is being permitted to happen in the name of disarming Saddam Hussein.
Third, of course, Saddam Hussein must be disarmed. Of course, these weapons of mass destruction are a threat to the people of Iraq, but so are weapons of mass destruction in the hands of many other nations. They are a threat to the future of the human family and to the future of the planet. We must begin dealing with that. The international multilateral architecture that has been built is the very multilateral institution against whom there has been a death blow dealt by the U.S. and the U.K. as a result of the decision to launch this preventable war.