Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Jonquière for her intervention because of course I feel very strongly about this and I think I was probably being too impassioned, but it is so worrisome because these cheap attacks against the Liberals do not pay attention to the collateral damage they must be doing.
I live in a riding that is close to the United States and I have people crossing the border. Ordinary people listen to this because it gets picked up by the talk shows on the Canadian side and it is beamed over to New York State or to North Dakota or wherever else in the country, and ordinary Americans think that these attacks really do represent the position of the governing Liberals and it is simply not true. It is so unfair to base all of this kind of rhetoric about anti-Americanism on one remark, one sole remark by one Liberal caught at a press conference.
The other remarks were criticisms of the president, perhaps, but I suggest that distinguished Americans can pass far more severe criticism of their President than has certainly been uttered by anyone here, and so it is. I would wish Canadians who are following this debate and the debate about Iraq to take note that if there is damage to trade, then the guilt and the fault are mainly with those politicians in this room, in this chamber, who take cheap political advantage of a principled position by this government and this country on the situation in Iraq in order to drive a wedge between two great peoples, between the Americans and the Canadians. I think it is deplorable.
I could say much more, Madam Speaker, but I really feel this is a place where we should try to be very calm and respectful of one another. But I have been extremely disappointed by the behaviour of the Canadian Alliance in this debate on Iraq. It has not served the national interest.