Mr. Speaker, I do not know whether I get equal time to respond because there were about five question there. However let me very quickly try to address them.
The first one is around the question of how the New Democratic Party can argue strenuously for multilateralism but then say that we are unalterably opposed to Canada participating in a war in Iraq. Well I will tell members why.
I think one has to take a clear position based on an evaluation of the situation as we know it. In this case we chose to take a position of leadership to try to prevent this war and to do so through the United Nations. We have always been realistic that if that failed, then every individual nation at the end of the day would have to exercise its judgment and its sovereignty. No country totally gives over the decision to any other body, including the United Nations, to compel it to enter a war.
It has to be acknowledged that Canada has a role to play and it has to choose how best to play that role. The overwhelming sentiment of Canadians is that our best role is in relation to the humanitarian efforts in this tragic situation and to the reconstruction. Anyone who does not acknowledge that reality, even on the basis of our existing military personnel being overstretched, they are turning their back on the obvious.
It is not a question of whether one is absolutely committed to multilateralism. It is a question of taking a responsible decision in the face of realities and in the face of events, which is why our position in the New Democratic Party is that we stand against this war. Our position has always been that Canada's best role should first be in preventing it. I believe it has been the wobbling and the waffling of the government that has caused confusion about where Canada stood in terms of prevention.
Canada's second role, in the event of war happening, should be its commitments to humanitarian aid and reconstruction.
On the issue of Rwanda, I have to say that of all the examples that get evoked again and again as the most persuasive examples of the inadequacies and failures of the United Nations, Rwanda seems to me to be a very instructive one.
Let me say that we agree that Rwanda was a colossal failure but what the Alliance fails to say every time it invokes Rwanda is that the two powers that stood most strenuously against intervention in Rwanda were the United States and the United Kingdom, which surely is a great irony and part of the historical picture that should be understood.
Yes, the United Nations is not perfect, and yes, there have been big failures, but surely those are reasons to strengthen the United Nations and make it a more effective body. In addition to the humanitarian effort and the reconstruction of Iraq, we also need to turn our attention to the kinds of reforms that are necessary to make the United Nations more effective. Among those, surely, is the desperate necessity to turn our attention to the issue of weapons of mass destruction, not just in the hands of Iraq or of a rogue nation, but in the hands of any nation in the world.
We need to address ourselves to that question because the capability of the human species to destroy the future of the world, both the planet and the human family, is awesome and should be very sobering as we address the bigger question of weapons of mass destruction needing to be stripped from the earth.