Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Saint-Jean for his kind words.
My competence is not as great as he thinks. I am just talking as another parliamentarian.
I believe in multilateralism. It has served Canada well. We have pursued that through the United Nations quite effectively in the sixties, the seventies and the eighties. We are now facing a situation which is so difficult and dangerous mostly because of the bellicose policies emanating out of Washington than any other reason. This is why we are facing this kind of dilemma.
If the policies emanating out of Washington were of a multilateral nature, I do not think that we would be facing this problem. We would not be talking about this form of defence where we do not know who the enemy is and what the alternative is. There is no parallel initiative being taken to the United Nations by the United States and I hope that Canada will perhaps take it in order to develop a parallel measure to counter this bellicose atmosphere that will lead eventually to an international convention on the gradual phasing out of the weapons system.