Mr. Speaker, in the first place I would like to clarify that the government is not on side with missile defence at this time. The government has not taken a decision, but the government is considering the possibility of entering into discussions or negotiations with the United States.
As for the hon. member's question as to whether anything at all has changed in the last three years, I suggest he must have been asleep if he has not noticed. The whole geopolitical context has changed in ways that were ably explained earlier by my colleague the Minister of Foreign Affairs and which a number of us have been talking about for some considerable time.
For example, three years ago the anti-ballistic missile treaty was still in place and many believed that the ballistic missile defence system would cause an arms race. Since that time, that situation has evolved to the point, as we have discussed many times, that Russia no longer considers that the system is destabilizing. That is just one example of many things that have changed.
I can only conclude that the Canadian Alliance must have its head in the sand if it thinks that nothing at all has changed in the last three years. Things have changed to the point where the Democratic Party in the United States is solidly on side, which was not the case before, as evidenced by the fact that it voted in the senate 97 to 3 in favour of ballistic missile defence in 1999.