Mr. Speaker, I listened to the minister make his comments and all of a sudden it sounds as if the government is on side with missile defence.
We have been encouraging the government for three years to say to our American friends and neighbours that this sounds like an interesting idea because it will provide security for Canada and that we will sit down and work something out. The government has responded to that by making statements like the one from the foreign affairs minister that terrorists are not going to get their hands on ballistic missiles except in James Bond movies and things like that. The government has said that we do not need it, that we are being alarmists in raising the issue of a possible ballistic missile attack. It has said that we are just catering to the Americans and that anything they say we want to go along with. That has been the government's defence over the past three years.
Now the government is saying that conditions have changed, but it has not given one example of what condition has changed in the last few years. Before September 11 the terrorist problem was well known. That was no surprise. It was widely debated around the world. I attended meetings for six years at the OECD where we discussed the terrorist threat. That is not new.
What has changed all of a sudden to make the government come on side with what the Canadian Alliance has been proposing for three years? Why did the government wait three years? Now the benefit to this country will be less than it otherwise would have been and the harm to our relationship will be greater than what it would have been.