Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend my colleague, the member for Jonquière, for her excellent speech and for her realistic portrayal of the Liberal Party of Canada.
I would also like to thank my colleague, the member for Saint-Jean, who has worked very hard to bring this debate to the House today. The men and women across Canada and Quebec who are following this debate do not understand why we cannot discuss a certain subject.
Is this one such subject? We shall see; it does not augur well. This illustrates just how the Liberal Party politicizes all debate in the House.
The debate started with a question from the leader of the Bloc Quebecois, the member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie, on Wednesday May 7. I will read the question so people can follow. He said:
—while the government is leaving parliamentarians and citizens completely in the dark when it comes to the American missile defence shield, the Prime Minister is already talking about the need to negotiate the terms of the shield with the Bush administration.
Before deciding and negotiating, will the Prime Minister acknowledge that the government has a responsibility to explain its position to the country and to debate the details of the missile defence shield project in the House?
The question was clear. The leader of the Bloc Quebecois was asking the Prime Minister if he was going to tell Canadians what his position was on the issue of the missile defence shield.
The Prime Minister's answer was the following, and I quote:
Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member would like there to be a debate on the issue, that would be just fine with us. There are opposition days that are specifically designed to discuss this type of problem. We are in the process of discussing it within our party and our government, and we would be very happy, if the opposition deems it important enough, to use one of their days to debate it in the House. The ball is in the member's court.
That is already recognition of the work accomplished by the opposition. The Prime Minister said, and I quote him again:
We are in the process of discussing it within our party and our government—
He did not go to the public or to anyone with that, only to his Liberal friends. And he told the opposition that, if it wanted the public informed, all it had to do was to make it the topic of an opposition day. We did. We asked for an opposition day and got it, and we have made it our topic of discussion. The hon. member for Saint-Jean has put the motion forward, and this is where we are at today. We have set out our recommendation.
Our motion is being debated. It reads as follows:
That this House urge the government not to take part in the United States' missile defence plan.
That is pretty simple. The motion before the House should at least be votable. Yesterday, the hon. member for Saint-Jean asked the government whether it would agree, with unanimous consent, not only to debate the motion but also to vote on it. We are all elected members representing the people in our ridings. As parliamentarians, since we are speaking on behalf of our constituents, the men and women whom we represent, it would have been logical that we vote on this today.
But no. The government decided that there would be no vote, that this is not an important enough issue. We can debate, but we cannot have a vote. Yet the Prime Minister himself suggested we bring the issue to the House for debate. He would not do it. He had discussions behind closed doors, with Liberal members, not Liberal supporters, only cabinet members. That was the choice.
So, today, we are debating this motion on which we cannot vote. I want those listening to know that we will not get to vote and find out where each member stands on an issue as important as not taking part in the United States' missile defence plan.
Our recommendation follows a certain logic. The Bloc Quebecois did not just wake up one morning and say, “Today, we are against missile defence”. A House committee has issued a unanimous report. The Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade of the House of Commons has addressed the missile defence issue. The critics for all the parties, the most competent in each party to understand the issue, met several times, called witnesses, made recommendations,and issued a unanimous report. One of the recommendations was as follows, Recommendation No. 12:
The government should not make any decision concerning the anti-missile defence systems being developed in the United States, because the technology has not yet been proven and the details on deployment are not yet known. It should, however, continue to monitor developments in the program in conjunction with the Government of the United States and continue to oppose the weaponization of space.
That was a unanimous recommendation, so why are we discussing this question today in the House, moving:
That this House urge the government not to take part in the United States' missile defence plan.
Because the situation that has changed within the Liberal Party of Canada. It has changed since the report was released by the House committee. The Liberal members who were on that committee had given their unanimous support, but the situation has changed because the Government of Canada is at the mercy of the Americans.
Yet the situation was clear. Since September 11, 2001, there has been a war against terrorism. Bills were passed here in this House. What we want to attack is terrorism, not other nations. It is the Americans who decided to attack other nations. It was their choice to go to war in Iraq.
The people of Quebec and a majority of Canadians have told the government they did not want to take part in this unilateral war the United States was waging on Iraq. That is a clear position. The Americans got the message.
Why did we take that position? Because we, in Quebec, for instance, are a peace-loving people. We are against terrorism. We will do everything in our power to eradicate terrorism from Quebec and Canada, but we will not condone attacks on other peoples around the world. That position is simple enough. That is the reality. That is what the government had to explain to the Americans, that the Quebeckers and Canadians are essentially peace-loving people.
That was the reality. It has not changed, and it was the same in the report of the standing committee mandated to look into the question of missile defence systems. We are a peace-loving people. The United States have made a different choice.
In this respect, I will give an overview of the latest developments concerning the missile defence system. That is the reality and that is why we are discussing this motion now.
On December 17, 2002, the President of the United States announced that the fielding of missile defence capabilities was beginning, with the first 10 interceptor rockets to be put in place within two years, to protect the United States against a potential attack by a rogue state like North Korea or by terrorists. President Bush's news release read, and I quote, “—the United States will take every measure necessary to protect our citizens against what is perhaps the greatest danger of all—the catastrophic harm that may result from hostile states or terrorist groups armed with weapons of mass destruction, and the means to deliver them”.
To the best of my knowledge, evidence has yet to be found, even in Iraq, of the existence of weapons of mass destruction. The American decision to attack was based on the assumption that these people had weapons of mass destruction, but none were found.
This is what Quebeckers and many Canadians are concerned about. If we get involved with the Americans again, they will demonstrate their strength towards other nations. This is not what Quebeckers want. We are a fundamentally peaceful people. We want to be able to guarantee our children and grandchildren that they will be safe on this planet.
We do not want to get involved in the American approach, especially when a report of a standing committee of the House of Commons tells us that it is too early, that we must not get involved in this because there is still room for improvement. I just read the recommendation a few minutes ago.
So why did the government change its mind? It is because it wants to try to please our big businesses in Canada who may think that they lost some money in terms of economic relations with the Americans since the war in Iraq.
I was reading recently that things are getting better. Economic relations and trade are going very well. Why is that? They will always go well, because we are a neighbouring country.
Because we are a neighbour, this does not mean that we have to shamelessly follow the Unites States if they decided to fight against all the people on earth. We have a right to tell the Americans, “Yes, we are ready, we are able to do business with you. The only thing that you have to understand is that we are a peaceful people. Quebeckers and Canadians are peaceful and we will never support you when you want to set up, as you are doing now, an antimissile system that could upset the balance of the planet”.