Mr. Speaker, the member is right to remind us that what we are talking about here is the future of the world. I am also very sensitive to this and that is why I have taken this position.
I would like to tell my colleague something I did not have time to include in my speech. What is feeding this missile defence shield frenzy is something that Eisenhower himself warned against: the existence of a powerful military industrial complex. After 1990, at the end of the cold war, this complex was forced to research civilian uses for all of its military capabilities.
It seems that the war in Iraq may have simply been a testing ground for new weapons. The war was an excellent opportunity to deploy new weapons; I myself heard someone from the industry explain this to the NATO Parliamentary Association. He explained to us that what we would see in the future would be a combination of all weapons, including weapons in space, with very powerful sensors to detect danger.
Yes, there is a powerful military industrial complex and it constitutes a very real danger. However, there is another danger, one that lies in the mind, according to which conflict resolution is accomplished by the use of force. Real prevention does not involve preemptive strikes, but the prevention of conflict, the signing of treaties, reducing the arms buildup. While this type of talk may have fallen out of fashion these days, when we think of our grandchildren, this is what we need to work toward and hope for.