Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, the member for Vancouver East, for her excellent speech and to ask her to elaborate on the new developments before us today. I would like her to comment on the spectacle of a government that has indicated its apparent support today for the U.S. missile defence program, at the same time claiming that it is against the weaponization of space.
As the member has pointed out and others have said, the connection is clear. A commitment to missile defence is a commitment to the weaponization of space and a commitment to the weaponization of space contradicts Canada's long held policy and values. That point has been made by others. I want to reference the article by Jeffrey Simpson in The Globe and Mail on May 7. He wrote:
Just as the conquest of Iraq was not fundamentally about weapons of mass destruction, so the U.S. anti-ballistic missile system is not about protecting the United States from missiles. It's about placing weapons in space. If Canada joins the U.S. system--which it might do for economic reasons or because the [Liberal] government feels we have no choice--it will be approving what it has always opposed
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency has said that for missile defence to be effective there must be flights in space. It has indicated that there will be weapons systems including space-based lasers and that the space-based laser system will be composed of a constellation of high energy laser platforms operating from space. Given all of that documentation, could the member comment further on the announcement today by the Minister of National Defence?