Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from the Bloc for his questions, but I really have to take umbrage at many of his comments.
First, so many people in the province of Quebec have contributed so much for so long to the Canadian Forces and have done honourable work to defend this nation here and abroad. I think he is really remiss in his comments in not acknowledging that fact.
To be a pacifist is all well and true, but the fact of the matter is that the milk of human kindness does not course through a lot of people in this world. It is sad to say that some of those people take actions against individuals, most of whom are civilians, and today more than 90% of the casualties in conflict are innocent men, women and children.
The government is putting an investment into our military. We know that we have some specific needs today. We know we have some critical needs and that is why we are putting 5,000 people on the sharp edge and 3,000 in reserves. We have purchased four new critical pieces of equipment and we are going to do more.
I want to ask my friend the following question. How does he propose that we as a country are going to defend innocent civilians in cases such as what we saw in Rwanda, what happened in Sierra Leone and what took place in Bosnia? How are we going to defend innocent civilians when people who are quite nasty are going to slaughter them? Are we going to ask our troops to sit back and watch? Are we not going to contribute? Or are we going to do the right thing under certain circumstances and be there to defend those people?
At the end of the day, does he or does not agree that peacekeeping is war by another name and we had better outfit our troops to be able to accomplish that objective?