Mr. Speaker, to follow up on the hon. member's comments, I do not know whether he is confusing being a pacifist and being a peacemaker. I will give him two examples. One is the situation in Rwanda, when our heroic General Roméo Dallaire watched in absolute horror as 800,000 Rwandans were slaughtered. He could not do anything, for many reasons, one of which was lack of personnel and another being the rules of engagement that he could not intervene.
Let us switch to Sierra Leone and a conflict that took place over 15 years, where a quarter of a million people were murdered. Hundreds of thousands were slaughtered in horrendous ways. They were tortured, raped and maimed and their limbs were chopped off. How was this stopped? The British walked in with 780 troops and started shooting some of the rebels. The result was that the conflict stopped. The people of Sierra Leone have now started to build a peace and are living in relative security. The slaughter of civilians stopped only because 780 British troops went into Sierra Leone and stopped the killing because they used force.
I will ask the member the following simple question. Does he believe that the Canadian military at times will need to use force when diplomacy or other coercive measures have failed, tragically? Are there times when our military will need to use force in order to save innocent civilian lives?