Mr. Chair, I think what we have in the corner here is what my friends in the military would describe as a target rich environment from the standpoint of arguments.
I am just flabbergasted by what the hon. member said in terms of this $1 trillion figure. I do not know where the mathematicians are in the NDP, but the current spending of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency is approximately $9 billion per year. At that rate of spending, it would take over a century to spend $1 trillion.
The hon. member should know as well, and should appreciate the fact, that if the NDP wants to take the high moral ground on this issue, if that is what the NDP members are seeking to do, then they owe the people of Canada the truth on this issue in terms of giving them the straight facts without trying to embellish this, without trying to gild the lily as far as the arguments go.
On the basis of the facts, so many of the arguments that the NDP members have just do not stand up.
I would like the hon. member to respond to that issue, but I would also like to have her respond on the issue of the threat that exists, because implicit in the NDP's position is the fact that there is no threat. But the facts are--and we know what the facts are--that there are countries out there like North Korea. They pay absolutely no regard to human rights. They have starved their own people for the sake of a weapons program. The North Koreans actually lowered the height requirement for soldiers in their army because they are so undernourished. The people of Korea are so undernourished that they just have not grown.
We have been prepared to launch missiles across the Sea of Japan; that was five or six years ago. Is the NDP saying that there is absolutely no threat out there, that we need not concern ourselves with the fact that there are countries that are ready, willing and potentially able to launch ballistic missiles directed at free democratic countries like Canada and the United States or even South Korea and Japan?