Madam Chair, I want to perhaps set the record straight. The hon. member for London--Fanshawe attacked my colleague who spoke earlier to the issue, the member for Okanagan--Coquihalla, saying that he had somehow misrepresented the situation during his remarks earlier this evening when he congratulated the government on finally catching up to our position.
The member for London--Fanshawe said that was not the case and then turned around and basically said that it was by stating that we have been on the record for quite some time now saying that we should be involved in this.
We looked at this issue back in 1999 and 2000 and came to the conclusion that Canada should be rightfully involved in this through Norad as our allies had requested as they moved down this road to try and get this missile defence shield in place to protect not only the United States of America, but Canada as well. Yet he is critical of that. I do not understand where he is coming from because he was critical of that and yet he has readily admitted that the government is finally, although belatedly, moving in that direction.
He says that the government wants to have more discussion on this but the fact is that we have been discussing it and government, supposedly, has been discussing this with our ally, the United States, for some eight years now. How long will it go on discussing this before making a bloody decision?