Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the member for Churchill, for raising that very valid point. She may be interested, as others may be, that it is not just landmines. Canada pension plan investments are currently supporting these following weapons that are in use in the Iraq war: the AC-130H Spectre aircraft, the F-14 Tomcat fighter jet, the Nighthawk stealth jet, the BGM-109 Tomahawk missile, the M109A6 Paladin tank, the Dragonlady aircraft and the list goes on. Therefore, even though we are technically not in the war in Iraq, we are inadvertently active in the war in Iraq by investing in these specific products. Some of these weapons are in use that war.
Canada officially stayed out of the war for reasons that most Canadians understood, but not our pension premiums. The fact is that Canada is very much present on the bloody battlefields of Iraq and it still is. Our Canada pension plan investment policies have made warmongers of us all.
At the very least, even those who disagree with me, it is entirely appropriate to ask whether we want one instrument of government actively undermining the work of another instrument of government. Do we want, in the case of landmines for instance, to be financing weapons that Canada is committed to eliminating from the face of the earth? Aside from the obvious hypocrisy, it is inefficient. It is a stupid thing for government to be doing; for the right hand not to know what the left hand is doing, and to be contradicting ourselves.
For all the moral and ethical arguments I can muster, I urge anybody who cares about these issues to support this motion and send a clear, specific direction to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Review Board to introduce ethical guidelines so that our investments are socially responsible.