Mr. Chair, I wish to thank the hon. member very much for his comments.
I took from his speech that he agreed with our premise that Haiti was a situation in the hemisphere with a great crisis taking place, and Canada could not have stood back and not have intervened, in conjunction with other parties that were capable of doing it.
In terms of the principles which justify our action, in this case it was clear that we were willing to intervene. We were only willing to intervene if others that had the capacity were willing to intervene. We were not prepared to intervene by ourselves. Also, we were only willing to intervene in the case of international legitimacy.
As I said in my speech, that legitimacy was conferred by the Security Council resolution. I do not accept the member's point that this was a regime change, any more than I accepted his views about the issue of Baghdad.
If the member had clearly said, at the time of Baghdad, that his party was in favour of regime change, that might have been a different debate. However, members will recall that in that debate we were faced with the terror of weapons of mass destruction which were going to come and destroy us all at any moment. Nobody at that point in that debate was discussing the legitimacy of regime change and this was not a regime change.
Mr. Aristide resigned. The new president, as the chief justice, was sworn in in accordance with the constitution and the Security Council took it on that basis.
I do not quite accept that. I do accept the member's point that we have to be active in the United Nations about democracy and about building democracy. Ultimately, countries will not survive and Haiti will not survive if we cannot build democracy in Haiti. That is what we will all be called upon to do. It will be a very challenging process. I agree with the hon. member in that respect.