Mr. Chair, with respect, the member opposite did not address the question raised by the hon. member for Elmwood--Transcona. In fact, federal Liberal policy is blurred on this point.
It goes back to the Prime Minister at the United Nations taking an initiative which we had wanted to be addressed, something called the responsibility to protect. His speech was important to give and to state that this would be a part of Canadian foreign policy and therefore at times possibly a matter of defence policy, defence policy being the operational arm of foreign policy in some cases. Since then there has been neither action nor definition put to that commitment of responsibility to protect. It has been blurred and inconsistent.
The Prime Minister went to Sudan briefly. The wheels touched down, some photos were taken and an unfortunate incident happened, which I am not saying was his fault. A commitment was made about certain vehicles. When those vehicles were sent over, they were tied up by the Sudanese government which did not permit them into the country. When the Prime Minister was talking to the Khartoum regime, he obviously did not have clearance to get these vehicles into the country because they were stopped. They recently have been released and are moving into the country now. They were released because of actions taken by the Americans not because of anything our government did.
The government takes sporadic and inconsistent action. The reasons for the action have not been clearly articulated. That is why I said at the beginning of my remarks that we support being in Afghanistan, but we have to communicate to our citizens why we are there. We have to tell them why our troops are in harms way.
The fact is Canadians were attacked and killed in New York by a vicious al-Qaeda and Taliban linked regime. We made a decision, along with some other countries, to take pre-emptive action and do what we could to put a stop to this evil and horror before it struck our shores. I believe it has been a noble action. There have been very positive consequences in taking that action. We have caused a barely emerging democracy to gain strength and momentum.
The reasons for it have not been clearly articulated by the government. My colleague's question was about the difference between the action in Afghanistan and emerging democracy with a regime that attacked and killed Canadians. What is the difference between that particular action and one in a so-called failed state?
In talking about failed states, unless we define them, Canadians are not going to know what is expected of them. There has to be predictability to our foreign policy so our allies and enemies can know what to expect from us. It could be said that North Korea is not a failed state because it is functioning. There is order there, but the order has been established by the slaughter and the starvation of millions of people.
Without the definitions being clearly articulated, our own citizens who pay the price with dollars and sometimes pay the price with their lives, our enemies and our allies will become confused and lack the ability to predict how we will respond clearly in different situations.
It is important we ask these questions so we can draw out the answers or if not the answers, at least we can send government members back to the drawing table, scratching their heads and putting more thought into the reasons why we take certain actions in some cases and why we do not in others.