Mr. Speaker, the NDP member becomes quite animated and that makes us all pay attention, which is good. He certainly expresses his point of view without ambiguity. I think that would generally be true.
The problem I have, as my colleague mentioned, is that he sometimes distances himself from the facts. I find it repulsive when he implies that we somehow love war. We do not. I do not know how to express it without becoming really animated myself, but war is very distasteful. We are defenders of peace.
However, every once in a while, whether it is in our own country or on the international scene, some very bad people stand up and do things that are very unjust to innocent people. I am one who would not hurt a flea but if someone was being attacked by someone else, I would be ready to put my body between them.
I do not know why that member wants to characterize us in that way.
The member made another statement saying that somehow we do not care about people who are dying of AIDS. How false. We care deeply and compassionately, which is why we are participants, as the Canadian government, in funding research and in distributing drugs to other countries where people are dying of AIDS.
For the member to say that because we were not represented at the conference we are not fighting AIDS is also false. Two of our ministers were at that conference but the media chose to ignore them. Our Minister of Health was there. I do not know who the other minister was but two ministers were there.
I wish the member would be totally truthful before he so blatantly and falsely attacks us.