Mr. Chair, first, I will say that there should never be a requirement for unanimity. After all, there are some legislatures, so called, where unanimity is required. I do not call those democracies.
However, there was a serious proposition put before us in that question. Let me phrase it this way with two answers. First, parties presented themselves in an election not too long ago. The majority of Canadians voted for parties who said that we should vote on the deployment of troops. In fact, the seats in the House are now held in the majority by parties that told Canadians that if elected, they would make sure there were votes before we sent our troops into harm's way.
Unfortunately, that promise is being broken by the government. Our request, respectfully placed earlier in question period and repeated again that we have a vote on future deployment beyond the agreements we have already made up to February 2007 was not only rejected, but it was suggested that anyone who would even propose such an idea was somehow not backing our troops.
That to me is not an acceptable approach here. In a mature democracy, one ought to be able to have a discussion and a vote about the deployment of our service personnel, the investment of those resources and the initiative that represents that Canada is taking in the world.