Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to share this time with my colleague, the member for New Westminster--Coquitlam.
I listened carefully to the comments made by the foreign affairs minister and by the parliamentary secretary. I am not sure how parliamentary it is to accuse the member of presenting staggeringly misinformed facts to the House without addressing the substance of what she said.
What I do know is that the foreign affairs minister and the parliamentary secretary totally and utterly failed to respond to the reasonable, practical proposition put forward by the member who is the NDP defence critic and peace advocate. It makes me wonder about what a farce Canadians will think it really has been over the last couple of years for us to engage through the foreign affairs committee in a debate about the international policy statement that was brought forward on behalf of the government.
Is it so absurd to suggest that Canadians should have the opportunity to be informed of the implications of the agreement that is now before this House? Is it so ridiculous to think that the foreign affairs committee and the defence committee collaborating with Canadians would somehow be a danger to Canada's security? It seems to me the danger is to Canada's sovereignty for us not to be able to take some responsibility for what it is and what the implications are for what we are doing.
Before I turn specifically to the agreement itself, I want to very briefly quote from a speech made by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in 2004 in the run-up to the non-proliferation treaty review process that took place last year.
We are approaching a point at which the erosion of the non-proliferation regime could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation.
What is the relevance of my introducing that into this debate? I do not have time to go through the 10 or so paragraphs of the preamble, but I want to refer briefly to two of them. One is paragraph six:
RECOGNIZING further that, despite non-proliferation and counter proliferation endeavours, efforts by others to acquire nuclear weapons, other weapons of mass destruction, and their means of delivery pose a major security challenge.
I think that is actually a statement of fact. I do not know that anyone would disagree with that preambular statement, but it is worrisome in the extreme that the real implication, the real meaning of that clause indicates in essence that Canada agrees with the Bush administration that somehow non-proliferation efforts are destined to fail. That is deeply worrisome.
Let us go then to preamble paragraph eight. I will read from it very briefly. It is very difficult for people to follow. It is difficult enough for us on such short notice to really thoroughly examine this, but I will read preamble paragraph eight:
ACKNOWLEDGING that space has become an important dimension of national interest and has become an increasingly significant component of most traditional military activities, and that a growing number of nations have acquired or have ready access to space services that could be used for strategic and tactical purposes against the interests of Canada and the United States.
What we are really seeing here is a frightening indication that we are buying into the notion that there is no confidence that we can really deal with nuclear non-proliferation, with weapons of mass destruction proliferation, through anything but military means. This is a very worrisome thing.
On reading preamble paragraph eight, it is very difficult not to come to the conclusion that what this really means, what is really in the mind of our government in having made the changes to this agreement that we are now asked to ratify, is that effectively we are steadily and surely taking steps, maybe baby steps, but I think significant steps toward Canadian participation in Bush's missile defence madness.
There is a great deal of recognition this should be worrisome to us. The United States is one of the countries that has been very irresponsible in regard to upholding its obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. In fact, in reviewing some of the documents leading up to the 2005 NPT review, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty was identified as one of nine major treaties in which the U.S. government was severely non-compliant. I think it would not be an exaggeration to say severely delinquent.
The nuclear non-proliferation treaty is absolutely crucial to global security, yet the U.S. is currently in non-compliance with the NPT requirements. When we examine the preamble and then the substance of the agreement that is before us, it is very worrisome that it almost seems as though what we are willing to be part of is a kind of tossing in of the towel on using our international mechanisms to really deal with these growing threats.
We need to be looking at what are the ways that we can in a genuinely multilateral way begin to look at the real threats to our security and what we can do about them as preventive measures as well as defensive measures.
Last fall I had the opportunity on behalf of the Canada chapter of the Parliamentary Network for Nuclear Disarmament to be at the United Nations and to speak on the occasion of UN Disarmament Week. It also happened to be the 60th anniversary of the United Nations. It was of great concern that after the virtual collapse of the non-proliferation treaty process in the spring, six nations, of which Canada was one, came together to really look at the ways to use UN mechanisms that were available to get the non-proliferation process going again.
I heard reliably from a number of sources that the United States was extremely aggressive and the word was used, threatening, to several of those member nations in actively discouraging that there be any attempt made to reignite, to restart that non-proliferation review process.
There were six nations involved. Canada was one as a middle power. What was not only very distressing but as a Canadian parliamentarian and as a Canadian, I found it, and I think most people would find it humiliating that while five other nations were willing to stand up to those pressures brought to bear at the United Nations by the United States, Canada was the one that caved and withdrew.
Our point is that there are many implications to this agreement that we are being asked to ratify. It deserves to be fully aired before the Canadian people. We should use our parliamentary committees to look more thoroughly at what it is we are committing ourselves to do and how it fits into a global structure for peace and security in this very turbulent and dangerous world.