Mr. Speaker, I wonder if there was actually a question in what the Minister of National Defence had to say.
We have tried to be very serious in the presentation we have made here tonight and present a perspective that is shared by many Canadians across the country. I have heard from a many them, and I know the minister has too because many of them have copied the information that they have sent to me.
What we are suggesting is that it would be totally appropriate to renew the existing Norad agreement for a 12-month basis and bring before the House of Commons, perhaps a shared foreign affairs and defence committee, the text of the agreement that the Minister of Defence signed last week. This would give Canadians a well-deserved and important opportunity to look at what is in this agreement, to see if they support the move to more integration with the U.S. and to hear from them. It should not be a four hour debate in the House of Commons where there is no opportunity for citizen involvement and no opportunity to put forward amendments or any kind of changes that we would like to see or Canadians might like to see.
This does not give us full, open, democratic debate on something as important as our continental defence and we think that is wrong.