Mr. Speaker, since I will be wrapping up the debate, I will approach this as if I were doing a summation after a trial in a courtroom.
I am doing that in light of what I saw develop during the debate. I will start with what concerns me. I looked at the number of points that were raised this evening and I have to say that the government stands accused, and I will convict it, of not answering these points.
The first one is the whole issue of sovereignty. It has been raised repeatedly by way of a question to a number of the ministers and a number of the members of the government about whether this is just another step to full integration of our military, and to some degree, our foreign affairs into a continental, particularly U.S. dominated process that will leave Canada seriously short of its sovereignty. That answer was never given.
There were a number of questions with regard to whether this was the best use of our resources within Norad. Would there be better ways of doing it? In that respect it raises the issue that there are clauses in the agreement about intelligence sharing. It was interesting to hear the Minister of Public Safety in a somewhat facetious and perhaps sarcastic fashion indicate that we already do share intelligence and do we not understand that. I think that was in response to one question.
I can assure the minister that I understand that having worked in this area for the better part of two years now. We do in fact share a lot of intelligence and I do not see that this particular agreement adds anything. There was no explanation of that given.
There was no explanation given as to why there is reference to missile defence. There is a long preamble and a subclause where the U.S. reserves its right to deal with missile defence. There is no explanation of why that is in there.
As a lawyer I can say that clauses are not put into an agreement unless they have some purpose. There was no explanation given by the government as to what the purpose was of those two clauses. There was no explanation and in fact very little was addressed.
We heard a lot about the history of Norad. I can say to the government that I understand the history of Norad. We did not need to spend all that time on that.
There was no explanation as to why Norad is now being used as a mechanism to fight drug crime. That seems to be a bit of an overkill. Certainly we have any number of other agreements with the United States and agencies for which we share similar responsibilities on both sides of the border that are much more appropriate to deal with drug crimes.
I have to say that I was left with the image of a ballistic missile coming in and blowing up a drug runner some place, whether it was at the border in Windsor or somewhere else in the Great Lakes or in the Rocky Mountains. There was no explanation.
It begs the question, why would we be spending money through Norad for that purpose as opposed to using that money for instance to raise the wages of our military which is badly in need? It seems to be a waste of money when one looks at it from that perspective. Again, there were no answers.
Finally, there is the issue of the maritime area and why this is in Norad. Norad was always designed to be a mechanism to deal with air defence. It has no expertise and no background in the maritime area. We cannot help but wonder if there is not a better mechanism.
If we look at those points, whether it is about missile defence, user resources, the fight against drug crime, and the issue of how best to protect our maritime borders, have we had the answers here this evening? In each one of those cases I can say with absolute assurance we have not. It begs the question as to whether this debate has produced the necessary information for the House to deal with whether we approve ratification. It certainly has not elucidated these issues for the sake of the Canadian public.
From that perspective, this debate should have been a much longer one. If the government is really serious about opening this up and ratifying these agreements on an ongoing basis, we need a better process than what we had here this evening.