Mr. Speaker, I would like to say first that I will be sharing my time with the member for Yukon.
I would like to thank all members for being present this evening and indicate that I, like the majority of them, support the Norad agreement and its extension. I recognize, as do most of the members in this House, that it is necessary for Canada's defence to form alliances with other countries, including the United States and those of NATO. Canada is often involved in alliances formed within the United Nations.
Now let us talk about the New Democrats as well.
The NDP believes fundamentally that there are no world crises that cannot be solved with singsongs and that we do not need necessary military alliances, but I do not share that view. I believe it is very important that in the defence of Canada we do participate in these alliances and that we do understand what our limitations are.
We can beat our chests, wave our flags and be very proud of who we are, what we can accomplish, what our science and technology can do, what our military training systems can do, and what our men and women in the forces can do. I am quite proud of our men and women in the forces; I have a military base in my riding. But at the end of the day, our territory is so vast and our population so small that there is no reasonable way that we can protect the security and safety of Canadians without being in international alliances.
Let us look at NATO. I think that what we have been able to accomplish in the security of the northern Atlantic and Europe since the second world war has been largely, if not entirely, due to NATO. The fact that our opponents or people who would have attacked some of our allies knew of the formidable strength of the NATO allies certainly served as a deterrent.
If we look at Norad, we see a similar sort of thing. We are looking at a vast, vast area that has a huge amount of commercial and military flights over its territory. The capacity of both countries is needed in order to ensure its security.
We have come to a point in the renewal of that treaty where we have to look at whether or not it requires modernization and whether we should go further. After long discussions and much consideration, we agreed this time that the question of the information on our maritime zones should be included within our Norad agreement. It was agreed that both countries should advise one another as to what they see happening in the maritime zones.
Let us be honest. There is nothing new here. We are adding maritime zones to the agreement, but we have already been doing this, and it was and is the responsible thing to do.
Norad has been doing some great work in drug interdiction. People in my riding have served in this capacity, one as a general and another as an officer. One of these officers wrote a good paper suggesting how Canada could have a drug interdiction centre working with the information collected by Canadian organizations such as the military, the RCMP, CSIS, the Coast Guard, drug agencies or others. All that information could be brought to bear so that we could be a better partner with Norad and more effective within Canada. I congratulate Mr. Gagnon for some very good work. I spoke with the Minister of Public Security, who has agreed to review that documentation and proposal and ensure that it gets the full consideration of government. I thank the minister for that and I thank Mr. Gagnon for his work.
Tonight we are in debate on something that to me is a little bit nonsensical, because I think we all agree on what we are talking about. The problem I have with this debate is that the government is putting on what I believe is a little bit of a sham. It has called the House together on a votable motion on an agreement that it has already reached, and it had the absolute right to reach an agreement in those negotiations, I do not doubt that.
There are some important questions to ask if we are going to have this type of discussion. What happens in the future on a go-forward basis? In the past, the agreement had a definite date and it died on that date. The government had to renew it and negotiate on it. The public could, one way or another, question the government on it. Now, and I agree with this position, we have said that it is going to be a living, breathing agreement that continues and that we will modify as we go along.
What happens, and here is my question, if we decide to go in a direction that is quite different from where we have gone in the past? In the past, we did not mention maritime zones. We added it this time. It was the logical thing to do. I agree with it. But what if we said in the area of missile defence that in the future we would participate? I think we understand now what information we gather, whether it is inner space or outer space, and what information we share, as we should, but what if we want to go further?
We can say that the United States is not asking us to do that. As a matter of fact, the Americans definitely said that they did not want us to be part of their missile defence. That is true, but only after our newly minted Minister of National Defence offered to be part of it and said that Canada should be part of it.
We know the minister has been a lobbyist for a lot of organizations. Perhaps some of them had an interest in that. Perhaps some of them would have liked to participate within that plan and have some agreements. Is that it? Am I being paranoid? Perhaps, perhaps not. I think a logical question to ask is, how would that be dealt with in the future?
During the election campaign the government said that it would not enter into conflicts or commit Canadians troops without bringing the issue to the House for a vote. I did not agree with that then. I do not agree with it now. I think the government has a responsibility. The government answers to the public at the right and proper time, and defends its actions.
The government sometimes has information it cannot share with the public, that it cannot share in this chamber. Perhaps we would put our troops at risk if we gave out that information, or we would put our allies at risk. We might put the people who collect and give us that information at incredible risk. That cannot be done.
Perhaps there are ways that could be explored. I raised this in the House when we had the debate on Afghanistan. The leader of the NDP laughed at it. I think this is a serious discussion and we should consider in camera meetings of the national defence committee. The government could make the members sitting on that committee privy councillors. Then, information could be discussed that could not be made public. The government would get feedback from the House. I think that would be a reasonable way to do it.
I do not disagree with the way we are going with the document that was negotiated by the government. I think it is a necessity in the modern world. However, it supposes a certain confidence between the public of Canada and its government. I think that confidence is important. The government always seeks the confidence of Canadians.
Recently, we have seen times where a government that prides itself on ethics promised an elected Senate. Then it appointed a member to cabinet from the general public. He was a campaign manager and not just anybody, but a campaign manager and someone in whom the Prime Minister certainly had great confidence.
However, the government did not do that directly. First, he was appointed to the Senate, so that he would be a parliamentarian. The Prime Minister, when he was the leader of the opposition, always promised Canadians that should his party form the government that there would be an elected Senate. I understood that to be true, as you did, Mr. Speaker. What you and I both failed to understand is that only the Prime Minister would vote in that election.
That changes a little bit the understanding that Canadians had. It changes a little bit the confidence that Canadians had. The former opposition leader also said that he would change the way government does business, that the way the government was lobbied would change.
The Prime Minister never mentioned to us that he would put lobbyists in cabinet positions. He said that if a person had been in a cabinet position, they could not be a lobbyist for five years. He did not tell us that his campaign managers would be named privy councillors, so that they could advertise that on their websites and attract defence contractors perhaps, or perhaps people who have an interest in this from around the world. I do not know, but it is a question of confidence in government.
This is the same government that told us two days ago in the House that it was lowering taxes. Yesterday, the taxes were lowered and then we had the parliamentary library confirm what we understood as an increase in the base rate of taxes for Canadians with the lowest income.
Those are the fears that we have and it is not about the agreement. The agreement is a good agreement. I congratulate the government. It followed through on what the Liberal government had done. It is the same thing as the softwood agreement and the government followed through. As a matter of fact, the government liked our agreement so much that they got the minister.