Mr. Speaker, I am happy to answer the member's question. The security situation within Afghanistan is intimately tied to our security. That is why we are there. We are there to deal with al-Qaeda. The member, who is a former officer of the Canadian Forces, knows full well that our troops are in Afghanistan to provide the security so development can occur behind that, so that training of Afghan security forces can occur and so that we can deal with the insurgencies.
That is why in dealing with security threats here in Canada it is important for us to deal with some of the root causes of that insecurity. Part of it is to deal with the threat of terrorism. We have to deal with countries through our development prism and change those educational components which feed a steady diet of lies and hate to children and leads them to one day take up arms against us in the west. The only way to address it is on the ground.
Here at home probably the best bang for the buck in terms of dealing with security would be to invest in intelligence. We did that when we put $7 billion into our security plan for our country. We made a specific increased investment in CSIS and the RCMP to give them the tools to deal with security threats within Canada.
Most people recognize that the best way to protect all of us here at home is to deal with a strategic investment in intelligence and to work with groups on the ground. We must ensure that those groups have the ability to communicate with each other. We must ensure that they have the intelligence information and the resources, both human and otherwise, to support intelligence activities in Canada.
By working with moderate leaders in communities within our country we are able to address threats that not only affect us but also affect those communities. We tend to forget that when individuals from certain communities commit acts of grievous violence against innocent civilians, it hurts their communities too.
There is a deep and profound angst and hurt within the Muslim community that some individuals are hiding behind the religion of Islam and purporting to kill innocent civilians in the name of God and Islam. They recognize full well that it is not the case. That is why it is very important for us, and I certainly hope that the government will continue with the process which we started, to work with moderate leaders in communities within our country. They are more than happy to work with us and with CSIS and the RCMP to ensure that we have the ears and feet on the ground to identify individuals who are threatening to kill innocent civilians.
Indeed, the members of Parliament from Toronto know full well that it was the brave actions of our RCMP and the Toronto police force and others, and members in the Muslim community, who worked hard with to apprehend those individuals before they were able to murder innocent civilians. We need to congratulate and thank all of those groups for their hard work. That does belie the fact that more investment has to take place in our security.
In dealing with natural disasters, one of the things we started was to fund, utilize and increase the numbers of our reserves within the Canadian Forces. The thousands of individuals in Canada who give of themselves to work in our Canadian Forces, in the reserve component, deserve enormous credit. They would like to work as aides to the primary responders, the police forces, firefighters and ambulance workers. Our reserve forces can be an active and able component to assist our first responders. I would encourage the government to continue something that we started when we were in government.
When the Leader of the Opposition was the defence minister, I was his parliamentary secretary and we worked hard with General Hillier the chief of the defence staff on a process to increase the number of our reserve force by 3,000. What they also need and what was left as unfinished business was training and the resources for training, as well as the equipment needed to respond in an integrated fashion to various disasters across the country.
We also need an adequate and competent communication network. When disasters occur, communication breaks down. It is a very difficult challenge but it is one that must be overcome very quickly. This is of an urgent nature in my province of British Columbia where two plates are grinding against each other. We know with certainty there will be a massive earthquake that will affect Vancouver Island as well as the coast some time in the next 100 years. It could happen tomorrow, 10 years from now, or 50 years from now, but it will happen.
I would implore the government to please continue the work we were doing to develop an integrated communication network that is impermeable to the effects of a disaster. This is critically important.
The government must also integrate our first responders with our reserve forces. When we were government we developed a threat assessment and a first response network that is centred here in Ottawa, integrated with other provincial responder units across Canada, which then goes down to the local communities and our first responders. We set that up across Canada. The communication network needs to be supported within that context.
We started a process of training our first responders, both firefighters and police, but more needs to be done in that area. I would encourage the government to listen to what our firefighters and our police officers are saying and respond to those needs.
We also developed the NESS system, an emergency network across the country. This is quite exciting. Dozens of portable hospitals are set up across our country. Each of these hospitals can have up to 168 beds. The hospitals are fully formatted to deal with an emergency. They are forward planted. Some of those portable hospitals were used during the tsunami relief operations in Southeast Asia. They proved to be very valuable.
I would implore the government to continue supporting the NESS system which we started. It would enable us in times of disaster to set up forward deployed portable hospitals across the country which would be fully functional. It is important for that activity to continue.
The other issue I would suggest dealing with is protection. More attention from all of us is needed regarding the protection of our critical areas, not only the transportation arteries on land, but also the ports and container traffic. A major significant area where our defences could be breached is with regard to container traffic. The other areas are water protection and protection for our nuclear power plants. An adequate assessment of that would be valuable.
We could learn a lot in looking at the 9/11 report from the United States. We should look at the findings of that report and ask ourselves what the U.S. did wrong in those areas. The 9/11 report articulates them. We could determine what the solutions are and whether we are applying those solutions to the challenges in our own country. The 9/11 commission report would give our government a framework that we could apply to our country and ask ourselves the difficult questions that have to be asked and answered in the interests of the safety of the citizens whom we serve. That document is critical.
We also started to study the U.S. failure in New Orleans with respect to hurricane Katrina. Our Canadian Forces did an outstanding job in assisting during Katrina. Divers from Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt went down there to save lives.They worked under the most difficult circumstances. They deserve an enormous amount of credit for what they did.
It is interesting to note that our Canadian Forces and civilian responders responded much quicker than did U.S. responders to the disaster in the wake of Katrina. We were on the ground helping those people right away. Our Canadian Forces, firefighters and police officers were there and did an outstanding job, responding quickly.
We looked at the response by the United States to the disaster in the wake of Katrina and noted what it had done well, what it had not done well and what we could learn from it. It is important for the government to look at the response. It is also important for the two ministers involved in defence to look at that document and address it.
There are two other areas about which I want to talk. One is research in the private sector. It is an area that is not known very well, it is not protected well and there is a lot of ignorance about it. A lot of research is done in the private sector. Some of that research has significant capabilities with respect to security, which could be used as tools against us, not only in the medical field but in other fields too.
The application of the research in the private sector could be utilized by individuals who would choose to harm us in nefarious ways. The problem is how we can protect against that research getting into the hands of those individuals? This area is not explored. It is an area where there is a lack of knowledge. I would implore the government to work with the private sector and educate it on the need to protect some of the research that is done. If we educate the private sector, it will fully understand and be very cooperative with the government and enable it to address the issue. It is a big black hole that has not been dealt with.
Last, as was mentioned before, protection of our communication, computer and information technology sector is critically important. We need to continue that endeavour to deal with it because it is an ever-changing field that is obviously difficult to get ahead of, but it is something we must do.
Bill C-12 will continue to build on the work we did in the former government in a wide variety of areas. We encourage the government to work with us to help this happen in the interests of all our citizens from coast to coast.