Mr. Speaker, I hardly know where to start. I will give the NDP members marks for being consistent. They consistently do not understand peacekeeping. They consistently do not understand that we have to equip and train the military forces to do the toughest job, and that makes them capable of doing any other job. But if we equip and train them to do the lowest common denominator when they have to do something else, we will simply lose lives and not accomplish the mission. The NDP members consistently misunderstand that. They consistently misunderstand the Taliban are not out there using pruning hooks and ploughshares. They are out there using weapons, weapons against Afghans, Canadians, Americans, Brits, Australians, Kiwis, and everybody else.
The NDP members trot out anecdotal evidence as, supposedly, justification for the fact that the war is not going well and they ignore the anecdotal evidence that they get from Canadian service men and women. Do they not believe the Canadian service men and women? Would they rather believe, for example, the people from the Senlis Council who come to the defence committee and grossly mislead the defence committee deliberately? Would they rather believe people like that or the men and women in uniform who are dying for the cause of Afghan freedom, who are dying for the cause of Canadian freedom? Ultimately, it is about Canadian freedom and it is about Canadian interests.
They talk about taking NATO out and putting in the UN. Who the heck do they think the UN is? Who do they think the UN would turn to if not the United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Poland, Lithuania, and everybody else who is there? Who the heck do they think they would be replaced by except ourselves?
For crying out loud, the NDP, the new Pollyanna party, really needs to get real.
They talk about the UN solving regional conflicts. The UN has never done a very good job of solving regional conflicts.
It goes on and on. They talk about the path to peace. The path to peace is not strewn with pruning hooks and rose petals. The path to peace is there because of people like Canadians, people like Lester Pearson, who they hold out as the icon of peacekeeping, which he was. Lester Pearson was also part of a government that increased defence spending to 7% of GDP because Lester Pearson knew that we could not stare down our enemies through words of peace and love; we had to stare them down through resolve and through strength. He did that. We did that collectively with our allies, like the United States, Britain and so on.
I could go on and on, but I have one question for my hon. colleague. Is there anything in the world that members of the New Democratic Party would support taking up arms for? Is there anything at all, any cause at all? Or will they continually be, like J.S. Mills said, made and kept free by the exertions of better men, and I will add, and women, than themselves?