Maureen Basnicki. That is right.
She sat on the couch in my office and told me about how her husband was over 100 storeys high in the World Trade Center. The reason she knows he was there is because he phoned home. She was not there to take the call, but nonetheless, somebody else let her know that he had made his best effort. He talked about how difficult it was and that he was above where those planes crashed into the building, and did not know how they would escape or get out or what the scenario would possibly be, not knowing of course that those towers would later collapse.
Joined with her was a gentleman whose relative was the first to have his throat slashed on board the United flight that crashed into a Pennsylvania farm field en route to Washington, D.C.
These people are frustrated. They know there are groups out there that raise money on behalf of terrorist organizations and funnel it to help those causes.
Maybe it is martyr money that is given to people who make the ultimate sacrifice as the ultimate terrorist in the cause. Maybe it is money that is given to help buy the detonating devices or the bombs. Maybe it is money to provide safe houses. Maybe it is money to help provide or manufacture false travel documents, et cetera.
But anyhow, they want to have the ability to go after these terrorist fundraising groups through civil action, through lawsuits, because they are having a great deal of difficulty in proving it in criminal court.
They would have a much easier time going after these groups with a probability in a sense and reasonable grounds in civil courts. I wholeheartedly support them in their effort. I think it is a valuable tool that we have in our potential arsenal to go after terrorism and we should pursue it wholeheartedly.
Earlier this evening, I heard the NDP ask questions and catcall some of my colleagues and make criticisms.
I would like to point out that some of the soldiers I know affectionately call the leader of the NDP Taliban Jack. I think that needs to be said. It needs to be heard and the soldiers need to know that we are listening.
The NDP members attacked the credibility of the government this evening. They said that Mr. Karzai and his government were not perfect. I think I would be the first one to stand and say that I do not think the NDP is perfect.
The NDP, despite the fact that we won the cold war in eastern Europe, still does not support the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The NDP is the party that proposed unilateral disarmament to leave Europe defenceless to the Warsaw Pact so that they would have served as a mere speed bump had those tanks rolled westward.
I will let that credibility sink in, but so many times in the past the NDP have always been the appeasers of aggressors. I am not sure what line in the sand NDP members would draw before they would be willing to stand up and fight.
They say that the Karzai government is not perfect. I would ask all members to think on this fact long and hard. This Parliament that we stand in today is the result of at least 1,000 years of history.
I was very lucky to be in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and travel to London on the 50th anniversary. When we think how long it took with King Canute in the 800s to establish property law and then in 1215 at Runnymede for some of the barons to say that the king should indeed have restrictions on his ability to tax.
I imagine the NDP in 1215 would have been a jester, running around saying, “Oh, but my Lordship, I don't think you can make any criticisms of King John because you have serfs on your land”. That is cute, but nonetheless, that was an important forward movement with regard to the restriction of the powers of the monarch so that we did not have capriciousness.
It took longer yet with the glorious revolution and various other things through history to arrive at the Parliament we have today. For the NDP members to expect that in a place like Afghanistan it will have a Parliament exactly like ours today, after 1,000 years of British common law history, is ridiculous. They should look at the situation and really compare what is fair.
In that respect, would our NDP colleagues prefer that the Taliban was still in charge? Is that what they would like? Or, would they have preferred that the Soviets had won their way and, instead, imposed their sense of order? Or, would they have us pull out and either allow the Taliban back in or possibly even allow the Iranians to impose their sense of justice on the place? It is nonsensical. If we are not there, who?
I also want to talk about the thanks that are well deserved with regard to these endeavours. We in this place have it pretty good. We are here in an air-conditioned room. It may be cold outside and we have suffered a storm on the weekend, but life is not so bad for parliamentarians when we consider the contrast. I thank the men and women who serve.
I remember the cook who was on board the HMCS Toronto when I was lucky to be embedded with them in the Arabian Sea in Operation Apollo. This gentleman spent 18 months at sea because his trade was hard to come by. I do not think there is enough of them in the navy. Ideally, he should only have spent six months on board that vessel but he was there 18 months later after first being deployed still doing his job and serving our country. I thank him tremendously for providing the meals and the bolster to the morale of those sailors on-board our vessels.
I also want to thank a gentleman by the name of Doug Movat who I met this past November at a Remembrance Day ceremony at the Bowness Legion that is in or close to my riding. Doug served in the infantry in Afghanistan. He told me stories about being in 54° Celsius temperatures, which is pretty hot. I think the hottest I have ever experienced was when I was at a port in Fujairah. It was 45° in the shade and I thought that was something else. However, he suffered through 54° temperatures while wearing a Kevlar vest in Afghanistan. I thank him for his sacrifice.
I also appreciate the young men who have been willing to join the cause, people like Lieutenant Will Lymer, who signed up with the Governor General's Foot Guards, did his basic training, his weapons training and finally his leadership training. Will sometimes gets up at 5 a.m. to run his new recruits. I am not sure it is something I would do, but I humbly appreciate what he does.
This weekend we had one of the largest dumps of snow that I think I have ever seen in my lifetime and I was born in Winnipeg. I think that says something, Mr. Speaker. This weekend Will stood out in the storm for at least six hours so that his recruits could train to shoot their C7s.
There are so many sacrifices. We could talk about those who have passed on in service. These are the real heroes. As one of the American comedians, Dennis Miller, puts it, we live the life of Riley. These men and women put themselves on the front line to defend civilization, to bring order out of that chaos.
We recently, with my committee and Veterans Affairs, did a tour of some of our bases across the country. I think of the dark, sunless hours in places like Cold Lake. I look at the member behind me and I know that he spent a lot of time in Cold Lake, bless his heart.