Mr. Speaker, the easy answer is that there is no real good explanation.
However, I think we should all reflect a little bit. If we want a better standard for the House, why was it easy for the government not to respond on April 23 of last year when the member for Toronto Centre stood up in the House and said that we had an incipient emergency. How is that possible?
It is possible to arm's-length ourselves, not just that government and that Prime Minister but ourselves from a humanitarian crisis by some of the excuses we have been using. We just need to invoke the word “terrorism” and it gives us a shield, and it is wrong. It is a failure on our part.
I invite members opposite, as we have invited them on economic conditions and other things, to adopt a Canadian standard. It is not an exercise in our personal ideologies. It is an exercise in developing where Canada is going to go. By putting that shield around it we make it harder to actually reckon with those realities and we have become less Canadian as a result.