Mr. Speaker, we hear from this government and heard today a phrase that it likes to use, the “whole of government approach”. Now a whole of government approach sounds great; it sounds like something is really happening.
However, whenever I hear that phrase, I immediately ask where is the content? Where is the detail? What part of government is involved? Where is the diplomatic effort? What exactly are we doing on the humanitarian side?
When I hear about whole of government, my conclusion is that there is no answer to that question; it is just the cover the government is using to say that it wants to be more involved.
The contact group is a good example of that. Who was there? I have nothing against the associate minister of defence responsible for procurement, but the associate minister is not the person to send to the contact group on Libya. What is that all about? Where is the Minister of Foreign Affairs? Why is he not there? Or the parliamentary secretary? Or someone else? Or the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence, if there are issues related to defence? I do wonder when we talk about that.
We also have to see the specifics. That is why we have these things in our motion. We are hoping to get the kinds of answers that the Canadian people truly want to see, that Canada is doing more than just sending jets to participate in this because the government wants to show we can participate in international affairs and show some leadership, et cetera. These are the talking points that we are hearing from the government, but we want to see some real action on all fronts.