Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague. Certainly the issue of the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East is of grave concern to all of us in the House.
The concern we have is that Canada has historically played a major role in multilateral negotiations to ensure that we maintain some manner of security with regard to nuclear weapons.
In regard to the current situation in Iran, we have a government that has decided to shut down our embassy, leaving us very much on the outside because we are not one of the large players but a smaller player. Therefore, our ability to have influence has been somewhat compromised.
What does my hon. colleague think of the decision by the present Conservative government to shut down the embassy at a time when we really need to ensure that we have as many people on the ground as we can to influence decisions because this issue is so serious?