Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to the member opposite, what we have heard here tonight on this issue is what a famous former U.S. secretary of state called “the stern daughter of the voice of God”, Dean Acheson's term for a certain kind of Canadian self-righteousness that simply refuses to take reality as it is, especially in the political, military or strategic field.
My question for the member for Toronto Centre is very simple. He regrets that there is not symmetry between this legislation and our legislation governing the land mines convention. He says that it is a slippery slope in all kinds of directions.
Will the member not acknowledge for the House that the essential difference here, underpinning clause 11, is the exception that this legislation provides for Canadian Forces that serve in operational units, combat units, which will never be using cluster munitions directly under this legislation, but that serve alongside their American colleagues in combat?
American units, as long as their country has not signed this convention, are still using that weapon. We disapprove and we will not do it in our armed forces.
However, will the member for Toronto Centre admit that there is a difference between land mines, which U.S. armed forces do not use, and cluster munitions, which are still used and were used as recently as in the last decade in Afghanistan, in a combat mission that included Canadian troops, some of them embedded in U.S. units?