Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for bringing out some of what happens with these munitions, but I will provide more information.
One cluster munition contains enough submunitions to cover an area the size of two to four football fields. In Laos the United States dropped, on average, an entire planeload of munitions every eight minutes for nine years.
Cluster munitions have been used in at least 30 countries and areas. There are 34 countries known to have produced over 210 different types of air-dropped and surface-launched cluster munitions, and tens of thousands of civilians worldwide have been killed or injured by cluster munitions.
My question is this: why is the government weakening the bill and weakening the spirit of the convention?