Well, that is my reading of it. I would be interested to hear how my parliamentary secretary colleague would say that I am wrong, because the understanding of any objective outsider reading this would be that there are exemptions and loopholes here that one could drive a truck through. It makes a mockery of the entire initiative in both the letter and the spirit of the law.
I am saying this trying not to be inflammatory, but the only reason that the Conservatives could possibly find to move time allocation and closure on this particular debate is that they would be embarrassed if school kids and activists around the country got wind of it and laid their eyes on this unworthy document and were aware that we were going to be facilitating those who use cluster munitions.
Never mind participating in the ban. We may in fact dispose of our stockpile in our country, but we have full permission to do anything necessary to enable countries that do have a history of using them regularly to carry on using them.
One of the most moving things I ever saw was when I had the opportunity to go to Geneva. There is a statue of a kitchen chair in Geneva twice as big as the Speaker's throne. I would say it is probably 30 feet high, with one leg blown off and simply splintered. It became the international symbol of land mines. It captured the imagination of the whole international community, I believe. It serves as a stark reminder that there are some things we just will not tolerate.
Again, as other speakers have mentioned, the face of warfare has changed so dramatically that it really becomes a game of who is willing to sacrifice the most civilians and not necessarily armed combatants. It is not necessarily soldiers versus soldiers any more, but how much brutality one is willing to cope with before one yields. That is the nature of war, and the victims of war are more often civilians and innocent bystanders.
It is cluster munitions perhaps more than anything else, now that land mines are being eradicated and remediation is under way to clear the hundreds of millions of mines that have been placed around world. Now the world has turned its sights on cluster munitions to rid us of this scourge, yet Canada is not doing its part. We are not pulling our weight. We are falling short and dropping the ball. We are failing innocent civilians around the world by not speaking out and not using everything possible to denounce, deter, restrict and move toward a global outlawing of these cluster musicians.
Therefore, clause 11 is why we will oppose the proposed legislation at this stage. We do not believe we could even support it in principle. I am sure politics will be played with this. The Conservatives will be putting out press releases saying that the NDP has voted against banning cluster munitions. I am sure they will play that game, but this is one of those debates that needs a more extensive treatment, because we can point back to the Conservatives as kowtowing to some greater master, somebody who is pulling their strings and telling them not to pass the legislation without leaving this mega-loophole in.
At committee, there will be an attempt to delete clause 11, or at least modify it so it does not undermine and completely destroy the intent of the international Convention on Cluster Munitions. I am sure this may not even occur until after we come back in the fall. I doubt very much we will have the opportunity between now and adjournment to give this proposed legislation the complete treatment it deserves.
The Conservatives have been moving closure at every stage of every bill. They have also been manipulating committee. Our parliamentary democracy is in tatters. It is really only a facsimile of a democracy that we have left. All the checks and balances to ensure there is some ability to accommodate the legitimate concerns brought forward by members, other than the actual authors of the bill, have been eradicated.
We are getting pretty tired of this winner-takes-all attitude that the Conservatives have exhibited. I am surprised they play this kind of cheap, petty politics with such a significant humanitarian initiative. It disappoints me, and I say that in all sincerity. I do not even feel like yelling and screaming about it. It makes me sad more than angry.