Mr. Speaker, one would hope and one would have expectations and good faith that those are the sorts of answers that we would receive with the sorts of questions that we have composed and tabled in the House as questions that need serious answers.
However, my speech focused not just on the emergency response and the reactive capacity of government, but we need to also start to probe and start to put together a program that is proactive and is actively engaged in creating capacity in countries in Africa but also in Latin America and Southeast Asia. It is not good enough to simply keep responding to crises, whether it is the housing crisis, the crisis in the Middle East, or whether it is crisis in Liberia and Nigeria and the countries of West Africa.
This country knows that if we prepare for problems ahead of time, we mitigate the impact of disasters. We may not be able to prevent them, but preventive action is just as important, in fact even more vitally important to invest in, especially in developing countries. Yes, there are questions about the reaction of the government, but we also want to steer the government back into a role that traditionally Canada has played, which is being proactive and anticipating the need to build civil capacity in developing countries. It is something we have done proudly in the past, but seem to have abandoned in favour of a trade-based foreign policy.