Mr. Speaker, I was not surprised but I was taken aback by the comments from my colleague from the Green Party. We have to remember that we passed a motion here, which was endorsed by the House of Commons, to take more military action because of the grave concerns and security issues that surround the ISIL situation in Iraq.
The member talked about making matters worse.
Canada's coalition partners are some of our closest allies, the United States, Britain, France, Australia; plus regional partners, such as Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. They are all involved in this conflict because they do not want to see things get worse.
If we do not intervene, people will continue to be slaughtered and the genocide will continue. I do not think anyone in good conscience wants to sit back and watch innocent ethnic or religious minorities beheaded, raped, sold into slavery, beaten with hoses or beaten with cables in any way shape or form.
This is a brutal regime, as the member has already said. ISIL is one of the most brutal terrorist organizations, and it is a genocidal group of terrorists.
The member may not want to make matters worse, but what she is proposing is to sacrifice all of those innocent men, women and children who are in the hands of ISIL terrorists. We on this side of the House will not allow that to continue unabated. We want to make sure that we can scale down this crisis, and I think that the coalition partners are having an impact on doing that now.
We cannot let these extremists, we cannot let these terrorists and we cannot let these murderers continue their rampage throughout Iraq and Syria or bring that type of brutality here to Canada. We cannot let them spread it within the region, but they are promoting and aspiring to spread their ideology around the area, and around the globe for that matter.
We have all seen the videos. They are horrific. I have trouble watching them, and tend not to. However, we know that sexual violence against women and prepubescent girls is a common practice of the ISIL terrorists. We know that if people will not convert to the terrorists' idea of Islam, and it is sometimes the elderly laying in hospital, they will behead them right in their hospital beds.
We do not have to do anything more than just remind ourselves of what happened last month here in Canada. We are not immune. What happened down at the war memorial, here in the Hall of Honour and in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu is something that we have to keep in mind. Those individuals were inspired by this terrorist ideology.
I want to remind members that we are working closely with Iraqi security forces and the Kurdish peshmerga to ensure that we can bring peace and security, both from the standpoint of supporting them with aerial attacks so that they can win the war on the ground, and also in providing control and command to aid and assist in how they move forward from a ground force capability. We have a squadron of six CF-18 Hornets, two CP-140 Auroras as well as our Polaris aircraft for refuelling over there. I can tell members that it is welcomed by our coalition partners, welcomed by the Iraqi security forces and welcomed by the people who we are helping liberate.