Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Ottawa Centre for his excellent presentation and for all of the work he does on foreign affairs. He is widely recognized as someone having a great deal of expertise, and we thank him for that.
On the bill at hand on cluster munitions, New Democrats support a treaty to ban cluster munitions. These are terrible weapons that overwhelmingly impact civilians, and especially children, as my colleague has so eloquently described, yet, as he detailed, this Conservative legislation to implement the Convention on Cluster Munitions is widely recognized as the weakest and worst in the entire world. In other words, Canada has become an embarrassment when it comes to the issue of having effective legislation to implement the treaty on cluster munitions.
My question for my colleague is this. With this weaponry that overwhelmingly targets civilians, especially children, can he advise the House why the Conservatives, who say their government supports families and children, would want to undermine a treaty that would save the lives of children around the world?