Mr. Speaker, it is clear to anyone with eyes to see that the two terror attacks that occurred on our soil last October were inspired by the cult of violence, the cult of jihad, of Daesh, of the so-called Islamic State.
With respect to the responsibility to protect, I think in virtually every intervention and speech I have given on this matter since the invasion of Iraq by ISIL last fall, I have invoked the concept of the responsibility to protect.
Obviously we are not invoking the actual legal formulation of RTP at the United Nations because it requires the support of the United Nations Security Council. Insofar as Vladimir Putin and the People's Republic of China are required to support this, we do not believe that Canada's foreign policy should be circumscribed by the policies of those countries.
The essence of responsibility to protect is this. When such crimes against humanity as genocide are being committed against helpless civilians by their government, or their government is either unwilling or unable to protect them, there is a moral responsibility. We ought not feel narrowly limited by the legalisms of Westphalian sovereignty. It is regrettable, in fact bizarre, to see the NDP take that position now. If we were not acting in concert with our allies against ISIL, there would be tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of additional victims: women and girls subject to sexual slavery, gay men being executed, religious minorities being slaughtered. Thank God, we began to act last October to at least prevent many more of those crimes from being committed.