Mr. Speaker, that member continues his shambolic, embarrassing, fatuous flip-flopping on this matter of essential international security. This is the member who characterized the policy of the Government of Canada, in responding positively to a request from the Government of Iraq to coordinate with dozens of other nations in a military action against a genocidal terrorist organization, as the Prime Minister wanting to “whip out [his] CF-18s and show [us] how big they are”.
This comes from a leader who is so profoundly unserious on such matters of national security, who ridiculed the equipment of the Royal Canadian Air Force as a bunch of “aging warplanes”. We ought not to be surprised. It is the same leader who said that the country in the world that he most admires is the “basic dictatorship” of China, and who joked about innocent civilians being shot in Kiev because of a hockey game. That is the seriousness of this member for Papineau.
He talks about refugees. He does not acknowledge that the largest refugee resettlement program to this country since the boat people was the 20,000-plus Iraqi refugees resettled by this government. That is a community that I know well. The Assyrians, the Kurds, and all of them, say to us to please continue with the military action.
Why does the member not understand that we cannot stop further humanitarian victims of ISIL's genocide without military action?