Mr. Speaker, I will withdraw my comments and I do apologize to the House for both comments that I made.
At the very least, I ask that the Liberals have our aircraft and our world-class men and women of the Royal Canadian Air Force in a forward position to provide support and safety for our troops, and those of our allies.
The true test of a leader is when he can stand up, face the people who elected him, and admit that he made an error or misjudged a situation. It is okay for him to say he is wrong. It means standing tall and using the information now at his disposal to make the right decision, even if it is not always the right one or the easy choice.
It is truly unfortunate that I cannot identify one single leader across the floor at this moment who will stand up for Canadians. Not a single person has been able to explain why our CF-18s must be removed from the air campaign. While we are putting more boots on the ground, we are also putting more of our men and women in harm's way without the necessary support to ensure their safety. That is a novel word that we have not been talking about a lot in this debate: safety.
Is that not what we should be focusing on? The safety of our men and women who are serving their country and the safety of Canadians here at home. I have a quote from General Rick Hillier that I would like to read. It is pretty powerful:
Every single ISIS leader should never have a single moment in their life when they're not worried about looking at the sky and having a missile come out and end their life, or go to bed and have that door blown in and have some commandos come in and capture or kill them.
This is Canada's fight. ISIS has taken it to our country. ISIS is committing brutal genocide. It has called for and inspired attacks against Canada, including the murder of two Canadian Armed Forces members. As I said earlier, they are recruiting Canadians, many of whom are just kids.
We have an obligation to stand up for the victims of genocide, fight against the twisted ideology, and protect Canadians at home and abroad. We should never have to rely on our allies to protect our Canadian soldiers. If we are going to send more boots on the ground, then we need to ensure the proper force protection is in place.
I offer this in closing, the men and women of our armed forces need to know that just as they stand on guard for our nation and put their lives on the line every single day that we here are fighting for them.
It is our job to ensure that when decisions are made that impact Canadian lives, be it during secret cabinet meetings or on a cocktail napkin on a Liberal campaign bus, that we will continue to stand and fight for those who put their lives in danger, those who risk their lives every single day, so we can sleep soundly, and the maple leaf can stand tall.
Simply put, Canadians deserve better.