Mr. Speaker, my friend makes the very good point that many things that we might in retrospect regard as obviously the right policy to pursue were actually unpopular in the context of their own time. The minister spoke about peacekeeping. This was a new idea that put us offside with some of our traditional allies.
It was not in particular our opposition to apartheid, because many countries shared that opposition, but our view that we needed to take particularly strong tactics in terms of responding to South Africa that put us a bit offside with some of our allies and partners; nevertheless, we were still forceful in standing up for our principles and standing up for what was right.
Let me speak to this point about multilateralism. Canada needs to be engaged. We need to be a part of these fora. We need to speak clearly and forcefully about our values.
Some people in the House seem to think that multilateralism means always going along to get along, putting our name on every single agreement, signing on to every single resolution. That is not a coherent definition of multilateralism, at least not one that is in our interests or reflects our values. Our multilateralism should be selective. We should be engaged where it is right to do so, always advancing the things that we believe are important.