Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for being in the House today. I feel sorry for him, though, in the sense that his party sent him in here to deliver that glut of flippant ramblings for such a long period of time. What it demonstrates is that the Conservative Party has not recovered from 10 years of an isolationist, insular, and disastrous foreign policy and that it has no credible plan to position Canada as a country on the global stage.
I want to correct the record, though. One of those flippant ramblings that my friend delivered suggested that our minister did not speak about the importance of NATO in her speech. In fact, she clearly articulated the importance of Canada's role in NATO. She said:
We will strongly support the multilateral forums where such discussions are held, including the G7, the G20, the OAS, APEC, the WTO, the Commonwealth, and La Francophonie, the Arctic Council, and of course NATO and the UN.
She went on to speak much more about our important role in NATO, saying, “There can be no clearer sign that NATO and Article 5 are at the heart of Canada's national security policy.”
Would the member not agree that at this time multilateral institutions that hold the rules-based world order in play are important and that Canada's leadership in those institutions is vital? Would the member not deliver clear support for that position, or would he just admit that the Conservatives are still isolationists and have a disastrous foreign policy for Canada?