Mr. Chair, I really appreciated the member's intervention today, but I took a bit of an exception to one of the last comments the member made. She said that Canada does not punch above its weight and that is why it did not get a UN Security Council seat. I would encourage her to visit our troops participating in Operation Unifier and Operation Reassurance in eastern Europe and talk to the other countries on the ground there about whether Canada punches above its weight. I am sure she would hear a much different story than she indicated in the House.
I find that sometimes when I talk about global assistance and Canada playing its part in other parts of the world in helping to take care of people, inevitably a certain number of people come back and ask why we are not taking care of people at home first. They ask, “Should we not be taking care of everybody at home first before we start spending money in other parts of the world?”
I certainly disagree with the concept that we should not be participating in and contributing globally to these various programs, for the reason the member has been talking about: If we do not pay for them now, we will end up paying so much more later.