Mr. Speaker, it is difficult to decide whether I should participate in the war effort or to let the gentlemen here settle it on the floor of the House of Commons. It is extremely interesting how today is revolving.
One of the things I want to address off the top is the misconception left in the House by the member for Nepean--Carleton. He mentioned that we were playing games with the motion put forward by my colleague from Saint John. The member for Saint John does not play games when it comes to our military. Every person in the military and every individual in the country knows very well where the member for Saint John stands in relation to our armed forces.
My party put forth a very strong motion today. It is actually not our motion. The motion is made up of the words uttered outside the House by none other than the minister responsible for our armed forces. I give him credit for having the courage to stand up in public and say what has to be said. Did he mean it? We saw evidence today that perhaps he did not when he was asked how strongly he felt about what he said and whether he had the courage to stand up for his utterances. He was asked if he had the honesty and the integrity to step aside if he did not get the money he needed or if he did not have the power, or the strength or the persuasiveness to get the money from his cabinet colleagues. He sulked away from responding to that question, which shows that perhaps he wants to remain in cabinet and is more concerned about a paycheque for himself than getting a paycheque for the military.
It is time that somebody over there stood up for the military. When we vote on the motion tomorrow, we will see who over there believes in doing something for our military. We will see if the minister responsible agrees with his own words because they are his words on which we are voting.
I now would like to get back to the remarks made by the member for Nepean--Carleton. He mentioned that the motion condemned the government. He said that it was a negative type of motion. Early this morning we were approached by the governing party and asked if we would consider softening the wording of the motion because many of those members wanted to support it for two reasons.
First, if they do not support this motion it will be very embarrassing for their own minister. Second, they want to support the motion because a lot of them are very honourable individuals who realize that the need of the military is great. They realize that we need to expend more resources to help our military, not just to maintain the status quo. We do not want to see our forces go through another exercise as they did in Afghanistan with all the embarrassments that came out of it.
I know that most people opposite like those of us on this side want to ensure that we support the minister when he says that more funding is needed. He did not say, as others in the past have said, that he could get along on what he already had. He said that more funding was needed and that the military was overstretched, I believe that was the word he used. More funding is all we are asking for, and we will see if the House agrees.
The member for Nepean--Carleton said that the word “condemn” was a harsh word, but if the motion were softer a number of those members would support it. We agreed to take out the word “condemn” and insert words such as “urge”, or “strongly urge” or “strongly recommend”, which somebody else suggested, and the member seemed pleased with it. We did not suggest to him what words to use. He suggested that words like these would be satisfactory.
He hustled back to his caucus room and undoubtedly talked to the House leader, from the reaction. I do not want to judge what happened. We waited and waited. I felt like I was a member of the military myself. I was waiting so long to get a response to a need. I still do not have an official answer. I got one indirectly from an NDP member, that the government would not go along not with our suggestion but with the suggestion that came from the member for Nepean—Carleton, who is a gentleman, who is extremely interested in the debate in the House today and who is a great chair of the committee, I am told. Consequently he realizes only too well that support is needed for the military.
It is quite clear. We are satisfied, and were satisfied, to eliminate the word “condemn”, if that is what the members want and if they do not want to stand and condemn their own government. We have no problem with that and we appreciate it. However it was inserted originally to stress how important the motion is in the House.
If they want, we will accept the change from condemn to something like strongly recommend or strongly urge. If that makes them feel happy, we will do it. What did they come back with? Was it wording to say that it would be okay as asked originally? No. They came back with an entirely different type of motion. They have came back with the type of question that the backbenchers would ask ministers every day. Why is the minister working so hard? Why has government been so generous? It is the same type of motion encouraging their government to keep on doing what it is doing. That is basically what it said.
We are not in the House to pat the back of the government. We would like to pat them somewhere a bit lower with a good boot. This is eventually what has to happen if we are to do something for the people in the country who need a proper government that considers all parts of the country, all groups in the country and in this particular case our military.
