Madam Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise today and speak as the representative for Edmonton Southwest and to represent the citizens of that fine part of the world.
Let me begin as others have before me in congratulating you and all members of the House on winning the election and thereby being entrusted with this high honour, this great responsibility and opportunity.
As this is my maiden address in the House, I wonder if hon. members would bear with me for a moment as I go through the traditional greetings and tell them a little about the constituency of Edmonton Southwest.
I would like to start, if I may, by thanking the electors of Edmonton Southwest for sending me here, and particularly all those who worked on my campaign so hard and so selflessly. I would also like very much to thank my family, without whose help I certainly would not be here today. They are probably the most interested people watching the debate at this very moment.
Just as an indication of things that may or may not go wrong, even if you think that everything is absolutely perfect, they are watching me today at a friend's. We get our television from the Anik II satellite, which is not working. So the world is not a predictable place. We have to be prepared for contingencies. This is what this cruise debate is all about. I will get back to that in a moment.
I wish to thank the voters of Edmonton Southwest for sending me here and I pledge to them and I pledge to you, my colleagues, that I will represent them with fidelity, with honour and with dignity in this House so as not to betray the trust they vested in me. I also pledge to represent this House with the same honour and dignity and fidelity so as not to betray the trust that we share as honourable colleagues here together.
It is also appropriate and traditional at this time to recognize members who represented the seat in other Parliaments. It is not always done but I think it is very appropriate for me to do so because this seat in the last Parliament and for the previous couple of Parliaments was represented by Mr. Jim Edwards. Jim, while we evolved to different political persuasions, always treated me and his political foes with dignity and kindness. I am sure that other members of this House would join with me in wishing Jim, his wife Sheila and family good fortune in the years ahead of them.
The constituency of Edmonton Southwest is just about 100 per cent urban. It has a bit of farmland on the extreme south and the extreme west ends but it is 90 per cent urban. It has very little industry, but a good deal of retail, and it is the home of the world's greatest shopping centre, regardless of whatever you may have heard about what exists in the United States. The Mall of the Americas will fit into a corner of the great West Edmonton Mall, which is a tourist destination that everyone should take in as they go through the wonderful, beautiful province of Alberta.
Edmonton Southwest has a good mix of people. It is much like this Parliament. It is wonderful to sit here and see the mix that is in this Parliament, which is truly representative of our great country. Edmonton Southwest has aboriginal Canadians. It has recent immigrants. It has children of immigrants who were not so recent. It is a very pluralistic constituency, and as an example the Toronto-Dominion Bank I deal with is bilingual. The signs outside are in English and Chinese. Our constituency and our country is changing, it is evolving. We should recognize that and we should embrace it. We should not be afraid of it. The electors and the residents of Edmonton Southwest, I think, do embrace the pluralistic nature of our society.
The voters of Edmonton Southwest sent me to Ottawa with a very clear mandate, and that mandate was to represent them in Ottawa and not the other way around. They sent me with a mandate to inculcate a sense of parsimony and of personal responsibility in government. They sent me here to be part of a Parliament that would get a handle on the outrageous systemic overspending that has been a hallmark of governments at all levels in Canadian society for the last 20 years. They sent me here to try and inculcate with all of our hon. colleagues a sense that we cannot go on this way forever. Sooner or later we have to start living within our means. We need to recognize the situation in the world and in our country as it is, not as we would wish it to be.
My constituents also sent me here with another mandate. That was to be forthright, direct, and honest in dealing with the Bloc. We want our Canada to stay united but we want it to be united on a solid foundation. That means all of the protagonists in this great debate that is going to rise of its own in a year or so need to get everything out on the table and deal with it honestly so that one way or another we can put the matter behind us and get on with the future.
That is precisely the kind of commitment I make and that I make to my hon. colleagues of the Bloc. I promise them it will be a constructive and honest debate. I wish to be a part of it representing my constituents who, make no mistake, want us to remain a united Canada.
Let me get to the reason for this debate. I will not speak a lot about it because virtually everything I have to say on the cruise missile has already been said by others over the course of the day, many very eloquently and many direct from the heart.
I do not pretend to be an expert on defence and I certainly do not pretend to be an expert on the cruise missile. I asked if I could participate in this debate because I wanted to put forward the feelings of the residents I represent in Edmonton Southwest about this kind of issue, an issue where the word of Canada is really at stake. Make no mistake, that is what we are talking about. We are talking about the veracity of our word when we make a deal in the community of nations.
That is the underlying theme of the position I would like to bring to this debate. When our national government makes an undertaking with another government it is in essence making an
agreement or a commitment on behalf of each of us as individual citizens.
There is a truism therefore that comes into play in a situation like that. The truism is that your word is your bond. We are only as good as our word individually, and collectively as a nation.
Our government at the time committed us to an agreement and we are therefore honour bound to live up to it today. The bottom line is that we should allow these tests to proceed for the following reasons.
We made an agreement with the United States in good faith and we should stick to it. Cruise missiles may be used to deliver conventional ordinances. Many countries now have the ability to manufacture and use cruise missiles and therefore it is in our best interests to learn how to track and intercept them.
There is a defensive nature to the testing of cruise missiles which needs to be recognized. Unless cruise missiles are flown in a test mode how would our pilots and how would our radar interceptors ever get the ability or the knowledge to learn how to intercept them?
The test corridor is in a sparsely settled area thereby posing little or no inconvenience or damage to Canadians or to wildlife. I do recognize the points made by the hon. member who addressed this House prior to me that it is an inhabited territory. There are people who do live there and we should not go through this without at least getting their permission or their leave to do it just as a matter of courtesy.
An extremely important consideration is that we have an obligation to co-operate with our NORAD partner under whose protective umbrella the western world has lived for 40 years. Not to mention the fact as others have made the point before me that we are going into bilateral negotiations with the Americans from time to time. How would you feel if you had been giving comfort to and looking after your neighbour for 40 years and when you wanted to borrow his lawnmower he said no.
There is a quid pro quo here. We have to work together.