Leon Benoit

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, October 8th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right. By cancelling the EH-101 contract and not replacing the Sea Kings, the Prime Minister has put our men and women in danger.

On more occasions than not the Sea Kings are not capable of fulfilling their missions. That means the frigates they are on are put in danger because they cannot fulfill their missions. I had a nephew who flew the Sea Kings until he got married and had children. Then he thought it was a risk he really did not want to take anymore.

It is completely unfair of the government not to provide the equipment needed to allow our men and women to do their dangerous jobs as safely as they possibly can.

In terms of strategic airlift, the defence minister just committed on behalf of Canada, or at least he has indicated he is going to, to a NATO rapid reaction force of about 20,000. It is a good idea. We should be committing to do that. There is no doubt we will have to buy strategic airlift and C-17s are probably what we will have to buy. If we make this commitment to NATO we had better be able to deliver because with the rapid response requirement, there will be no welshing on our promise under this circumstance.

Then we will have the planes for the earthquake in B.C. which is going to happen sometime, and it could be in 200 years, it could be next year. The people in that area deserve to know that should that happen at least we can get our military people in there to help deal with the disaster and the mess that follows a situation like that. At least then we would have the ability to get our troops and their equipment to the next ice storm as needed.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, October 8th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, the way the member asked the question, I would ask him what he wants to do. Does he want to give Canada away? Does he want to give the whole north away? Is that what he wants to do? Is the member saying that somehow we should not try to defend our nation? Is that what he is saying?

The way to defend the sovereignty of the nation is first to build a military that can make substantial contributions to our allies, our NATO allies or Norad allies and the United States. We should work with them but have a military that can stand on its own and provide units as needed to make a substantial contribution. That is the way to protect the sovereignty of our nation.

Then we work with our ally the United States in defending our country. We do not do it by allowing our military to collapse as the government is doing. The member's question demonstrates the thinking of the government. It is saying that it simply cannot spend the money needed to defend this country.

This is how bad it is. We had to beg the Americans. We had to hire large planes from the Americans for a strategic airlift to move our men and their equipment to the ice storms in Quebec and eastern Ontario and to the floods in Manitoba. Even within Canada we have to depend on our allies to get our men and their equipment to where they are needed.

What type of security is that providing to the citizens of Canada? It is unacceptable. Canadians more and more as they understand the situation are saying that it is not good enough. The government should provide more.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, October 8th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Yorkton--Melville. That is one of those Saskatchewan ridings and a very good one I might add.

I am here to respond to the Speech from the Throne, as are all the members who are speaking today. Being the official opposition defence critic, I will talk about the military. If I were to talk only about what was in the throne speech about the military, I would have to sit down right now. There was one sentence, and it did not say much. It was a motherhood statement. That was in the written text.

The Governor General did make a few comments which I thought were important and which were added in, on the efforts of our soldiers and the marvellous service of our army, navy and air force in the area of Afghanistan. But that was it. There was nothing concrete at all about the military in the throne speech. That omission tells an awful lot about the government, as did a report presented by the Conference of Defence Associations and the Auditor General's report on one aspect of military spending.

After the Conference of Defence Associations made its presentation today I responded to it. Eric Sorensen, a reporter for the CBC, asked some tough questions about defence funding. They were very interesting questions. He did not back off. He asked me if I were the Minister of Defence would I spend more money on health care or on the military? My response was that it was a bogus question.

First of all, the Canadian Alliance identified in the past more than $7 billion of low priority or completely wasted spending by the government every year. That is money spent on political friends for projects that are not productive and other types of programs. The taxpayers' association identified about $11 billion in low priority and wasted spending.

However there is something even more fundamental than that which has to be said. Defence and other security spending is different from any other spending in the government budget. It is different for at least two reasons.

First, it is the first responsibility of the government, above all else, to provide security for the nation, to protect the sovereignty of the nation, and to ensure that the citizens of the country are safe and secure. The government has forgotten that with its lack of effort over the last nine years and the way it has allowed our military to deteriorate.

There is something else as well which has to be considered. We have members talking about more money going to health care and other important social programs. We have the government with all of these ideas that were thrown out in the throne speech, and granted we do not know what they really mean, but it looks like an awful lot of spinning. Liberal members must ask themselves how will they raise the money for these programs.

I would like the members opposite in particular to think about how that can happen because Canadians are starting to recognize this. If it were not for our military and other security provided in the country, I would argue that our economy would not be able to operate in a way which would produce the money that funds all these social programs. Without a strong, capable military, and without the other security spending, there would be so much unrest in our country that our economy would not function in a way that would allow us to maintain our status as a wealthy nation. That is something that the government has forgotten. It has not been talked about by the government and I have come to the realization that it does not understand that.

That was the first question from Eric Sorensen. The second question he asked me was: if the government refuses to put substantially more money into defence then how would I reallocate resources?

If we look at the military, there is no area that we could tear out and throw away and still maintain an effective military. There is no large, substantial area we could cut out of our defence budget and not put our overall military at risk of collapse, even more than it is. Those are the facts. There is no area we can cut out.

However, there are ways that money could be better spent. That is the case for any department. It is the case in the defence department as well. The Auditor General did a good job of pointing out one of those areas. The Auditor General put out a report today on NATO flying training in Canada. It is in chapter 4 of her report. This NATO flying training program was intended to provide training to Canadian and international military student pilots to fly helicopters, F-18s and various other types of planes that our military has and that other NATO allies have.

This untendered $2.8 million contract was given to Bombardier by the government. We talked about that at the time. The government tried to justify it, but it was unjustifiable. It was a sole source contract, untendered, given to its political friend, Bombardier. That is bad enough, and it is unacceptable. The government should answer to that.

We find out today from the Auditor General that only 41% of the training that was paid for by Canada was used. That means 59% of the pilot training that was paid for by the government went unused, and yet the payments still had to be made. That is $65 million, according to the Auditor General, in the first two years of operation which were completely wasted.

The contract was set up so there was no requirement to perform or deliver. That is the government. I do not blame the military for that. I blame the government and its political process through Public Works, a process that it uses all too often to award contracts to political friends and does not require those friends to deliver. That is exactly what happened here. We can see that there are areas where the money must be better spent, though there are no areas that can be completely cut out.

Mr. Sorenson went on to ask: If the government will not spend more money on the military, then what would I do? My response, and the only response, was “I would elect a new government”, because that is the only thing we can do.

The government has refused to provide adequate funding to the military. We all know that. Various groups have made that point clear. Many Liberal backbenchers have made the same point, to the extent that the House of Commons committee has asked for a 40% to 50% increase in the military budget.

Approximately $5 billion to $6 billion a year must be added to the base budget three years from now. That is a lot of money added to the budget, but that is what the Liberal dominated House of Commons committee came up with. That is what the Canadian Alliance has proposed for some time, that we increase spending on our military, with $2 billion immediately added to the base budget, and move it toward the NATO average. Yet the government has not responded to that.

The government has been dishonest in the way it has presented spending on the military. I want to refer to the Conference of Defence Associations and what it says in its report. It is absolutely right. These are things that our party has pointed out before. Of the $1.2 billion that the government talks about that it spent for security, it talks about it all the time and the defence minister in his answer says that, only $510 million was assigned to supporting Canada's military. So the real number is $510 million, and some $200 million of that was to fund the war in Afghanistan.

The government often says that it allocated $5.1 billion to defence since 1999. This is the Conference of Defence Associations saying this. What the government did not say, according to the Conference of Defence Associations, is that much of this amount has been assigned either to non-military objectives or to the services and operations deficit. Only $750 million has gone to military use over the past five years.

Canadians deserve honesty in reporting what spending actually has gone to the military. The government has not provided that and it should do that as a bare minimum to show some respect to Canadians.

There is virtually nothing in the throne speech. One motherhood statement on defence is not enough. We need $2 billion in the next budget and then let us talk about what we want our military to be. It is going to take more money in the future.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, October 8th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the minister said that the Indian Act is outdated. I would like to ask the minister if that means he will scrap the Indian Act and replace it with something else. If so, what?

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, October 8th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that in responding to both questions so far the minister has taken a jab at the members asking the questions, asking them to be respectful. I heard nothing that was not respectful. The minister should stop that political nonsense himself, answer some questions and take part in this serious debate, because this is a serious issue.

In his presentation the member said that the Prime Minister has spent 40 years of his political career working to make things better for aboriginal people. The minister himself would have to admit that this simply has not happened. The gap between the level that the aboriginal people lived at 40 years ago and where they are today actually has widened. Things have gotten worse over the past 40 years rather than better. The strategy taken by this government and others over the past 40 years has not worked. I would appreciate it if the minister would recognize that what has happened over the past 40 years has not worked--

[Agriculture, October 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak in this debate tonight. I understand that I will be the last speaker. I want to take a bit of a different approach to this tonight and talk a bit about what has led to this situation, as I see it.

Before I do that, I just want to acknowledge that the situation on the farm today is the worst than I have seen in the last 30 or 35 years. The drought is certainly the worst drought in recorded history in western Canada. There is no doubt about that. It is much drier than it was in the thirties. The only thing that saved farmers until now is their aggressive changes over the past 10 years, direct seeding in particular, which allowed every drop of moisture to be saved so that there would be crops in following years, where there would not have been any 20 short years ago.

Farmers have made any changes they possibly could to help them farm in a way that would allow them to make a living. These changes have led them to be the most productive farmers in the world. The evidence of that is that Canadian consumers only pay something like 11% of their income on food. That is lower than any other country in the world.

Our farmers are doing their part and yet we are in another situation where many farmers will lose their farms. Many farmers have been forced to sell their livestock. Many simply will not rebuild their herds again. This hurts. It especially hurts someone who has grown up on a farm, as I have, and who has been raised on a farm with livestock and crops.

I studied agriculture in university. That was my chosen field. I bought a farm while I was still in university, 100% financed. It was not with the family. I had some very difficult times on it. It was not easy. I watched my neighbours as they struggled.

Because I had the training in agriculture, I worked as a farm economist for Alberta Agriculture and did private consulting with farmers over that time period as well. I will never forget as long as I live those years in the late eighties and early nineties when I sat at the kitchen table with dozens of farmers who were losing their farms. I knew there was no way to save the farm and they knew that also. In so many cases, a father, a mother and their children would be sitting at the kitchen table. The father would break down in tears as he realized there was just no way they could save the farm. Then the mother would break down and the children would sit there wondering what was going on.

That is what drove me into politics more than any other thing. I had seen the impact of government policies on farmers and I was determined to change that, at least to do my best to change it. I was determined that never again would I see farm families in that kind of a situation. However here we are 10, 12 or 15 years later and this situation has come back again.

It is important to look at what led us to this situation. There is no one point in time or one cause which could be pointed to as starting this mess, but I think there is one that probably lends itself to that more than any other of which I can think. That was an action taken by the current leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, the right hon. member for Calgary Centre, when he was Prime Minister for six months in 1979. That member caused more devastation and hardship than any other political leader in the country by signing on to the trade embargo against the former Soviet Union. The then president of the United States signed on and decided to take this action and that member, as prime minister at that time, supported the United States. That has been the most devastating action taken by any politician in Canada, when it comes to the problems we now see in agriculture. I want to explain why.

I believe the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan. Part of the problems we see in Afghanistan now of course stem from that. Something had to be done. The mistake was when the United States and the Government of Canada decided to use food as a weapon. What was the response from our European friends? The Europeans said, “Never again will we go hungry”. They built subsidies and a common agricultural policy to the extent that they could be sure they would produce the food they needed so their people would never go hungry again, as they did during the second world war. The Europeans built their system of subsidies, including export subsidies, which drove world prices down.

The Americans to protect their farmers, then responded to those subsidies, including export subsidies, which further drove prices down.

What happened in Canada? Canadian farmers were left without the support that the Europeans and the United States farmers were receiving. They were not competing in a fair way. Our farmers remarkably did a lot of different things much faster than the Europeans or the Americans to help adapt to this very unfair trading environment. It is only due to their remarkable reaction that they have survived as long as they have, and many of them have done very well. Many Canadian farmers in fact are thriving.

I am here to say that I do not believe that subsidies are the solution to this problem in any way. That is not what we should be calling for. Subsidies are not the answer. Our farmers have done their part. They are producing the food more efficiently than any other farmers around the world.

We need compensation for trade injury absolutely, which is what we called for, and we need to improve the crop insurance program, which we certainly support. To portray farmers as charity cases is completely unfair because they have done their part. Governments have failed miserably.

First, we had the Conservative government with the member for Calgary Centre as prime minister and the tough, wrong-headed action which he took. Then successive governments since, Liberals, Conservatives and Liberals, again refused to deal with the base of the problem, which was unfair trade, particularly export subsidies on the part of Europe and the United States.

We have import restrictions in Asian countries, Japan, Korea and other wealthy Asian countries. They have refused to deal with these unfair trade practices and as a result have continued to keep our farmers in an unfair position where they simply cannot compete in an appropriate way.

I would like to close by saying that it is time for the government to finally do what it should have done all along, and that is to deal with some of the trade problems and high input costs that it has forced on our problems through high taxes, over regulation and red tape that is very expensive and takes a lot of time on the part of farmers.

It is time that the government gave farmers freedom to market their own grain, for Pete's say. It should not throw them in jail when they try to get a better price for it in the United States.

We have to allow competition in the transportation system so freight rates will drop. The government has to take action in all these areas. When it does that, our farmers will compete fine and there will be no need for subsidies in any way.

[Committee Business and Reinstatement of Government Bills, October 7th, 2002]

The hon. member said tell us how to fix it, so I am going to do that.

The place to start is with is the unfair practices. It is time for the government to start to really put some pressure on the European Union, the Americans and the Asian countries who impose import restrictions. It is time for the government to get tough on the trade negotiations and actually bring some change in that area. That is the first thing.

The second thing is that it is time for the government to make some changes which will allow input prices to go down for Canadian farmers. Canadian farmers are operating at a disadvantage, not only because prices are driven down due to unfair trade, but also because of our high tax regime relative to our biggest trading partner, the United States. That high tax regime adds to input costs, so again our farmers are put at a disadvantage; lower prices, higher input costs.

We have a regulatory system which is quite burdensome. The red tape our farmers have to go through compared with the red tape our American trading partners have to go through is not even comparable. There is simply too much red tape. Some of that red tape, the unnecessary regulations, has to be reduced.

There is a start in terms of suggesting things that have to happen, but it is certainly not the end of it.

Quite frankly, I am tired of being here on emergency debates on agriculture. I have been here nine years now. I am tired of having to have this debate. I am tired of having especially members of the governing party, but even some of the other opposition parties, stand up and say that the problem is the drought and farmers should be able to deal with the drought.

The problem is not the drought, although it is this year. The problem is the government. It has not done what is necessary to put in place a level playing field. Prices are driven down due to unfair trade. Input prices are pushed up due to over regulation and high taxes.

I have not really even talked about the high taxes yet. Look at taxes on fuel and fertilizer, especially the energy portion of it. It is just extremely high compared with other countries. We could go right through the list. The prices our farmers have to pay for what they buy are so much higher than our competitors. It makes it awfully tough for farmers to do business well.

I want to expand a bit on the problem area of taxation. I have talked about how it raises input costs, but I want to talk about a change for which I have been calling. I have written to the revenue minister, the finance minister and the agriculture minister over the past five years on this. I have brought this issue up on several occasions through private members' motions and so on. That is the issue of extending the period farmers have to sell off their breeding stock due to drought and things like that.

There is a program in place for the deferral of livestock sales due to drought and other emergencies. It has been in place 15 years. That legislation, as it is now, allows farmers only one year to buy back their breeding stock after they have been forced to sell it off. In my area many farmers have sold off their entire herd, but they want to be back in business down the road. Many farmers have sold off a large part of their herd and they want to buy it back next year. Just imagine this scenario of the cattlemen in our country. My constituency is probably in the worst part of the drought area and across the border into Saskatchewan.

Probably 40% of the cattle herd has been sold off. It takes 15 years for a farmer to build up a good herd. Because of one drought, they do not have the reserves they would have had had the government done its job in dealing with important trade issues. Because of high taxation and so on, they are forced to sell. Now they will be forced to buy back over the next year.

Imagine farmers trying to buy back 40% of the herd one year. Prices will be driven through the sky and they will be unable to get the livestock they need. The program which was set up 15 years ago will not work. I have argued for four to five years, as have my colleagues and my party, that the period should be extended so that farmers would have five years to buy back breeding stock which they were forced to sell off due to a drought or some other freak of nature.

Is that too much to ask? I am talking about a very straightforward change. The Liberal member asked that I tell them what should be done. Well, I am telling them.

This should be done now. It should not drag on until next spring. The revenue minister, the finance minister and agriculture minister should get together and say, yes, that it makes sense to extend the buy back period to five years so cattle prices will not be driven up beyond anything that is reasonable. This would give farmers an opportunity to pace themselves so they could buy back as opportunities arise over the next five years to rebuild their herds and be back in business suffering the loss only from one year and not from 15 years of building a herd.

The member asked what the government should do. That is another thing it should do. We have a long list of things the government has ignored when it comes to agriculture.

Instead of focusing on bills such as Bill C-15B, cruelty to animals, the government should put in place a bill to protect animals from cruelty, because we all care about that, that will not impose an unmanageable burden on farmers.

I am asking the government to set priorities and base them on something that really will allow our farmers to operate and compete fairly with our competitors around the world. It has been said by many that agriculture is the closest thing to a true marketplace because so many producers are selling and competing around the world. The only problem is that farmers in Canada simply are not competing in a fair marketplace because the prices are driven down due to unfair trade and the Government of Canada cannot afford subsidies that match the European or American subsidies.

Why has the government not done its job and negotiated with the Europeans and Americans? It could start by getting rid of the export subsidies. Over time the domestic subsidies can be removed. We have the time there but simply do not have the time for export subsidies which affect the price the most.

I ask the government to wipe the slate clean on legislation like this or at the very least start from scratch so we can have the rest of the debate that we did not have the first time around, so we can get people across the country more involved in the debate and so we can deal with some of the solutions to this agriculture problem. I encourage all members in the House and Canadians to listen to my colleagues in the agriculture debate tonight and listen to solutions for which the member asked. I have only brushed over them. They will be talked about in more depth by my colleagues.

Unfortunately, because of the priorities of the House, we only have three and a half hours to talk about agriculture. Therefore, I am left out of that debate. However members opposite noticed that I just gave my agriculture speech because I had to, and I am glad they did. At least they are listening for a change, and that is good.

I have given my agriculture presentation, a few thoughts on Motion No. 2 and why Bills C-15B and C-5 should be started over again if the government insists on bringing them back. That is what proroguing Parliament is supposed to do.

[Committee Business and Reinstatement of Government Bills, October 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by commending my colleague for the tremendous job he did talking about Motion No. 2 and why Bill C-5 and Bill C-15B should not be reinstated at the stage they were at but should be debated all over again.

We all remember those debates. We remember that closure or time allocation was invoked on both of them. There was a lot of debate that had not yet taken place, not only in this place but across the country, because there seems to be a period where things can be debated in the House and the general public has not caught on that it is happening. Even though each MP goes out to his or her riding and talks about it in the riding, it still takes time before the general public gets involved in the debate. Bill C-5 and Bill C-15B had only just started at the stage where the general public was starting to understand what was included.

An interesting thing that we found, probably MPs from all political parties but the Alliance MPs certainly because I have talked to my colleagues about this, is that the more we talked about this in the constituencies and elsewhere across the country, the more people came to understand that these two pieces of legislation were bad legislation, not that the concept and the intent of the legislation were bad.

Canadians agree, for example, with Bill C-5, species at risk, that they should be committed to preserving endangered species. Canadians support that. However when they got into the legislation and came to understand what was in the legislation, they came to see that it was bad legislation which did not deserve to be supported by Parliament.

For that reason, we should start from scratch again, go through the process again. By the time we are done, maybe we will have the Canadian public across the country more engaged. There is a good chance that the legislation as it is now would not pass, due to public pressure, or that there would be changes made so that we could pass it. That is certainly another option.

Bill C-15B, the cruelty to animals legislation, was much the same. Canadians support the concept of tough penalties for people who abuse animals. Who does not? That is a motherhood concept. However the legislation itself had some extremely dangerous clauses which infringed on civil liberties and would not do the job intended. I argued in debate on these bills and at meetings across my constituency and elsewhere that some of the clauses would do anything but perform the function that the government said they would perform.

These two pieces of legislation need to be debated more. The government sent the signal when it decided to prorogue parliament and end the session. Why does it do that? It does that because it wants to clear the slate and start over again, get rid of the bad legislation it should never have introduced and start over again.

These are two pieces of bad legislation that should never have been introduced, not as they are at least. They need a major change before they should be passed. The government and the Prime Minister chose to prorogue the House. Let us start from scratch and do exactly what Parliament is supposed to do when we clear the slate and start over fresh again.

I would be happy if the government never brought these forth again in the new Parliament because they do not do the job intended. I would prefer it takes these back to the people drafting legislation and get the changes made that would make it good legislation so that we could support it.

There is something else that has led me to not want these two pieces of legislation to come back at the stage they were at. I found that in this place there is precious little debate on agriculture. For example, tonight we have an emergency debate on one of the worst agriculture crisis in the history of the country, the worst in the last 35 years without doubt.

We have an emergency debate on this coming up after we vote on these motions. How much time do we have allocated to this emergency debate? Eight-thirty to midnight. That is three and a half hours, if we get that. There is simply not enough time devoted to debating issues that are critical to what I would argue is the most important sector in our country: farmers, the people who produce our food and many other products that we simply cannot do without. I would argue that for that reason we should start from scratch on these bills, if the government still wants to go ahead with them. I think the argument on that is fairly obvious.

I want to talk a bit about farmers and agriculture not getting the attention they deserve in this place. This is something I have seen over the past nine years. Rather than the debate which is in the House to deal with issues which will make things better for farmers, too often the debate is about things like Bill C-5 and Bill C-15B, which will put an incredible hardship on farmers if passed. Some of my colleagues have talked about this in the past.

Now we have an agriculture crisis which is hurting cattlemen, grain farmers and hog producers. It is hurting agriculture producers across the country. It is certainly not appropriate to burden them with the consequences of legislation like this. I would argue there are other things government should do for farmers.

The drought certainly is the immediate cause of this crisis, which again I argue is the worst in 35 years, since the late 1960s or early 1970s. The drought is not really what has led to the mess that agriculture is in today. It is the immediate cause for some of the problems, but the long term cause is the government's neglect when it comes to dealing with some trade negotiations.

In the GATT, in the WTO and even in the free trade agreements, which are excellent trade agreements, agriculture was mostly left out. For that reason, we have all other industries in the country dealing under a trade agreement which gives pretty much fair trade. We have exceptions. We have problems the odd time. Softwood lumber is a huge problem. However most of the problems we have seen have been in agriculture because the agreement does not cover these things.

Instead of the government trying to bring forth Bill C-5 and Bill C-15B, which have had this incredible negative impact on farmers, why does it not deal with the real problems that farmers face? Again, it is the cumulative effect of prices being driven down year after year for the last 10 to 15 years due to unfair trade practices in other countries. I am talking about the common agriculture in Europe, especially the part of the common agriculture policy which deals with export subsidies which pays farmers from Europe to dump their products in our traditional markets. By doing so, it not only causes us to lose those important markets, but also causes prices around the world to be driven down.

Then we have the Americans getting involved to combat and counteract Europe. They want to counteract the harm of the European subsidies. Therefore, they get involved with their export enhancement program and that type of thing, which further depresses world prices. Then the Canadian farmers, who have only a very small portion of the subsidies the United States and the European Union have, are left holding the bag.

Canadian farmers are truly the most efficient in the world, I would argue. If we level the playing field or even make it closer to level so that year after year they do not have to combat the impact of these prices being depressed, the agriculture sector would do extremely well. Under those circumstances, when these drought years come from time to time, although never as bad as this, then farmers could deal with it and we would not be here talking about the crisis in agriculture.

The problem is that for the last 15 years farmers have had their equity chipped away. They have not been allowed to build up reserves in their business, like most corporations and businesses do, because prices have been driven down due to unfair trade practices.

Why does the government not deal with the root of this problem, which is primarily unfair trade practices and higher prices that Canadian farmers have to face due to the other things the government imposes on them, such as high taxes on inputs?

[Points of Order, October 3rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the government has been making some comments and suggestions lately that it would like to make the House truly democratic. I would suggest that this is an opportunity for the government to demonstrate that it is serious about trying to make the House democratic by dividing this motion so that members in the House can vote on each motion separately. The current motion does not allow that.

[Iraq, October 2nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member said first of all that people do not want to go to war and do not want to have Canadian military intervention. That is a motherhood statement. Of course people do not want to go to war and do not want Canadian military intervention or any military intervention. I think that goes without saying. Second, he said that people would prefer a peaceful resolution through a UN resolution. Of course people would prefer that. Who on earth would not? These are givens.

The member went on to say that Iraq is not the only dictatorship and Saddam Hussein is not the only person who ignores UN resolutions. He went through that argument. That is true, but what the member refuses to acknowledge is that Iraq is the only country known to have chemical and biological weapons and is very close to producing nuclear weapons. It has a delivery system, the scud missiles left over from the gulf war of which 10 to 20 are missing.

Also, Saddam Hussein has threatened to use them against the United States and its ally, Canada. Not only has he threatened to use them but he has proven that he is very willing to do so because he has done so in the past. He used them against his own people. He used them against the Kurds. He invaded Kuwait when he said he would. When he has threatened to do something in the past, he has followed through with it. What makes the member think he will not use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and its ally, Canada, if he could?