Evidence of meeting #18 for National Defence in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was kandahar.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Norine MacDonald  President and Founder, The Senlis Council
Emmanuel Reinert  Executive Director, The Senlis Council

5:05 p.m.

Liberal

Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON

I wouldn't mind speaking on this.

I know our friends at Médecins Sans Frontières are absolutely, totally opposed to soldiers ever handing out food, because eventually you couldn't trust people handing out food because it might be a soldier. I think it's what they've experienced around the world, that it would put their people at risk. Is that your understanding of that?

5:05 p.m.

President and Founder, The Senlis Council

Norine MacDonald

As I said, I do military and counter-narcotics. I only got into food aid recently, accidentally. I can understand their opinion. I think it is so important that we solve this problem for our Canadian military as soon as possible that they might even be convinced that this is a circumstance where they can make an exception to what sounds like a thoughtful rule. I'm not sure, in these circumstances, where our military are so at risk and the Afghan population is faced with starvation, that you want to stick to that sensible rule. It might be time for an exception.

5:05 p.m.

Liberal

Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON

But you're saying you can get into places because you're not in a military convoy.

5:05 p.m.

President and Founder, The Senlis Council

5:05 p.m.

Liberal

Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON

That's because you're trusted that you're not a solider.

5:05 p.m.

President and Founder, The Senlis Council

Norine MacDonald

And because I'm bringing food, so it's all—

5:05 p.m.

Liberal

Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON

Okay, but if eventually they found out you were a soldier, you could then be found at risk.

5:05 p.m.

President and Founder, The Senlis Council

5:05 p.m.

Liberal

Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON

I think there is a chicken and egg, but I think that the purity of this is.... So having Canadian development workers who are experienced helping you handing out the food is optimal, having more of us there on the ground who are not soldiers?

5:05 p.m.

President and Founder, The Senlis Council

Norine MacDonald

I think this is all worthy of a much longer and more complex conversation, with a lot more information about what the options are, and in consultation with the Afghan government, etc.

I don't have a clear answer for you about that. I think the problem has to be solved and you have to innovate, but because I don't know what all the options are and whether the military can do this or that, I can't give you a clear answer. You just must find an answer.

5:05 p.m.

Liberal

Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON

I can't resist this question. The bottom part of this is that the war on drugs isn't working, and that we actually need to find a different way of going about this, in terms of the fact that warlords are in charge of illegal drugs, and if drugs were legal there would be a different way of going about this.

5:05 p.m.

President and Founder, The Senlis Council

Norine MacDonald

Just to speak specifically about eradication policy, manual eradication policy, from a counter-narcotics policy point of view, manual eradication is a legitimate part of a counter-narcotics strategy where there's an alternative livelihood. If somebody's growing poppies for opium out of greed, and they could be doing something else, you should go in there and eradicate the crop manually, not chemically.

Even the UN agrees that when there is no alternate livelihood it's not the appropriate response. The United States helped Turkey switch to opium for medicine; the United States and the UN in Thailand had a grace period and they transitioned to alternative livelihoods. There are lots of examples. What we are proposing for Afghanistan has been done by the United States elsewhere, under their counter-narcotics strategies. So it's not that we're coming up with a radical idea here, folks. We're just repeating to you a U.S. counter-narcotics strategy that's used elsewhere that we think should happen there.

There are parts of the war on drugs that absolutely don't work, have never worked no matter how much money you put into it, and there are parts--if you call Turkey, India, and Thailand part of the counter-narcotics strategy--that worked. So let's try to find something that works is what we're saying, from a counter-narcotics policy point of view.

5:10 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Rick Casson

Thank you.

Mr. Hawn.

5:10 p.m.

Conservative

Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB

Yes, thank you, Chair.

First of all, let me say you will never find a Canadian government, I don't think, who would ever ask the military to grow beards and wear civilian clothes and go into a situation like that without their protection. It's just not going to happen. The military delivering aid, that's a different question.

I have a question on the poppy thing. How strong are those local commanders? Will the Taliban ever follow the Islamic oaths that are taken by communities of farmers, and would the Taliban ever allow an alternative crop to poppies when they can earn so much more from illegal drugs than they can from legal apples?

5:10 p.m.

President and Founder, The Senlis Council

Norine MacDonald

I'm going to try to start being really quick now.

We need to run the pilot projects, but if they grow poppies for medicine, our studies have shown that the net farmer income, which is different from the farm gate price—you guys know what I'm talking about there—is the same or more, we think. Please let us go and find out.

Will they obey their Islamic oaths? Yes, because first and foremost, the people of Afghanistan are Muslims.

5:10 p.m.

Conservative

Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB

I'm talking about the Taliban, not—

5:10 p.m.

President and Founder, The Senlis Council

Norine MacDonald

First and foremost, an oath on the Koran does the trick. It's the same as an oath on the Bible here.

5:10 p.m.

Conservative

Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB

That's very debatable, whether the Taliban follows any religion.

It's not what the farmer makes, it's what the Taliban will allow the farmer to make. You say the net to the farmer can be better doing it for legal drugs than illegal drugs, but I'm not sure the farmer has any input into that under the Taliban.

5:10 p.m.

President and Founder, The Senlis Council

Norine MacDonald

No, but we would have input into that under a licensing scheme. For example, that Indian farm gate price of opium for morphine and codeine, if you look the farm gate price and the retail, there's a 5,900% markup, so there's a lot of the value chain there that could be reallocated.

I think these are good questions, and we have to go and have a look at it. I'm with you; there's a big long list of questions that have to be tested.

5:10 p.m.

Conservative

Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB

I'm afraid we might be being a little naive there, but they're good questions.

Does it come down to something as simple as taking care of the poppy problem with money? Do you think that alleviates our problem of dealing with the Taliban? When I say “dealing with the Taliban”, I mean killing the Taliban so that we can allow other progress to go on. I mean we have to buy the poppies and kill the Taliban--is it as brutally simple as that?

5:10 p.m.

President and Founder, The Senlis Council

Norine MacDonald

We should deal in the harshest manner with the al-Qaeda Taliban, absolutely, but for those young men who can go either way, we need to find a way to make friends with them.

When I say we want to run pilot projects because we don't know if this is going to work, I mean that: we don't know if it's going to work. But I can tell you that poppy production is up. We've spent millions on cultivation. Anybody can go there and tell you that what we're doing now in counter-narcotics policy isn't working.

The first step is to say this is not working and ask what other things we would try. This is one of a portfolio of things we should try. As I said, it's been done by the United States elsewhere.

5:10 p.m.

Conservative

Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB

I don't dispute that. I don't think we're entirely dealing with the same mentality with someone in Vietnam as the Taliban.

I think you give the Taliban too much credit for giving a rat's patoot about the Koran, frankly. I don't think they're governed by any religion. I think they hide behind religion. They carry out acts in the name of religion that are clearly not in accordance with the teachings of the Koran. We can argue about whether the Koran is....

5:15 p.m.

President and Founder, The Senlis Council

Norine MacDonald

Perhaps that's for another day.

5:15 p.m.

Conservative

Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB

Any legitimate religion does not condone the kinds of things the Taliban does. For them to do that in the name of religion is utterly fraudulent and utterly without credibility, so I'm not sure how you can trust them to follow any Islamic oath.

That's a question or a statement. You can argue with it.

5:15 p.m.

President and Founder, The Senlis Council

Norine MacDonald

It's certainly a longer conversation, but despite any extremist political beliefs, my observation of people in Afghanistan is that an oath on the Koran is binding, even to those with extremist political beliefs.

But it's a question for another day.