Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise tonight on an area of foreign policy which I think is very important to many Canadians, and that is the situation on the African continent.
A few years ago, the prime minister of the day had pushed at the United Nations for something which countries like Russia, China, Pakistan, et cetera, agreed to, and that is the responsibility to protect. There is a collective responsibility among all nations to deal with issues such as genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.
There are just two examples I wanted to look at tonight. The other month we had the president of Liberia here and we saw the rather stumbling approach of the government with regard to her presence, but the issue that I want to talk about first of all is in Zimbabwe.
The Liberal Party has called, both on March 13 and on April 24, for action by the government to deal with the deepening crisis in Zimbabwe and the fact that Mugabe has deployed his security forces, his green bomber militia, to basically turn a country which used to be an exporter of food into an importer. By the end of this year, inflation will reach as high as 4,000%.
People are fleeing Zimbabwe, risking their lives every day because of this regime which has brutalized people on the streets and in their homes, has packed the courts, has changed the nature of government, and has essentially allowed few foreigners to document what is happening. We only hear from those who have been able to leave.
We called upon the Government of Canada to increase aid from $4 million to $20 million for medicines, food and other essential supplies, to working with NGOs, to appoint a Canadian envoy to deal with this crisis, and to pressure the Security Council into bringing Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, before an International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. Yet, we have heard nothing but silence from the government benches.
The Sudan in Darfur is another example where again Canada had shown leadership in the past. A former Liberal prime minister had been to the Sudan in 2004, advocated and supported the role of the African Union, along with the logistical support of Canadians helping members of the African Union on the ground. There is a genocide going on, and again we hear little from the government benches.
If the central tenet of Canadian foreign policy is to be human rights, if it is to be the security of the individual, then we need to act. Africa is not simply something that we can read about or watch in the news. It is something that Canadians have a deep understanding of and concern for. We need to see action at a multilateral level. Whether it be through the United Nations or in concert with our allies, we need to take action.
We have put forth, through the previous government and obviously now, proposals to the government. We would like to work with the government to ensure that if in fact we are going to act, we need to act in concert with our allies.
I would point out that on the international policy statement, which the previous government had enunciated in 2005, I have yet to hear from this government whether it supports it or rejects it. It has been very quiet on it, but part of that policy statement was the issue of intervention to provide support in these cases.