Mr. Speaker, I find it utterly inexplicable that the official opposition would try to link Norad and the missile defence system.
The issue of Canada's participation in Norad—a longstanding, reasonable, fair and justified involvement—does not mean that because we agree with Norad, we have to automatically accept a missile defence system, as proposed by the U.S.
I find this completely illogical. The official opposition is trying to corner us. They are going to say that if we vote against the resolution, we are voting against Canada's participation in Norad, which is not at all true.
We are certainly in favour of participating in Norad, but we certainly also have the right, as a sovereign country, to decide for ourselves, upon review of all the issues involved, whether or not we support a missile defence system as proposed by the U.S.
These are two entirely different matters that they are trying to link in order to trap us. If we vote against the resolution—which we will, I hope—they will be able to say that the Liberal government is against participating in Norad, which is completely illogical.
If tomorrow morning the United States, as a major player in Norad, decided to launch a weapons system that was even more repugnant than the missile defence system, by introducing more nuclear weapons for instance, would we automatically agree, or would we take our own decisions after reviewing all the facts?
Many knowledgeable people who base their opinions on all the statements made at the most senior levels of the Pentagon or the U.S. administration, say that the missile defence system means launching weapons into space.
It is interesting to see reference in the resolution by the Canadian Alliance to any system against ballistic missiles. Does that include weapons in space? It will be interesting to hear from Alliance members whether they officially and clearly back the inclusion of weaponry in space. By putting their motion forward the way it is phrased and referring to any system, if we voted for the motion, it means we would have to accept any system, including weapons in space.
Alliance members will probably say in reply that of course they are not talking about weapons in space and that the Americans have only proposed a ground based anti-missile system. Yet the pressures and the numerous statements coming from the highest level at the Pentagon, within the administration itself, by Rumsfeld and others and sometimes by the President himself, give us very good grounds for believing that in the end the anti-missile system proposed by the United States must include weapons in space.
I would like to read from an article, which I think is a cogent, profound article by Jeffrey Simpson, in the Globe and Mail of May 7, 2003. He puts this question:
What link exists between missile defence and weaponizing space? A missile defence system must depend on satellites for surveillance and communications. Any threat to these capabilities would weaken the anti-missile system. Therefore, the logic of an anti-missile system must drive the designers to protect it. This means producing weapons in space that can protect satellites and attack any threat to them.
He goes on to say:
Anti-missile defence without weaponizing space is like being half-pregnant. Joining the missile defence scheme without understanding where it must lead is to misunderstand the stakes.
He is not the only one to have given us a warning that joining the anti-missile defence system is a path toward weaponry in space.
It is interesting to hear our friends from the Alliance tell us about all these missiles that will rain on us if we do not protect ourselves, that the Americans will suffer enough to defend us and that they will rain on Vancouver, Seattle and Montreal. At the height of the cold war with the Soviet Union, if any country had the power to have ballistic missiles that could travel across the ocean, we did not have an anti-missile ballistic defence system. Who are these countries now? From where is this threat coming?
The axis of evil was Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Already Iraq is completely disabled and it has been proven that the so-called weapons of mass destruction and all the famous armaments it used to have in secret have not been found still, months after the end of the war. Today there was another article saying that they could not find a threat anywhere. It leaves Iran and North Korea.
Who in a sane mind could believe that Iran or North Korea or another so-called rogue state, which has not been identified, could rain missiles on the United States or Canada, for that matter? It is almost a farce because if they even attempted, surely the intelligence of the world community would signal before hand that Iran or North Korea was ready to rain missiles on us. However even if they did by surprise, does anyone think they would take a chance with the power and might of the United States and the world at large? They would be annihilated in just a matter of days. They would never risk it, even if they had the power to do so, which most informed observers say they do not.
So where is the need for this?
The irony of it is that terrorism today has been conducted by people who have used unsuspected means such as suicide bombers mostly, using low tech technology and not high tech technology. It happened in the 9/11 tragedy, again in Saudi Arabia, the other day in Morocco and it is always the same pattern, suicide bombers using low tech technology.
It really is scary, this new way or talk of militarism and more and more weaponry when we have so much of an arsenal already at our disposal.
I read an article from the San Francisco Chronicle dated May 20. It said:
As Congress moves closer to a vote on repealing a ban against developing smaller, more usable nuclear warheads, a group of prominent scientists issued a letter Monday urging that the prohibition be kept in place.
The Senate Armed Services Committee has already voted in favour of a total repeal of the prohibition, passed 10 years ago as a means of preventing the use or proliferation of nuclear weapons. But the House Armed Services Committee voted on a compromise version that would permit design work but stop short of production of low-yield warheads.
The Bush administration and many Republicans in Congress have said the law should be repealed because, in a world of dangerous new threats, the U.S. needs a new generation of low-yield weapons for pinpoint strikes...
They do not have enough. The scientists wrote this:
“It is counter to U.S. interests for the United States to pursue new nuclear weapons at a time when the highest U.S. priority is preventing other countries or groups from obtaining them”, the authors said. “The perception that the United States is pursuing these weapons and considering their use would give legitimacy to the development of similar weapons by other countries.
They added, “The United States should be seeking to increase the barriers to using nuclear weapons, not decreasing them”.
The article goes on to say:
A low-yield weapon refers to a warhead with a force of five kilotons or less, about a third of the force of the warhead that killed 140,000 people when dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
Where do we stop with this weaponry? Where does the United States stop? It already has so much in the way of armaments that it can annihilate any country in the world just in a matter of days if it wants. It has nuclear warheads in profusion, ballistic missiles, ships and warships of all kinds, technology of the latest as we saw in the Iraq war but that is not enough. Now we need low-yield nuclear weapons and we need the star wars deal which will lead to weaponry in space.
Meanwhile, credible observers like Lloyd Axworthy, our ex-foreign affairs minister, with a reputation for peace, peacemaking and peacekeeping, and Nobel Laureate John Polyani have warned us that star wars is a slippery slope. What does the world really need? Does it need star wars? Does it need more nuclear weapons, low-yield or otherwise? Does it need more ballistic missiles or anti-ballistic missile missiles?
What it needs really is more concern for the areas of the world that are totally neglected. Three million people are dying in the Congo right now as we speak and I think a few troops are there. To help this small United Nations force would be really a far greater service to the world than spending billions and maybe trillions on a star wars defence system. What we need is to really check our conscience.
Malaria, AIDS and TB are devastating millions and millions of people in Africa. They say that just AIDS alone devastates something like 27 million people in Africa. We really need to change course, to abandon weaponry in space and to say to ourselves, yes, we can be participants in Norad but, no, to any system that would lead to star wars.
