Jesse Flis

[Foreign Affairs, January 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I compliment the hon. member for an excellent speech.

[Foreign Affairs, January 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, when the cold war ended everyone was hoping that there would be peace dividends; money that would be saved on defence would be put toward economic renewal, stimulus, reducing poverty on this planet, et cetera. That is why this government is recommending a review of our foreign affairs and defence policy.

As the Prime Minister mentioned and offered, both standing committees will be going to the people of Canada to review our

existing policy. I hope the hon. member will make his interventions on behalf of his constituents again at that time.

I would also recommend to the member that tomorrow there will be another debate. It will be on whether or not we should continue with the cruise missile testing. That would be another excellent forum for the hon. member to raise this.

That is why I think we have come to the stage in the development of our country and the development of our foreign policy to take an in depth look and review by consulting Canadians.

[Foreign Affairs, January 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his comments and compliments and for supporting today's process. If the hon. member does not see enough of such debates I hope he will remind us that it is time for another. In debates like this we see the best of every member of Parliament, all 295.

Actually the hon. member's comments and questions coincide with a poll that was reported in the Ottawa Citizen today. The poll suggests that an overwhelming majority of Canadians favour the idea of UN peacekeeping in general, but six in 10 respondents said that Canada's mission in Bosnia is too risky and should be ended in April. I quote from the poll: ``More and more Canadians are saying it is too damned expensive and it is so dangerous, why not have some other countries take on the job?''

The poll also suggests that when the heat is high in Bosnia, meaning the military heat, attitudes toward peacekeeping are cool in Canada but if the shooting stops then Canadians want their soldiers to be there to administer humanitarian aid.

I think when we send our troops there the one thing our mandate should guarantee is the safety of our Canadian forces. It is all right for countries to negotiate air strikes but how can air strikes be negotiated and mandated if the Canadian peacekeepers are in that region? That is where we will not get the support of Canadians if things like that happen.

If one of our soldiers has to come back you know how, I do not think we will get much support from Canadians in future peacekeeping. Yet our troops have the highest reputation in the world.

I had the good fortune of being in Cyprus and was talking to our Canadians forces. I talked with the British commander who begged Canada to please not pull the Canadian forces out because they are such an excellent example for the other countries that have peacekeeping forces.

We had an example in the Bosnia-Hercegovina area when it was time to remove the Canadian soldiers and replace them by soldiers from another country. The Serbs said no. They said they would accept the Canadians but not the troops of another country. The Canadian forces have this ability. They are respected by the Muslims, they are respected by the Croats and they are respected by the Serbs. That is why we can play such an important role. However, if we start dropping bombs on them, our taxpayers will give us the message to bring our troops home.

First, before we make any such move I think we have to ensure the safety of our troops over there.

[Foreign Affairs, January 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to congratulate you on your appointment as a deputy speaker since this is the first opportunity I have had to do so.

I would also like to thank and congratulate the right hon. Prime Minister for allowing the House to have this debate on peacekeeping and defence issues so early in the 35th Parliament. We see a big difference between the 34th Parliament and the 35th Parliament. We had requested many such debates in the 34th Parliament and such debates never happened.

I hope all members of all parties will take to heart the words of the right hon. Prime Minister when he said: "We want to hear your individual views". I know someone from the New Democratic Party just arrived from that region. It would be very important to hear what he has to say. This is an opportunity to put on our creative hats, not to have to worry about party discipline, and to express what we know from our constituents and what we know from our experience.

I also take this opportunity to congratulate the constituents of Parkdale-High Park, especially the Canadians of Croatian, Serbian and Muslim descent. I must say that in my 10 years of representing the area and having so many Canadians of those backgrounds in my riding we have never had any conflicts, any squabbles, any fights, et cetera. The Canadians of Muslim, Serbian, Croatian descent are showing that these three peoples can live together in peace and harmony. I congratulate them through this forum and all Canadians across this land who are showing the example that we want peace and not the kind of thing that is ongoing in Bosnia.

The Leader of the Official Opposition rightly took us through the happenings at the end of the cold war and immediately after the cold war, how Solidarnosc started the movement and then the Baltic states and other countries. However the world has become a more not a less complicated place since the end of the cold war.

As the minister mentioned in his statement the key body in the international system, the United Nations, is straining to keep up with the increasing demands being placed on it. Canada is working to alleviate the pressure on the UN. Our approach is a broad scope. It ranges from strengthening and reforming the UN system itself, including providing staff to key areas such as the peacekeeping unit, to promoting the concept of co-operative security in which strengthened regional institutions and arrangements can play a larger role in contributing to international peace and security, thus relieving some of the burden placed on the UN system.

In this brief intervention I would like to focus on the efforts of Canada to encourage and position regional organizations to play a more active role in support of the UN. If we put the emphasis on regional institutions getting into potential conflict areas this will alleviate the pressures of the UN and then it can do a more effective job in crises such as the one in the former Yugoslavia.

In January 1992 the UN Secretary General launched his agenda for peace. As the minister mentioned in this document the Secretary General spoke about conflict prevention and preventive diplomacy. In this regard he highlighted the increasingly important role that regional organizations could take to

prevent and resolve crises so that they need not come to the attention of the UN every time.

As the House knows Canada strongly supports the agenda for peace and is working to implement many of the Secretary General's recommendations. I was pleased that our parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs and International Trade in the 34th Parliament submitted its recommendations and views on the agenda for peace. I was pleased that our Senate committee on foreign affairs also responded to the agenda for peace.

We have taken to heart the Secretary General's challenge to regional organizations to pull their weight more effectively on the global scene. Let me be more specific. I would like to speak about three key areas in which Canadians can show leadership, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America, as well as say a brief word about the new initiatives in the Commonwealth and the Francophonie.

Post cold war Europe is a place of both enormous opportunities and challenges. As mentioned by the minister, Canada is placing considerable emphasis on strenghthening the ability of our key pan-European and transatlantic security forum, the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, to prevent and resolve conflicts.

Thanks largely to Canada's efforts over the past few years the CSCE has the most extensive framework for conflict management of any regional organization. We are now working to fine tune these mechanisms and to enhance the CSCE's ability to take action to prevent conflict. The key to conflict prevention is to deal with the root causes of tension and conflict, many of which are to be found in the areas of human rights, especially minority rights. For that reason Canada is strongly supporting CSCE instruments such as the CSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, whose task is to serve as an early warning mechanism by providing a Canadian expert to the high commissioner's investigative team in Slovakia and Hungary.

The CSCE also has conflict management missions in places such as Latvia, Estonia, Georgia, Moldova, Skopje and Tajikistan. Canada has participated actively in these missions. We have headed the mission to Moldova and have personnel in the former Yugoslavia as well as on shorter term missions to the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Nagorno-Karabakh and Bosnia-Hercegovina. These missions undertake fact finding and conciliation, investigate human rights problems, and generally assist these countries in making the transition to democracy.

Canada is continuing to refine the framework for CSCE peacekeeping, a Canadian initiative. This mechanism adopted at the 1992 Helsinki summit makes the CSCE the only regional organization with the ability to mandate a peaceful operation. It permits the CSCE to call upon the UN's expertise and assistance as well as that of other regional organizations, notably NATO. While this mechanism has not yet been used it is in place should CSCE states ever need to call upon it. Let us hope it does not, but if it does the mechanism is in place.

As the Minister of Foreign Affairs stated to his colleagues at the December meeting of CSCE foreign ministers in Rome, Canada will promote innovative approaches to conflict management in the CSCE region. He underlined this government's commitment to the CSCE and Canada's readiness to play a leadership role within the organization. He also committed Canada to working on a comprehensive assessment of the CSCE's conflict management efforts to date and to make specific practical recommendations that will help the CSCE deal more effectively with future challenges.

This organization has its failures too. I have to be very honest in the House. Again this is my own personal opinion. I attended some of the CSCE meetings and the process is decision by consensus. Members know what it is like in their own caucuses, how difficult it is to come to a consensus sometimes.

While the politicians and the diplomats are working on wording that is acceptable to everyone, we see reports such as we saw on the CTV last night where six youngsters were killed last weekend, where a young lad was getting shrapnel pulled out of his side, and where a child was walking with only one leg. We heard the report about shell-shocked children, the psychological effects of just being injured or witnessing what is happening there. It talked about the Sarajevo syndrome. Children need tranquillizers to sleep. The same report talked about the high suicide rate and passive suicide. People actually walk into the streets to get killed. They cannot take what is going on in the region any more so they walk out hoping that a bullet will kill them and end it all.

While the death toll reaches hundreds of thousands and with all that is happening daily, CSCE argues about wording acceptable to all member countries. Although I am placing a lot of emphasis on CSCE, having attended its important conference in Madrid 12 years ago I do have my criticism of it. I appeal to the international community to make the CSCE, with the help of Canada, more effective.

As the House is aware Canada joined the Organization of American States or OAS in 1990. I stood in the House on the other side to criticize the government not for joining the OAS but for how it got Canada to join. Canada joined the OAS without any consultation with the Canadian people, without any debate in the House as we are having now, and without even asking the standing committee on foreign affairs to look into the implications of joining OAS. We were very critical not of the

OAS membership but how the former Prime Minister made the decision without any consultation or debate.

Since joining, Canada has made one of its priorities enhancing the role of the OAS in promoting regional security and stability. In its short time as an OAS member Canada has succeeded in putting these issues firmly on the OAS agenda.

The OAS now has a permanent committee on hemispheric security. Canada is focusing the committee's work on security questions such as conflict prevention and management, confidence building measures, CBMs, conventional arms and transfers in non-proliferation. Canada is also stressing the importance of strengthening co-operation between the OAS and the UN in conflict prevention and management.

In March a Canadian promoted OAS meeting on confidence building measures will take place in Argentina. As a former principal of Argentina Public School in my riding of Parkdale-High Park and as a current member of the Argentine-Canadian Friendship Institute, I am pleased this meeting will be taking place in that part of the world. The reason I was principal of Argentina Public School was because we were twinned with Canada's school in Buenos Aires.

When we are talking about peace I think we should begin with the children, with the future citizens of this planet, because our attitudes are difficult to change. When we started with children being twinned with other countries it is amazing how children as young as age five were learning about the language, the culture and the peoples of a country as far away as Argentina.

Unfortunately because of the Falkland war the Toronto Board of Education decided to remove the name and it is back to Garden Avenue. What a sad commentary, blaming the children for the Falkland war. One recommendation I would toss out so that all members could take it to their constituents is for them to be on the lookout. Maybe there is a school in a riding that can be twinned with a school in a faraway country. We will all be richer for it.

This June at the OAS general assembly Canada will be bringing forward new proposals to strengthen the OAS role in dealing with regional security challenges.

A word on our efforts within the Commonwealth and the Francophonie organizations which bridge traditional north-south and east-west divisions in the world. Neither of these organizations have well developed approaches to conflict management. For this reason Canada submitted proposals for the development of conflict management mechanisms at both the Commonwealth and Francophonie summits this past summer. These ideas are very new to both organizations. Canada will continue to work to make these proposals a reality.

I have outlined a wide range of initiatives which Canada is undertaking within regional organizations. I do not have time to go into the ASEAN group and other regional organizations that could help address conflicts arising in that part of the world.

The House should have noticed common themes in what I have said so far. First, support for the UN; second, emphasis on conflict prevention; and, third, development of mechanisms which can be in place and be called on by states to assist in resolving problems before they erupt into conflict and before they require the already overtaxed resources of the United Nations.

As the minister stated this government is committed to supporting the United Nations. This government is also committed to positioning regional organizations to play a more active and effective role in complementing the important global efforts of the United Nations in promoting co-operative security and in building international peace and stability.

I call upon the international community with which I quite often have the pleasure of meeting through the diplomatic corps in Ottawa to do everything in its power to strengthen the various regional organizations and to make them more effective in coping with future emergencies, thus alleviating the pressures on the United Nations and making it more effective in guaranteeing international peace and security.

If we do not follow this course then Lieutenant Colonel Ian Malcolm who served with the Canadian forces for 23 years and was involved in peacekeeping in Egypt, Iraq and Namibia may be correct in a recent document wherein he asks: "Does the blue helmet fit?"