Madam Speaker, I want to join with the rest of my colleagues in congratulating you on your appointment to the role of assistant Speaker. I know that you look forward to this as do we in the House of a Parliament that is different, more progressive and more open than that which we have probably come to live with over the last number of years.
I want to congratulate all of the people today involved in this very important and very timely debate about our role as peacekeepers throughout the world and what the future role of the Canadian military should and will be.
As I rise to participate in this I say that I am a member of Parliament who has taken great interest in the last number of years in Canada's military and in our foreign policy. I had the opportunity on two occasions to travel with the defence committee. Once we went to eastern Europe as a part of our delegation. There was that trip along with the other times I spent as a
member of the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs.
I believe this has given me somewhat of an insight into the problems and the questions which are facing our military and which we must address if we are to continue to build on a foreign policy which is coherent in the light of today's world situation.
This is consistent with our historical record as one of the world's leading peacekeepers. As we all know, Canada has long been a world leader in the field of peacekeeping and our contribution has been appreciated around the world.
After World War II Canada was a major military and industrial power and one of the leaders of the free world. We gave our unconditional support to the United Nations from the beginning and we were leaders in the movement to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the North American Air Defence Command.
We were ready to participate as a full partner with the world community in collective action. While the United Nations involvement in Korea was not peacekeeping as such it was a collective action to deter aggression and was a prime example of the ability which that organization had to react around the world.
The pre-eminent Canadian contribution to peacekeeping came at the time of the Suez crisis in 1956 when Canada, under the Right Hon. Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent and external affairs minister Lester B. Pearson, played a leading role in the world community. They were instrumental in the establishment of the UN peacekeeping force in the Middle East.
The eminent historian J. L. Granatstein says that the high water mark of Canadian prestige in the world was reached during the Suez crisis of 1956. As most hon. members well know Mr. Pearson won the Nobel peace prize. At that time Canada stood at the forefront of world security and peace efforts and we were a very proud nation.
Our commitment to international peacekeeping has continued and a roll call of the places Canada has served would take one around the world. Today there are over 2,300 Canadians on duty in places as diverse as Rwanda, Iraq and El Salvador and the others that we are talking about today. Our peacekeeping efforts have been a badge of honour worn proudly by the men and women of our forces who have served this world and this country with dignity and with purpose.
We cannot however rest on the laurels of the past. The world today is a vastly different place than it was in the 1950s or in the subsequent decades. All the implications of our role must be examined. We as parliamentarians must lay out a clear and concise plan of action for our government and for our military which is consistent with the role as citizens in the world.
It must be said that the last two major peacekeeping operations have been fraught with frustration. Every speech made in this Chamber today said that. The horrible savagery which has been talked about in Bosnia comes to us instantly every day on television. It was mentioned here earlier today that on the past weekend six young children out playing in the snow were killed by shells. The daily butchery based on longstanding ethnic hatred causes each of us to grieve when we see it in our homes on television.
Our troops have also served in Somalia in a harsh and hostile climate and environment for which probably they may not have been fully prepared. The people we send on these missions of course are soldiers. They are not social workers. Their training, as good as it is, and it is the best there is around, does not always equip them for the degradation and inequities they see. They are placed in areas where the game is played by different rules which are not consistent with the values that they know and we know.
We must always remember when we send our young men and women abroad that they are going in may cases into a no win situation. It is like the tale of the three young boy scouts who helped the lady across the street. It is an awful lot more difficult if she does not want to go.
Sometimes our troops and others are in a situation where they are trying to make peace between groups and peoples who really want to continue their animosities which go back into the mists of time. When we put our people into these situations we must remember that frustration follows.
The world has undergone dramatic and fundamental change over these past few years since Canada stood at the zenith of its international prestige as a world leader in the peacekeeping process.
The fundamental cornerstones of Canada's foreign policy have not changed substantially over the years, however. We are still committed to defence and collective security with our allies. We remain committed to arms control and disarmament.
We are committed to the peaceful resolution of disputes. We must ask ourselves whether we are now entering a phase where we become world police. Is this the role we are to play?
Even over such a short time span as the last five years, the face of the world has changed dramatically. Maps five years old are out of date. Few could have seen following the dramatic days when the Berlin wall came down how fundamentally the world would change in such a short time.
The collapse of the communist party and the dismemberment of the Soviet Union would have been unthinkable a decade ago. We would have thought then that if the old order in eastern Europe were to collapse then all would be well. Peace would break out all over the world.
We smugly watched and claimed victory at the end of the cold war not realizing the pent up ethnic nationalistic tensions that were just below the surface. The thin veneer of civilized behaviour was quickly stripped away. Now we see a world situation more fraught with danger than at most times during the past 50 years. During the peaceful years that followed World War II we developed the attitude that reasoned and rational behaviour would rule the nations of the world.
What we forgot is that only 80 years have passed since the beginning of World War I which was a horrible, wasteful war that was finally touched off by a spark in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia.
Only 55 years have passed since the beginning of World War II which was the most destructive conflict in human history. We may feel we are past the stage of generalized conflict but I fear that that smugness may be false optimism. We pray that we will never be faced with the other way but we must realize that many of the tensions, conflicts and hatreds that led to war in the past are still with us today.
As I mentioned earlier, almost daily on the TV and other news media we are reminded of the mindless, terrible slaughter that continues around the world. Our greatest challenge as people is to prevent further conflict, to show world leadership and to cause others to follow our example of nationhood based on reason. This is where disputes and conflicts are settled by dialogue and not by bullets.
There is a great challenge facing this government as we approach the 21st century. We must assess the role of our armed forces and we must provide them with the direction that is necessary in a troubled world.
It must be a multilevel approach. Our military role must be defined and priorities must be established. Canada must continue to be the honest broker who works tirelessly on diplomatic fronts to halt conflict around the world and to eliminate the root causes of these conflicts.
We live in difficult times. The economy of Canada demands that we restrain our spending but a troubled world looks to us for leadership. As I said earlier, as the citizens of the world we must be involved in the affairs of the world partly out of self-interest and partly because morally we must be involved in trying to make the world a better place.
We must however perform our duties only after the most careful examination of all the implications that our future involvement holds. This challenge faces us all. If we do not create a world free of conflict then the price we pay as Canadians may be too horrible to contemplate.
We have been a world leader in peacekeeping over the years. That tradition is now more important than ever.