House of Commons Hansard #94 of the 35th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was world.
Svend Robinson NDP Burnaby—Kingsway, BC
Madam Speaker, I have a supplementary question. I would note that until 1992 the previous government was providing substantial government to government aid to the brutal regime in Rwanda. We allowed into Quebec City as a visiting professor one of the people who had been most vigorous in his incitement of genocide when he was living in Rwanda.
Jesse Flis Liberal Parkdale—High Park, ON
Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. We do need clarification. My interpretation of the standing orders is that when we divide a 20-minute period into 10 and 10, it is 10 minutes plus 5 minutes for comments and questions.
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The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Maheu)
I am sorry. We have not yet started to divide our time. We will be dividing it after the defence minister's speech. Questions and comment for 10 minutes for the hon. member for Red Deer.
Svend Robinson NDP Burnaby—Kingsway, BC
Nice try, Jesse. Madam Speaker, the member for Red Deer in his comments did not make any reference to the situation of Canadian peacekeepers in Bosnia. Obviously this is one of the important elements that the House is addressing.
I personally had the opportunity to visit our troops in Gradacac in Croatia. Certainly the men and women there were doing a very fine job under very difficult circumstances.
Could the hon. member for Red Deer clarify what his position and the position of the Reform Party is with respect to the role of Canadian peacekeepers in Bosnia and in Croatia? The hon. member is doubtless aware of the recent concerns.
Just today there was a report that some 750,000 Muslims and Croats have fled from Serbian held areas of northern and eastern Bosnia over the past two and a half years. According to the representative of the United Nations, hundreds of thousands of them are victims of ethnic cleansing.
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The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Maheu)
I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member but the hon. member for Red Deer has 30 seconds left in his questions and comments. Would you like him to respond to your question?
Svend Robinson NDP Burnaby—Kingsway, BC
Madam Speaker, I await with great interest the response to the question.
Bob Mills Reform Red Deer, AB
Madam Speaker, some of the money that is being sent out there is a major concern. We have to tidy up the whole CIDA program, that whole area. In answer to the very first question, that would be my answer. Yes, we have to improve on that.
Second, in terms of Bosnia and Yugoslavia, the hon. member for Okanagan-Similkameen-Merritt will be speaking on the subject of divided countries. The hon. member will hear the answer. He will have to wait.
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The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Maheu)
I would like to remind hon. members that the government has decided to divide its time with 10 minutes each. There will be 5 minutes for questions and comments after each speaker.
David Collenette LiberalMinister of National Defence and Minister of Veterans Affairs
Madam Speaker, I will take 10 minutes. I will be succinct.
I had some comments planned but I am absolutely shocked at what I have been hearing this afternoon, the cynicism of the member for Red Deer who just spoke on behalf of the Reform Party dealing with our engagement in Rwanda and Haiti. I understand my colleague, the Secretary of State for Latin America and Africa, will deal with that in her speech following me.
However I am even more shocked at the belligerent tone of the Leader of the Opposition both in question period and this afternoon in what had been until now really rational and well ordered debate. His belligerent criticism of what happened on the weekend, the agreement that former President Jimmy Carter ironed out in Port au Prince, is beyond belief. His shooting from the hip is incredible. If he conducts the affairs of his party that way then I do not know what the rest of this parliamentary session is going to be in for.
The hon. Leader of the Opposition should have reflected and been a bit more statesmanlike. He perhaps would have found that the deal that was made on the weekend had to be explained to all the parties and indeed has been explained. Shortly after three o'clock this afternoon, President Aristide issued a statement in Washington. I quote: "In the past three days something has happened in Haiti to uphold democracy which was the result of President Clinton's decision for the commitment to lead a multinational effort in carrying out the will of the United Nations to help restore democracy in Haiti".
He has thanked the United States for its military intervention to restore him to power. He said he will be back within 24 days. He also said that to help foster the environment of civil liberties and political stability he has asked his minister of defence, General Jean Beliotte, to head a transition team and recommend the next steps to be taken in order to ensure the quick restoration of constitutional order.
To listen to the Leader of the Opposition this afternoon one would have thought that he did not want President Carter to avert the disaster that would have occurred with a military invasion. I think the statement that President Aristide has just issued should calm everyone and help bring some rationality to the debate. President Aristide declared this afternoon that he will be back within 24 days. After he is restored to power, as we have said publicly on a number of occasions, we will take part in any effort to help reconstruct Haiti, certainly using the Canadian Armed Forces.
I will not give any details on what we will actually be doing because we will be part of an international reconnaissance team. In fact a Canadian colonel will be leading as chief of staff that team in the days immediately following President Aristide's return and stability being established there to determine what requirements will be necessary of a UN peacekeeping engagement. Canada will be happy to take part in helping with the reconstruction of Haiti wearing blue berets.
I want to talk for a few minutes, since we have not got much time and have divided our time on this side, about the changing nature of peacekeeping in the world. We are seeing that the peacekeeping that was enunciated by former Prime Minister Pearson and the peacekeeping tradition that was established in the post Second World War era has drastically changed over the last number of years. We are facing situations around the world which are vastly more complex. They require a multiplicity of responses. In some cases, as we have seen in Bosnia and Croatia, the circumstances are incredibly dangerous.
In the past five years international operations have involved three or four different types of peacekeeping arrangements: humanitarian work in Ethiopia, Somalia and Bosnia. Let us not forget that our troops have been in Bosnia as a humanitarian effort under the auspices of the United Nations to bring relief and supplies. I think our men and women have done a remarkable job in the last two years in bringing that kind of humanitarian relief to Bosnia. They are still there as we debate this issue today.
We have been involved in demining and reconstruction in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Kuwait, Iraq and Haiti. We have been involved in nation building. We have been involved in embargo enforcement such as in the Persian gulf, the Adriatic and the waters off Haiti, and we have been involved in confidence building through arms control and verification.
When we talk about peacekeeping we do not just talk about the strict conflict resolution and patrolling the line as we did in Cyprus for many, many years in a very civilized fashion. We use the word peacekeeping in a much wider context. For Canada to take part in the world governance through the United Nations requires a multifaceted capability on the part of our armed forces to try to discharge the missions that come forward.
One of the points I want to raise today is that there is an ongoing commitment of the armed forces. We have about 3,400 people actually deployed, not counting what we perhaps send to Haiti and which we can discuss in the next few weeks. With a whole group of people waiting to go, a whole group of people just coming back, and those who are being deployed at the moment, we are getting somewhat stretched. We have about 10,000 peacekeepers involved in this kind of rotation. One of the concerns the government has at the moment is how much of our resources should we continue to devote to these peacekeeping missions.
In particular I want to talk about the commitment concerning Yugoslavia, Croatia and Bosnia.
I will outline our contribution to the United Nations force deployed in the former Yugoslavia, which is our main commitment at present. The mandate of the UNPROFOR expires on September 30 this year, and will likely be extended.
Canada's commitment towards the force also ends on September 30, and it has not yet been decided whether to extend it.
In other words, we have not made the decision in fact to let the members of the House know. We do have about 1,500 to 1,600 personnel ready to go to Croatia and Bosnia starting in the early part of October, which is only about 10 or 15 days away. These are the Royal Canadian Regiment that will be going to Croatia and the Royal Canadian Dragoons that will be going to Bosnia. They have both been training in the last little while at CFB Petawawa.
This training is worth noting as more and more, because of the engagements that we are taking on, we are having to deploy reservists. This summer I spoke at a function in St. Thomas, Ontario, one of the constituency functions of my colleague, the member for Elgin. I was really quite touched by the fact that the members of the Elgin Regiment, a reserve regiment, will be offering nine people for this next engagement as part of the Royal Canadian Regiment to go to Bosnia and Croatia.
We may well ask why is he saying that they are ready to go? What is this debate all about? We want to know before we actually send our people that the members of the House of Commons are comfortable with a continuation of this arrangement. The purpose of the debate is to get the views of the men and women in the House who have been talking with their constituents over the summer to see if we should continue this engagement, how long, should we pull back a battalion or should we cut it in half? We have 750 people in Croatia and 750 people in Bosnia. The balance is near Split as a supply unit. We want to know whether or not we should continue that operation for the next engagement. As I said earlier, the engagement ends September 30.
While no decision has been taken, the government is very cognizant of the depletion of our resources. We are cognizant of the fact that the armed forces budget is under pressure. We are trying to find other, more effective, cheaper ways of discharging our duties in terms of peacekeeping. As the Minister of Foreign Affairs said, this government remains totally and absolutely committed to the concept of peacekeeping, of Canada playing a role as a bridge between other nations, whether it be at the sharp end, as we see it in Bosnia and Croatia, or whether we see it in terms of reconstruction as we have seen it in Rwanda and as we may see it in Haiti. The Canadian Armed Forces has the most enviable reputation. When the Prime Minister was in Bosnia this summer the Prime Minister of Bosnia said we have outstanding troops and he wanted us to stay and be part of the effort to help bring peace to the area.
We had the Serbian leader, General Karadzic, who said the same when we were faced with the problem of how we would relieve our forces in Srebrenica.
We have the best armed forces in the world. They have suffered as a result of some of the deployments. We have lost 10 people in the former Yugoslavia. We have about 50 wounded but those men and women are prepared to continue to discharge any obligations that the government will seek to discharge and those obligations will be determined by consultation with members of the House of Commons and that is why we are very interested in having the views of the members today.
Jim Hart Reform Okanagan—Similkameen—Merritt, BC
Madam Speaker, I listened with interest to the minister's comments and I too travelled to the former Yugoslavia and found there that our troops indeed are doing a magnificent job under extremely difficult circumstances and we should all be very proud.
As the minister mentioned, peacekeeping is not the only issue that the Canadian Armed Forces has to deal with and because the resources are very thin and we are downsizing the Canadian Armed Forces we have to look at the possibility of internal conflicts here on our shores in Canada.
You might say that Canada never has to worry about things like that but even in my own riding of Okanagan-Similkameen-Merritt this summer we had a forest fire in that region and had to call out the Canadian troops and we had people from Calgary come in and do a job there. That was a very small contingent and just a small example.
We do not have to go back too far. We had a situation in Oka where we had great demands put on the situation there as well.
How can the minister or the ministry deal with ensuring that we keep our role in the world as a peacekeeper but also ensure that we have enough resources to ensure we have the people here to do the job as well?
David Collenette Liberal Don Valley East, ON
Madam Speaker, that is a very good question. I thought I did address it although I am not used to having to speak in 10-minute periods. Perhaps I did not have the time to enunciate it.
More and more we discharge our obligations whether it be peacekeeping or whether in aid to the civil power, domestic crises such as the ones we saw this year. We helped in the search for a young Saskatchewan girl. We helped with the forest fires in B.C. We helped last winter with the floods in Quebec. We are going to have to turn more and more to reservists, those men and
women who train part time, on the weekends, the unsung heroes of the Canadian military tradition.
It costs money and to continue to do this we have to reorder our priorities, reshape our budgetary priorities.
I want to assure the hon. member that we will not be so stretched that we will not be able to discharge those very emergencies of which he speaks. That is why I have raised the subject of our future continued engagement in Bosnia and Croatia. We are getting not to the breaking point but to the stretching point. If we are to continue the multiplicity of peacekeeping engagements, and they have been coming fast and furious, we are now talking about the possibilities of Haiti and we have been in Rwanda, which was unforeseen certainly when I became minister, obviously we are going to have to redirect more and more of our budget to this. This could mean that we will have to take it from other very deserving components of the military budget.
I want to assure the member that when we have disasters such as the ones of which he spoke a little earlier we will be there. We will not let the Canadian people down.
Bob Mills Reform Red Deer, AB
Madam Speaker, I guess what I am concerned about is that there are so many areas that are going to erupt and I do not see us developing any criteria as to what our guidelines are going to be in the future.
We are getting more and more letters telling us about the quality of our equipment. More and more letters are coming back home saying our equipment is not adequate. Could the hon. minister respond to that, please?
David Collenette Liberal Don Valley East, ON
Madam Speaker, we would not send people outside of the country to do this work if the equipment were not good. I can assure you and all Canadians the equipment is good.
However, we do have some needs to replace various components of armed forces equipment. Those questions will be addressed in the context of the defence review. I know one of the points that the hon. member made for which he should be commended is he is trying to put our peacekeeping engagements in some kind of conceptual framework in terms of the priorities.
I do not particularly agree with the conclusions that he drew with respect to Rwanda and Haiti, but the fact is the defence review and the foreign policy review will I hope help set those criteria so that we will be able to answer the hon. member and the UN when it comes knocking on our door for future commitments.
Christine Stewart LiberalSecretary of State (Latin America and Africa)
Madam Speaker, it is frustrating to hear some of the debate going around the House and have inadequate time to respond today. I was most disturbed by the comments made by the Reform Party with regard to Rwanda and Haiti. For a party that is supposed to represent the interests of the Canadian people it is no wonder it is plunging in the polls today.
If the Reform Party had looked carefully it would understand from polls that have been done recently moral and ethical considerations are considered by Canadians the way that they would judge priorities in the world. They put Rwanda and Haiti at the top of the list. At the bottom of the list they put self-interest. I am quite appalled that the Reform Party bases its foreign policy on self-interest.
Canada's support to the United Nations and our commitment to peacekeeping remain strong. Our reputation worldwide for balanced and fair diplomacy, humanitarian and determined confidence building initiatives such as peacekeeping and our commitment to global peace and development all give Canada influence much beyond what our economy and population size would suggest is possible.
Canada must not squander the opportunities our reputation presents both for our own good and the good of the world. Canada does not earn this reputation through playing the role of the belligerent, unfortunately necessary as this role might seem to be from time to time. It is peacekeeping, the role so strongly associated with Canada, that earns us our enviable reputation and thus influence in the world.
However important peacekeeping is to Canada's foreign policy and defence policy, it is costly. We must continue in our role as peacekeepers but constantly look at less costly alternatives such as early warning systems, conflict prevention, management and resolution.
Granted, important initiatives are already being taken in this area by Canada and others around the world, thereby warding off the crises the public never hears about.
The government will continue to follow up good ideas and recommendations with diplomatic initiatives. An example of Canada's initiatives in this area of policy is our decision to send Bernard Dussault to consult in and around Rwanda not only to find appropriate and timely solutions to the crisis situation in Rwanda but also to address the political difficulties in Burundi, Zaire and the refugee problems in other countries in the region.
In the development of our strategy for Haiti Canada has been fully conscious of the need for a long term strategy to not only return democracy to Haiti through peacekeeping but to build and strengthen the institutions needed to support and sustain it in the long run.
I would wish that all members in this House had been able to accompany me to visit President Aristide in Washington last week to see the very warm reception that he gave to our Minister of Foreign Affairs and his effusive thanks for the leadership role that Canada has taken on the issue of Haiti and his return to Haiti to head a democratically elected government there which he represents.
Our role fits into a broad historic approach that Canada has taken to peacekeeping and emphasizes the contribution to be made to that category of international peace operations that the Secretary General of the United Nations has characterized as peace building.
Once President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is returned to power in Haiti, under the terms of Governors Island agreement and UN resolution 940, Canada will participate in the United Nations mission in Haiti, UNMIH, by providing up to 600 military and 100 police personnel. Canada will assume a particular responsibility in police training and supervision.
Altogether UNMIH will assume the task of maintaining a secure environment which will provide the necessary foundation upon which to begin efforts aimed at establishing a durable and lasting democratic system in Haiti.
These are daunting objectives that will require a long term commitment. It is important to remember that we will remain in Haiti for the long haul. Establishing the foundations of a civil society in a country whose population has been numbed by years of desperate poverty, brutal violence and repression is an enormous challenge.
We have to build from the bottom up by providing assistance with basic education and literacy training, agriculture and health care and by creating employment opportunities that will put in motion the wheels of a healthy economy. The success of these initiatives is only possible when the political environment is secure and stable.
Our aid program has and will continue to reinforce these objectives through the provision of assistance to the development of civil society and good governance, including the respect for human rights in Haiti.
Our contribution to Rwanda has also been significant, initiated well before the conflict escalated in April. Canada provided the chief military observer to the first UN mission on the Uganda-Rwanda border. We fully supported the Arusha peace agreement providing for power sharing and integration of the armed forces.
The force commander for the UN mission assigned to oversee the implementation of this agreement was our Canadian hero Major General Romeo Dallaire. Through a coherent strategy formulated by the Departments of Foreign Affairs, Defence and the Canadian International Development Agency, Canada has also made a significant contribution to the peacekeeping and humanitarian relief effort in Rwanda through the provision of medical experts, engineers and the ongoing airborne delivery of essential supplies. Assistance from multilateral and non-governmental aid organizations working on the ground has been invaluable.
In taking these initiatives to establish lasting peace and stability in Rwanda Canada is clearly focused on the task. Rwanda must have an acceptable, broad based government in power. It badly needs a functioning infrastructure, basic services such as water and electricity. The thousands of displaced refugees must return to their homes as soon a possible. These are all objectives of our peacekeeping mission in Rwanda.
Given the difficult circumstances peacekeepers have played an indisputably critical role under the steady and courageous leadership of Major General Romeo Dallaire and now Major General Tousignant. Peacekeeping must be broadened by committed political activities that do more than keep the warring factions apart. We must be proactive to build the institutional pillars of a peaceful and secure society and to assist Rwandan citizens to experience their fullest human capacities.
In our debate today we have to address the important issues of our extended peacekeeping role throughout the world in light of limited resources for peacekeeping. I am attempting to convey that despite our limited capacity to continue to respond to every crisis in the world Canada can continue to have an effective voice through concerted efforts to not only prevent conflict from erupting but in maintaining our commitment to fragile states once the peacekeeping phase is over. Peace building and conflict prevention are much less costly than war and crisis responses.
I cannot finish these remarks without a particular acknowledgement of the basic component of our peacekeeping effort, our peacekeepers, our Canadian Blue Berets. Canada would not have the enviable reputation for peacekeeping it has were it not for the professionalism, skill and discipline of our peacekeepers. Canada cannot take part in peacekeeping without our soldiers having the best training and adequate equipment and material support meeting the best standards for the protection of our soldiers and assuring that they have all the necessary tools to succeed in the task.
We must be grateful, as I am, for the women and men who volunteer to serve Canada as part of our important peacekeeping missions; grateful to them and their families for their sacrifice in helping to bring about global peace and security, to bring dignity and freedom to innocent men, women and children, the victims of conflict.
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The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Maheu)
It being 5.30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper. The question and comment period of the secretary of state will have to take
place at 6.30 p.m. when we resume after Private Members' Business.