Madam Speaker, I am pleased to share my thoughts about Canada's peacekeeping role in Bosnia this evening. I begin by giving a vote of thanks to our Canadian troops.
Despite the bad press they have received because of a few bad apples and a few incidents in the past few years with people who are not worthy to be called Canadian soldiers, despite the miserable state of the leadership at national defence and the wholly inadequate response to leadership deficiencies on the part of this government, and even though our forces have not always been properly backed up by this government, I commend the fortitude, the restraint and the professionalism shown by our military personnel in the field. The quality of our peacekeeping has never been more restrained or to be admired more than in Bosnia. We are recognized the world over for our contributions there to date.
Canadians have an unparalleled reputation for even handedness and compassion in other areas of the world as well. A Canadian working for World Vision in Rwanda and Somalia who had daily contact with our troops had nothing but praise for them. He told us that our personnel consistently went above and beyond the call of duty in service to other Canadians as well as to the people native to the area. That is a typical comment.
However, there are a number of defence reports circulating that show a serious morale problem in the forces because of the rapid and successive deployments in Croatia and Bosnia. Some soldiers have seen three or four tours of duty in a row and are becoming exhausted. Still, they are professionals and I expect they will return to the field once again without hesitation if they are asked to serve.
The question we address tonight is should they be asked in the first place? Nowhere is it more appropriate that the questions be asked than in the House. I remind the Canadian people that the Prime Minister and the minister of defence have already made the decision to send the troops, which renders the House of Commons almost irrelevant in this debate. All we as members can do is stand up here and voice our frustrations. It was obvious in that last exchange between members on government side and this side when they said "support us, we do not know if we have the troops or the supplies or the necessary equipment. Just support it". It is very frustrating.
Members of Parliament are denied any meaningful input which is contrary to the recommendation of the special joint committee's defence review last year which said: "The government should not commit our forces to service abroad without a full parliamentary debate and accounting for that decision. It is our expectation that, expect in extraordinary circumstances, such a debate would always take place prior to any such deployment".
In other words, before the decision is made we should be debating it in advance. So much for the recommendations of that special joint committee.
Earlier this year the House considered my private member's Bill C-295, the peacekeeping bill, which would have placed reasonable limits on Canada's peacekeeping role. The bill would have required Parliament to approve participation in the mission, a mission such as we are discussing tonight. It would have required the government to offer the House an estimate of the mission's cost, its duration and the role of the Canadian troops before committing to it. These are the exact questions Canadians are asking today, and the government is not offering adequate answers. I am not going to sign a blank cheque or approve a blank cheque because those questions have not been answered.
I point out a few important things, especially to the people back home at CFB Chilliwack in my riding. The first is obvious. This is not a UN mission. This is a NATO mission and NATO is not intended to be a peacekeeping body. It is a joint force originally designed and meant to defend Europe in the face of aggression. We are a part of that. We understand that concept of collective security.
However, the quality of this mission is not a normal peacekeeping mission. We need to know that up front. It is a NATO led enforcement mission, not the kind that Canada usually participates in under the authority of the United Nations. The Minister of National Defence has already said this mission would be a fully armed, sharp point combat role in which NATO forces would be able to fire first and to respond to any attack with overwhelming force. Previous American leadership has said this force would be meaner than a junkyard dog. This is not a peacekeeping force.
Given also the warlike tone of some of the Bosnian leaders who have already repudiated the Dayton treaty signed in Ohio, I think we can expect some difficult combat action. Canadians are understandably uncomfortable with this role when they are not defending their own soil.
They ask questions such as are we willing to accept an escalation of our role in Bosnia? Do we have the equipment to equip our forces properly? Are we willing to raise the stakes even further with the risk of having our Canadian soldiers shot or blown up by land mines or humiliated and held hostage by people intent on destroying the peace? I have already attended one funeral in my riding of a Canadian soldier who served in Bosnia. I can understand their concern about this escalation in the role.
We hear that NATO may also be involved in rearming Bosnia. People ask if Canada should be a part of this where it takes sides and helps to arm different factions in a war, where it helps pick the winners and losers. In some people's minds this provokes rather than reduces hostilities. Canada has invested too much in its international reputation for peace to jeopardize its neutrality now by enmeshing itself in conflicts as one of the antagonists.
We also have no idea what the goal of this mission is. We do in broad terms but NATO says it hopes to stabilize the situation within a year, then throw the hot potato to somebody else, an unknown, unnamed entity with the power to keep the antagonists apart. Who would that be? No one knows for sure but it seems to me if history is any teacher we are likely to see NATO forces there indefinitely.
Because this upcoming year is an election year in the U.S. there will be intense pressure for the Americans to pull up stakes and return home after that year is up. Then someone will have to stay behind and keep the peace. Who? I talked to a senior member of the armed forces on the weekend back home. He said that when he went to Cyprus 30 years ago it was supposed to be a one-year mission. We all know what happened there. We were there for 30 years and we do not want to see that happen again.
Not only that but as part of the bigger picture Canada is also on record saying we want to give some of our forces to a standing permanent rapid reaction force, virtually a standing army, to the United Nations. I realize this is a separate issue but if that were to come about it would surrender more of our troops outside of Canadian led combat forces.
I wonder sometimes where the leadership of our country is taking us. I am not sure it understands that we do not have an infinite amount of troops to give to either the UN or to NATO while trying to keep our other jobs properly equipped and manned.
The cost of this mission? In the last three years we spent $800 million in the former Yugoslavia. In the next year we would expect to spend another $200 million, but that is just speculation because the government will not give us the figures. We have asked it to give us the figures, the cost, the role and so on, but it will not give us any of that. It is interesting that if we commit more troops to NATO we will have fewer troops to commit to any UN led force in years to come, and there are bound to be more demands on that as well.
I reiterate the idea of a colleague from the Reform Party. We could arguably and persuasively say Canada has some obligation to serve with NATO but Canada need not take an active combat role. We could have a support role either with the engineers, as was mentioned earlier, with providing field services, supply services, an intelligence network and so on. There are things we could do outside the combat role.
To be heavily involved in combat, to be rearming some portions of the population and not others, to be acting outside our traditional UN mandate is a huge step when I do not see the end result the government is trying to work toward. Without an effective national debate we are about to launch an armed forces, exhausted and low in morale for the reasons I mentioned earlier, into a dangerous high risk combat mission without goals, without timetables, without cost estimates and perhaps even without the proper equipment. Is this wise?
It is said that discretion is the better part of valour, and our national leaders will show their discretion in this situation by declining combat participation in this venture.