Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the people of Okanagan-Similkameen-Merritt to participate in the debate today on an issue of national importance, the NATO mandate to commit a peace implementation force to Bosnia.
The Reform Party supports international peacekeeping commitments and takes pride in the work that our armed forces have done worldwide. They have a reputation of being the best peacekeepers in the world and this reputation is well deserved.
From Korea, Cambodia, the Golan Heights, Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda Canadians have been there and have done the job asked of them with honour, dignity and determination. They have performed above and even beyond the call of duty.
Nothing serves to show the dedication and bravery of our troops better than the rescue mission of a Romanian freighter sinking in a storm off the Atlantic coast this past weekend. A master corporal with the support of his colleagues rescued the crew in a 30-year-old helicopter despite the odds and the shortcomings of this antiquated vehicle. This helicopter lacks sufficient range, forcing the frigate to close in tightly to the distressed ship and the master corporal and his colleagues are true Canadian heroes.
Since the end of the cold war peacekeeping has changed dramatically. We have left the era of classic peacekeeping to a new era of active peace enforcing. In response to this change the Liberal government has increased Canada's peacekeeping commitments.
However, the Liberals have done this without a coherent policy. They have increased our commitment while decreasing significantly the resources they are willing to allocate to the Department of National Defence and military personnel.
This must be considered before we can determine what kind of force Canada is able to contribute to IFOR. We must also have a clear set of conditions before we commit our armed forces to a task such as this.
Reform Party members have developed such a clear set of conditions that we would like followed before committing our troops on peacekeeping and peace enforcing missions. The Reform Party's conditions are: one, all peacekeeping missions must be approved in advance by Parliament, including a proposed budget; two, the belligerents must signify their genuine willingness to settle their conflict peacefully; three, the mandate, duration and rules of engagement must be specified and adequate command and control must be in place, sufficient resources must be available to do the job; four, Canada must be included in any diplomatic negotiations; five, rules governing troop rotation must be established and adhered to.
As it stands right now the Liberal government has not been forthcoming with information to determine whether these conditions are being met.
Today we are debating the issue of contributing to the NATO peace enforcing mission in Bosnia. However, this is only a take note debate. Parliament will make no decisions here today. The government has already made the decision.
The United States has made it known that Canada is contributing between 1,200 and 1,500 troops. Twenty-two Canadians were sent to Bosnia on Saturday with other NATO forces to begin the preparations for the main NATO force. The Canadian people had no voice in this decision.
Canadians will not know whether the belligerents are genuine about peace until they sign a formal agreement scheduled for December 14. This is not a done deal. The leader of the Bosnian Serbs has already served notice that he is not happy with the accord and he has warned of bloodshed over Sarajevo.
While supporting all peace efforts in Bosnia, I have a number of military concerns this government must take into consideration before sending our troops to Bosnia. Before we make a commitment to IFOR we must first assess whether our land forces have the personnel, the equipment, and the resources necessary to contribute to the IFOR mission; second, whether our land forces are facing a morale problem; and third, whether questions on leadership raised by the Somalia inquiry should be addressed prior to a deployment of this nature.
For the past 25 years the Canadian Armed Forces have been abused politically and financially by governments to the point where our forces are in disarray. They are quickly becoming ineffective in taking on missions asked of them by the government. This is not an indictment of our military personnel who shoulder the burden of these commitments, but it is a condemnation of successive governments that have failed to provide effective leadership and resources to the Department of National Defence. Our armed forces are at the edge not of technology or effectiveness, but at the edge of survival as a fighting force.
The 1995 budget of the Liberal government has cut the defence budget to the point of calling into question whether our land forces are capable of sustaining any combat role. To the Minister of Finance I say that there is a point at which armed forces must be funded to remain viable. We have hit that point. Yet the Department of National Defence is bracing itself for more cuts at a time when our government finally is calling on them to do a job they should have been equipped to do in the first place.
No other country has neglected its armed forces as much as Canada. In the early 1960s our armed forces totalled over 120,000. Today the Liberal government is reducing that number to some 60,000. Yet the demand on our armed forces has remained the same. And the demand on our military personnel will only increase as the new world order unfolds.
Our whole army is approximately 23,000 people, which is smaller than the metropolitan Toronto police force. In fact we could take the whole army and march it into B.C. Place Stadium to watch a football game and there would still be room for thousands of additional spectators.
In addition, our armed forces have been almost demilitarized. The government has trained and equipped our land forces for classical peacekeeping based on lightly armed troops. Leaders are being taught the wrong lessons, which could result in a disaster when faced with a serious combat situation. This is at a time when classical peacekeeping is required less and less.
Peacekeeping missions are now peace enforcing missions, requiring the skills and equipment our government has neglected. The Liberals have based their security policy on peacekeeping alone, at the expense of our combat readiness and conventional capabilities.
Being trained and equipped to act as a peacekeeping force is a far cry from stepping into a conventional combat role. This is what the Liberals are asking of our land forces today. Due to the Liberal government's procrastination, our 30-year old armoured personnel carriers will not be replaced until 1997. The land forces lack critical support infrastructure such as logistics and medical.
I would like to quote from a recent study by the Conference of Defence Associations. They state:
-the Armed Forces are in fact a facade, or a three-dimensional chess board, in which many pieces are missing from the main board, and almost none exist at all on the lower supporting boards.
If the Liberals send our land forces on this IFOR combat mission to Bosnia, we may be asking our land forces to pay the price for the lack of government leadership they have had. No wonder morale in the Canadian Armed Forces is at its all time low. The Minister of National Defence in his rhetoric blames the low morale on the Reform Party. However, the attack on our armed forces by the Liberal government is responsible for the low morale. This in turn has its own cost on operational ability in our land forces. For the past three years they have been forced to rotate 3,000 personnel on UN missions every six months. To many, this may not sound like very much. Many states can field such a force without difficulty. But because of the size of our modest land forces, successive rotations of 3,000 troops is a significant burden.
In fact it is a burden that normal training, which is imperative before any mission, has ground to a halt. Our land forces have been forced to scramble to be able to put together the personnel and the units to fulfil the commitments the government has obliged them to do.
Sadly, the Minister of National Defence blames again, of course, the Reform Party, the only party that is looking out for the interests of our troops, for the problems of his own making. The minister is responsible for the morale problems and should not pass the buck in this cowardly manner.
The morale problem is well documented. For example, an August 1995 chaplains' report states that we are seriously taxing the morale necessary to remain a competent force. It states that rapid successions of deployments requiring the members to continually be away from their families must be balanced with adequate time at home. Stress levels are at all time high, resulting in breakdown of the family and other serious problems.
I am gravely concerned that the government will commit a significant number of our land forces personnel to Bosnia without taking the morale issue of the rotation of our troops into consideration. We cannot rely on land forces reserves to take up the slack. We need them to help the regulars maintain operational strength during their UN tours. While this was occurring, the Minister of National Defence announced the number of militia reserves was being cut by some 6,000.
The rapid succession of deployments is not the only factor that is reducing morale and operational effectiveness. The Somalia inquiry has raised a number of questions regarding the leadership of our forces as well. The leadership problems have been documented extensively by senior officers in the Canadian forces. For example, one report last March states that there is a grave lack of confidence in the senior defence hierarchy among the rank and file. The report states that there is a widespread belief in the Canadian Armed Forces that political agendas and careerism have replaced leadership in the defence hierarchy. The report discusses the perception among soldiers that the loyalty and focus of senior officers is directed upwards, and not downwards to the rank and file. It criticizes how leaders appear hypersensitive to human rights and political correctness at the expense of building the warrior ethic in soldiers. The report states that soldiers perceive that their interests
and welfare are being sacrificed so that senior leaders can be successful in delivering the same bang for the buck.
It is ill advised for the government to consider sending combat troops to Bosnia, given the seriousness of this problem and the fact that the Somalia inquiry investigating the chain of command will not issue a report and recommendations until June 1996.
The government should seriously consider the current state of land forces before committing them to this combat mission. I stress this is not the classical peacekeeping to which Canadians have become accustomed, nor are our land forces trained and equipped. Our whole land force has spent the last three years training for peacekeeping deployments. They lack the equipment and the resources. Morale is low and there are questions about leadership that must be addressed. This is not the time to send them on a mission for which they are ill prepared.
