Mr. Speaker, this has been not merely a valuable debate but an innovatory debate in Constitutional law of Parliament terms.
It was intended by the United Stated Constitution, to which some of the members of opposition parties referred, that questions of peace and war and commitment of armed forces be always submitted to Congress for decision.
We know that historically American presidents evaded that in invoking presidential power. What is fascinating here today is that we have come to Parliament. We are consulting Parliament on the renewal of the mandate and we have established a parliamentary practice that will not likely be changed in the future.
It will now be part of our constitutional law that where there is a commitment to be made of Canadian forces, it will be more than a telephone call at 5 a.m. from a foreign head of government and a Canadian Prime Minister replying yes sir, without any thought of the roles and missions of the forces to which he is committing Canada.
There are mistakes here and we can identify them readily if we survey the history of peacekeeping in its classical form as developed by our then foreign minister, Lester Pearson, for which he won the Nobel prize for the interposition of unarmed UN forces between armed combatants who had decided to cease operations and were looking for a face saving way out of it.
The classic situation was in Suez in 1956. It was muddied in the Congo in 1960-61 when the secretary-general of the United Nations in moves that ultimately brought his own destruction and death interjected political motives that had not been cleared in advance. Many of us would believe they were the correct political decisions but the political motive intervenes.
If we look at the two operations in recent years in which we have been most involved, Croatia and Somalia, we find operations in which the political commitment was made to engage Canadian peacekeeping forces but without a prior adequate definition of goals and missions.
This is the tragedy in Somalia. A classic peacekeeping operation was converted into a mission with political objectives, arguable and even questionable because they ignored the existing power structure there which was necessary to the effective operation of the UN forces.
In Croatia conflicting political agendas had been set by European powers that were in some respects reviving their old quarrels of pre-1914. I would not wish to censor the government that made these decisions without prior discussion in Parliament, without prior examination of the roles and missions in which we are engaged, but it is clear there was a fault there.
Our real issue today is that Canada entered into operations, engaged our forces, engaged our word as a nation and we are bound by that commitment in terms of consequences. We cannot lightly walk away. In other words, a new political situation is created by our act however much the present government and opposition parties might wish to question the original political premises on which the predecessor government engaged Canada.
I have some suggestions to make in terms of the continued operation of the Canadian peace forces in Croatia. It is clear if we ought to be there it is to be in a classic peacekeeping sense. We are not there as a chapter seven of the charter, a peacemaking operation in which we have a defined political goal that involves the application of military force for its achievement.
This was never our role. It is not our role today. It may well be the objective of some of the people presently engaged in the same operation. One of the problems here is the problem of state succession to the former communist republic of Yugoslavia. It was about to break up, as Turkey was in the 19th century. It created the predecessor of Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro. It was a situation of state succession in which European powers met together and realized that one cannot have recognition of new states without a precise and equitable definition of frontiers.
That was not done here and in a very real sense it is a mistake to attempt it under the guise of a peacekeeping operation. Therefore our message to the government should be that the predecessor government engaged Canada in the operation. We cannot in good faith walk away. We are responsible in measure for what has happened since. We should limit our responsibility to the UN mandate, the maintenance of a political military situation created by the parties, agreed on by the parties as a cease fire and no more.
If there is to be an issue of political goals to be established, we should call for another congress of Berlin. The treaty of Versailles to which we are signatory, our first international act, establishes just such a machinery.
If it is to be a matter of defining frontiers, let us have a larger European conference of which we are part. Let us get those frontiers defined. Do not try to do this under cover of a military peacekeeping operation. Do not charge our soldiers with the responsibility of making political decisions. It is beyond their special competence. It is beyond their mandate. It is manifestly unfair to them.
I say congratulations to the government for establishing what I hope will become a precedent that before Canadian forces are committed we will bring the matter to Parliament. Second, we will insist on maintaining respect for the UN charter and respect for UN peacekeeping operations as defined in chapter six.