Mr. Speaker, from the killing fields of Passchendaele to the bloated corpses of Kurdish people in Iraq, to the people we have seen dead and dying in the streets of Japan, chemical weapons have come to each and every one of us in our lives.
Bill C-87 is something we as Canadians should be very proud of as it enable us to implement our convention on the banning of these weapons of mass destruction. It also shows a unique amount of leadership that Canada and Canadians have demonstrated, a degree of leadership I might add that shows what we as Canadians can do in foreign policy if we put our minds to it.
I thank those members in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade who have worked extraordinarily hard to implement this very important piece of legislation, not only for Canada and Canadians but also for people across the world. As I hearken back to my original example, all of us in the House today and all Canadians hope that such tragedies will not occur in the future.
This is a landmark deal. I also thank a couple of members of the riding of Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, Mr. Bob McCrossen and Mr. Ken Conrad, who have given me invaluable information on these and other policy matters.
This convention had a number of sectors and dealt with schedules 1, 2 and 3 dealing with various chemicals. Schedule 1 deals with chemicals that are known to be chemical weapons such as tabun and sarin. Schedules 2 and 3 deal with precursors. There are varying degrees of compliance among them but it enables our country and other countries to monitor each other in a co-operative fashion to ensure that no country within the international community is building up chemicals or precursors to chemical weapons that can be used for aggressive and belligerent purposes.
One of the most remarkable aspects of the bill is the degree of co-operation. If we look at just one aspect of it, it enables countries to look at other countries and demand spot checks on the countries if they are suspected of developing, producing or stockpiling chemical weapons for aggressive and military purposes. It enables the international community to go in there, investigate and demand the chemicals be apprehended and destroyed as is.
The consequences of not doing so are significant for the country that chooses not to obey. In this instance when the implications of using chemical weapons are so severe it is important to see that the international community finally has its act together and is able to penalize countries that engage in these activities.
The industries that produce chemicals have appeared before the committee on foreign affairs, on which I sit, to give their wholehearted support for the bill. That is important to know. We in the House do not want to impede or compromise in any way, shape or form the ability of the chemical producers of Canada to engage in the peaceful production of chemicals for industrial purposes, a very important aspect of the industry.
There was a level of co-operation shown in the production of this convention that has not been seen since the end of the second world war. My hope is that we can learn something from this in the application to other aspects of threats to the international security that are occurring in the world now.
I have two examples on the aspect of the international stage that are a major threat to the international security not only for countries half a world away but also, believe it or not, for our country.
One example is the trafficking of small arms. The trafficking of small arms in this world of ours moving from one area of conflict to another has fanned the flames of ethnic discontent. It has given the fuel to enable people to fight ethnic conflicts where 90 per cent of the time it is the civilians who bear the brunt of these wars. They serve very little purpose.
Although people might say they have a right to buy and sell weapons, it is not the same as buying and selling wheat. These seemingly innocuous trades have an enormous impact not only on the conflicts in question but also on countries such as ours which are not directly involved in it. Why is that so? Because it causes the migration of individuals away from conflicts to areas that do not have conflict. It means that people are going to move to our country. I am sure if we put ourselves in those people's shoes we would see that they want to live in their homeland. They do not want to move to an area half a world away. These people in moving to our country will then cause an economic stress on our social programs.
The second thing is that conflicts half a world away put a stress on our military and on our foreign aid dollar. No matter what we do, if we go into a country and spend decades building up its infrastructure and a civil conflict occurs in that country, all of what we and other countries have done to build a peaceful and productive society will be dashed on the rocks for generations to come. We can see that now in the former Yugoslavia, in
Angola and in Mozambique. The list goes on and on. In fact the list is getting longer all the time.
There were over 40 ethnic conflicts in the world last year. The numbers are not getting lower they are getting higher. In part, small arms are what fuel the flames of that. I ask if Canada can take a leadership role, the same leadership role we demonstrated in producing the convention on banning chemical weapons, in developing some restrictions or framework in the trafficking of small arms for our benefit and for the benefit of countries the world over.
A disturbing thing came across my desk late last week. It shows that in Rwanda the French in collusion with the Government of Zaire have been selling arms to the former Hutu government living in the camps in Zaire. This means that the French are selling arms to the rebels and the rebels, over 50,000 strong, are getting ready to go into Rwanda to continue the killing.
I say that because it is very important. They are not only destabilizing Rwanda but they are destabilizing the eastern part of Zaire and are fuelling the flames of ethnic discontent in Burundi also. What we have seen for the last two years in central Africa is going to repeat itself unless we ask the international community through the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity to get involved and defuse the situation before it gets out of hand.
The other aspect in which I would like us to take a leadership role is the banning of land mines and anti-personnel devices. These devices have no significant role in fighting a war. They are primarily meant to destabilize the civilian population and are not meant to kill but to maim. Usually they are meant to maim civilians who work in the fields and children. Many of these anti-personnel devices are in fact designed to look like toys. When the children pick them up they get their arms or legs blown off. That is what they are used for.
I would ask that we take a leadership role in asking for the land mines and the anti-personnel devices to be put in the convention for conventional weapons and put in a similar category to chemical weapons. If we did that we would do a great service by saving hundreds of thousands of lives and preventing injuries. We would also be able to prevent the situation we see now which is that after a conflict finishes large areas of many countries are left completely uninhabitable. I will give a couple of recent examples.
In Chechnya there are literally millions of mines seeded around the country and absolutely nobody knows where they are. Therefore large tracts of land in Chechnya are going to be completely uninhabitable.
In Mozambique thousands and thousands of square kilometres of land are completely uninhabitable. People cannot go into the fields to grow crops to get their economic house in order because of the land mines. That completely diminishes the ability of a country to get on its economic feet after a civil conflict is over.
In Croatia the Croatians say that over a quarter of a million hectares are completely uninhabitable because they are seeded indiscriminately with land mines and anti-personnel devices.
The justification is as I have described before. Let us get together and work with the United Nations to look at those two areas. This is not only in our interests but in the interests of the international community as well.
As I said before, the model we can use is this convention, the convention on banning the stockpiling, use and production of chemical weapons and the degree of international co-operation we have seen here. It is a truly remarkable degree of co-operation. If we as a country can work with our Nordic compatriots to influence other multinational organizations, such as the United Nations, and the regional groups, such as the OAU, the OAS and the OSCE, and show them it is in their self-interests to put restrictions on the purchase, sale and production of small arms and look toward banning anti-personnel devices and mines, then we might be able to make some headway in this area.
I would also like to address the aspect of preventive diplomacy. I have spoken to the Minister of Foreign Affairs about this on a number of occasions. The minister said that yes, we will get involved by sending some of our diplomats across and that we will try to influence other countries and in co-operation with them send rapid deployment forces into areas where fighting has started. I would say that is too late. We usually find that the antecedents to conflict are on the boards at least two years before a conflict blows up.
There are things we can do to prevent these conflicts from occurring. Let us use the UN crisis centre more effectively. We need to build up a network all across the world of groups, individuals and NGOs that can funnel information into the UN crisis centre. The UN crisis centre could then produce briefs which would be made public every month as to what is occurring in the hot spots. The United Nations, which again would require a new level of co-operation, could then act on these situations to try to get a diplomatic solution rather than having them solved at the end of an assault rifle.
There are some things which we have not looked at aggressively. One of the things is to use the IFIs as an economic lever to bring belligerents to the table before they start fighting it out. These are things which have not been looked at before.
The other aspect is to withhold non-humanitarian aid from countries. By doing that we can force them to engage in behaviours consistent with common international norms. Again we try to offset the conflict by engaging in a diplomatic solution. If we allow a conflict to occur the seeds of ethnic hatred are sown for generations to come. It does not end at the end of the
conflict; rather, it continues for generations to come. We will all collectively pay for it in the future.
We cannot keep getting involved in conflict after conflict. We do not have the power, we do not have the will, and rightly so, and we do not have the money or the resources to do it. Perhaps through the leadership which we have demonstrated by implementing the convention on chemical weapons we can use the lessons we have learned here and bring Australia, New Zealand, Sweden and Norway together to influence the multinational organizations. If multinational organizations are going to continue to function in the way they have been since the end of the second world war, we will get the same results we have been getting since that time which are totally unacceptable.
We need a paradigm shift in the way we deal with the new threats we are going to have in the international community in foreign policy. As one of the few countries in the world that can take a leadership role in this, I ask that we engage in this not only for the benefit of the international community but also for the benefit of Canadians.