Mr. Speaker, I am resuming remarks interrupted by other House business on another day and we now return to the motion of the hon. member for Fraser Valley East.
To recapitulate what I said earlier on this bill, one respects the intention and the purpose behind it. In the interim I have had the privilege of sitting as a substitute member on the all party committee on national defence. The experience reinforces the comment I made earlier. This is one of the very strong committees of the House. I was very impressed with the degree of knowledge of the members and the degree of co-operation across both sides of the table from all parties. In other words, there is a great deal of awareness in the committee of the gravity of the problem and the search for proper remedies.
That brings me back to the main point that the failure in Bosnia is a failure in foreign policy and not in the military sphere of the operation. The failure goes back to a basic criticism many contemporary historians have made that this is one of the low periods in foreign policy in the world community.
If we look at the confidence, the reaction to the events of the emerging cold war in the late forties and fifties, the very creative period in American foreign policy, in European foreign policy with Adenauer, Schuman and De Gasperi creating the European community, we are now in one of those periods in which foreign ministers simply seem unable to cope with the problems.
Returning to Bosnia, the failure was in lacking a vision of what to do with Yugoslavia once it broke up, as inevitably it was to break up. Everyone predicted this when Tito should die and Tito's regime should pass into history. We find there are alternative plans. Greater Serbia has been spoken of but there is a greater Bulgaria concept, a greater Greece concept, conflicting ambitions of Balkan powers restrained by the facts of life of the cold war and bipolarity but broke out with the breakdown of the cold war system of world public order and the new pluralism which dangerously at times comes close to anarchy.
In this area Canada has played a constructive and useful role. We were not in at the beginning on the decisions on Yugoslavia and post-communist Yugoslavia. We were not part of the contact group. To be frank, I see no point in our trying to join the contact group now. We would in effect be trying to correct errors made by European foreign ministers who should have known better.
We have to search for solutions using other arenas like CSCE, NATO, forum available to make our point. In terms of military operations, the Canadian forces have behaved with intelligence, good judgment and restraint. We have recognized that United Nations peacekeeping as devised by Prime Minister Pearson absolutely prohibits a political role. What is now talked about in contemporary international relations activities as crossing the Mogadishu line is something Canadian military men above all have always observed with proper self-restraint. We have to face the reality that our peacekeeping forces have not been developed with a view to imposing political solutions by military means. There is nothing in the training of our staff colleges that lends itself to this.
I have had the privilege of lecturing to our national defence college and the military college at various stages in my pre-parliamentary life. They are very well trained but they cannot cover the whole world. If we are to send them to Somalia to impose a political solution or to former Yugoslavia to impose a political solution the training is not there. We have behaved properly and correctly.
Counting this we have had three debates in the House on the future of peacekeeping. What emerges on the future of peacekeeping is a large interparty consensus which crosses the House that we wish to maintain the classical conception of peacekeeping. That is something we developed and which we do very well. If it is a matter of moving into peacemaking, imposing political
solutions, we have to recognize the limits of our special competence.
In countries that have connections with the former British empire, the Commonwealth and la francophonie there are special ties of culture and experience that give us perhaps the ability to make political judgments if that is what is called for. Elsewhere, it is entering unchartered seas. Therefore, the clear conclusion emerging from our debates is that we maintain peacekeeping as our function for the United Nations, that we do not get into peacemaking and that we do not cross the Mogadishu line.
In relation to the bill presented by the hon. member for Fraser Valley East, I respect the intention here but I wonder about the attempt to legislate what sensibly can be left to executive administrative judgment. In article 5(2) the Canadian forces shall not participate in any action designed to force the governor of state to leave office or to install a government other than by facilitating a democratic process in accordance with the laws of the state or a resolution of the United Nations general assembly or the United Nations security council.
We are bound by international law. Because it is one of the currently contested points before the International Court and elsewhere, it is arguable whether a United Nations general assembly or security council resolution can go beyond international law. Where it does go beyond that it is arguable it is unconstitutional in United Nations terms.
I wonder why one should try to legislate this. We are bound by common sense. The one thing emerging from the debates in the House and which any foreign minister would take note of is that Canadians do not want us to get into political ventures in the Balkans or areas where we have no special historical ties and no background of historical experience to aid our judgment. In other words, we have done very well with General MacKenzie and the people we have had there. The all party consensus is there and the defence committee reflects this. There is no need to legislate this. Good sense prevails.
This bill is taking us into an American style constitutional solution but it is unnecessary in our context. Even in the case of the United States, all the legislation in the world and the American constitution have not prevented the president of the United States making those errors of political judgment and getting involved in political military ventures overseas that go beyond the letter and, some would argue, the spirit of the constitution.
These debates on peacekeeping have been an educational experience. In many respects there have been inspiring contributions by members. The consensus is very clear that no foreign minister will take us on a creeping course into foreign military involvement. All reports of the summit meeting suggested we have exercised prudent self-restraint. Within the limits of our powers we have spoken to other foreign ministers, presidents and heads of states and have said as far as we are concerned we are peacekeepers, we cannot ourselves get involved in political-military ventures.
That is the spirit of the House. I do not think it is necessary to legislate it. However, I commend the member for Fraser Valley East for giving us yet another occasion to reaffirm a striking consensus.