Mr. Speaker, sometimes in this House a very special thing happens and that is a feeling of unanimity about a particular issue. This is certainly one of them.
I would like to commend my colleague, the member for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca. Within all of our lives there are defining events. Clearly this has happened in the life of my colleague where he has been involved in this issue at a very personal level.
With your indulgence, Mr. Speaker, I would like to read a column he had written that appeared in the Financial Post on Tuesday, May 21, 1996. He writes:
For those who survive, the horror often begins with an ominous click as the detonator is triggered. It is followed by a deafening roar and having your body catapulted through the air. The result is either death, or a life of destitution in a developing country where people who are disabled occupy the lowest social rung in a land of poverty and despair.
In January 1992, Tomas Chiluba was a strong and fit 18-year-old Mozambican fleeing his country, a land wracked by 15 years of civil war. Just before arriving at the South African border and the hope of a new and better life, Tomas heard that fateful click. He was dragged into the hospital 18 hours later. The explosion had torn into his legs, ripping the flesh off his left leg, while shattering the bones and sending mine fragments and bone shards into his right leg. For the next three hours we amputated his left leg above the knee and tried, as best we could, to remove dead tissue, dirt and mine fragments from the good leg in the hope of salvaging it. Thousands of times each year, far from the prying eyes of the world community, this tragic scenario is played out.
The international community convened in Geneva earlier this month-
-that was in May of this year-
-to deal with this silent menace. Sadly, only marginal progress was made with calls for the use of "smart" mines (a real oxymoron) that self-destruct only 90% of the time, and the prohibition of plastic anti-personnel mines. Canada called for an international ban but refused to do the same domestically citing that land mines are essential to our troops in the field. However, this argument has been effectively dispelled by a number of studies, the latest by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The time has now come for our country to take a stand. We have significant moral suasion in the international community and it is time we took a leadership role by banning their production and use in Canada. This will send a clear message for other countries to follow suit.
Land mines have been with us for decades and have become a long lasting and lethal by-product of war. Sixty-nine countries harbour over 100 million of them in their soil, their precise location unknown. Indiscriminately seeded over large areas, they can be active for over 50 years.
Many of the anti-personnel devices are made of plastic and are usually targeted against innocent civilians. Some are even designed to look like toys so children will pick them up, play with them, and have their arms blown off. They are not meant to kill, but to maim, the perverted logic being that a disabled person will be a continuous drain on society and therefore more costly than someone who is dead. The toll in human suffering they have exacted around the world is enormous. In Cambodia, one out of every 260 people are amputees and in Angola it is one in every 470 people.
Over 40 countries manufacture over 300 different types of mines at a cost ranging from $3 to $70. They include such nations as Italy, Sweden, Canada and paradoxically every permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The company names run like a who's who on the Fortune 500 and includes such notables as Daimler-Benz and Motorola. Even in Canada, SNC Industrial Technologies in Quebec makes the C3A2 land mine, dubbed, "little Elsie".
Although mines are cheap to produce, their removal is extremely costly and dangerous. The worldwide bill for demining is a staggering $85 billion. Who will pay for this? Last year, 85,000 mines were removed worldwide at a cost of $70 million. However, at the same time two million mines were widely and indiscriminately seeded. Thus, despite our efforts, we are losing the battle.
Above and beyond the ruined lives and huge demining costs that mines cause is their devastating effect on an economy as they render huge tracts of land unusable for decades. This is particularly sad since those countries that are mined tend to be the poorest, and have been decimated by years of civil conflict. Their starving populations, desperately in need of the land to feed themselves, cannot because of the risk of stepping on a mine. The world community recognizes this silent menace but must now organize itself to do something about it.
For the sake of Thomas Chiluba and thousands of others like him, it is imperative that we eliminate the use of land mines and anti-personnel devices worldwide. To not do so will commit thousands of young people to a life of disability, leaving a lethal legacy in impoverished countries already devastated by war. Banning them is our only option.
Those are the words of my colleague from Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca. He has proposed in Bill C-232 a very small step toward the objective of reducing and finally banning land mines. I think that his bill makes a lot of sense from the perspective that it is not grandiose. It does not say anything about our country as a country. It does not say anything about armed personnel. It does not say anything about armament in bases around the world. But what it does say is that:
Every person commits an offence who sells, offers for sale, gives, barters or exports
(a) a mine; or
(b) an object or device that the person, on reasonable grounds, believes
(i) is designed exclusively for use in the manufacture of or assembly into a mine, or
(ii) will be used in the manufacture of or assembly into a mine.
(2) subject to subsection (3), every person commits an offence who purchases, possesses, manufactures, assembles or imports a mine or an object or device referred to in paragraph 1(b) above.
The bill makes sense in that it talks about putting this into the Criminal Code so that we at least take one small baby step, on whole legs, toward the objectives that we have of seeing land mines banned.
Once again I would ask for unanimous consent of the House that Bill C-252 be sent to committee at this time.