moved that Bill C-252, an act to amend the Criminal Code (mines), be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure today to speak on my private member's bill, Bill C-252, an act to amend the Criminal Code relating to mines.
This bill deals with an epidemic that we have in our midst which is affecting over 60 countries in the world. It is an epidemic which kills over 25,000 people every year. It is an epidemic which harms over three times that many people. It is an epidemic primarily designed to kill and maim innocent civilians, often children. The epidemic I am talking about is the epidemic of anti-personnel land mines.
This scourge affects many countries and often the poorest countries of the world. It is often spoken of on the same level as biological and chemical weapons. These heinous devices, these heinous silent killers which lay underneath the ground beside trees, on walking paths, beside watering holes and in fields are devices which violate virtually every single tenet of humanitarian law. They are in effect by their very nature, by the way in which they are used and by whom they affect, illegal. Yet there are in the world today countries which still use them, countries which produce them and countries which sell them.
The purpose of this bill is to give Canada a leadership role in banning anti-personnel land mines. To the credit of the government, it has placed a moratorium on land mines. It has also destroyed two-thirds of its stockpile. That is a move in the right direction. If we are calling for an international ban on anti-personnel mines which we have been doing, we must first take a leadership role in banning them domestically. It is disingenuous for us to call for a ban of these mines internationally on the one hand and on the other not do the same within Canada. It is a shame
because these weapons are not necessary, from a military or any other perspective. I will get to that later on in my speech.
There are two different kinds of these mines. There are blast mines which when stepped on blow up. There are fragmentation mines which contain pieces of shrapnel and metal one of which elevates itself above the ground to rip out a core and affect people perhaps in a 50 or 60 yard radius from where the mine has blown up.
The fragmentation mines shoot out projectiles at rapid speed which can tear into a person's bowels, legs, groin, chest, eyes and face. The blast mines can take off a limb. Perversely, these devices are not meant to kill but are actually meant to maim. The perverted logic behind this is that a person who is injured is a greater problem to society at large than somebody who is killed and removed from society.
Most of these mines are laid in battlefields. Most of them are laid in the poorest nations of the world. The mines are also used for a number of other different purposes. They are used to terrorize. They are used as blackmail. They are used to starve people. The Khmer Rouge used them very effectively in Cambodia. They would lay mines around the fields and say to the people that they could only get back into their fields if they paid them money. The Iraqis used them very effectively to starve the Kurds.
These mines, as I have said before, affect the poorest nations of the world. When a war is over and people want to go back into the fields they cannot do so because of the mines. This continues the cycle of starvation and destitution within these nations.
The mines are also used in a number of other heinous ways which is well known to the people here. Over 40 countries in the world manufacture mines and the list of companies that make them reads like the Who's Who of Fortune 500 . In fact if we look at the nations that make them, we find sadly that those who claim to be the leaders in peace at the United Nations Security Council are those who are the greatest producers of land mines in the world. It is important to know that. The list includes companies such as Daimler-Benz, Daiwa and many others that can be found in Fortune 500 .
Many of these devices are often designed to look like little toys. The reason they are designed to look like toys is that children will pick them up and their arms will be blown off.
My personal experience with land mines occurred when I was working on the Mozambique border in southern Africa during the war in Mozambique. It was usually young people, adolescents, children, youth, who had their limbs blown off. If you have ever looked into the eyes of somebody who is sitting on a hospital bed with one of their limbs torn to pieces and fragmentations embedded in various parts of their body, knowing full well that that the person is going to die or at best live a life of utter poverty and destitution, then you cannot arrive at any other conclusion but that these devices must be banned.
In fact looking at the current conventional wisdom, the Pentagon has called for a ban of these devices. Twenty-two top military brass in the United States have called for a ban. Canadians have called for a ban. The international community has called for a ban, yet we do not have a ban. Furthermore our country has not called for a ban.
The International Committee of the Red Cross put forth a very eloquent document which looked at the use of land mines purely from a military perspective. It was done by 12 top military brass including General Itani, a Canadian. The outcome was they said that there was no legitimate military use for anti-personnel land mines in the 1990s and there would not be in the future. They strongly recommended that these devices be banned.
Within 24 hours that document was supported by another 24 top military brass. Within 48 hours, 72 top military brass supported it, including General Norman Schwarzkopf and our own General Lewis MacKenzie.
The primary reason for keeping land mines within our arsenal comes from the military, from a very archaic view of the use of mines. Unfortunately that is the view that is being held sway within our country today and that needs to change.
I am greatly disappointed that this bill which in effect has been supported by members across this House and in fact in the Senate was not made votable. There have been dozens and dozens of interventions by members from the government, the Bloc, the Conservative Party, the NDP and Reform Party to ban anti-personnel land mines in Canada. There are even senators from all party lines who desperately want this to occur. There is no reason this bill should not have been made votable so that the House and the people of this country could vote on this very important humanitarian issue.