Mr. Speaker, I thank the House for its consideration. I very much appreciate entering into this debate on Haiti.
The people of Haiti have endured over 150 years of tyranny, bloodshed and destitution under successive dictators and bloody regimes. However, the Haiti we see today on the eve of the U.S. pull-out is not much different from the Haiti of the last 150 years. There is still a desperate population and an economy in ruins.
In this land that teeters between anarchy and hope we have been asked by the United Nations to take over from the United States in managing the peacekeeping force. However, the role the United Nations has completed there is far from complete.
I am very disappointed in the government for bringing this debate to the House in a less than meaningful fashion. If this debate is to be meaningful it has to be votable. The people of Canada through us as their elected representatives must have the right to have these issues debated and voted on so their democratic rights can be exercised. They must know when, if and how their sons, daughters, husbands and wives will be sent to far off lands to potentially lay their lives down in the name of peace.
There is no question in my mind that we should engage in this role for a number of reasons. It is our responsibility with Haiti lying within our sphere of geopolitical influence. The consequences of inaction are huge. As my colleague from Swift Current-Maple Creek-Assiniboia mentioned, if we do not act on this and Haiti descends into anarchy and bloodshed, there will be a mass migration of people to other shores, not to mention the basic humanitarian needs of these impoverished individuals for which we as Canadians are known to champion.
Conditional on our involvement is that a few questions must be answered: first, the length of stay; second, we must have parameters in terms of the cost of the involvement; third, we must have a well defined mandate. These three principles should be applied to any subsequent peacekeeping operation we as a country dare to entertain.
I have some suggestions for the Minister of Foreign Affairs. President René Préval cannot govern properly and bring peace to his country if he cannot govern safely. Therefore law and order must be restored to Haiti.
We must engage in training a constabulary in the form of a police force. The United States was engaging in training these individuals not as a police force but as a military force. That is a can of worms that will explode in its face.
There must be a stable judiciary in Haiti, and this is where Canada can involve the United Nations and the World Court in helping to train a fair, equitable and democratic judiciary in Haiti.
We must have a demilitarization of the army and paramilitary groups. As we look at the history of Haiti in the last 150 years, successive paramilitary/military groups have wreaked havoc in that country and have driven it repeatedly into a state of utter destitution and bloodshed.
We need the help of the United States. That is why we should take the request of President Préval and ask the United States to stay on for another six months. We will need it for that and also for a number of other interventions if peace is to take hold in Haiti for the long term.
We have to stop the shipments of arms that are clandestinely taking place into Haiti. This has a huge destabilizing effect on the country. We have to utilize international financial institutions, the World Bank and the IMF, to involve an integrated international approach for restructuring the economy in Haiti. If there is not a viable economy in Haiti, then there is a desperate people. If there is a desperate people, there is anarchy, bloodshed and it ends up exactly where it started.
One may argue this is a heavy handed approach but even with President Aristide before President Préval, moneys given to Haiti for aid and development went into the pockets of corrupt officials and were spent in a completely useless fashion. It will require very much an interventionist approach from the international financial institutions to make sure that economic restructuring and moneys designated for economic restructuring go where they are supposed to.
The restructuring of this land will be complex and will involve the multifactorial approach with the IFIs and the Organization of American States, as the secretary of state mentioned earlier. We need to take a leadership role in this because nobody is actually pushing these groups to take this multifactorial approach. We should be pushing these groups to do that for the long term.
This issue is too large for any one country to deal with, particularly ours. We must do our part because international security, our security, is intimately entwined with the ability of international structures to provide for umbrellas of international and regional security. We cannot provide this on our own.
I recommend again that the government involve the international financial institutions with a co-ordinated plan that involves economic restructuring, internal security and the construction of good governance and democratic institutions in Haiti if it is to get on its feet in the future. If we do not, it will again descend into a bloody mess.
All one has to do to see how unbalanced this situation is is to scratch the veneer on Haiti today and see that democracy is only skin deep.
As an extension of the problem in Haiti, I warn the Minister of Foreign Affairs of an impending problem in the Caribbean, particularly germane with the shooting down last week of the two planes from United States by Cuba. Cuba will be a huge security problem for Canada if we do not act in a preventative fashion. I urge the foreign affairs minister to do all he can to convince Mr. Clinton to defeat the xenophobic rhetoric forth by Jesse Helms and Mr. Burton in the United States.
Their mandate is driven by the rich Cuban expatriate groups in the United States trying to manipulate the situation in a presidential year. It is definitely the wrong thing for the people of Cuba and definitely the wrong thing for Canada. The implications of this bill will have a widespread effect also on our companies trying to operate in Cuba in a constructive way.
The quickest way to end the destitution and the communist structure in Cuba is for Canada along with other countries in a constructive fashion to build up the economy of the middle class in Cuba. If they do not, when Mr. Castro dies there will be a power vacuum left in a country that is economically destitute, which will cause anarchy and bloodshed in exactly the same way as in Haiti.
I put that out as a warning for the minister. Again, I support what the government is doing in Haiti and I hope in future we will have further meaningful debates in the House.