Mr. Speaker, the first time I heard about the convention and anti-personnel mines was when I was having discussions with colleagues at the Université libre in Brussels. Professors and students in international law were calling for the elimination of these “instruments of death”, as they were already calling them at the beginning of this decade.
This is an issue that I became involved in, as did everyone who was calling for disarmament, everyone who was following, in Vienna and elsewhere, the conferences organized to bring the international community to abandon the instruments of death such as nuclear arms, smaller arms, mines of all types and especially anti-personnel mines.
However, I still had not seen personally what these instruments of death were until I went with my colleagues in this House to Bosnia-Hercegovina several weeks ago, where we were briefed on several occasions on these mines, on how they operate, on the way they kill and the way they endanger human life. It was a rather moving experience and one that showed how important it was to support the international community's objective of banning the production and use of these mines.
These facts helped me convince the members of our party, the Bloc Quebecois, to support the initiative of the Minister of External Affairs and to ensure that our party would give its support to the convention as it is outlined today in the Canadian legislation.
Increased awareness of this in Canada and abroad issue must not, however, lead us to forget that this convention is an unfinished creation and will undoubtedly remain so. The debate we witnessed today in this House reveals how much we live in a system where democracy has its failings when it comes to signing such a convention and implementing it in domestic law. I would like to take a few minutes to discuss each of these issues.
This convention will most likely be signed by over 100 countries on December 3 and 4. Apparently, some 120 countries will be in Ottawa to sign this convention. But there are 191 countries in the international community and at least 70 states will not be there, 70 states that have not yet committed to eliminating these mines.
And also the states who will be signing the convention will have to become parties to this convention and to ensure that their legislature or their government will ratify or endorse it. Among the states that are still hesitating to support this convention, there are three members of the Security Council, that is the United States, Russia and China, which are some of the most powerful nations in the world and which refuse to come to Ottawa or buy into the Ottawa process.
Therefore, this work is unfinished and it might remain unfinished. In that sense, the work accomplished by the Minister of Foreign Affairs is only beginning and the work of all those who supported him, including the work that is being done in this House, must continue. The Bloc Quebecois will support the initiatives taken to ensure that this convention will have an increasing impact on the international community.
However, the debate today helped illustrate how parliament and parliamentarians lack a proper voice, I would say an adequate voice, in the process by which treaties are adopted, the process by which treaties are developed and create obligations that are very important and that often entail legislation, as with this treaty, by which treaty obligations can be implemented.
We presented this afternoon an amendment which sought to determine to what extent the government was willing to commit itself to a democratization of the process by which treaties are concluded. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of External Affairs was speaking earlier of the democratization of external relations that had been witnessed by the international community with the adoption of this treaty, which involves not only governments but also non-government organizations, which of course work in partnership with international bodies. It is time to also democratize the process by which states participate in international negotiations and in the conclusion of international treaties.
The Bloc Quebecois therefore attempted to determine in what frame of mind the Minister of External Affairs was operating in this area, and it found out that this issue did not create as much interest as it should, although it will be raised when the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade meets. The Bloc Quebecois hopes that, at that time, there will be a real debate leading to important changes to the this process.
In this case, therefore, by the end of the day we will have a bill, one we have sought to enrich by constructive proposals aimed at improving the implementing legislation. This will be a bill for implementation of a convention with which the Bloc Quebecois is basically in agreement, a convention which will bind Canada, when it has signed and ratified the convention, and which will one day, I am sure, bind the sovereign Quebec so wished for by the Bloc Quebecois, in accordance with the requirements of international law which will be applicable when the State of Quebec state attains sovereignty.
In conclusion, this treaty and this act will be a source of pride for the international community next week. It is true that the Minister of Foreign Affairs has shared with his colleagues, and with those in this House, the glory involved in getting this convention signed, but it is the international community that will benefit from it. It is the men, women and children of the world who will be the main beneficiaries, for their basic rights, the most fundamental one being the right to life, will be better protected by this convention.
Humanity will be the beneficiary of this convention, a humanity composed of the men and women whom states and nations have a duty to protect at all times, including when treaties are signed. I would like to use the words of a great internationalist, one that Professor Jacques-Yvan Morin, an academic colleague of mine and a professor of international law known in political circles, having been a minister and deputy premier in Quebec, has a predilection for quoting. In fact, he quoted him in his 1994 course at the academy of international law. The quotationis from Bartholomé de Las Casas, the great internationalist, who said “ Todas las naciones son hombres ”.