Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour for me to stand on behalf of the New Democratic Party to speak in support of our country's initiative to ban land mines.
This treaty is a testament to the power that people can have when they act together and to the positive power that governments can have when they put their minds to it.
Just one year ago most nations of the world decided that even though the economic costs were large and the military implications larger, this issue is a moral one. Anti-personnel land mines are an evil which has no place in the arsenal of modern democracy.
In Canada we are blessed with thousands of kilometres of open space. It is difficult for me to imagine living in a country where you risk crossing a unseen border with every step, the border between your life today and a life without a leg or a life without your child; where the field you and your family have tilled for generations is now a dangerous and foreign land full of hazards that could in an instant destroy lives and ruin futures; where your children cannot play in the streets or in the woods; where there is no freedom from fear.
Perhaps I feel strongly about this treaty because I am the mother of a young daughter. I read about the scores of children like her who are killed or maimed every day by mines. I read about mines made with brightly coloured plastic or cloth designed to attract children, designed to kill children. Designs like these have no place in the world I want for my daughter.
In Canada and other first world countries we spend a lot of time talking about rights and duties and codes of acceptable behaviour. At the same time we have allowed our governments to manufacture and export land mines, weapons whose only purpose is to cripple and to maim. That is the worst sort of hypocrisy.
Since 1868 and the St. Petersburg declaration which outlawed weapons which uselessly aggravate suffering, through to the Geneva convention which banned the use of terror against non-combatants, governments have worked long and hard to make sure that human lives are spared the painful excesses of modern military technology. But they have worked simultaneously to advance that technology, to make it possible to develop devices like the gravel mine I talked about a minute ago, a mine that includes the following line in its owners manual: “They are especially effective against inquisitive children. They make life difficult for rural communities without endangering troops and armoured vehicles”.
How about the wide area anti-personnel mine. These are dropped from aircraft and throw out eight fine threads which then act as trip wires. Anyone who steps on any of the trip wires sets off the mines and lethal pellets scatter over an area of 60 metres. Mines have been filled with flechettes, small and irregularly shaped scraps that embed themselves deep in the victim's flesh. Some are made of plastic, not because it is cheaper but because the plastic will not show up on X-rays. A surgeon has to gouge blindly inside the patient's body. A recent innovation has been to tip the pellets with depleted uranium so victims will also suffer from radiation poisoning.
This is what the governments of the world have been working on in their labs while the leaders preach peace and compassion.
This treaty is a huge step forward, a step on to safer ground. We are not free from danger yet. Until the superpowers have the courage to sign this treaty and the United States has the courage to accept the ban wholeheartedly, we know that every day for decades to come more lives will be shattered by mines.
Every year in Europe a few mines left over from the second world war explode, killing yet more people. That war ended over 50 years ago. Since then more mines have been laid than ever. Countries like Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Angola and Bosnia are carpeted with bombs that will take decades to clear. During those decades more families were broken. This is a fact and one we cannot escape, but we can reflect on it and do our best to make sure the cycle of violence and death is broken.
The United Nations has done excellent work co-ordinating mine clearing projects around the world but that work is useless unless we, members of the governments of the world, promise to ourselves and our children that we will stop adding to the stockpile. Making that promise means more than speeches in the House of Commons. It means applying the full moral weight of our nation to those countries that still insist land mines are a vital part of their defences.
It is ironic that today the leaders of the APEC nations are gathered in Vancouver hosted by our Prime Minister. The leaders of China and the United States both have refused to sign this treaty. Yesterday U.S. President Bill Clinton at least had the courage to congratulate Canada and urged us to move forward with the treaty. Meanwhile the Chinese government, which is responsible for a large percentage of the global manufacture and export of mines, has refused to sign the treaty and even to discuss signing the treaty.
It is truly a positive step for this Liberal government to have initiated this treaty. I want to extend sincere thanks from the NDP caucus to our Minister of Foreign Affairs for his diligent work to make this treaty a reality. It shows what governments can do when they decide to make a positive difference. My only regret is that it often seems the minister is a lone voice in this administration pushing for a more moral and humane approach to foreign affairs. While he pressures the Chinese and tries to take them to task for their refusal to meet the standards of international decency, other government leaders are wining and dining the Chinese president in Vancouver.
I am just one person whose voice has joined the global chorus calling for the abolition of land mines. There are tens of thousands of others, including the winners of this year's Nobel peace prize and many other individuals, groups and governments. I would also like to mention the efforts made by the British Labour government and Prime Minister Tony Blair who have shown what a moral government with the courage to use its authority can do. For them banning land mines is part of the moral philosophy of social democracy just as it is for us in the NDP caucus. It is part and parcel of our belief in human dignity and international co-operation.
This issue has to be put in a larger context. Land mines are an obvious and unquestionably evil expression of man's inhumanity to man, but there are others just as evil that receive little or no attention from the world's leaders. To be brutal, why ban land mines if there are no hospitals to treat children with measles? Why replace death from shrapnel wounds with death from malaria, with death from cold or hunger?
This treaty must be a first step, but the fact that I can rise in this House to discuss the issue that our government has been the author of a civilized page in the global book of laws remains a credit to this government. We are creating a new law for the civilized countries of the world and that is a worthy thing. On behalf of the people of my riding, of my party and for myself and my daughter Kayla, I thank all the people who made this treaty a reality.