Mr. Speaker, I too am pleased to take part in this debate this afternoon, which says the government should obtain the consent of two-thirds of the members of this House before revoking the mandate of a commission of inquiry. I want to congratulate the hon. member for Berthier—Montcalm for bring the motion forward. I assure him at the outset of my support of this bill.
Everyone I think knows what is behind this motion and that is the Somalia commission which the member has upper most on his mind and our minds. The Canadian peacekeeping mission to Somalia and the subsequent muzzling of the commission of inquiry by the Liberal government opposite constitute a sad and tragic episode in Canadian history.
As we know now, something went horribly wrong in Somalia. Some Canadian soldiers sent there to keep the peace became the torturers and murderers of the very people they were sent to help. I know that only a very few Canadian soldiers were involved, but we cannot deny or hide under a rug what happened there. Nor can we deny the ugly strain of racism that showed itself in at least one of our regiments stationed in Somalia.
This behaviour was appalling enough. What is even more shocking is the cover-up that occurred, a cover-up that included some of our senior defence personnel. I think it is worth recalling how we found out about the tortures and killings in Somalia and about the cover-up.
We first learned about it through some enterprising news reporters. I congratulate members of my former profession and I would single out Michael MacAuliffe from CBC radio for bringing this unsavoury information to light in this country. We learned more when soldiers with a conscience blew the whistle as well. Throughout all this the upper echelons of the military establishment continued to stonewall and, even worse, to destroy some documents and tamper with others. We were not getting the full story on Somalia, so in 1994 the Liberal government named a commission of inquiry.
Initially the Liberals were great truth seekers and democrats. One might summarize that they enjoyed having a commission of inquiry probing into events that occurred during the term of the previous Mulroney government. We all watched as the commission began its work. We watched the stonewalling and obfuscation by military brass and their attempts to avoid having the real story come out. This subterfuge and these attempts at evasion prolonged the hearings and frustrated the commissioners.
The commission and its proceedings also began to frighten the Liberal government. They were now well into their term. They did not want to see the defence department's dirty linen washed in public, particularly in the run-up to the federal election of this last June. We all know what happened. In the run-up the Liberals ordered the Somalia commission shut down as of June 30.
One of the three Somalia commissioners, Peter Desbarats, a former distinguished journalist and now an instructor of journalism at the University of Western Ontario, described that shutdown as “one of the most brazen cover-ups and denials of responsibly in the history of this country”. He also called the Liberal action a “brazen cover-up and a denial of responsibility”.
Because the inquiry was snuffed out we will never know exactly what happened in Somalia, and we will never really know who was responsible for the ensuing cover-up. Exchange of information is the oxygen of a free and democratic society. By shutting down the Somalia inquiry the Liberals deprived of that vital oxygen in this instance.
To the best of my knowledge this is the first time ever that a federal government has shut down a commission of inquiry in mid-term. In his remarks earlier the parliamentary secretary, who had done some extensive research, talked about 350 commissions of inquiry, royal commissions, et cetera, but I did not hear him say how many had ever been shut down by the government. I think our research is correct on this.
This is the first time in the history of the country that a commission of inquiry has been closed down before it finished its work. It is profoundly undemocratic and it set a very dangerous precedent for the future.
I want to remind members opposite of just how valuable commissions of inquiry and royal commissions have been in the nation's history. In the 1930s, for example, the Rowell-Sirois commission looked deeply into federal-provincial relations in this country. That commission did groundbreaking work and its recommendations set the stage for a social contract that vastly improved life for millions of Canadians. This was extremely important to people in the province of Saskatchewan, where I come from, who had been ravaged by the depression.
The Rowell-Sirois commission was an embarrassment to the federal government of the day because Ottawa had been sitting back and appeared content to continue to sit back and allow Canadians to suffer through that horrible depression. The royal commissioners had a very different idea and outlined it. As I said, it was an embarrassment to the government but it certainly did not move to shut down the commission.
What the Liberals did in this present context in snuffing out Somalia was self-serving and undemocratic. In political terms the issues here are arrogance and accountability. The Liberals believe they were born to govern and think they can do almost anything and get away with it. They paid for this arrogance, however, in the last election. Despite pre-election polls that indicated that it was going to be a cakewalk, they only won a narrow majority and only one seat in the province of Saskatchewan. They should be asking themselves why this happened.
This arrogant and unaccountable government has to be contained. It is for this reason that I support the motion of the hon. member for Berthier—Montcalm which states the government should obtain the consent of two-thirds of the members of the House before revoking the mandate of an inquiry commission.
I want to remark on the hon. member's choice of the 66% figure. Government appoints a royal commission or commission of inquiry for a reason. Once appointed the commission should remain free of interference and be able to complete its work.
This private member's bill states that it should take more than a simple majority vote to shut a commission down. For this reason I support the 66% figure used by the hon. member. I also add parenthetically that a 66% vote would also make a good deal of sense when we talk about certain referenda in this country that could eventually break it up.
For the moment I will contain my thoughts on that and simply say that I support the hon. member's motion regarding commissions of inquiry and congratulate him for bringing it forward today.