Debates of March 12th, 1997

Peacekeeping Or Peace Enforcement Commitments

[Bob Mills, Reform, Red Deer, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to conclude the debate on my Motion No. 31.

The motion is designed to try to allow Parliament to have more control, more discussion and more open debate on the sending of our troops on peacekeeping missions. It is not intended to be against peacekeepers, to say that we do not do a good job, or to say that Canadians are not behind it. This is a motion simply to provide accountability for decisions that are made.

Even though peacekeeping is one of the most important aspects of our foreign policy, the Prime Minister and the other elites in the government do not want Parliament to truly participate in the making of decisions. They want to have sham debates or no debate at all. They refuse to allow parliamentarians access to crucial mission information until the dye is cast. They refuse to allow members a vote on whether the peacekeeping mission is in the interest of our country or the interest of our troops.

A perfect example of this disregard for Parliament occurred just a few weeks ago when the government leaked to the press the fact that we would be staying in Haiti for the next five years. There was no consultation. There was no mention of cost. There was no mention of the best interest of our troops.

It was just another unilateral decision by the government. Even though the Minister of Foreign Affairs promised to consult he broke his promise. Even though the minister assured Canadians "when Haitian President Préval was here, he indicated a very strong interest in having the international presence of the UN force and the Canadian force end as soon as possible", guess what. He did not mean that either. Even though Canadian taxpayers have already paid over $430 million for this mission, we now find out there is no end in sight. No wonder the federal debt is $600 billion.

It is not true that committee has the opportunity make the decisions and debate the issues. I use as an example the mission to Zaire which was decided on a weekend. In fact, the member for Rosedale and I heard from a news reporter that the decision had been made for the Zaire mission. We were not consulted. There was no opportunity for Parliament to make a decision.

To say that we need 24 hour decision making, I again use the example of Bosnia. The situation there has gone on for hundreds of years. There was no panic to make a decision.

The situation in Haiti of the dictatorship has gone on forever. I was in Rwanda in 1985 and I knew there was a problem. There was lots of time for Parliament to debate it, two years to make a decision. I mentioned Zaire. That problem did not just pop up overnight. Very seldom will that argument hold any water. If it did there would be ways to deal with it by way of an amendment to the motion.

The issue of peacekeeping goes far beyond the issue of money. It goes to the lives of our Canadian troops, their parents and the lives which could be lost or shattered by crippling injuries. When we send our soldiers abroad we are asking young men and women to take a serious risk for the country. They could be shot, taken hostage, blown up by land mines. There are numerous examples of this.

For the sake of these soldiers, we in Parliament must ensure that the government is not being irresponsible in its decisions to participate in these missions. It cannot be because the Prime Minister watched CNN and made a decision on a weekend. We must not let the government rubber stamp missions where lives will be lost. We must accept responsibility as legislators and demand a full debate will all the information on the table.

Only after the debate, when we know the risks, the mandate, the rules of engagement, the duration and the cost, can we decide if the mission should go forward.

Then we must hold a free vote. A free vote is critical because it forces individual members to assume responsibility for the safety of our soldiers. When young men and women from our ridings are going to a war zone or a country where government has broken down, we owe it to them to find out the facts for ourselves. The lives of Canadians are more important than pride, the party or the government.

In conclusion, when we vote on the motion each of us will make a choice for which we should be held accountable. Our choices will show Canadians what we think is most important, the lives of our soldiers or what the party brass says.

I will end here and let the vote speak for itself so that Canadians from coast to coast can see where their members stand when it comes to the lives of our soldiers.

[Ted McWhinney, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Fisheries and Oceans]

Madam Speaker, we have had in this particular area of United Nations peacekeeping missions and Canadian contributions to them a very high level of debate in recent years. It is a debate to which members on both sides of the House have contributed significantly.

As the member for Rosedale rightly reminded us, Canadians have a special interest in UN peacekeeping. The concept is a Canadian creation. It was the brain child of our then foreign minister and later Prime Minister Lester Pearson. He recognized that there is a period in a conflict in which in a certain sense the parties have exhausted themselves emotionally and physically and where the interposition of a third force may allow them to retreat without intolerable loss of face. It is in this context thatMr. Pearson proposed a UN peacekeeping force for the resolution of the Suez crisis.

It worked perfectly and it has become known as the special Canadian contribution to the United Nations international organization. He was later recognized for his work with the award of the Nobel peace prize.

This was an area, if one considers the participants in this particular difference-Great Britain, France, Israel and Egypt-in which there was special Canadian interests apart from the idea of a foreign minister who was a UN man par excellence.

Similarly, I would have said with the Congo in 1960, which was the next big exercise in a UN peacekeeping operation to which Canadians contributed, there is a special Canadian interest in every issue where the presence of a French speaking force is crucial and one with openings to the English speaking world and recognizing the American interest in all these things. The Canadian mission becomes logical, sensible and almost inevitable.

The lesson from our debates in the House in recent years and in the present Parliament has been that we need to redefine our roles in missions, that we have to be more selective in the allocation of our energies, our forces, our contributions to missions and that we should, as far as possible, husband our scarce resources and apply those to situations where there is a Canadian special interest.

I would have thought, and I would agree with people on both sides of the House on this, as to some of the more recent missions, the Somalia mission, I would have thought by most tests, it was not a good case for Canadian involvement at the very beginning. There is something to be said for the thought echoed by the hon. member opposite that when the telephone rings at five in the morning and somebody says that they need our help, maybe the correct response is to say: "George, why do you not go back to sleep and call at regular hours?"

Somalia was a case where the special expertise in terms of the language, in terms of the significant Canadian ethnic community with links to the territory, in terms of knowledge of the culture of the region, the special problems of language and religion, and also the historical divisions within the country was absent. These were outside our knowledge. In some senses it was a tragedy waiting to

happen when we sent over, in essence, a regiment trained more or less for anti-terrorist activities.

I would have said that Bosnia was possibly an issue of which we should have been more cautious although there were special pressures on us by members of Canadian communities with roots in the homelands of the former Yugoslavia. On that we can leave the question open.

However, the main issue is that the pragmatic consensus which has developed in the debates in the House over the past several years is that Parliament should be involved. I remember the Minister of National Defence making this view known to the House during the course of the debate. Sensibly any administration, recognizing the political aspects of these operations and the dangers of misconception or misconstruction of a mission, should be very sensitive to parliamentary opinion. I believe these undertakings were given sufficiently at that time.

The problem we have with this motion is that we recognize the spirit. We believe the spirit has essentially been accepted on both sides of the House, but it does introduce, with its too narrow limits, too specific limits, a limitation that frankly could be extremely troublesome in a period of international crisis solving where urgent action is required.

On that basis, I believe we could say to the party opposite moving this issue that the spirit is there. I think the spirit is accepted and understood on both sides of the House in a responsible way. However, our suggestion to the members opposite is that the tethering limits of the motion create serious impediments to situations in which Canadian interests and Canadian special knowledge and competence suggest an intervention.

Looking at the situation in Somalia, the United States was involved.

The U.S. admiral advising the United Nations in that situation simply did not understand that American federal conditions could not be replicated in a country that was more similar in its social political organization to, for example, Great Britain in the 13th century. I am speaking in terms of the confrontational situation of feuding feudal barons. In Bosnia largely the exercise in policy making had been made in a few key European foreign ministries and not necessarily along lines that were sufficiently broad in their conception to yield a lasting solution.

On that basis I thank members of the third party for their contribution. It adds to the thoughtful contributions of earlier debates made in particular by the member for Saanich-Gulf Islands and the member for Nanaimo-Cowichan. These sentiments are understood and appreciated on this side of the House.

It is in this spirit I repeat the thoughts of the member for Rosedale. We think the limitation is too tethering. We think it could be a serious impediment in a crisis situation. In any case the pragmatic understanding on both sides of the House is enough to achieve the spirit of what has been contributed to this thoughtful debate.

[The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais)]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais)]

The question is on the amendment. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the amendment?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais)]

All those in favour of the amendment will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais)]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais)]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais)]

Pursuant to order made earlier this day the recorded division stands deferred until Monday, April 7, 1997, at the conclusion of the time provided for Government Orders.

A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.

[Jean-Guy Chrétien, Bloc, Frontenac, QC]

Madam Speaker, I urge you to keep an eye on the government. It is about to pull another fast one on us. This time, it is food inspection.

This is the problem. I asked the Minister of Agriculture last week about his plan to withdraw from the inspection of processed meat, poultry, fruits and vegetables.

When you go grocery shopping, you buy pâté made by La Belle Fermière or cretons or tête fromagée made with pig's heads, fruit juice, fruit cocktail or other processed food, and now the federal government wants to withdraw from inspecting this type of processed food.

There would be implications for recipes and labelling. When you buy pâté, there are certain ingredients in this product, and at the

present time, federal inspectors go to small processing plants to check whether the labelling reflects exactly what is in the product. Now the government wants to withdraw from this type of inspection.

These inspections have been done in Canada since 1959-almost 40 years-and done very well. The industry is happy and takes them in its stride. Industries have in fact asked the federal government to continue to provide the inspection service, for which they would be prepared to pay a fair price. The federal government asked its officials to do a study, which shows that the quality could drop in this sort of product. The health of our fellow Canadians could ultimately be affected.

Last week, I was listening to the Prime Minister talk about tobacco as he eliminated cigarette sponsorship of sports and cultural events; he said it was bad for the health of our children.

In this case, although the industry is prepared to pay a fair price, the government is considering withdrawing from this sector.

I think the department of agriculture should ask cabinet and the minister to take a step backward, give the people what they already have today and continue to provide the same service.

In order to save a few million dollars, the government would run the risk of imperiling a significant element in the processing of meats, poultry, fruits and vegetables-industries, as usual, found primarily in Quebec. It would seem that every time things go well in Quebec the government tries to throw a wrench in the works to show that things are not going so well.

I see that the parliamentary secretary will be responding, as the minister is in Japan at the moment. I hope he takes that into consideration and encourages his minister to go back on this decision to stop food processing inspections.

[Jerry Pickard, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food]

Madam Speaker, current regulations require mandatory prior approval and registration of labels, processes and formulations for domestically produced and processed vegetables, fruit and products as well as domestic and imported processed meat products.

All other food products regulated by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada are marked without a mandatory review and industry is solely responsible for label compliance. While the service provides some value from an inspection point of view, the service could be provided by the same private sector that currently supports non-mandatory areas.

During the business alignment plan discussions relating to possible areas of cost reduction some industry representatives indicated that the service was neither necessary nor wanted. However there was not consensus among the various industry organizations. With the government's desire to provide more uniform treatment of food products and to encourage industry to be more self-reliant, the existing program was reviewed.

Several options including termination of the service have been developed. A working group involving industry and consumer organizations and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada staff has been formed to produce a consensus report by late April 1997.

The goal is to implement this consensus during the second half of the 1997-98 fiscal year. In the interim delivery of the present service will be continued. The final result of these consultations will reflect the fact that the health and safety of Canadians continues to be the major priority of our department.

[The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais)]

The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to be adopted. The House therefore stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 7.04 p.m.)