Mr. Speaker, I am honoured indeed to rise to speak in support of my colleague's Motion No. 380. The motion brought forward by the official opposition's chief critic on foreign affairs, the hon. member for Red Deer, asks this House to seek majority support through an official vote in the House before Canadian military personnel are committed to an active military mission outside the country.
All members of the House should support this motion. This is a motion that would strengthen our democracy and make the executive branch of government more accountable to Canadians. This motion attempts to balance the requirements of ruling with the argument of accountability. It is a step forward in redefining responsible government as we enter the 21st century.
It seems only just and right that we should always debate and vote to support our troops before we agree to send them overseas. Our troops can then embark on their mission knowing that a majority of elected representatives from every part of Canada approve and support that mission as they go off to foreign destinations to protect freedom and democracy and defend defenceless people in so many parts of the world.
If passed, this motion will help inform Canadians. This motion will help make the foreign policy process more transparent and therefore more legitimate.
In the foreign policy paper “Canada in the World” the government claims it wants a new and broader process for foreign policy formulation, but when it comes to practising it the government fails.
By making decisions to commit our troops without debate in this House, the government is attempting to prevent itself from being held accountable for the lack of equipment and the poor grade of equipment our troops are asked to use despite year after year defence budget cuts.
Motion No. 380 asks for a debate to take place in the House every time the Liberals want to risk the lives of those who have pledged to die for our country so we can compare the capability of our armed forces to what the Liberals are asking them to do. This House is the very place where Canadians should be consulted. Canadians want the days of secret decision making to be gone.
Take note debate takes place only after a decision to dispatch our troops has already been made by the Prime Minister while on the telephone with another world leader. That is not democratic. It is autocratic and shameful.
Recently in the House we debated military action in Kosovo. Did the Liberal government have any long term plan for dealing with Kosovo? No. Did we simply have a phony emergency debate to affirm the knee-jerk decision made by the Prime Minister?
What plan does the government have to prevent a Kosovo type conflict in the future? What leadership role is this government willing to play to handle such a situation in the future in a better, more efficient and visionary manner? The government has the habit of inappropriately addressing various issues, whether taxes, the economy, justice, national unity and so on. The take note debate regarding the Kosovo decision was all the Liberal government allowed members of parliament and Canadians.
In order to deal with such problems there should be two plans. According to plan A diplomatic initiatives should be aggressively pursued at the first signs of a problem. Kosovo was an example of a too little, too late initiative by this Liberal government and other world governments. The government did not pursue plan A aggressively.
When we know plan A has failed we can go to plan B which is military action. That is where Motion No. 380 kicks in. Before we prescribe this bitter medicine Canadians will need answers to many questions. Why are we choosing a military situation over a diplomatic situation? What are the actions the government has taken? What other possible solutions can we pursue? What are the possibilities of finding a long term solution? How are we dealing with the long term persistent hatred in the minds of ethnic people? How much involvement are we asking from the other affected and related countries to deal with an issue that is in their backyards?
Canadians want to know whether we are creating more victims by sending troops. They want to know how far we will go, how much it will cost, who is paying and what share we will pay. Did the government assess the degree of risk before it committed the men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces? Do they have enough equipment and facilities? What strategy do we have to deal with the original security situation? We look forward to the answers as do Canadian forces personnel. These decisions are made before we get the answers to these questions from this government. Motion No. 380 would make the information available in a timely fashion before the decision is made.
There have repeatedly been serious situations in the world, in Rwanda, Somalia, Nigeria, Bosnia, Haiti, Iraq, and the list goes on. Such situations will happen again somewhere, someday. We are not prepared to address international conflict situations in their infancies. We should be. We should be able to monitor and perhaps predict when economic, social, cultural, political or other factors are creating conflict in different parts of the world and we should address the conflicts before we have to use costly military force anywhere in the world.
Canadians are proud of their tradition of caring and intervention for the sake of peace but the world cannot continue to merely react to these situations. We have sent many peacekeeping missions around the world. I ask the foreign minister to look into the possibility of peacemaking missions rather than peacekeeping missions.
I cannot understand how we can keep peace when it is not even made yet. How can we keep something that does not exist? Let me give an analogy. When a pressure cooker is heated, steam is produced. To contain that steam we put pressure on the pressure cooker. Suppressing the steam under weight might cause the whole thing to explode and create another mess. The best thing would be to remove the heat under the pressure cooker. No steam would be produced and we would not have to put any pressure on it.
Why do we always use military pressure to contain the steam of conflict in the world? Have we ever taken action to remove the heat under the pressure cooker? No. Would it not be easier to address the root cause of the problem? Why can we not prevent problems before they happen? That is the key question. Unfortunately this government has not taken this sort of action.
Our peacekeeping forces were stationed in Cypress for 29 years. Still peace was not made when we withdrew. We should focus on peacemaking before peacekeeping.
Conflict resolution is a precursor to peacemaking. Ethnic tensions in many parts of the world can be resolved by equitable, democratic and better governance. Pilferage and smuggling of weapons can be stopped. Child armies can be banned. Foreign aid should be tied to transparency and accountability of recipient governments. Corruption, poverty, illiteracy and education needs can and should be addressed.
The weak Liberal government lacks a proactive leadership role. It is just reactive because it is used to making knee-jerk decisions. Often a humanitarian crisis is the consequence of what is fundamentally a political problem.
For example, in the Palestine and Israel conflict in the Middle East, to help the refugees we committed $55 million in 1995. But we had already spent more than $136 million and the refugees were still be produced the day I was there in 1998. We tried to resolve political problems with financial solutions through foreign aid. This was absolutely wrong.
We need to meet these problems head on. We should make educated and democratic decisions. One of the best things to do is debate it in the House before the decision is made. I urge all members of the House to support Motion No. 380.