Mr. Speaker, we have had a debate this evening that addresses a very serious international problem recognized by our government, by the United Nations, by NATO and, doubtless, by many other countries around the world. We have heard tonight ample evidence of the brutality and suffering in the province of Kosovo. We have heard that there are some 200,000 to 300,000 people who are homeless and being brutalized by a campaign of terror initiated by Serb forces in that province. The terror is intended to bring about the submission of the people, in response to an insurgency or an alleged insurgency, calculated to bring about independence.
That poses, potentially, a dilemma for many countries. We do not in this country condone armed insurgencies. We continually and constantly commend to the rest of the world peaceful ways of governance and evolution of governance. While we regret the appearance of arms in Kosovo, the greater evil now is not the original appearance of the armed attempt to produce independence, but the reign of terror now brought by the police response. That reign of terror includes murder. It is not just murder, it is murder with a message.
We have seen this message before. We have debated this type of murder before. It is murder which leaves a message. It includes the mutilation of the victims and it is intended to bring about so much fear that it will numb the will, the initiative, of the victims and the victim group. We have seen this in months gone by in Bosnia and in Croatia.
For those of us who had an opportunity to be in the Balkans after the break-up of the former Yugoslav Republic, we have seen the villages utterly destroyed and burned. What were apparently happy settlements are settlements no more. The people are gone. Some are dead. They have certainly dispersed. It is a very sad situation.
I need only mention Rwanda as another reference point for all of us, where regrettably the world was not able to act soon enough. I do not think any of us wants to let that type of scenario happen again when we have the ability to respond.
Tonight it would appear that most members of parliament who have spoken have supported an international effort to respond to the evils that have been outlined. It appears that all of the parties support an international action to respond to these evils and our government appears ready to act internationally in an attempt to end the evils described and to bring about an improved situation for the victims and hopefully an improved political solution for the future.
One of the areas that has puzzled me as a layman looking at international relations for some time now is this business of gamesmanship theory. When we sit down with an opponent to negotiate we must in the beginning decide whether or not the opponent is telling the truth or is lying.
It seems to me that all of our international organizations have operated without any gamesmanship theory. They have simply assumed that the party on the other side of the table is telling the truth. We have seen a number of occasions on which it is painfully obvious that the party on the other side of the table is not telling the truth.
If one were to simply operate one's life in gamesmanship theory without any reference to morality, without any reference to life and death, I could hypothetically here say why not lie on the international scene, why not cheat, why not kill. The objective is to reach our goal, to attain our goal. As long as we get there, it does not matter how. I have seen this and as a legislator I do not have a solution.
It is very frustrating to see our international institutions victimized by countries, interest groups that simply play gamesman theory with more than one tactic. I think we are getting better at dealing with deceit. It is sometimes difficult to call our opponent deceitful when negotiating with them. With the inability of our institutions and people who in good faith operate to be able to do this, we lose innocent lives in the process. We lose valuable time and that is a great tragedy.
I do not have a solution. In the matter of Kosovo, because we have previous experience going back not too many months with the parties involved here, we are more able to tell it like it is.
I hope we get better at telling it like it is, calling a liar a liar and I hope we get quicker at doing it. The quicker we can reach these conclusions, the better we can respond.
The United Nations is a large, sometimes unwieldy body but sometimes it is all we have on this planet bringing us together. If there is a veto gridlock there which has been referred to here tonight, it is quite possible that the UN may not be in a position to authorize a specific response to the Kosovo situation. We are then fortunate in having NATO. NATO is prepared with indirect authority from the United Nations to do it and Canada is a player in NATO.
Last Sunday I was at an exhibition of Islamic arts and science in the Scarborough area of Toronto. A man came up to me quite unannounced. I did not even get his name. He said please do something about Kosovo, you must do something. He was a man who obviously had some personal experience in connection with the Balkans. That was my read on the situation. I do not doubt his sincerity in his exhortation to me. He was a new Canadian but a real Canadian and I do not doubt the need for our Canadian government to act.
I will not, as a member of parliament, let him or the rest of my constituents down. I will not turn my back on the victimized people of Kosovo and I support the initiative of this country to intervene, to cause the Serb government to cease its evil and inhumane operations in Kosovo and to allow humanitarian aid to get to the homeless in Kosovo. I hope this initiative will happen within hours.