Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to be able to talk about Bosnia again; it seems to happen every six months or so.
I believe Canadians have a lot of questions about our involvement in Bosnia. Everywhere I go people ask me to explain why we should be there. They ask questions about the history of Bosnia. They ask if it is a civil war, whether it has been going on for a long time, what it is really like there and what the people are really like there. They deserve answers to some of these questions.
I like the two ministers who have just spoken have been there. I have been on the ground, visited the people and taken pictures. I changed my point of view many times because of what I observed firsthand on the ground. This is an opportunity to express that and to get it on the record. I will take this opportunity to answer some of those questions.
It has been going on for a long time. We could go back to Roman times when they were fighting in this area. We could go back to the Ottoman empire when there was fighting in this area. We could talk about the involvement of many countries, of Russia, of Germany, of Greece, of France and of Britain. There has been much involvement. There is a history there. There was the first world war and Archduke Ferdinand. We could talk about the Nazi occupation. Then we could talk about Tito and his rule until 1980 when he died.
Then we come to current history and to 1991. Two of the strongest parts of Yugoslavia, which had been held together by Tito, decided to opt for independence. When Croatia and Slovenia decided to separate it was the beginning of the modern day problems that would occur in this part of the world.
There is a history there. There is a history of turmoil and of trouble. At this point there is also Canadian involvement first with the UN forces. We were one of the first countries to be involved. I like the others would say that I saw nothing but dedication and great Canadians working with the people of Bosnia-Hercegovina.
I was proud to be a Canadian and to see the Canadian flag on the tanks when they came around the corner. That made me proud as a Canadian. Talking to some of our troops made me even prouder. They told me about the little kids they had helped, the schools they had reconstructed and that sort of thing. That was real. That was something we could feel, touch and look at.
Many people thought at that point that Kosovo would have been the next place to explode but instead it was Bosnia. That is all history.
The 1995 Dayton accord supposedly ended the conflict. When I went there as an election observer on the ground last September I had the opportunity to see how the Dayton accord would work. I will use my province as an example.
It was like if during the war all the people from Red Deer had been moved to Saskatoon. Then the Dayton accord came along and said to the people in Saskatoon that in 1991 they lived in Red Deer so they should vote for the mayor and the council in Red Deer. However they lived in Saskatoon. People of a different ethnicity mix and of a different religion now lived in Red Deer and had to vote for the mayor and the council in Red Deer. Because of problems like the ones we just witnessed occurring there some of the people from Saskatoon decided to go back to Red Deer. That is why there is a problem.
How will that create peace? There is a built in conflict because the people who designed the Dayton accord were in Dayton, Ohio, and did not take into consideration the emotion, religion or ethnic mix there.
Yes they are all of Slavic background but they are of three religious backgrounds. There are Muslims, there are Orthodox and there are Catholics. It is very different and they feel very strongly and are very emotional. In Drvar when the Croats attacked the Serbs who were returning home it can be seen why. That is going to continue and continue.
I wanted to find out what it was really like in that country so I hired a translator and a car and off we went to cover Bosnia. I visited schools. I visited mosques. I visited churches. I visited community halls. I talked to farmers. I went to bars. I went everywhere the people were and I talked to them.
Probably one of the most emotional feelings I got occurred when I talked to a group of kids who were 10 to 11 years old. I asked them to tell me how they felt about their country. I have pages of their comments but I will quote only a couple which I think say a lot. Remember that these kids are 10 and 11 years old.
They said they could not relax or run freely because there are mines everywhere. That is what Bosnia-Hercegovina is like now. Mines are everywhere. We found mines under Coke tins. The bottom was cut out of the Coke tin and a plastic mine was inside. It was placed on a picnic table, there for someone to pick up. Boom. In cobs of corn, on the sides of roads, there are mines. There are millions of these mines everywhere. Imagine living in that sort of an environment.
“When I see my friend without a leg or a hand it makes me very sad”. “I cannot wait to grow up”. “Suddenly there was heat. My sister fell over me. Something exploded. There was smoke. There were screams. Rivers of blood. I saw both my parents dead. I called them but they did not respond. When I wanted a drink of water I saw a head without a body. Since then me and my sister cannot sleep at night”. That is what the kids of Bosnia-Hercegovina are going through.
What about the people? The people are well educated. They are handsome, good looking people. They are friendly. They are concerned about families, about school, about education, the same things we are. Yet there is something there that is different. That something is a level of history and hate I have never experienced before.
I could talk to someone and they would tell me about a war and they described it as though it were yesterday. One person told me about a war that happened in 1536 when the Ottoman Turks were there. Another person told me about when the Nazis came in 1943. It was as if it were yesterday. That is why they hate their neighbour. Because their neighbour was involved with that action and it has been regurgitated and regurgitated and everybody remembers it as if it were yesterday. They are handicapped by their history.
I will never forget the little old lady who had gone for a loaf of bread. I asked if I could take her picture. She had a beautiful face. Her face was stressed and strained and I thought of what it had seen. She said she had to go home and change her dress so I could take a picture of her with her loaf of bread. I convinced her finally that I could take her picture without her actually changing her dress.
I will never forget the old fellow who at a polling station said “You are from Canada”. He asked me if I knew how to make slivovitz. That is plum brandy. “Come to my basement and I will show you”. He was so proud. His was the best in the community. I was also advised not to drink any of it as a person could go blind. This was a real guy. He was proud of this. He was a real person, someone that makes you say how can there be such hate here? These people have such emotions, such feelings, such beauty.
In the countryside as well. It is like Switzerland. The only problem is it is full of mines. We drove through some of the valleys. The houses are destroyed. The fields are mined. The graves are in the ditches. There are no birds singing in the fields. Not having lived through a war, experiencing this firsthand on the ground in a car with a driver and a translator was quite an experience.
Should we stay in Bosnia-Hercegovina? We have several options. We could leave. We could simply leave, saying that it is a long war, that it is going to be like Cyprus and might last forever. What are the problems if we do that? My feeling is that if we were to leave at 12 noon by 12.30 there would be a full fledged war again.
What would that mean? It would mean the potential of expansion. The Turks are not prepared to see Muslims die. The Russians are not prepared to see Serbs die. The Germans are not prepared to see Croats die. The Albanians and the Greeks and the Macedonians. The list goes on and on of possible future expansion of warfare in this area. Kosovo is the exact same example. What will Greece do? What will Turkey do? There are so many people involved.
If we leave, what about the CNN factor? What about the killing we would watch on our televisions? Are we prepared to do that?
These are hard questions. These are questions we need to ask as we contemplate this decision.
Another choice would be to divide the country into three units and say this is where the Serbs will be, this is where the Croats will be and this is where the Bosnians will be. I guess that is called ethnic cleansing but I do not know that that is acceptable or possible. Certainly it is not something we would be prepared to talk about.
Our third option is a short term plan in which we would do something which I consider to be so typically Liberal. That would be to simply extend our mandate and not really propose a solution. It is similar to saying that the financial problem has been solved even though there is a $583 billion debt, but it is all solved because we balanced the budget.
My colleague is going to address the sustainability and what are the costs to our troops.
I will put forward a fourth option tonight and hopefully the minister will get a chance to read it. That option would be to show some leadership in developing a long term solution, a plan. I am not saying I have all the answers. I am not saying how we would handle the refugee return or the war criminals. However we need to have something longer than six-month intervals. I cannot help but remember standing in the lobby in this House when the former defence minister said “We will be out of there by Christmas; there is no chance we will be there beyond Christmas”. That was in 1996.
We need to look at something bigger. We need to talk about costs, about mandates, about responsibility, about length of stay, about a plan. I would like to see this government take some initiative, do some planning, show something beyond a six-month window in a problem like this one.
I cannot stand up here and say we should not stay there. I can now put a face on Bosnia-Hercegovina. It means people. It means caring. It means that little man and his slivovitz. It means school kids. However, we must do something better than simply say that the Dayton accord is going to do it all. It is not the answer and I have given just a brief insight into why it is not.
Finally, as far as the take note debate is concerned, I guess I was naive when I first came here. One of the first speeches I gave in this House was on Bosnia-Hercegovina. Did I ever work hard to prepare that speech because I thought it really was part of the decision making.
However, it was announced yesterday by the defence minister that we are staying on for at least another six months. It is already news. We are not informing anybody about anything. I think the huge turnout here demonstrates how many people are really interested in the take note debate. We are here so the government in a week's time can say “We had a full fledged debate on Bosnia and every party had a chance to speak. We debated the issue and came up with this decision. This is democracy”.
I put to the House that tonight may be the wrong night to talk about democracy when we have just gone through what we went through with a 15 year old boy being removed by our guards, I hope not to jail. We saw the vote on hepatitis C. I feel somewhat like a hypocrite to the Canadian people when I say I am here to try to make a difference about Bosnia-Hercegovina because I want to make a difference. I want to help the people of Bosnia-Hercegovina. How do we get a government that does not involve us to hear us? That is a plea I guess for the democratization of Canada. We need that.
I have a lot of disgust for this kind of procedure. Yes it is on the record, but I wish the minister could hear it or would read it.
In conclusion let us come up with a plan. Let us talk about the big picture. Let us not just do what makes us feel good. Let us show some leadership and be part of the decision making process. Let us talk about the cost of lives and the suffering. Let us really make a difference to the people of Bosnia-Hercegovina.