Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to the motion of the hon. member for Red Deer and I congratulate him for bringing it forward.
This motion gives us an opportunity to debate something which I think is very important for this parliament to consider and that is the extent to which parliament is not properly consulted by this government and in many cases by previous governments on the occasion of Canada's armed forces being committed to military missions outside our boundaries.
That is not to say that we have not had debates from time to time with respect to various peacekeeping assignments. I can remember some of those debates because I participated in them. They take the form of “take note” debates. However, we do not have a debate in which parliament gets to express itself, up or down, yea or nay, with respect to a particular military mission outside Canada's boundaries, to use the language of this particular motion.
I would certainly want to speak in favour of the motion. I would speak in favour of deepened and broadened parliamentary consultation on the part of the government when it comes to making these types of decisions. This is not just out of respect for parliament. Something as significant as this ought to be brought before parliament in a meaningful way and not simply in a “let them talk about it for a little while” kind of way. It should be brought before parliament in a way that allows parliament to truly express itself.
By and large the types of things the government commits our troops to are things that would receive the support of parliament. Our military men and women could participate in these particular assignments with the comfort and the encouragement of knowing they did so with the full backing of the Canadian people expressed through their representatives here in parliament. That is the reason I speak in favour of this motion.
I listened to the parliamentary secretary, who outlined the extent to which he felt the government was already in conformity with the spirit of this motion.
Let me cite what I think is a glaring exception, that is, the fact that this government signed an order in council with respect to NATO enlargement, a major commitment of Canada's armed forces, beyond our boundaries, without it being debated for a single minute here in parliament.
Through NATO enlargement we are committing the men and women of Canada's armed forces to the defence not only of the countries which are already members of NATO, but to new members such as the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary. Was this ever debated in parliament? We did not just commit our armed forces to the defence of those three countries, we committed Canada, given NATO's flexible use doctrine when it comes to nuclear weapons, to a nuclear exchange with whomever would breach those boundaries of the three new countries, in addition to the existing countries, without so much as a sentence being uttered in defence of that particular decision.
The shame and embarrassment of this is that we are the only country in NATO to be in this position. Every other country in NATO, and I have checked and studied this, with the exception of the United Kingdom, requires parliamentary ratification of a move like agreeing to the enlargement of NATO. But not Canada. Only in Canada you say. Not in Canada. In Canada a decision of this magnitude can be made by executive order. The United Kingdom can do the same thing because it has the same tradition of the crown being able to enter into these types of agreements.
But in the United Kingdom they had enough respect for parliament that they had a debate regarding NATO enlargement in the House of Commons at Westminster. Did we have such a debate here? Did we have a ministerial statement that members of the opposition could have responded to? No.
So imagine the embarrassment if we were to think it through given all the self-congratulatory rhetoric that we use about Canada being a great democracy and wanting to export our democratic values and culture to all these poor third world countries that need to be more like us.
Yet here we are in Canada where a major decision like this can be made without parliament's ever being consulted, without there ever being a parliamentary debate. All other members of NATO require some kind of congressional or parliamentary ratification.
I bring this up as a counter example to what the parliamentary secretary said. The government should examine its own parliamentary conscience with respect to how this transpired.
This major military and foreign policy decision could have been made without the benefit of debate in parliament. It is one of the reason I rise in support of the hon. member's motion. Although the motion does not particularly reference NATO or the enlargement of NATO, I think the member would agree that this is an example of the kind of thing he might have had in mind when he was framing his motion. I think he was probably thinking in a more routine way about various commitments of forces but certainly the enlargement of NATO involves a major potential commitment and actual commitment of Canadian forces. This was done without benefit of parliamentary debate whatsoever.
That is why I hope we would be able to pass the member's motion or that the debate on this motion would lead the government to examine its record in respect of this issue and others and improve its procedures accordingly.