moved:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should seek majority support, through an official vote in the House of Commons, prior to committing a significant contingent of Canadian military personnel to an active military mission beyond the boundaries of Canada.
Mr. Speaker, I will explain the motion further before I really get started.
I have not put specific numbers in there and that is intentional so that the government would use its discretion. We are not talking about three people going off for telecommunications duty. We are not talking about some of the smaller missions. We are talking about major engagements and about the kind of events that have occurred. Many of my colleagues across the way were very vocal during the late 1980s and early 1990s about the government's not coming to the House of Commons to talk about the issue, to inform Canadians and to seek permission of parliamentarians to send troops on these kinds of missions.
I am certain today that my hon. colleagues on the government side will be supporting the motion. I could list all the quotes from many of the people who are still there regarding the past government and how it did not talk to parliamentarians.
I want to relay some of the motivation for this. I want to talk first of all about some of the Canadian troops I have encountered as I have travelled in many parts of the world. Specifically I want to talk about our troops in Bosnia and Haiti.
I had the privilege of meeting with these troops in both these locations. In Bosnia I was there observing elections. I was part of the OECD mission to observe the elections, basically working for the European Union in terms of that observation role.
In Haiti I was travelling with the foreign affairs minister and at that time he and I together had an opportunity to see the kind of role our troops and the RCMP were playing in that situation.
I was proud of what I saw. I was proud of the men and women I had the opportunity to go out on patrol with. While in a rented car, a Swedish translator and I were out in the boonies and we came across a Canadian armoured carrier with a Canadian flag and Canadians soldiers. I flagged them down in the middle of the road and they stopped and asked what a member of parliament from Canada was doing in Bihac. They were surprised.
As a Canadian serving Canadian voters there was a pride there I cannot describe to the House.
The fact that they are there doing that job for all of us is something we should know more about. I really feel Canadians know little about what our troops are doing in foreign countries. If for no other reason, bringing that information to the House will help Canadians to find out exactly where we are sending our men and women.
I cannot help but relay to members the pride when those little kids took me to a school in Bosnia and said “Look at that. There is a Canadian flag. There is a Bosnian flag. Your troops on their own time rebuilt this school, put the windows in it, put the desks up and we now have a school”. A little old lady took me to the hospital and said “There is a Canadian flag and your troops on their own time came to this hospital and volunteered to do all kinds of things to make our lives a little better”.
As well I will never forget going into some of the really hard areas of Haiti on a 2.00 a.m. patrol. I saw the kind of relationship that our troops had built with those people in that very impoverished country.
We need to think about this issue and the motion at hand and what I am trying to accomplish in this private member's motion.
I love taking pictures. When I talk to a rotary club or when I talk to a chamber of commerce I have watched people's faces when they see those little kids, that little old lady or that hospital in some of those pictures. I have seen their faces light up with pride. They said they did not know we were doing that sort of thing. They did not know our troops got involved in that sort of stuff. All they have heard about is the negative stuff the media love to print. They have not heard about the schools or the hospitals and all the positive things.
To involve our young men and women in a foreign country I believe it is vital that we bring into this House and talk about this issue. I believe that the top down cabinet decision about committing to some part of the world is not acceptable.
We may hear these things come up overnight and we will not have time. Nothing comes up overnight. We knew about Bosnia. In the 1980s we talked about Bosnia and its potential. Many people thought Kosovo would be the place that would ignite first. It turns out that it might be the place that ignites last. We knew that something was going to happen there. We have known for 1,500 years that things were not well there.
I was in Rwanda in 1985. It was very clear at that point that there was a problem. When General Dallaire was there in 1990 he clearly told everyone there was going to a serious problem. He told us that there was a problem between the Tutsis and the Hutus. Nothing much happened. People were not made aware of it. These things do not just happen.
The Americans were in Haiti in 1925 trying to solve the problems of Haiti. They built schools and infrastructure. We know that 85% of the people are illiterate and do not have jobs. We know the potential places. We know the problems in Sudan. We know the problems in Nigeria.
It is a poor excuse to say that this would handcuff the government into not being able to discuss this issue. That is not possible.
Unanimous consent would be given in this House, I am positive, to discuss the issue when it comes to the lives of our troops going to a foreign country.
I do not think there is a single person in here who would dare stand up and oppose that sort of motion. To say it cannot happen is just not acceptable. To say it would handcuff the government is just not possible. That is what was said in 1990 and so on but that is not true. That is not an excuse.
How should we handle this sort of thing? How should we get accountability and transparency? How would it work in this House?
What I would like to put forward is a process something like this. Members are aware of the special debates that we have in this House. These special take note debates in the last case occurred the day after the press release and press statements were made downstairs, that this was what we were doing, extending our mission in Bosnia for a year and so on.
Then we had the next day the take note debate, of which there was an audience of one or two members. That has been typical. That is not what I am talking about. That is not an excuse for democracy.
What I am talking about is where we have a problem in the world the Canadian government says this is a problem we should get involved with and Canadians should be interested in.
We then come to this House and committee of the whole and we inform this House so that every member has the opportunity and the responsibility to be in this House to listen to experts. This is non-partisan politics.
This is where every member is going to hear from the military experts, the foreign affairs experts, the academic experts and about the history of that part of the world we are proposing to send troops to.
This is an education for us and for Canadians. I would even go so far as to say it would be to our advantage as parliament to vote some advertising funds to let Canadians know that on their national television network they will be able to watch and get firsthand expert information on Bosnia, on Haiti, on Zaire, on Nigeria, on Sudan, wherever it is.
We heard yesterday from parliamentarians from Pakistan. The question was asked of how to solve the problem in Kashmir.
The senator said the way to solve that problem and what Canadian parliamentarians could do would be to send a mission to Kashmir to see the atrocities occurring, 60,000 people dead so far, to report those to the international community and then the international community could take action.
That is a role he suggested he would like to see Canada play. That would be the best thing they could do to diffuse the issue in Pakistan and India.
Maybe that is something the government would like to propose and get the best information we can on. The second phase would be speakers from each party would from a military and a foreign affairs perspective present their party's opinion on sending troops to wherever it is.
There would be all party input. We would not have to listen to ten speeches, some of them written by researchers and simply read. People would speak who have worked on the issue, are knowledgeable about the issue.
Let us face it. We are busy enough in this place that members cannot be specialists on everything. They zero in on their little area of responsibility and that is what they work on. Those are the people we would hear from and I believe parliamentarians would listen.
There has been an information session of two hours. There has been debate for two hours. Now comes the most important part of all. All members who have received the information, have heard the positions of the parties would vote on whether we send our young people to some unsafe place in this world.
We have a responsibility. We owe it to Canadians to give them the opportunity to become informed and to know where we as parliamentarians stand. Then in a free vote we stand up and are counted.
To me that is a responsible way to decide whether we send troops to foreign countries. I cannot see how any government going into the 21st century cannot agree with that sort of approach. It takes care of the accountability factor. It takes care of the responsibility factor. We are responsible for every single life that we put in jeopardy when we send people to those places.
I would imagine that we would get unanimous agreement once we had gone through that process. I cannot believe that it would be very controversial. All of us would feel better. Canadians would be informed. They would know about what they are reading in the newspapers. As a result of that we would probably have done the best service that we possibly could.
Putting this in the form of a motion allows it to be transferred to the committee and the committee can fine-tune it. The committee can adjust and fix it however it wants.
That is the framework we are talking about. With that framework I believe we have taken an approach with which everyone can agree.
I truly hope that all parties will be in favour of that and will speak in favour of that and not use the tired arguments that we so often hear that it would tie the hands of government and that government is responsible. We are all responsible. We all want to share the information. We all want to share the pride.
We want to share the pride of knowing what our young people are doing over there. I find it very troubling that we do not know what they are doing. It is troubling that we have to hear all the negative stuff about our troops when there is so much positive out there.
A recent poll done by the government showed that 61% of Canadians want to know more about foreign policy. This poll was commissioned by the foreign affairs department and was tabled by the minister. The minister's poll said that 61% of Canadians want to be informed.
What better way to inform them than to start with peacekeeping and to inform them in the House. What better way to raise the profile of the House and of all its members, that we are really taking part. I would challenge any party or member not to be here for those take note debates. If they have young people in the forces in their ridings, they had better be here. If they have the parents or grandparents of those people in their ridings, they had better be here.
Canadians are going to be looking at them and saying it is a responsible way to make that decision. Canadians are saying that is what they want. The minister's polls have shown that.
This would lend legitimacy to budget figures that many people do not understand. There are budget figures of millions of dollars for missions. This would lend some legitimacy to the spending of that kind of money.
In conclusion probably the most important thing would be to tell our troops: “We care. We parliamentarians are giving you an endorsement.
We have studied the issue. You have watched us on national television studying this issue. We have spoken to the issue and we have voted on the issue. We are saying to you that we are behind you. Canadians are behind you. We do not care what that media might do to you. We believe in you. We trust you and we are giving you our confidence”.
That is what it is all about. That is why I hope all members will see fit to support this motion. Adjust it, send it to committee and work on it, but this kind of concept should be carried through.