Madam Speaker, there are a number of issues I would like to deal with.
The first one is central Africa. We have a briefing set for central Africa tomorrow. Of course the debate is tonight but that is probably not a problem to the government.
I contacted foreign affairs yesterday, five times today, and at 6.53 this evening I got my briefing sheet on the Central African Republic. I think that probably tells us the level of importance of what we are doing here tonight when this kind of blatant abuse goes on in parliament.
To deal with this situation first, the government did not have the briefing and therefore I felt it was essential that somebody at least try to find out a bit of what our mission is all about. This is a rather unstable former French colony of 3.3 million people. It has had a very fragile France sponsored democracy since 1993. Basically the French government has propped up various dictators and regimes from about 1979.
There was a 1,400 man French force that was withdrawn on April 15 of last year and replaced by 1,350 international francophone peacekeepers, of whom Canada had 45.
Today the number of Canadians there is 47 and basically they are attempting to maintain stability. When we look at the stability that is being created this is the sort of thing we have.
President Patasse has faced three armed rebellions since May 1996 and really could not have remained in power without these foreign troops, the French and 47 Canadians.
Mutinies are motivated by unpaid wages, ethnic hatred of the president and the story goes on. Human rights records are that there are routine summary executions, torture, restrictions on basic freedoms, looting by the peacekeepers, mistreatment of women and of a whole race of pygmies in the area.
With no information from foreign affairs or DND we are here to endorse the keeping of Canadian troops there.
There are only 47 but those are 47 Canadian lives we are saying we should leave there or extend there, whatever. But we do not live in a dictatorship. We live in a democracy where we need the information. Canadians need the information. We should be talking about this and it should not be a partisan issue. We are talking about Canadian lives, men and women, our armed forces. That is the kind of disrespect the government shows for those fighting people of our country.
There is much more that we can talk about with Kosovo because all of us have watched CNN, we have read the news and we have been part of this debate for a long time. It was back in about 1990 that everybody felt Kosovo would be the part of Yugoslavia to break away first. It has always had a problem and that goes back maybe 1,500 years.
We can also be fairly certain as Canadians that a decision has already been made as to what we will do. On January 29 when the Prime Minister committed Canadian forces he did not do that by accident. That decision had already been made. The defence minister of course immediately questioned it. The general questioned it. He said we really could not do that. Our critic from Calgary North questioned it.
Certainly we said we should be debating it. In the February 16
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the defence minister also said maybe we will have to skip a debate in the House and go on with that. On February 16 when asked that question in the House, it was rather interesting to see the House leader jump up and answer the question. He said dare you ask that question because at the House leaders meeting today we are going to be discussing that issue.
How am I supposed to know what will be discussed at the House leaders meeting after question period? Our House leader certainly did not know what the agenda would be and I am not even sure what that answer was all about.
The decision has already been made. The government does not care much about this. It wants this for bragging rights, to say the issue was brought here to be debated by parliamentarians so that parliamentarians had a say in what would happen. Of course that justifies anything that happens.
These are men's and women's lives we are talking about. We should not be talking about politics. It should be non-partisan. We should be talking about whether we should participate, what we are participating in, how much it will cost, what our role will be and who will command those troops. All those are the kinds of questions that should be dealt with here tonight but which I doubt will even be mentioned.
How could we do it better? This will now be the sixth time I believe we have had a take note debate since I have been here. The proposal I will put forward again will be very simple. The way to really accomplish all we want to accomplish is to have a committee of the whole with 301 MPs who should be responsible. They should be in the House listening to this because it is men and women from their ridings who could conceivably lose their lives. We should be here to give support to those troops who do such a heck of a fine job. I will always remember meeting those troops in Yugoslavia and thinking wow, these people are Canadians. I was proud of the flag and proud of seeing them there. They need to know we are 100% behind them.
What should we do? We should have the experts come in and tell 301 members of parliament the exact and complete information. Then what we should do is have two or however many party members from each party and extra ones from the government present the party position. Then we should have a free vote. We should be voting on this item because it is the lives of our men and women. That is what is really important.
I do not know why the government does not like that idea. We would inform members of parliament, we would inform Canadians and we would then have an intelligent presentation and a free vote. The government would not fall if it was the decision of 301 members to not go to a country. Maybe we should not be going to the Central African Republic or staying there. Maybe we cannot be the 911 number for all peacekeeping missions. Those are the kinds of things this House should decide and the onus should be on us to decide.
Let us get to the committing of troops to this imaginary UN or maybe NATO force that we might send. Should we commit them? Obviously all of us have seen the newsreels. We have seen the 40 people from a village brutally killed and mutilated and tortured. All of us are sickened by that. They are unforgettable sights. All Canadians are hurt by those. All Canadians say we should be involved in trying to stop those. That is not the issue.
It is a lot deeper than that. We have to understand the cultural nature of these conflicts. We have to understand the propaganda involved. We have to understand the interrelationship of history, religion and the conflict going on.
I think we would all say those tragedies have to stop. We all abhor them. We cannot stand them and we want to do something. I think the question that comes down is what should we do. As Canadians I am not sure that it is fair or that it helps us to send troops, to send planes, to send whatever it takes unless they are equipped and unless they can do the very best possible job they are required to do. I am not saying they would not try. The problem is that we handicap them.
Again I go back to Bosnia when I saw those Canadian vehicles with patches, part paint jobs, 35 years old, belching diesel fuel and then I saw some of the other countries' equipment, silent and fast moving. I thought our guys and girls are there trying to do the job for us. But we are handicapping them. We have to be hurting them and their pride just because of what we do.
We have to take that into consideration. We cannot simply go everywhere. Many of our veterans are particularly touched by this issue as well. During the world wars we were right there. We were part of the decision making. We were leading in a lot of situations. There was a huge amount of pride. We had a huge role in many of those conflicts.
It was a Canadian prime minister who started peacekeeping back in the Suez Canal days. There was pride. There was pride when we went to Cyprus. I believe we have hurt that pride. We have done in this country something to lessen our position. By sending off troops and again asking them to do something, we do not really know what, we are doing nothing to help enhance that pride.
I cannot help but remind the House about 1996 and the Zaire mission. The Prime Minister and his wife were sitting around watching television. They saw a terrible massacre on CNN and said “We should call Raymond and tell him to do something about this”. They called Raymond down in Washington and Raymond went flying over and said “Yes, we will be the saviours; we will be the white knights”. The only problem was that nobody else followed.
We started moving troops there. We did not know what they would do. It was probably one of the biggest military-foreign affairs embarrassments we had ever had. A week later it was all cancelled, and we said we had to watch the Prime Minister watching television.
We also have to ask about our UN Security Council position. I am glad we are there. I hope we can make a difference. We must remember that we held it in 1948-49, 1958-59, 1967-68, 1977-78, 1989-90 and 1999-2000. We have had it every 10 years for the last six decades. That is what we would expect. We are along with Gabon, Namibia, Slovenia and so on.
We should not brag too much about that. We should do something. Instead of just talking we should do something. As far as soft power is concerned, as long as there are no bad guys left in the world it might work, but flower power will only go so far.
There are lots of bad guys out there: the North Koreas, the Kadaffes, the Saddam Husseins and the Angolas. The minister is very proud of our record in Angola where we have spent $2.3 billion on UN peacekeeping. We are about to reduce the 1,000 peacekeepers down to 100 and basically leave in disgrace. The British ambassador says that the crises in Sudan, Angola, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Eritrea and so on demonstrate that the UN is powerless to cope with crises as they arise. While we brag a lot, maybe we should ask what we are to do.
A lot of questions need to be asked about Kosovo. Who will make the decisions on what happens there? Who is in the contact group? Will we have any say as to what happens to our 500 to 800 troops? What are the NATO objectives? Do we agree that there should be a referendum in Kosovo in three years and a vote possibly to separate? Do we agree with those kinds of politics?
What will we bomb if we bomb something? What sort of long term plans do we have? Will we just be a police force with a big stick? The minute we leave will it go back into crisis again? Or, will we really try to accomplish something? What about the expansion of this conflict? What are the chances of it spreading to Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro and so on? Has anybody thought about that? What happens when we put this force in Kosovo? Will it spread out?
We have to ask about the cost. We have to ask about the 300,000 refugees. Who will take care of that problem? Who will work on that? What kind of plans are there? We are being asked to provide troops. Will we also provide infrastructure? What are we being asked? Are we being asked for a blank cheque, or what exactly is it that the government wants?
These questions have not been answered. We are not equipped to handle it. We will not have any control over our troops. As I say, it is a blank cheque. We are showing no leadership. We are showing no new spending.
Basically I am embarrassed when NATO calls upon us that we are not prepared to deliver. It is embarrassing for us as parliamentarians. It is embarrassing for our troops. How can we support a full mission? We want to support it. Obviously we owe that to NATO. I think we have tied our hands behind our backs. Governments for the past 30 years have made it very difficult for us to support something like this.