Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Laval West.
I listened with great interest to the debate so far and I do not wish to repeat that which many hon. members have said in the House. It is clear from what I have listened to in the debate that most of our colleagues are in favour of the government's action and of NATO's action as it presently takes place. Some have even made it clear that they would support further action, including ground troops under certain circumstances if our humanitarian aim to return the people of Kosovo to their homes is not met.
All hon. members of the House recognize that our action raises difficult issues. The hon. member for Red Deer just referred to some of them. The hon. member for Scarborough—Agincourt also referred to some of them.
The issue of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Yugoslavia in traditional international law terms and in traditional diplomatic terms is a very serious issue that we must consider. The future of the United Nations system given NATO's role without specific UN security council sanction raises issues in itself which require serious consideration in the House.
Finally, among many other issues is the suffering of many innocent people in Yugoslavia. We must recognize that in seeking to stop the government of Mr. Milosevic and his war making machine others are paying the price.
All of us have many constituents with families asking us to bring an end to the situation. Those same constituents also recognize that ultimately the solution to this issue, the solution to the problem in the Balkans, will be the restoration of democracy in Yugoslavia, the restoration of an open, tolerant and pluralistic society in that area. That is how we got where we are by virtue of the existence of a dictatorship which did not stumble into the issue.
The member for Red Deer raised issues of the complexities of life in the Balkans. Members will recall that Bismarck said in 1888 “If another war occurs in Europe it will be because of some silly thing in the Balkans”. We are still wrestling with the complexities of the ending of the Turkish empire, the whole issue of the complexities of relationships of peoples in the Balkans. When we look at this issue we know that it was planned by one mastermind. It was planned by the government of Mr. Milosevic.
Recent evidence is showing that military leaders who were opposed to him were dismissed, that troops were put in with the specific issue of conducting ethnic cleansing, and that this would have gone on if we had done nothing and sat there. We were therefore forced to face this awful choice.
Would we sit there and do nothing as the member for Beauharnois—Salaberry said in the debate earlier this afternoon, or, as another member just said, what about the analogy of 1939? Would we sit there and do nothing, let it happen and run the certainty that there would have been over a million refugees in Macedonia and in other countries in the region, threatening the security of Europe for the next how many years?
How long would these million or million and a half people live in squalor and in refugee camps? Have we not seen the refugee camps in Palestine? Have we not seen refugee camps in other places where whole generations of people have grown up as refugees outside their countries? Could we in all honesty tolerate that situation to happen again if we had an opportunity to deal with it?
As the member for Red Deer's leader said this afternoon, did we not have a moral imperative to deal with it? Did we not have a right or a duty to say yes, this creates a difficult precedent? Yes, it raises difficult issues of sovereignty. Do we not have an obligation to ask ourselves whether we are living in a changed world, a world in which we have learned the lessons of failure to intervene in grave cases such as Rwanda or even the second world war?
Are we not living in a new world where humanitarian rules and humanitarian considerations prevail, rules that are being evolved by the international criminal court, by the Pinochet case and by other precedents which are telling us that national sovereignty is not what it used to be, that leaders can no longer in their own countries treat their population the way they wish and be able to get away with it because of a 19th century doctrine of national sovereignty?
We must deal with this because we are obliged to. Our peace and security are threatened when we see such situations developing with the terrible humanitarian consequences of millions of displaced people being pushed out of a country because of the iron will of one government and one man.
That is why the Prime Minister and the leaders of all other parties were of the view today that we must continue with this until there is a solution. That solution is that the Kosovars must go home. That is the moral imperative of which the leader of the Reform Party spoke this afternoon. That is the answer to the objections that the member for Red Deer has raised in the House this evening.
When members have said use ground troops if necessary that is what they are trying to deal with, recognizing that if that comes there would be an important role for a possible Russian contingent in such a force. This would be difficult but Russia's present prime minister, Mr. Primakov, is a very able and skilful diplomat. He may yet be able to bring some helpful resolution to this horrible problem.
I want to raise two other issues which I do not think have been considered in any great detail in the House today.
The first is that of Montenegro. We owe it to ourselves and to the people of Montenegro and their courageous president, Milo Djukanovic who has managed to keep his people out of this conflict, to ensure that we and our NATO allies do nothing that would push his people into a war situation. He has so skilfully and ably resisted the terrible pulls in that region and has saved his people from the scourge of this conflict. I hope that our NATO allies and our government are doing everything to ensure that peace will reign in that one small area of sanity that still prevails in that region.
Second, I hope that we will turn our minds to the issue of what will happen after. The leader of the New Democratic Party raised this in the House this afternoon. I support her position.
We have to be in a position to consider rebuilding the society after this is over. To intervene today and leave a totally destroyed society would be irresponsible. We cannot do that. We are now engaged, it seems to me, in a situation to ensure that Kosovars return to their homes, but they must return to homes. We will have to make sure that when this is over we will be engaged in a process to enable them to return to a real society that we help build together.
We also must make sure in Serbia itself, in Belgrade that the citizens know that when Mr. Milosevic goes, and he will eventually go at some time, and a new, open and liberal society is developed in that country, we will be there to help rebuild. Otherwise all we have done up to now will have been a total waste of time.
I ask members of the House that when we are calling for action today, let us not forget the humanitarian aid we are looking at. Humanitarian aid will have to extend well beyond that of helping refugees in their place. Humanitarian aid will have to go in the long term to rebuilding a society, to rebuilding democratic institutions and an infrastructure that will enable reasonable life to return to that area. Only if we look at this long view, only if we deal not only with the present crisis, but recognize the root causes of it, will we be able to avoid the problems that have led us here.
Only if we follow the road of recognizing that there is a new society with a new rule of law applicable to the Pinochets, the Rwandans, the Milosevics and others will we be able to assure ourselves that this will not reoccur and we will not be debating this issue at another time in the House in other circumstances.