Mr. Speaker, Kosovo has drawn the attention of the world. No matter where we live in Canada we have watched on television and we have read in the newspapers the horrors and the atrocities, the violations of human rights that have taken place in Kosovo against Muslim Albanians.
In the past two weeks in my riding of Vancouver East I have been overwhelmed by the response that I have received over the telephone, by mail, e-mail, faxes and from people I have met on the street. The response I have had in my own community has been on a couple of levels. First, there has been the response that we have all seen in the House of Commons, across Canada and indeed around the world. That has been the response of: What can we do to stop this violence? What can we do to provide a humanitarian effort to ensure that the Albanians of Kosovo are not violated further?
From my constituents I have also heard another very thoughtful response. It concerns the question of what is the appropriate role and what is it that Canada should do as part of the international community to ensure that there is a just peace in the Balkans and in particular in Kosovo.
I have been very gratified by the amount of debate that has taken place regarding what Canada's role should be. Many of my constituents have expressed very grave concerns about the fact that Canada has participated in a NATO action that has escalated into military intervention.
Twenty days ago all political parties in the House, including the NDP, supported that intervention because we believed that it was necessary to provide a humanitarian response to the atrocities that were taking place.
However, here we are twenty days later and I think we have to say that the situation has changed. Twenty days ago there was an assurance, a prediction, that the NATO initiative would be short and effective and that its objective was to protect the Kosovars.
This debate has gone on for many hours. We are approaching early morning. Although we will not be voting, today is the time to take stock, to pause for a moment, even in terms of our Canadian contact, to say “What is Canada doing? What has our response been? Is it still the appropriate response?”
The situation has changed. Rather than the situation being contained, which we were told was the objective of NATO, in actual fact the situation has worsened. The bombing has provoked a horrific number of atrocities and a greater fleeing of refugees. Over 500,000 refugees have fled Kosovar.
The bombing has caused untold harm, suffering and death to civilian populations. It is very important to point out that in today's wars—and this is a war, let us make no mistake about it—it is the civilian populations who are the primary casualties. Even though we are told that there is strategic bombing, it is still the civilians who pay the price.
We were told that this would be effective, but we now face the very real danger and threat of the situation escalating. As I and people in my community of Vancouver East watch the news, we watch with a sense of anxiety and stress. We see this drama in the Balkans playing out with Russia particularly, as well as China, becoming involved and making various threats. The whole situation is becoming destabilized.
In today's debate and certainly in our discussions in caucus we believe that we must have the courage to stand and examine what solutions are going to provide a humanitarian, peaceful and just solution in Kosovo and in the Balkans.
We have to ask ourselves if the continued bombing of the people of Serbia and the continued fleeing of refugees is bringing any stability to the area. Evidence is mounting that the contrary is happening. There is greater instability, greater harm is being done and the NATO initiative is leading us into a situation that is more and more volatile and tense.
People in the peace movement have suggested and predicted that because NATO went in without the authority of the United Nations the very issue of NATO itself has become one of credibility. We went in with a massive force, we issued an ultimatum and then it became very hard to back down, rather than seeking out other resolutions that would bring peace to the area.
Our caucus has had very serious and thoughtful debates about what it is we should be bringing forward to this House of Commons, what we should be saying on behalf of our constituents. We believe very strongly that in terms of what Canada does at this point we should be emphasizing and moving back to a role within the United Nations, a role within international peacekeeping forces, which includes Russia, the OSCE and China. Otherwise we run the huge risk and danger of having the situation worsen daily and we will see the NATO objectives failing.
One of the major peace organizations in British Columbia, End the Arms Race, whose members are expert in the areas of international law, peacekeeping and conflict, wrote a letter to the Prime Minister expressing their opinion that Canada has failed the United Nations. They said that the unilateral military action of NATO has further undermined the authority of the United Nations, the new international court of justice and other UN bodies, and that Canada has contributed to international anarchy by demonstrating that international politics is not governed by law, but by military power.
Those are very sobering words. I urge members of the House to take stock of what is taking place and to recognize that, yes, we must have a humanitarian response, but we are also allowing a crisis to develop in the role of the UN and how the international community responds, not just to the situation in Kosovo, but elsewhere.
We only have to look around the globe at the situation in the Congo, which is a bloody civil war, at the Kurds in Turkey, at the Great Lakes region of Africa, at Sierra Leone, Indonesia or East Timor. There are very fundamental issues about how it is that we strengthen international law, how we protect human rights and how we use the role of the UN as a catalyst to facilitate peacekeeping and the protection of human rights, rather than using NATO as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy to further its own interests.
There is a huge concern growing about the further escalation of the war in Kosovo and whether we have met the humanitarian objectives which we started with 20 days ago. Now we have the contemplation of the possible use of Canadian ground troops, with no assurance from the government that it will be done through a democratic vote in the House of Commons.
I think it is time to say that we want to see an end to the bombing. We want to see a serious pursuit of diplomacy and not the rejection of every diplomatic overture from Russia or other countries. We want to see a serious negotiation take place under the auspices of the UN. We want to see an international peacekeeping force and, very importantly, an international system under the auspices of the general assembly, after a debate in the general assembly, to adjudicate and make decisions about the use of peacekeeping forces.
Also I think we want to see a commitment that other atrocities, often perpetrated or abetted to serve U.S. interests, receive the same kind of attention. There is an issue of consistency here. The media have drawn our attention to what happens in Kosovo, but we have to be aware of other situations that also demand that kind of response from the international community.