Madam Speaker, when humans were organized into tribes, bound together by family ties, language and religion it was easy to fight their neighbour who was clearly different.
Today in Canada we have a wonderful new type of nation. Our citizens include the very diverse first nations people who speak a range of languages which extend beyond our borders and who may well have relatives in other countries.
In Canada we have representatives of more than 200 nations of the world who speak hundreds of languages and who belong to all of the world's major religions.
Over the weekend I was told of a housing project in Toronto where the kids speak 80 languages.
The majority of Canadians have kin abroad. It is virtually impossible for a nation like this to engage in a dispute with another country without it being a dispute with some Canadian families or with people who have linguistic or religious ties with Canada.
Today, for the third time, we are debating a conflict in the former Yugoslavia. This is a part of the world where the ethnic, linguistic and religious mix, although nothing like the scale of our mix in Canada, is quite remarkable. As an inevitable result the ties with Canada are, to say the least, intricate.
In my riding we have two first nations and some 70 first and second generation nationalities. We have Serb Canadians, Albanian Canadians, Greek Canadians and Macedonian Canadians who talk on the phone to relatives in the zone of conflict. Some of these people came to Canada to get away from the clutches of Mr. Milosevic. We have church groups, Christian and Muslim, that have strong ties over there. As the House can imagine, the views of these Canadians who share a common region of origin are often very different.
I am glad that Canada is not a tribal society. I am glad that it is not easy for us to fight our neighbours. I hope that it never will be.
In my riding there is a wide range of opinion about the conflict in Kosovo. There are people who are opposed to NATO involvement. Some simply want the bombing to stop. One person compared the NATO actions to those of the Nazis. He said that it is like the Nazis practising with high tech weapons on civilians.
There are people who are very much in favour of the NATO action, who feel that we should escalate the action in the air and on the ground rapidly to finish off Mr. Milosevic off once and for all. I believe that the vast majority of people in Peterborough support the NATO action, but with sadness. That is why there has been such an outpouring of support in cash and kind for Kosovo and neighbouring countries from people who support the NATO action.
Never before have I known an international crisis that has resulted in large numbers of people offering space in their homes for refugees. One couple in Peterborough specified that they wanted to have a family with at least three children to make good use of their spacious home. Nurses and translators from Peterborough have offered to travel to reception points in Canada and to Albania and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The Government of Canada has already committed more than $20 million in aid at a time when we are engaged in this conflict.
Canada is not a nation which enters into conflict easily, with the idea of pounding some other nation. Most people support the NATO action as a necessary evil, something that they believe has to be done.
Last October when the House first debated this matter people on the street often mentioned Rwanda as a missed opportunity. They would say that if only we had gone in earlier we could have saved half a million people. Today those who contact me with offers of aid are saying the same thing. The fact that we are in the first hour of the Holocaust Memorial Day now reminds us of another case where timely intervention would have prevented a tragedy.
In the first debate last October I had the strong feeling that we were raising the ante so that Mr. Milosevic would back down. It was a bit like a union giving its executive a strike mandate, with each member secretly hoping that a strike would not be necessary. In most labour-management negotiations a strike is not necessary. The same is true of many of the actions of the international community. Diplomatic and economic pressure usually does the trick, but this time more serious action was necessary.
In the debate last October 7 the Minister of Foreign Affairs pointed out that we were faced with a humanitarian tragedy and that 300,000 people were on the move. That was six months ago and there are now a million people on the move. Conditions in Kosovo have become much worse.
Can we stand by when this sort of ethnic cleansing is going on? Surely we should learn from experiences like Rwanda and the 1930s leading up to World War II.
As I said, it is not easy for a country like Canada to enter into a conflict like this; it never was and it never should be.
Until recently the colour sergeant of the Peterborough legion was a man who immigrated to Canada just before World War II. He volunteered and served through the war, much of the time in campaigns in which his brothers were on the other side. As a new Canadian he had to make a very difficult personal decision to volunteer to fight in that war. So did tens of thousands of others in our armed forces.
It was not easy for Canada to go to war then; it is not easy now, but let no one doubt our resolve when we decide on a course of action. We were right then; we are right now. We are engaged in this tragic conflict today out of firm conviction. Our intention is to halt ethnic terrorism in Kosovo and prevent its spread in that region. Our intention is to show that the international community is resolved on matters such as this.
Let us continue to exert all forms of diplomatic pressure to achieve a political settlement. Let us hope that Mr. Milosevic will soon realize that we are serious so that he will allow Kosovo to develop in peace as an example to the world of diverse peoples living together.
Let us pray for all those in this troubled region and for their families, wherever they may be.