Madam Speaker, before I start my speech this evening I would like to advise that I will be sharing my time with the member for Peterborough.
I rise this evening at this late hour to support Canada's involvement in Kosovo to stop the systematic campaign of terror being perpetrated and led by Slobodan Milosevic against the innocent civilians of Kosovo.
First and foremost I thank our Canadian fighter pilots and the peacekeeping troops for putting their lives on the line to carry out their missions against Yugoslav military and security forces with skill and courage. All Canadians can be proud of their performance.
Almost three weeks ago NATO commenced its operation allied force. I submit that it had no further option when it did so. As Canadians and members of the international community we could no longer stand by and tolerate the actions of a government which denied the most basic rights to its people, sending tanks, troops and artillery to destroy villages, barbarically taking the lives of innocent civilians, and forcing hundreds of thousands of people including women and children out of their homes.
We have witnessed the pillage and agony too vividly for almost a decade. The actions of President Milosevic and his authorities constitute the last horrendous crime of this century. The crimes continue to be perpetrated. This weekend we again heard of reports of alleged rapes. We have seen aerial views of alleged massive grave sites.
Enough is enough. Genocide and ethnic cleansing cannot and will not be tolerated any longer.
That is the message that operation allied force is sending to President Milosevic, the Serbian government and the people who stand up and support those policies and, in some instances, carry them out. That is also the message that we, as Canadians and members of NATO, must unanimously reaffirm tonight. I would encourage all of my colleagues on both sides of the House to do so.
Over the last week questions have arisen in the media as to why Canada, which has an international reputation for peacekeeping, is so deeply involved in the attack on Milosevic's forces. Why is Canada dropping bombs instead of pursuing peace?
Let it be absolutely clear that Canada's strongest preference remains a negotiated settlement to the crisis based on the Rambouillet agreement.
I also believe that Canada's participation in NATO is not a brand new direction in Canada's foreign policy. Our participation in the NATO air strikes is based on furthering Canada's human security issues agenda, the very same agenda on which Canada campaigned for a seat on the United Nations security council.
Human security is a concept which responds to the changing nature of conflict in the late 20th century where wars are increasingly fought within, not between states. New strategies are needed for addressing today's civil conflicts not only because of the threat that they pose to international peace and security, but because of the toll in civilian suffering that they extract.
Human security extends beyond the traditional security paradigm centred on conflict resolution between states by addressing such issues as poverty, refugees, human rights, governance and the rule of law, and other cross-cutting issues such as transnational crime, terrorism and environmental degradation. The land mines campaign and the follow up is an example of successful international action to tackle a key human security concern.
Last week our Minister of Foreign Affairs delivered an address to the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Relations at Princeton, New Jersey, wherein he confirmed that our government's decision to send Canadian pilots to war was based on our policy of furthering and protecting human security. In his speech he stated:
If Kosovo symbolizes how human security has become a focus of attention and concern for the international community, NATO's response demonstrates how the defence of human security has become a force for global action.
NATO is engaged in Kosovo to restore human security to the Kosovars. It was and is the humanitarian imperative that has galvanized the alliance to act.
Critics state that the proper way to resolve this issue was through the United Nations and that Canada with a seat at the security council had a duty to ensure that the resolution to this crisis took place at the security council.
The fact is that the United Nations security council, acting under Chapter VII of the UN charter, issued crucial resolutions that identified the conflict in Kosovo as a threat to peace and security in the regions. In fact, Resolutions 1199 and 1203 and the October agreements between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and NATO imposed a clear obligation on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to respect a ceasefire, protect the civilian population and limit the deployment of its security forces in Kosovo. Yet the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia breached all of its obligations under the United Nations security council resolutions and under the Belgrade agreements of October 1998.
The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was intransigent and all efforts to reach a negotiated settlement were rendered futile.
There is no doubt that Canada would have preferred the United Nations security council to explicitly authorize NATO's mission and Canada worked hard to encourage the council to pass such a resolution. However, as the Minister of Foreign Affairs stated last week, “certain members of the council would not reconcile yesterday's assumptions about sovereignty with today's imperatives of human emergency”.
I believe as the Minister of Foreign Affairs believes that the notion of human security has transcended classic notions of the nation state and sovereignty.
Critics who believe that NATO has no legal right to attack a sovereign state are overly simplistic in their analysis. While Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty signed in Washington on April 4, 1949 defined the case of the alliance as a collective defence against armed attack, the nationalisms of the Balkans and the Caucuses that helped spark World War I became resurgent.
This produced non-Article 5 missions such as the peacekeeping force in Bosnia. As Craig R. Whitney wrote in Sunday's New York Times , “the war is teaching NATO what its role is”. Mr. Whitney noted:
Like it or not, the role of NATO is being defined in practice in Kosovo, not on paper in Washington.
The role right now is that of a bulwark against the consequences of ethnic instability in Europe's southeastern rim. For that, much more than Russian nuclear bombs, is today the biggest threat to European security as it was a century ago.
Mr. Whitney goes on to note:
—if NATO cannot defeat the effort of President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia to drive the ethnic Albanian population out of the ancient Serbian province of Kosovo, the alliance risks going the way of the League of Nations and other failed 20th century attempts to deal with the same ethnic instability.
As Canada and other leaders of NATO meet in Washington next week to celebrate NATO's 50th anniversary, it will also be a time to discuss and chart a new strategic concept as it defines its role in the 21st century.
I hope the concept of the missions of human rights and human security are first and foremost on the NATO leaders' agenda. This is also an issue in which Canada can play a lead role at the United Nations security council; by working toward a universal set of conditions and limits for actions in favour of human security.
Last week, when addressing the criticism about Canada's role in NATO and its unprecedented interference with state sovereignty, the Minister of Foreign Affairs stated as follows:
It is curious that far from weakening state sovereignty, action to support human security—to the extent that it supports democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights—can serve to reinforce stability. Similarly, the very same countries that argue against humanitarian intervention on the basis of sovereignty are the most anxious to join trade and commercial organizations, which by their nature involve creating a certain amount of international control. It is hard to understand why it is acceptable to sacrifice sovereignty for economic interests, but not in the human interest.
Last but not least, let us send a very strong message today from the House of commons to President Milosevic and his authorities that Canada, along with its NATO allies, is determined that Kosovo's two million people should be left in peace to govern themselves under international protection.
If we do not prevail more atrocities will undoubtedly unfold. As we approach the next millennium, we in the international community have a duty to ensure that the human atrocities that we have watched over the last 10 years cease and desist immediately. As we enter the new millennium we must also ensure that these atrocities never happen again.