Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to this very, very important motion.
Last Thursday I had the occasion to visit Winnipeg to attend a funeral which was held for a very close relative who had passed away. Funerals have a way of bringing to light the stark reality of life and death, what it is all about to be here on earth and what we accomplish while we are here.
While I was in Winnipeg I also had the opportunity to visit with my son who is living there. My son is a fine young man. I am not saying that just because he is my son, he is a very fine young man. He is a very peace loving young man and I am very proud of him.
We were sitting in a restaurant having a bite to eat and he said “Dad, I got in a fight not too long ago”. I was very surprised. I said “You got in a fight?” He said “Yeah. I was walking home and I saw this fellow who was drenched in blood. He was covered with blood. Another person, quite a bit larger, was standing over this person, beating him. I went over to talk to the aggressor. I said `This is not necessary. Calm down. Relax. Go home. It is all over”.
He was trying to bring peace to the situation. Then he turned to the fellow who had been beaten up and he told him there was no point in continuing with this, that he should just go on home. The person who had been beaten up listened and decided to go. Then my son turned around to leave because he thought the issue was over. However, the aggressor, accompanied by two other people, all charged him. One came at him from one side and one came at him from the other side, and the three of them were holding him. He looked at them and said “So it takes three of you”. He must have touched a chord with their kind of macho image. One fellow said “Let him go and we will fight one on one”. The aggressor who had beaten up the other fellow went after my son. My son, with his Judo instincts from his training days when he was younger, very quickly took over, pinned this fellow to the ground and held him so that he could not move. The others were quite surprised. They said “Let him get up and we will go”, and they backed off.
I was torn with conflicting opinions on the situation. I said to him “Jamie, I am proud of you. You did something that was good. You stepped in to try to help someone who was obviously in distress”. However, I also said “It was kind of an interesting situation. You were lucky because who knows what could have happened. Those people could have had weapons and they could have attacked you while you were down holding this fellow”. There were a lot of risks involved.
The bottom line was that he had to make a choice. He made a choice to take some risk to try to help someone who was in distress, who was at a disadvantage, who was being bruised and beaten.
I tell that story because it has similarities to the conflict in Kosovo, where people have had to make hard choices which involve risk. That was done at the beginning of this conflict. I do not think anyone questions the motive for becoming involved in the conflict. We were trying to assist people who were being taken advantage of and we were trying to end the suffering and the bloodshed. That was the motivation for becoming involved and for remaining involved in this conflict.
However, we are at a point now where we have to very seriously look at what this motion proposes, and that is intensifying and accelerating our efforts to find a diplomatic solution—and I emphasize the word diplomatic—to the crisis in Kosovo.
We know that in diplomacy there is always give and take on all sides. We cannot have it so that someone can say “This is exactly what I want and unless I get that I will not give anything in return”. Diplomacy always involves a matter of give and take. People involved in the labour movement know this. At the negotiating table there is give and take.
There are certain principles beyond which we do not go. For example, in this case we know that there are certain principles at stake; the principle of self-determination and so forth. We re-affirm our support for that basic principle. However, in negotiations and in diplomacy there is always give and take.
We are urging very strongly that the government take the lead in finding a diplomatic solution, involving Russia and the United Nations, to this very serious crisis. None of us can doubt the seriousness of this crisis. All we have to do is look at our televisions to see the images of the people who are suffering on both sides of the conflict. We see the suffering that is taking place and we know that the bottom line is that the conflict must end.
As I said earlier, when we attend a funeral it comes home very quickly that after all is said and done we all end up in that same position, lying in a coffin with the life gone from us. What people remember afterwards are the good deeds that we have done, the way we have influenced someone's life as we passed through.
I am reminded of a spiritual phrase which says that if I have helped somebody as I pass this way then my living would not be in vain. That is the goal which we must all strive toward, to not have our living be in vain and to try to do what we can to help people.
In this case we must help to bring about a diplomatic solution to this problem, to make sure that no action is taken which expands the conflict and makes it worse because we see that sort of thing happening quite often. It could very well have happened in the situation involving my son. He could very well have become involved in a situation where the action he took could have escalated things. Fortunately, he was able to take action to calm the situation and to use the appropriate amount of force necessary to bring an end to it.
It is because of our concern that nothing be done to expand or prolong this conflict that I move:
That the motion be amended by replacing the words “to take actions” with the following:
“to impose a naval blockade or take any other actions”