Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Calgary Northeast.
I would like to welcome the new foreign affairs minister to his position. I have no advice to give him other than to read deeply for several weeks before he wanders into that portfolio. As somebody who is fairly new to this, I have discovered how complicated it is.
I will not suggest that I am going to edify the House greatly with what I have to say tonight, but I do want to issue a few cautionary notes about what the government is proposing to embark upon.
Canada is proud, and rightly so, of its record in peacekeeping. As a Canadian citizen I am very proud of what Canadian soldiers have done in their role as peacekeepers over the last 44 years since former prime minister Pearson invented the idea of peacekeeping. Soon I will be able to present a peacekeeping medal to one of the people who works in my office in my riding. I am quite proud of that fact and he is very proud of the role he has been able to play as a peacekeeper in the past.
It is something that Canadians generally support. We like the idea that Canada has played a very productive role around the world as peacekeepers in the past.
That said, Canadians are rightly concerned about some of the things that have happened in the past and which give us pause when we consider moving into some of these new trouble spots such as the mission that the government seems ready to embark upon, the mission where we would essentially patrol the buffer zone between Eritrea and Ethiopia, which is 25 kilometres wide.
This is a situation where there has been, as the foreign affairs minister pointed out, tremendous bloodshed over the last few years. There have been somewhere in the neighbourhood of 100,000 or 120,000 people killed and 85,000 to 100,000 displaced. In some cases people are in jeopardy of not having enough to eat this fall. It is a pretty desperate situation.
We also know that in the past when we have gone into the continent of Africa we have had huge trouble in some cases. I think of Zaire, where peacekeepers sat on the tarmac for a month trying to figure out what exactly they were doing there because seemingly on a whim the Prime Minister decided that peacekeepers should be sent there. I think of course of Somalia. Who could forget Somalia and the disaster that was? It spawned an inquiry that ultimately never did get to the root of the problems, an inquiry that the government cut short.
Most tragic of all, of course, was Rwanda. That was a terrible situation. Roméo Dallaire sat helplessly and watched the genocide that took place there while he tried to alert the rest of the world to what was going on. Ultimately the UN failed him, frankly, in that situation.
The reason I raise some of these cases is not to suggest that Canada should not go on peacekeeping missions into Africa but that we should go with our eyes completely open. We have challenges that I am not certain the government has considered yet. I do not think it has addressed some of the questions that have been raised.
My friend who just spoke and questioned the defence minister has pointed out that Canada has been involved in a lot of peacekeeping over the last many years, at a time when the government has cut deeply into our ability to provide equipment for our personnel, at a time when the government has cut the number of personnel dramatically. There were about 10,000 people out of uniform in the last seven years and about $10 billion to $11 billion removed cumulatively from the defence budget over the last seven years. That is a lot of money and a lot of personnel to remove and still maintain the same levels of peacekeeping that we have been maintaining. It was not very long ago that we consolidated our troops in the Balkans because we were overextended. It was hurting morale in the military.
It seems like we cannot say no to missions. We are just now starting to get back on our feet. We are just now giving our military personnel a chance to collect themselves and get used to having a bit of time to spend with their families in many cases. Right away again, though, the government is committing us to another mission. It commits us without answering some fundamental questions.
We point out that Ethiopia-Eritrea in the Horn of Africa is a tremendous distance from Canada. How do we support these people when they are that far away? Let us remember that we do not have the airlift or sealift capacity we should have. We do not have a lot of capacity in our military because we have let our military run down so much. How do we reinforce those people? How do we support them? How do we withdraw them if there is trouble?
We know that there can be trouble in Africa. That is one thing we have learned over the last many years. Even when we do not expect it, all of a sudden there can be trouble. When we talk about trouble in Africa we are not talking about skirmishes but about the sorts of things that have happened in Somalia and Rwanda and the sorts of things that happen today in Congo. We are talking about terrible messes, terrible situations, so we need to be assured that we have the ability to reinforce those troops, to supply them and to get them out if there is the type of trouble we are talking about. We have heard no reassurance from the government that we have that capacity.
Next, as I have already mentioned, we are in a situation where we are already extended about as far as we can go. What happens if we are asked to intervene in places like the Congo? Are we to send more people over? How will we deal with that sort of situation? It is not clear to us what the government's intentions are. Obviously this is something that is on the government's radar screen, but we need to have that kind of information before we can say yes. The government has said clearly that we would not be involved in the Congo, that we would therefore commit these troops only to Ethiopia-Eritrea. That is an important thing, which we need to know. We have not heard that yet from either one of the ministers.
My final point is that while I appreciate the chance to speak tonight to this issue, I resent the suggestion that somehow we are influencing the government's policy on this issue and somehow influencing their decision on whether Canada will go. It is all but assured that Canada will go.
The minister mentioned a moment ago that the Dutch parliament will consider this. Maybe in that system members actually do consider it. That would be a great thing, but I have a niggling suspicion, which is borne out by past experience, that this debate really will not influence the decision very much. That is regrettable. A lot of people who are here have some valuable points to raise. We would see this place full if people thought they could influence the government's decision making. Unfortunately they do not, and that is reflected in how many people will speak to the issue tonight.
I will conclude my remarks with that. I urge the government to consider some of the questions I have raised. It is for those reasons that the Canadian Alliance is very reluctant to suggest that Canadian peacekeepers should go to Ethiopia-Eritrea to be involved in this mission. We need more information. We do not have it. It is for those reasons that we would oppose that action at this time.