Mr. Speaker, in connection with the motion by the hon. member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, while I have sympathy for his intentions, at the same time I have misgivings about the wording and even his proposed amendment, for a number of reasons which I am going to explain.
First of all, I have sympathy. He spoke eloquently of the extremely troubling and revolting scenes taking place all around the world, which are intolerable. We will readily agree that millions of people have been killed all over the world in senseless conflicts since the end of the cold war. We are all aware of this.
We can also hope for prevention. The desire to take preventive action is not lacking, not in the hon. member, not in the government, not in the party I represent, not in members of parliament, not in ordinary citizens, not in the NGOs. The real question is: how we go about it.
The proposal made by the hon. member, and I recognize his merit in so doing, is to perhaps stir up debate on this in the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs. This might be the ideal forum for doing so. However, several aspects of the motion disturb me.
First of all, the notion that one country could play a lead role, to spark a so-called policy of the necessity of prevention, is not realistic. This is not how it is done. Many people everywhere want to carry out prevention. We need only go to the UN, to visit the representatives of the institute for conflict resolution. Many people are working concretely on this.
On the other hand, when he refers to like-minded countries, in French “nations de même esprit”, this raises questions in my mind.
If we are to create a real prevention force, there may be countries with different visions, but these visions together must then lead to the establishment of a plan, if a plan is enough.
My first question concerns the expression “like-minded nations”.
I will now deal with the expression “in order to develop a multilateral plan”. I must say that I have a bit of a problem with that. Our hon. colleague is his party's critic, and his party revealed a new position on foreign policy last fall. I was therefore expecting that, as critic, he would adopt this policy, I understand that this is not the case, and I am a bit lost.
It was in light of this policy that I prepared my speech. I note that my colleague is distancing himself a little from it, but he will have to tell us more. Developing a multilateral plan involves all parties, otherwise how could we manage?
The motion says “to reform multinational organizations”. They do indeed need reform. There has been consensus on the need for reform in the various forums I have participated in. Mr. Camdessus, the outgoing president of the International Monetary Fund, does nothing but talk about the interests of the developing countries, but what was his policy when he was the active president?
We have all seen the fiasco of the Seattle summit, resulting from the collision between the rich countries and the others. The gap between the rich countries and the poor ones is widening. We cannot be thinking that a single political plan will reform these international bodies. Major interests are at stake.
So long as the rich countries, including the most powerful, do not understand the link between the unacceptable aggression happening worldwide and poverty, we will get nowhere.
The aim of the member's motion is for the plan to make it possible to “identify the precursors of conflict”. I think there are ample such organizations. In Canada and Quebec, there are groups working at the site of conflicts around the world. I heard what Canada's ambassador to the UN, Mr. Fowler, has to say and I have also read what he has written. If the situation in Rwanda, around the great lakes, turned into something like what we have seen elsewhere, he was not certain that the UN would intervene. I respectfully submit that the problem is not that we do not know there will be conflicts.
The hon. member's motion also says establish multilateral conflict-prevention initiatives. There is nothing my party and I wish for more than for countries to be able to achieve that. As the hon. member pointed out, in 1997, out of the 27 conflicts that occurred, 24 were internal ones taking place within a country.
These conflicts involve groups and people who have power relationships between each other. These conflicts sometimes have economic roots. Some of them occur because a group wants recognition. It is not enough to know that a conflict is brewing. We must also understand the situation, otherwise we will not be able to intervene.
Let us take the conflict in Kosovo, regarding which there was what I would call a reluctant consensus in this House to call for military intervention. The current situation in Kosovo is extremely problematical. In the name of humanitarian objectives that I shared then and that I still share, we created a situation where the multi-ethnicity of society has become difficult to maintain. That conflict should have been avoided altogether. But how could it have been avoided without looking at the issue of Kosovo's self-determination?
However, the international community is still opposed to self-determination. In preparation for this speech, I read a book written under the direction of Charles-Philippe David and Albert Legault, two very attentive observers in Quebec. In their book, a professor wrote the following about Yugoslavia:
An analysis of the events that preceded the declarations of sovereignty and independence of Slovenia and Croatia suggests that the armed conflict in Yugoslavia might have been avoided if the international community had been prepared to rethink the role and implementation of the principle of self-determination.
I understand the hon. member's determination, but I cannot support the proposal in its present form. However, I hope that this debate will lead to more discussions on the issue.