Madam Speaker, I am pleased to stand today on behalf of the New Democratic Party of Canada to indicate that we support Motion No. 30. In essence it calls upon the government to continue and intensify efforts with other nations to further develop multilateral initiatives to strengthen the capacity of international organizations, for example the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the United Nations, to enable them to identify the precursors to conflict and improve their conflict prevention capabilities.
The motion is very important and contains a number of very valuable words and thoughts. I want to focus a bit on some of the clauses that are quite important. For example, when we talk about multilateral initiatives that in itself says a lot. It talks about co-operation with other nations rather than a unilateral initiative.
Many unilateral initiatives take place where one nation will decide something on its own and move forward. Far too often those kinds of initiatives are based on the narrow economic greed of a nation or on its own particular agenda. Very often they are based upon intimidation, where a nation intends to intimidate other nations to go along with its will.
Yesterday I read in the paper, and I sure others read the same article, about an initiative that was considered by the United States to explode an atom bomb on the moon back in the 1950s to intimidate the Russians. This has just come to light now. That kind of initiative was based upon intimidation and an attempt to display that it was omnipotent, all powerful and could do what it wanted. That is not the kind of thing that leads to peaceful relations between nations.
Many years later we are seeing these things happening again. The United States is attempting to intimidate others to go along with its unilateral move to put up a national defence missile system. Concern has been expressed by nations across the world and by many citizens about it. Even people in Canada have expressed concern about it. Yet we see these intimidation tactics whereby the United States says that it will move ahead anyway and if we do not co-operate we will suffer as a result.
Those are the kind of threats that neighbouring nation is making to Canada. We have to get away from that kind of approach if we want to move forward, if we want to look at preventing conflicts and if we want to work together for a peaceful world and society.
The motion also talks about strengthening the capacity of international organizations. We must agree that the international organizations today are quite weak. For example, let us look at the United Nations. It was very clear during the Kosovo crisis that the United Nations was weak in terms of being able to cope with that situation. It was a NATO led movement that dealt with that situation when in reality it should have been the United Nations that took the led. We know the United Nations has to be strengthened to enable it to cope with the many conflicts that come up today.
Let us also look at the situation regarding Sierra Leone. A number of peacekeepers have been taken prisoner. That does not bode well for the strength of the United Nations, an international organization. We have to seriously look at strengthening these organizations so they may fulfil the kind of role that we determined they should fulfil.
In order to strengthen any of the international organizations such as the United Nations they need to be properly resourced. That brings back the responsibility of each country that is a part of the United Nations to pay its dues and to contribute do the things it is supposed to do as a member of that organization.
We need people of like mind. I think the original motion talked about bringing together like minded people. Indeed this is very important. We need people who are concentrating upon and desirous of obtaining world peace rather than simply preserving their own national identity or their own particular national interests. This is very important when we talk about strengthening the capacity of international organizations.
The third idea that is brought out in the motion, again a very important idea, is enabling the identification of precursors to conflict and to improve conflict prevention capability. This is where it is very important. We must look at bringing about situations that prevent rather than always end up reacting to crises.
Far too often we find ourselves at a stage where something terrible or drastic is happening in the world. We then react and try to correct the situation, but many times we know that if we keep our eyes and ears open, if we are at all interested in what is happening around us, there are many signs that conflict is developing. There are many indications that problems are brewing on the international scene.
Certainly we have to be able to detect that kind of information and to move to prevent these things from escalating to a point where we are sweeping up afterward. With today's technology we should be able to do that. We should be able to clearly identify and know when trouble is brewing.
When we look at our military there is talk about revolutionary and military affairs where we are being presented with the concept of modern warfare based upon technology and based upon the ability to have smart bombs. Ultimately I guess the goal is to have war with very few casualties because everything could be so precise according to the technology. If the technology is precise enough to enable us to conduct that kind of warfare, it should be precise enough to enable us to detect when problems are brewing and developing and to step in to do something before they become a crisis.
When we talk about international organizations, one of the key factors we have to recognize is that no matter how great the technology is today, no matter how advanced the technology is, the human factor must always be dominant. The human factor must remain. Technology is only going to be as useful and good as we as human beings enable it to be. If we put it to the proper use then it can be quite helpful to us. Otherwise it can be very damaging.
That calls for a certain mindset among people who are governing nations and working together for international peace. They must have a mindset or an attitude that is predisposed toward peace rather than toward aggression and war.
We must move away from the idea that everything is controlled by economics. We heard about diamonds being the cause of the conflict in Sierra Leone. In other parts of the world economic advantage has been the moving factor for people. We have to move away from letting economics dominate our lives and start to consider the value of human life in itself. We have to start looking at the lives of those children missing limbs whom we have seen, the victims of a war over economic greed. If we change our mindset we can certainly go a long way toward strengthening these international organizations.
I am reminded of a couple of stories told to me by people who had worked at the United Nations. One young woman who was a lawyer told me how she just quit in discouragement because of the things she saw taking place at the administrative level within the United Nations. Again, it was coming down to personal agendas and people looking toward their own power within the organization rather than looking toward the goals of the organization itself.
I spoke recently to a RCMP officer who had worked through the United Nations in a very high position. He told me about the things that discouraged him on the administrative side of things. When they needed equipment in certain areas in which they were working, they could not get it. They were told there was a lack of resources. Then they would see personal secretaries and people at the top riding in Jeeps and getting the equipment they needed. That kind of approach or attitude is what we have to change if we want to strengthen and create co-operation among our nations and to improve and strengthen our international organizations.
Again the NDP are very pleased to speak in support of this motion. We feel it goes to the heart of what is important when we are dealing with international affairs. People must work together with a proper mindset toward peace and harmony in the world. If we put that behind our efforts, certainly it will go a long way toward improving these international organizations.