Mr. Chairman, it is quite spooky here tonight. After almost 25 years in family practice attending to sick patients or getting up in the middle of the night to pronounce somebody dead, I guess we are all here tonight because we are worried that this debate is about life and death.
I think we all know, having visited the knesset, that those are the kinds of debates held in other parliaments around the world but are not debates we often do here.
One of the most important things about being a member of parliament is that sometimes we have to talk about things of which we know very little. When I spoke on September 18 I was worried about the events of September 11. I wondered what would happen. I talked a little about how my father and my father-in-law had gone to war so that my sons who are now 18 and 20 would not have to.
We worried about having peace. In the 50 years since the second world war, we hoped we could continue to use the rule of law, to use our sense of justice around the world and that there would be a way to solve our problems other than through military action.
On thanksgiving Sunday while I was putting the turkey in the oven and being grateful for being in Canada, I was upset to hear that the war on terrorism had begun. It was numbing to think of what it meant to Canada, a country of peacemakers. It was an extraordinarily difficult week in the riding, as the hon. member for Yukon has said. Canadians are worried. They were worried when they looked at the Globe and Mail this morning and saw the headline stating “Ottawa backs U.S. all the way”.
As we often find, however, when we get into the text is that it is not what the minister said. What I think people want to know is whether there is a way to sort out the next steps.
It has been said that the difference between a politician and a statesman is that the politician is making decisions for the next election while a statesman is making decisions for the next generation.
What I have heard very loudly over this last week is that we want to ensure that the Prime Minister of Canada gets to be a statesman and that this is not a coalition where one nation makes all the decisions, particularly as we look forward to what must be the next steps.
Last Thursday was a most difficult evening. In compulsory civics courses now in grade 10 we have some making a difference course that I have done with all the grade 10s in the riding. We had a dinner planned for months for the best 20 essays in the riding about these wonderful students' views of citizens, about apathy and about the role of the citizen and the role of the elected representative. I had asked Ursula Franklin to come and talk to them, who I think has done some of the most amazing thinking and writing on the role of the citizen. Last week she was seriously wearing her pacifist hat. She made all of us think a little differently. She was someone about to win the Lester B. Pearson award for peace. She was concerned I think that 50 years of work could be for naught if we did not try to make sure that the next steps out of this were back under the umbrella of the United Nations.
She reminded us of the important work of Lester Pearson, of George Ignatieff and all Canadians who have worked so hard.
I was reminded of Beijing. Whenever there were things too difficult to handle, a subcommittee would be struck and Canada would be asked to chair it.
I was reminded of the number of ways to look at things. It was an interesting challenge for me to report back to my wonderful staff who seemed to all have degrees in peace and conflict studies. They wanted to know why the scientists were pacifists and if it because there was no evidence that this worked? They wanted to know how to find smart ways of going about the next chapter and how to make sure that whatever we did would not take away the important role of the UN in the future.
When Kofi Annan and the United Nations won the Nobel Prize last Friday, it did not seem ironic. It seemed like a very purposeful decision of the Norwegians to make sure that people would not forget the UN at this time.
Ursula Franklin asked me questions that I could not answer. I was asked if this had happened to China or to India, if the Pudong highrises opposite Shanghai or if the Taj Mahal had been hit, would we be writing blank cheques or giving carte blanche for the people in self-defence?
I have a feeling that we would want a serious role for the security council and I think that we would want to get this back on the rails as soon as we possibly could.
There are many things to look forward to in the next chapter. It is imperative that we have the best brains involved when coming to this decision. It is really important that people understand that culture. We cannot demand that someone be handed over on a silver platter, when that is not the way people in that culture work to save face. Sometimes, with a certain persuasion, accidents happen. There are many ways that people have organized to make sure terrorists can be rooted out.
I want to make sure that the foreign policy which is articulated in these next chapters, particularly by the United States, is indeed a foreign policy. We have some concern that at times foreign policy, which is merely for domestic consumption, is not the best in the long term.
Ursula Franklin said to me “If you have a friend that drinks too much, do you just pour them another drink?” What do we do with people who actually need to work together in the best possible coalitions?
I want to make sure, as we move forward, that we have the ability to set a course that is for the next generation and indeed for the next 100 years.
Today, at the finance committee hearings, there was a fantastic American who chose to live in Canada 10 years ago. She implored me to make sure that we maintained our perfect culture. She said she did not come here for the weather. She came here for the extraordinary sense of community, and she has lived it. She felt it was the greatest gift that she could give to her kids and to herself.
We want to make sure that we move forward in this next chapter with the kind of thoughtfulness that the people like Lester Pearson would want us to do.
As we move into this time together, I hope that we ensure the legacy of the work that Canada has done for the UN. It is imperative that we think of what the next steps are and how to make sure that we are on track.
I hope that domestically we will use our brains, in terms of the kind of information technology it takes to track the money and do the preparedness. I want to make sure that Health Canada and the physicians of Canada get together so that we can prepare a response.
I hope the Government of Canada can show the very best kind of friendship to our American colleagues. A true friend will help them move into the next chapter and embrace the United Nations in a way that we know they should.