Mr. Chairman, I thank the Prime Minister for his thoughtful remarks. I also thank him and the government House leader for giving members of the House the opportunity in this debate to express their views regarding military action and support from Canada.
We have all acknowledged that the world changed on the morning of Tuesday, September 11. We have talked about it at length. We have talked about how terrorists transformed passenger planes into fuel laden bombs to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The world changed again last Sunday, October 7, when many of us, with Thanksgiving dinners cooking in our kitchens, heard the news that American and British forces had begun bombing al-Qaeda and Taliban positions in Afghanistan. We then learned from our Prime Minister that he had committed Canadian forces to the coalition war effort in one of our largest deployments since Korea.
There is probably no more difficult decision for a prime minister or a government to make than to send their own citizens into harm's way. It was a difficult choice but the Prime Minister made the right decision. The official opposition stands with him in making it.
Since the beginning of the crisis the official opposition has spoken of the need to commit our forces and provide them with the resources they need to be able to do their jobs.
However this is only one of a number of areas where the Canadian Alliance has been at the forefront in suggesting things that need to be done. I have addressed and will continue to address other areas requiring action such as anti-terrorism legislation, resources for our armed services and security services, and humanitarian aid. Humanitarian aid cannot stop at the end of the conflict but must continue getting to refugees from Afghanistan and other places after the immediate part of the conflict is over.
Since September 11, we have all been trying to find legislative and political solutions so that such terrorist acts never occur again.
I am particularly proud of the work done by the official opposition, which has been proactive in suggesting concrete measures to fight terrorism. We have also strongly supported the government's tough decision to commit our armed forces to this war against terrorism. Canada is fighting for freedom alongside its American ally.
Our role, as the official opposition, is also to make our policies known and to encourage the government to adopt them. While we may not agree with the Liberals on the best means to strengthen our criminal legislation, to secure our borders and airports, to better fund our armed forces or to deal with those who abuse our immigration and refugee system, we will take a constructive approach to criticism. The war must not be fought between the parties represented in the House of Commons, but rather where terrorists are.
When the crisis began some people, including members of the government, said the war against terrorism would not be a conventional war. They said it would be war only in a metaphorical sense and that conventional forces would play a relatively small role. We learned on October 7 that these statements were far too simple.
Undoubtedly the war against terrorism will involve more than conventional military action. It will involve intelligence, police work, financial monitoring and humanitarian aid in a multi-faceted effort to eliminate the scourge of terrorism. We are confronting groups which operate on an international level, which are proficient at using weapons of war and which are trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Frozen bank accounts and good police work alone will not defeat such an enemy.
It is clear that conventional military forces will need to play an important role in eliminating the terrorist threat. Clearly the war against terrorism will involve military action. The question facing the House is what role Canada will play in what may be the defining struggle of the early 21st century.
The Prime Minister and the government, as we have already said, made the right choice in committing Canadian troops to the first phase of this military action. It is likely and possible that an even deeper military commitment will be required before the fight is finally won.
I will address two questions which have been asked in the media, around coffee tables and in the House since September 11. First, is a military response in Afghanistan justified morally and under international law? Second, should Canada be involved militarily or should we restrict our involvement in the war against terrorism to policing, humanitarian aid or peacekeeping operations?
Once I have addressed the question of the justness of the war and the necessity of Canadian participation I will examine a third area: the need to provide better resources to help our troops do the job. The official opposition believes the military action which commenced a week ago Sunday is a just and proportionate response to the events of September 11.
The events of September 11 were not merely criminal acts but acts of war. They deliberately targeted large numbers of civilians to advance a narrow cause. These acts of war apparently enjoy at least the tacit support of the Taliban regime of Afghanistan.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1368 of 2001, passed in the hours after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, acknowledges that under article 51 of the UN charter the United States has the right to individual and collective self defence against the perpetrators of the attacks once it has identified the parties responsible. As the days went by it became more and more evident that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization, aided and abetted by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, was indeed behind the attacks.
Had the Taliban responded in the wake of September 11 by handing over Osama bin Laden and expelling his al-Qaeda terrorist organization from Afghanistan, perhaps the diplomatic and legal route alone would have been the best course to take. Perhaps we would be here debating the role of the International Court of Justice in The Hague rather than that of NATO. Perhaps we would be debating sending peacekeepers and international monitors into Afghanistan rather than the SAS and the Delta force.
The Taliban responded to pressure from the international community, including its former ally Pakistan, with deception and denial in the face of evidence that al-Qaeda orchestrated the murderous attacks. The Taliban gave bin Laden and his cohorts time to hide and secure themselves and perhaps plan further deadly terrorist attacks. To address the clear and present danger of further terrorist attacks against civilians the United States and its allies had little choice but to take military action against al-Qaeda and its Taliban hosts and sponsors.
The coalition must work to minimize civilian casualties as far as is possible. It is tragic that last week at least one bomb went astray and killed innocent civilians. We must work to rebuild a stable government and civil society in Afghanistan after the conflict has ended. It appears that the United States and the coalition is making every effort to hit military and terrorist targets and not civilians, and to get food and aid to the suffering Afghan population. This must continue.
Canada should play a bigger role in responding to the humanitarian dimension of the crisis. However if we do not take military action against the Taliban we will leave intact the greatest support network and training ground for global terrorism. It is not a matter of retaliation. It is a matter of self-defence to ensure the bases and their sponsors are eliminated.
Consequently, since it seems to us that this war is a just cause and that the means used are morally reasonable and in accordance with international law, there is no doubt in our minds, our military commitment is warranted and deserves our full support.
I will address another argument against the legitimacy of the war that I find particularly specious. Some have suggested that the attacks of September 11 while unfortunate were the inevitable results of American foreign policy and that further military action will only inflame the situation.
It is outrageous to suggest the attacks of September 11 were some kind of response to American foreign policies or to global trade agreements like the WTO. There is no moral equivalence, nor can there ever be, between terrorism and legitimate foreign policy.
It is ethically improper to compare diplomatic positions, trade deals or even legitimate military actions undertaken in accordance with international law to the bloodthirsty massacre of more than 5,000 innocent civilians.
We must also reject the views of the former president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. She and others in circumstances where the innocent are abused would never tolerate the blaming of the victim. It is ironic that a person who purports to speak against violence, particularly violence against the innocent, a person who quite rightly in other situations would utterly reject the notion that the abused are inviting the abuse, would now survey the slaughter of 6,000 innocent women and men and dare to blame the victims.
We all support freedom of speech, even the freedom of speech exercised by this individual. That freedom, incidentally, was paid for by the blood of Americans and Canadians in the first and second world wars.
With that same freedom we must stand and utterly reject these spurious, erroneous, incorrect and unintellectual suggestions. The expression of these kinds of views, though the freedom is there to express them, should never carry the legitimacy of government sponsorship and subsidies.
People around the world, including Canadians, may quite reasonably disagree with U.S. policies but we must never condone barbarism as a response. The September 11 massacre was not a political act. It certainly was not a religious act. It was an act of pure destruction. It was an attack on democracy and the ideas of freedom, justice and reason.
Osama bin Laden is a multi-millionaire whose millions of dollars would be far better spent helping his own people who live in poverty because of the destructive policies of the Taliban. They are instead being used to slaughter innocent thousands who believe in freedom of religion and all the freedoms that come with living in democratic nations which support the individual rights of others.
Osama bin Laden and his supporters are hijacking the historic religion of Islam. They are perverting and distorting its teachings to justify their murderous ideology, an ideology every bit the threat to the safety and security of the 21st century that communism and fascism were to the 20th.
No compromise or bargaining is possible with this kind of terrorism. We cannot split the difference. There is no halfway point between this type of good and evil. U.S. President George Bush asked every nation in the world to choose which side they are on. There is no middle ground here. To Canada's great credit and to the credit of the government we have chosen the side of freedom and civilization.
Canada's support for the American and coalition effort should not be limited to passive approval but should include active participation. Canada's participation in this military action is necessary to show solidarity with our allies. Some who recognize that the United States had to act militarily still question why Canada, a traditional peacekeeping nation, needed to be involved on a military level rather than limiting its participation to humanitarian aid and diplomatic measures.
However Canada, while a peacemaker, is not a neutral power. Canadians answered the call in the first and second world wars. Let us consider the first world war. With a population of eight million people, roughly half of whom were men, 625,000 men answered the call to combat.
Let us consider the second world war, the Korean war and the gulf war. Despite the fact that Canadian lives and interests were not directly at stake in any of these conflicts, Canadians were there. Assisting our allies and honouring our international obligations was reason enough then and it is reason enough now.
How could we fail to respond to an attack on North American soil that took, among others, Canadian lives? We are a founding member of the NATO alliance, the most successful military alliance in modern history. Article 5 of the NATO charter says that an attack on one is an attack on all. On September 11 NATO invoked this principle for the first time in its history and authorized a collective response to the attacks on the United States. When the United States asked for our assistance we had a moral obligation to provide it.
The Prime Minister was correct to answer yes when the United States asked for our support. The government made the right choice to engage in this action and we support our troops. However supporting our troops means more than words. We must also support them by giving them the tools they need to do a difficult job. They do not have the tools they should have. We must face this squarely with the facts clearly before us.
This is not a partisan commentary. This government and the government before it consistently cut and underfunded our military. This has taken place over a generation and not just over the last seven years, as the Minister of Foreign Affairs has admitted. We have seen brutal cuts to defence over the last generation. While Canada's serving personnel are among the best trained and most dedicated and courageous in NATO, they do not have the resources or equipment to play certain vital roles in this combat.
Our forces are stretched so thin that it would be difficult to send troops to the Middle East, participate in further peacekeeping and defend the domestic front at the same time. It is unfortunate that due to the government's delays in replacing our helicopters we must send our navy equipped with aging Sea King helicopters that require 30 hours of maintenance for every hour in the air. It is unfortunate that the one military unit which may have been able to make a significant contribution on the ground, the Canadian Airborne Regiment, was broken up by the government in a fit of political correctness.
Instead we have only the highly skilled but much smaller JTF2 unit to offer for potential ground action. It is unfortunate that our CF-18s were not equipped with the anti-missile systems that would have been needed in the early sorties over Afghanistan.
In the past few weeks and over the past year and a half or more when the Canadian Alliance has voiced its support and appreciation of our troops by raising the issue of underfunding and poor equipment, we have been accused by some in the government of insulting our serving men and women. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is the cut in resources to our armed forces over the years that has been an insult.
Before September 11 many would never have guessed that Canada would be engaged in military combat this year. We are now sending our forces into danger, and this is just one campaign in a war against terrorism which may go on for years.
Why are our armed forces in such poor shape? It is because in past years the government has cut the defence budget by some 30% in real terms. These are the simple facts. Over the past 10 years, with two different governments, the total number of military personnel has fallen from about 90,000 to less than 58,000. That is a 35% drop.
While the government claims the forces are more combat capable than they were 10 years ago, the facts tell another story. Some new equipment is beginning to arrive but it is not sufficient to restore the combat readiness of our forces to previous levels. A parade of former officers, the Conference of Defence Associations, the Royal Canadian Military Institute and the auditor general have all raised concerns about how the lack of resources has affected the combat capabilities of the Canadian forces. The auditor general has identified a potential funding shortfall in the equipment budget of $30 billion up to and including the year 2012. This must be addressed.
The government put new money into defence in the year 2000, a move it constantly trumpets as a great success. However it has been assessed by independent military experts as insufficient to address the broader crisis in the Canadian forces. If Canada is to be taken seriously in the international war against terrorism we must act at once to rebuild our military in a significant way.
We must be capable of meeting our commitments of the white paper of 1994. We must take the matter seriously because we are no longer at peace.
Even for peacetime purposes Canada's military funding has been inadequate. In the last election we called for an increase to the national defence base budget of $2 billion per year. A few weeks ago the Conference of Defence Associations, Canada's leading research and advocacy group on behalf of our military, said an extra $1 billion would be necessary to maintain the status quo let alone increase and improve the strength of our forces.
Now that we know we will need to restore the strength and morale of our forces in what may be a long military effort, we call on the government to commit to a budget that will give our military the resources and equipment it needs. We hope the government will heed this call, table the budget and table it soon. This is the minimum that will be required if we are to participate fully in the war against terrorism and live up to the 1994 white paper commitments of the government.
We have stood with the government today and supported its decision. We now ask it to show support for our troops by tabling a budget that provides them with the resources, equipment and manpower they will need to play an effective frontline role in the campaign against terrorism.
The Prime Minister alluded to our visit to ground zero. I have stood in the World Trade towers in years past while someone explained to me how they were able to resist large earthquakes. As we stood at ground zero we could hardly identify where the two proud towers had once stood. The hundreds of people working in the rubble that day did so slowly, methodically and quietly. They worked mainly without talking. While watching them we realized we were not only standing in a place where the heart of the city had literally been ripped out. We were standing in a massive graveyard.
We met with Canadian families who had lost loved ones. We talked with them privately and without media, which was appropriate. We heard stories of heartbreak; of fathers, brothers and loved ones who would never be seen again. In my own heart, and I believe in the hearts of the Prime Minister and other leaders who were there, a resolve was formed to do what had to be done so that never again could such an atrocity happen on either Canadian soil or the soil of our allies.
That is why we are committed to the actions we have spoken of today. That is why we are committed to the call for resources to the armed forces. That is why we are committed to analyzing the anti-terrorism legislation over the days ahead. It is for our freedom. It is for democracy itself.