Mr. Speaker, it is with a heavy heart that I rise to speak to a matter brought to this place by one of the greatest tragedies in modern history. It will undoubtedly be the greatest matter of import dealt with in this parliament and by many of us during our time in this place.
The events of a week ago today hit all Canadians in various personal and emotional ways. My brother was in the World Trade Center the day before the attack. He was to stay in a hotel across the street from it that was destroyed. It brings to mind the role of fate and the randomness of this ferocious violence which has left at least 5,000 families with a great loss from which they will never fully recover.
In contemplating these events we sometimes speak glibly about the need to stand by the United States because it is our friend and trading partner. Both these things are true and both are good reasons to support it.
However there is a higher reason for us to stand by the United States. So often we Canadians seek to strengthen our sense of self by casting a critical eye on the imperfections of our American neighbour. Regrettably we have even heard murmurs of that old discontent throughout the past week in Canada and throughout the past day here in parliament.
However now is a moment, unlike any in our history, for all Canadians to set aside the habit of small mindedness and unashamedly affirm the nobility of the American experiment in democracy and liberty, values we hold in common.
The World Trade Center was perhaps the world's greatest symbol of economic liberty and free enterprise. It looked out on to the Statue of Liberty, a sight which itself has welcomed millions seeking the blessings of that freedom which we share.
The Pentagon is the great symbol of the American resolve to defend democracy, including our own. It stands within sight of the Lincoln Memorial which is itself across from the Capitol building, the temple of American democracy, which itself was another target. The Lincoln Memorial is a powerful testament to American resolve, to how tirelessly Americans will fight to maintain democracy and government of, by and for the people.
It was no mistake that the forces of destruction chose these as their targets, for it is freedom and democracy that they fear and seek to destroy. It is these common values which we are now being called to defend.
As Andrew Coyne of the National Post recently wrote:
The men who destroyed the World Trade Centre are not moved by mere hatred of Israel, or even the United States: it is western civilization they hate, in all its forms, with all its values. The only way we could escape their wrath would be by abandoning those values, engaging in ever more craven acts of appeasement, until at last there was nothing left of us but self-loathing.
I was disturbed yesterday to hear a remark repeated at least half a dozen times in the House. Members of different parties said that the war in which we now find ourselves engaged that has been thrust upon us is not a conflict of good and evil. They said there are no clear, stark moral absolutes here and that we cannot apply normative moral objective categories such as good and evil to the conflict.
Members have said repeatedly that we must focus on the root causes of this ferocious act of terror. These root causes have been nebulously referred to as social inequity, the growing gap between rich and poor, and the uneven distribution of power in international institutions. This is folly.
Let me quote from my leader's speech yesterday when he said:
Root causes must be addressed, but it is sheer folly, let there be no mistake, when we say that the root cause of terrorism is the terrorists themselves. The hatred that moves them to massacre the innocent can never be negotiated with or reasoned with.
It is not a matter of shades of grey...This is not a time for moral ambiguity. It is a moment of moral clarity.
For those who would have us address the root causes, would they have stood in this place in the fall of 1939 when Poland was being attacked and invited us to contemplate the root causes of German aggression and Nazi anti-semitism, the humiliation of Germany in the Versailles treaty or the economic crisis in Weimar Germany, and to address the social and economic inequities as the root cause of Nazi terror? No, that is not what our predecessors in this place did. They called evil by its name and committed the nation and all its resources to its complete elimination and unequivocal surrender which cost great quantities of Canadian toil, treasure and blood.
I think that mindset is one which we must now adopt for ourselves at this time. We can have our international organizations and our north-south dialogues. We can address the need to improve living standards in other parts of the world, but that is not what this is about. The attack last week did not come from some nebulous voice of third world inequity. It came from deliberate, evil-minded, malicious killers who were motivated by hate, many of whom have never experienced the kind of poverty that is implied in this reference to root causes. Most of them were well off in some of the wealthiest countries in the world financed by a multimillionaire. This is not about economics. It is not about politics as we would normally understand it. It is about a boldfaced attack on all that we stand for as a western civilization.
If we do not start from that first principle, whatever policy response we have will be inadequate. That is my concern and that is what we have seen reflected, regrettably, in the weakness of response from this country's leadership to date. I hope that will change.
There is no obvious, clear, simple panacea to this. Pointing to the morally objective nature of this struggle between good and evil does not mean that we embrace simplistic solutions to this incredibly complex problem. On the contrary, the war on terrorism, and it is a war, will require a fight on so many different fronts, including the legislative front. We must do what we can in this parliament to ensure that the principal responsibility of the federal government is for the safety and security of Canadians and Canadian sovereignty. That is what part of our motion today calls for and that is why I am supporting it. I hope other parties and members will too.
We can change our laws but that of course will not stop the terrorists in their lairs in some 30 countries in which they operate and in the several countries that actively sponsor, support and harbour these people. I want to briefly turn my attention to this problem. What I picked up from the debate yesterday was the notion that all we have to do is some very targeted and limited covert action to remove a few of the most guilty hate mongers and terrorists. I heard that it need not be a broader conflict, that it need not involve conventional warfare conflict and that it need not be a state to state matter.
As the defence minister suggested, this is not a conflict between states. I disagree profoundly and it is folly if that is the basis of our action.
As the president of the United States said a week ago last night, he will make no distinction between those states that harbour and support the terrorists and the terrorists themselves. I support that principle of action because those states which make this kind of terror possible are equally culpable. The fury of the free world must be focused not just on the terrorists themselves but on those states and that does mean there will be military conflict of some sort.
It also means that as a free country, as one of the most blessed and wealthiest nations in the world, we have a profound moral obligation to do our duty, to do our share as Canadians have done before. However we are not in a position to do so now. Our military expenditures are less than half the average of NATO countries. We have the second lowest military expenditure in NATO. That means when our allies call upon us to do our share we are not in a position to do so.
I want to close with a call for all of us, the government in particular, to begin a massive reprioritization of the responsibilities of the federal government. Protecting sovereignty, peace and order are our first responsibilities. We must think deeply about changing our priorities so that we can do our share and fulfill our moral obligations in this fight against evil.