Madam Speaker, this is the second time in recent weeks that the House of Commons has addressed issues relating to Iraq. The first, as mentioned by my colleague from Halifax, was at a meeting of the standing committee several days ago. In both cases, that meeting and tonight, it is fair to say that the initiative was taken by Parliament rather than by the government.
I commend the members of the committee and the House leaders of all parties, in particular my own who I think wrote the letter that was critical in this case, for taking that initiative. However, I want to recommend to the government that it become much more proactive in providing information to Parliament, and through Parliament to the public.
These are very difficult times, not at all ordinary. Canadians are increasingly uneasy about the prospects of terror or of attack or war. Canadians are aware that our country may have to make very difficult, literally life and death decisions. People in this country do not shrink from those decisions but they would take them more easily if they were involved and informed.
During the gulf war, which I acknowledge was a very different time, after the conflict had begun, the government in which I served as foreign affairs minister began the practice of regular public meetings with a committee of Parliament. Those meetings were televised live so citizens could see and learn. Ministers attended regularly as did senior officials. It is fair to say that those meetings were not adversarial; they were not particularly partisan as committee meetings sometimes are, but they did involve the exchange of information as well as the exchange of opinions.
The government will undoubtedly benefit from the views expressed this evening by members of the House. However, we all know how easy it is to ignore take-note debates.
What would really be helpful would be for the government to make a determined effort to make information available, not only on this issue but on some of the issues relating to al-Qaeda. I continue to be shocked by the answer given by the Solicitor General some months ago when I asked about information on the al-Qaeda network. I was told that it would breach national security if the House were advised. Later that day I read on the website of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom the very information I had sought.
We need to know what evidence the Government of Canada has of any connection the Iraqi regime has to al-Qaeda or to other terrorist organizations. It would be very useful to know the most up to date information the minister and his officials have of the possibility of a nuclear capacity in Iraq.
We would be very much interested in knowing in some detail what it is that Canada is doing, not only diplomatically and not only in the United Nations but elsewhere in the world. There are a range of other questions on which it would be very helpful to have the government regularly inform parliament and be available for questioning. It would be in everybody's interest. I think it would help develop consensus in the country as to what the real issues are and what our options are.
My party and I very much welcome the decision by President Bush to go back to the United Nations. There was great concern that might not happen. I hope that the Government of Canada will do everything it can to encourage the Americans to continue to work through the United Nations system.
When the Minister of Foreign Affairs spoke he said that there was no need for mediation because Iraq was itself a member of the United Nations and that it had its own ways of determining its own interests and information.
We may not disagree on that but I want to make a point to him very strongly, again borne out of experience in a similar situation. There is an immense amount that Canada can do in terms of seeking to bring our influence to bear on countries and perhaps organizations or individuals who may have influence that we do not on the regime in Iraq.
There is no doubt that Russia is a critical player in terms of the attitude that the Saddam Hussein regime will ultimately take. There are extensive connections between the governments. They remain active. We should be using our influence with Russia. We should be doing the same with Iran. We should be doing the same with Turkey. There are other countries which the minister could identify.
I know from some experience that in an earlier situation with Saddam Hussein we literally did everything we could. We literally called everyone we could think of to try to bring some influence to bear on that regime. I will not pretend it worked but I do believe it was worth the effort because there are few other countries in the world that have the capacity of Canada to do that kind of thing.
The Leader of the Opposition spoke about the position that Canada took during the gulf war. I want to make a couple of things clear to the House. One was that we became part of a coalition then in the United Nations but it was a coalition that was marked by its breadth and by its diversity. Its strength was that it was broad and that it was diverse. That is what made that coalition work.
The circumstances are very different now. Canadians in particular should not pretend that the extent of the coalition now is the same as it was before.
We were, as the Leader of the Opposition said, prepared to use force. We were prepared, however, to use force in the context of the United Nations. In case there is any misunderstanding, I simply want to make the record of Canada very clear, at that time we also used every diplomatic instrument we could find. We resorted to force as a last resort. That should be the practice that is followed I believe now by Canada.
We need of course to know and to contain the danger posed by the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. He is an extremely dangerous man. It is an extremely dangerous regime. I do not think anyone disputes that.
We have to be very clear as to what our goal is here. I can do no better than quote the Foreign Minister of Sweden, Anna Lindh, who said a few days ago “Saddam Hussein is a terrible dictator, but it is not the objective of the United Nations to get rid of him. The objective of the United Nations is to get rid of the weapons of mass destruction”.
I think that is very much worth our bearing in mind as Canadians. I share the satisfaction I think throughout the House that Hans Blix believes that he now has an agreement that will allow the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq. However it is very important to note that it is an agreement. There have been agreements before. It is not done yet. We must find every instrument at our disposal to ensure that the agreement announced today by Hans Blix is in fact given effect.
Personally, I think it is probably helpful in these circumstances that countries like the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia are indicating that there are options other than just the United Nations option that they would want to follow. That is their decision. I think it is not unhelpful in terms of trying to ensure that Saddam Hussein understands the seriousness of the position the world has taken.
In our circumstances, the position of Canada, at least at this time, is far better and more effectively exercised trying to make the authority of the United Nations as respected as possible. Whatever the Americans and the British do on their side, and whatever countries who have such credentials in the United Nations as we do, those avenues should be pursued.
I and I think others in the House are concerned that with the recent preoccupation with Iraq there has been less attention given to the danger of terror and to the al-Qaeda network and the al-Qaeda connection.
We have to bear in mind that one of the grave dangers of any unilateral action taken outside the United Nations, or indeed an agitation for that kind of action, is that it will weaken the coalition that fights terror. We simply cannot afford to have that happen. We also must, as others in this debate have made clear, be conscious of the high tensions in the Arab and the Islamic world. We have to take great care not to trigger violence and disorder there. There has long been tension in the streets of Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and of course in the Palestinian authority. It is a very delicate and dangerous time and we have to be careful that inadvertent actions are not taken that may have the consequences of lighting fires that are in tinder dry situations.
I want to make a couple of separate observations about the United Nations and about the United States of America. I will start with the U.S.A.
The Americans of course are a superpower. It is a country of confidence and accomplishment. They do not bother me as much as they bother my colleague from Halifax. It is a country, and this is the point I want to make, that I think is both unusually angered and threatened by the terrorist attacks of a year ago. Those attacks struck us too. They took Canadian lives. They shocked us out of our complacency. However, for better or for worse, those attacks gave even deeper offence to the United States. That is a factor that we cannot ignore as we consider how Canada can best contribute to both the campaign against terror and the urgent question of Iraq.
I believe the current Canadian government has mishandled its relations with the Bush administration. We can discuss that another time. The point I want to make tonight is that the bonds between these two North American democracies are deep enough to overcome tensions between administrations.
The bottom line is that we are still the country with the greatest capacity to influence the opinion of U.S. decision makers.
Again, in very different circumstances, my experience has been that Canada can influence Washington even though we disagree on serious issues. One reason for that is that although we have similar roots we see the world differently. The United States is a superpower and we are not. It understands that we sometimes see things, hear things and understand things that it does not.
As was the case in the gulf war, we should be doing everything possible to encourage the Americans to continue, as I said before, to work within the context of the United Nations but there are other things we should be doing with them.
It is very important for the Government of Canada at whatever level to be making the case to the United States of how contagious and dangerous the idea of regime change can be. If one starts with Iraq, where does one stop? Does one then go to North Korea? Does one go to Burma? Does one go to Zimbabwe? Does one go to Cuba? It is a very dangerous precedent and it is very important for a country like Canada to use our influence with the United States and make that case calmly but emphatically and consistently.
With our interest in international development and our roots around the world, I think Canada has a heavy obligation to make the case about just how difficult it is to rebuild societies once they have become destabilized. The experience in Afghanistan is not encouraging. The experience in other places where regimes have been displaced is not encouraging. That is not, of course, to express support for the regime of Saddam Hussein. On the contrary, it is to say that no one should assume that society building is simple. When one computes the costs, and the costs here are immense, not simply the financial costs but the costs in terms of potential violence and the cost in human lives, we must recognize that it is not at all simple to reconstruct societies that come undone.
I thought it might be appropriate tonight to say something about the United Nations. I think that in some quarters the UN is seen as just a talk shop. There is no doubt that caution, delay and compromise are part of the UN culture. In a sense that is natural. It reflects the diverse and difficult world in which the UN functions. However what we need to remember is that the United Nations is the organization that always gets the tough jobs and which, quite often, despite its failures, gets those jobs done.
Countries do not take easy issues to the United Nations. The easy issues get settled at home. The UN is called in when normal procedures fail. What is unique about the United Nations is that it can confer a legitimacy on actions which would otherwise be unpopular, extremely dangerous or indeed impossible.
Most people think of the United Nations, I think, in humanitarian terms. Of course it does wonderful humanitarian work , but it was not set up for humanitarian purposes. It was set up for political purposes, political in the best sense of that word: to resolve disputes peacefully, to encourage order and to try to make hard decisions.
There have been references to the League of Nations and its failures. We should remember some history of how the United Nations came into being. We should remember the chaos and international disorder that engulfed the globe in two world wars. The men and women who designed the United Nations were not idealists in the weak or pejorative sense of that word. They were realists, worn by war, steeped in suffering. They had seen in that very League of Nations the futility of rules without a capacity to enforce them. They knew that, as in societies everywhere, rules will only be obeyed if they are enforced and if they are not enforced, then the rules become meaningless and societies themselves cease to be peaceful for anyone. So they built into the charter of the United Nations the right and the capacity to deter aggression and to reverse it by force if necessary when it occurred.
There is often talk of soft power. The United Nations can be hard power, capable of exercising both physical force and moral force. I make this point to emphasize that the United Nations option is not an option of either weakness or inaction.It is an option of strong action based on rules, action with the weight of international legitimacy. In this case it is the capacity to identify and deal with deadly weapons of mass destruction and to do that in a way which might prevent widespread movements of mass protest that could themselves have violent, unpredictable and uncontainable consequences.
I am pleased that the Minister of Foreign Affairs is in the House tonight. I would hope that he might make this debate tonight a beginning of a much more open relationship between Parliament and the government on this issue.