Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the Minister of Foreign Affairs for this opportunity to debate one of the most important issues that I believe will face this Parliament in many years.
I am probably the only member of the House who was present during the debates in 1990 and 1991 and also probably the only member of the House who has actually had the opportunity to travel to Iraq on three occasions: initially in the fall of 1990 with my former colleagues Lloyd Axworthy and Bob Corbett, a Conservative member from New Brunswick; again with a delegation in the early part of the year 2000; and most recently in May of this year, along with a number of British members of parliament.
It is very clear to me that what is at stake here in this debate and in the very critical decisions that will be made in the weeks and months ahead are the lives of literally tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens, the environment in that region and stability throughout the Middle East. It is desperately important that Canada speak out in the strongest possible terms against any possible unilateral military strike that would have disastrous impact on the people of Iraq and on this region.
We have heard eloquent testimony before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
I see my colleague from Mercier and other colleagues also who are members of this committee.
We have heard eloquent testimony before our committee from former UN humanitarian coordinators, Denis Halliday and Hans Van Sponeck, about the devastating impact of economic sanctions on the people of Iraq. We know as well that the impact on the environment has led to the very adverse results of depleted uranium on children and indeed huge increases in the level of congenital birth defects. I was in the south of Iraq. I visited the hospitals in Basra and Baghdad and saw for myself those results.
We have heard evidence before the foreign affairs committee and certainly I have had to respond personally to the anguished plea of an Iraqi mother in a children's hospital in Baghdad that was desperately short of the most basic supplies. She asked “Why do you feel you we must kill their children”. I could not answer that question.
I was very proud of the fact that the foreign affairs committee stood and spoke with one strong, powerful and eloquent voice. I might add that the chair of that committee at the time this decision made was the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the hon. member for Toronto Centre—Rosedale. I want to remind members of the House what that committee unanimously called for. The committee called for an end to the economic sanctions, the delinking of economic and military sanctions and a rapid lifting of economic sanctions and a contribution to the overall goal of regional disarmament, a Canadian diplomatic presence and so on.
It is in that context, a context in which hundreds of thousands of innocent children have died, in which a nation's infrastructure in terms of clean water and sewage has been paralyzed, that we are now told by George Bush that there is a concern about weapons of mass destruction, that we must pass a new resolution and obviously that there must be some sort of firm military action to enforce United Nations resolutions.
To accept Bush's insistence that we move in this way is a recipe for disaster. It is also fundamentally dishonest and ignores the history of that region. In fact, members of the House must know that according to the former chief UN weapons inspector, Rolf Ekeus of Sweden, the United States and other Security Council members were manipulating UN inspection teams for their own political ends. I do not have the time to go into that at length, but certainly both Rolf Ekeus and Scott Ritter made it very clear that was the case. In fact Scott Ritter said that far from Iraq kicking out the weapons inspectors in December of 1998 that:
It wasn't Saddam Hussein or the Iraqi government who gave the boot to weapons inspectors from...(UNSCOM). Rather it was the United States. In the person of former President Bill Clinton...
It pushed them out so they could bomb in December 1998.
One might ask who Scott Ritter is. Here is how Scott Ritter describes himself:
I need to say right out front I'm a card-carrying Republican in the conservative-moderate range who voted for George W. Bush for President. I'm not here with a political agenda. I'm not here to slam Republicans. I am one.
This is the source about information about the presence currently of weapons of mass destruction. Ritter said, and he said it clearly and unequivocally to our committee, a committee of this Parliament, that no one had substantiated the allegations that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction or was attempting to acquire weapons of mass destructions. Scott Ritter said:
This is not about the security of the United States. This is about domestic American politics. The national security of the United States of America has been hijacked by a handful of neo-conservatives who are using their position of authority to pursue their own ideologically-driven political ambitions. The day we go to war for that reason is the day we have failed collectively as a nation.
For God's sake, surely our nation, Canada, must be speaking out strongly and clearly to reinforce that message.
Today we received good news. Hans Blix, the chief of the United Nations, UNMOVIC, the monitoring and enforcement inspection commission, has said about Iraq that “On the question of access, is clarified that all sites are subject to immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access”. What more can we ask for? Each time they comply, the bar is raised higher and higher.
The spokesperson for the Alliance says that we cannot trust them. Surely we must recognize that when the inspectors go in, they have unfettered access and if there is any suggestion of obstruction of those inspectors, obviously Blix will be in a position to report back quickly to the United Nations, which is where this question belongs.
The hypocrisy in this area is breathtaking. I have heard from a number of my colleagues on this issue already. The silence in March 1988 from the then American government included a number of key administration officials now, about the gassing of Halabja. There was not a word nor a peep. In fact it obstructed the United Nations Security Council efforts to condemn them. Why? Because then Saddam Hussein was our guy.
As well, we have to be honest and recognize that if we are seriously concerned about respect for United Nations resolutions and Security Council resolutions in the Middle East, what country has violated over and over again UN Security Council resolutions with the support, often alone, of the United States? Israel. Yet there is not a word on that. It is the only country in the region that we know for certain possesses over 200 weapons of mass destruction. I remind members of the House that Israel has refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty. It is hypocrisy.
Which country just last year blatantly refused to sign onto United Nations protocol on developing, producing or stockpiling biological or toxic weapons? The United States of America.
I want to once again appeal to the government and to the minister to recognize that it is within the framework of both international law and the United Nations that this must be resolved. It must be resolved with consistency and equity. It must be resolved in a manner that respects the lives of innocent Iraqi people who have suffered already too much.
Over 100 prominent Canadians, Québécois et Québécoises, Canadiens et Canadiennes from everywhere in Canada, Anton Kuerti, Margaret Atwood, Pierre Burton, David Suzuki, and many more have signed a statement calling on our government to endorse the principle of a peaceful resolution of this conflict. They have said it is time to move beyond war, il n'y a pas que la guerre. I urge the minister to heed the eloquent words of these Canadians.