Mr. Speaker, tonight I want to talk about a subtext of the debate going on in this country about Canada's possible participation in any military action against Iraq. The underlying debate has to do with Canadian sovereignty and whether or not we really actually can or are permitted to have an independent foreign policy when our American friends are dead set on a certain course of action and see Canadian support as a test of our friendship.
I will say more about this later, but first I want to say that I come to this debate not from a pacifist perspective or from an anti-military perspective, as is sometimes suggested by those who disagree with the NDP on such issues. Indeed, I am one of the few members in this place with any military service, in this case in the militia, and I have a great deal of respect for those who put their lives on the line on an ongoing basis in the Canadian armed forces.
I do believe that force is sometimes justified. I believe that the UN should have something like a permanent standing army, ready to enforce its will when necessary. I regret the weakness of the United Nations, and I regret the role that the United States has played in making and keeping the United Nations weak. Only a weak UN would have to consider contracting out the enforcement of its resolutions, as is now the case.
What I do not believe is that force is justified in this case, for a variety of reasons. It is not justified because there is now an opportunity, arguably because of the threat of force, but an opportunity nevertheless real, for weapons inspectors to return to Iraq and complete the work they began several years ago. We need to trust the competency of Hans Blix, who seems to feel that the upcoming inspections now agreed upon will be meaningful, and to trust the judgment of Mr. Scott Ritter, a former weapons inspector, who has testified, as I understand, to the effect that there is no urgency that would justify not letting this new opportunity for weapons inspections be exploited. A new resolution at the UN seems unnecessary at this point.
The apparent eagerness of the U.S. administration for a war with Iraq is a source of great concern to many Canadians. They know that wars, even against bad men and bad regimes like Saddam Hussein's, are not always fought for the best of reasons. They know that today's bad guy was often yesterday's good guy. They know that economic interests are often at play. They know that domestic political interests are often at play, and they may also sense in this case, in the post-September 11 context, that our American neighbours may be acting out of a collective consciousness that we just simply cannot be expected to share, even though Canadians were killed on September 11. And of course, there is still no active claim that Iraq is connected to the events of September 11.
Whatever the combination of reasons, it now appears that the U.S. is determined to create the context for justifying an attack on Iraq in the near future. What should Canada's response be? That is the question. But the underlying question is whether Canada has any choice in the matter. It may be okay to take a different position than the United States on Kyoto or the International Criminal Court or the landmines treaty, but when it comes to Iraq the argument is often heard that given U.S. vehemence on this issue we have no choice, that it would not be in our best interests to not participate.
This line of argument was quite prevalent in a debate that I was part of recently, sponsored by TVO, which took place in Calgary. The argument seemed to be that our economy was so integrated with that of the United States that we would be at great economic risk if the Americans decided to punish us for lack of conformity to their view of this particular situation. This is exactly what those of us who fought the free trade agreement feared: that with integration would come a loss of political freedom. That day seems to have arrived, and it is this that Canadians should be also concerned about. For if we have no choice economically, then what kind of country are we? There may be situations in which one does not have a choice, morally speaking. That is different. But economic arguments for Canadian acquiescence raise a different set of questions.
Finally, I believe that all of us who subscribe to multilateral global solutions to problems have to devote ourselves to the reform of the United Nations. It has such a diversity of weaknesses at the moment that no matter what one's point of view one is able to identify some reason why UN resolutions that one does not support should not be enforced while resolutions that one does like should be enforced.
It is common to cite UN resolutions on the occupied territories at this point but my point is this. Two wrongs do not make a right and some day we must have a UN with greater democratic and moral legitimacy with an independent capacity for enforcement that no country will be able to ignore.
I wish the government much wisdom in charting a course that is respectful of international law, of Canadian sovereignty and of the need not to sign on to the new American doctrine enunciated by President Bush on September 20. This doctrine effectively ended any pretence that the rules which obtained for decades after World War II are any longer valid. From now on the United States has taken onto itself the role of global arbiter of what regime survives and what regime does not, of who is pre-emptively hit and who is not. If the UN goes along, fine, but if it does not, it happens anyway.
This is not the world the distinguished Canadian diplomats and politicians like Lester Pearson set out to create. It is not a world that the current Liberal government should go into without raging against the dying of the light.