Madam Speaker, I felt compelled to take part in this debate on the Iraq situation. Over the last couple of weeks I have gone from one side of the equation to the other in dealing with the concerns. I appreciate some of the concerns that have been expressed, some of the historical sequences that have happened, some of the things that countries have done that perhaps they should not have done, but I think we have to look at where we are. We have to look at where the United States is right now and, whether we like it or not, September 11, 2001, changed the way we all look at things. The United States is now holding hearings in its Congress over the information the intelligence communities had. Had they put it together, had they shared the information, had they done something about it, they could have prevented what happened on September 11.
We are dealing with a nation that is having to look at information and how it deals with the information it has. Even on the other side, where people have a concern with the direction that the United States is going in or appears to be going in, they admit that the foe is a mighty foe, that Saddam Hussein is a horrible person who has shown absolutely no kind of moral climate, either in his own country or in his dealings with other countries, that he used biological weapons of destruction against the Kurds, and that he used the same against the Iranian soldiers in the Iran-Iraq war. He has a history of using weapons of mass destruction. He has a history of not being concerned about his people. There has been more concern shown for the people of Iraq from the members of the House, this Chamber, than their own leader has shown.
There is also a concern about changing the conditions of the UN resolutions. There is a reason for wanting to change the conditions. There are 17 resolutions out of the United Nations and they compromise themselves by saying that presidential palaces are excluded. There is a concern, and there should be, about them being excluded. These are not residential palaces like Buckingham Palace. It is not our terminology that they use. These palaces are huge, massive compounds. It has been brought to my attention that there are 8 of them, that there are over 1,000 buildings, some of them large warehouse buildings, and that one of these palaces covers 44,000 acres, which is larger than Washington, D.C. There are an awful lot of things that can be stored, developed and hidden in an area of 44,000 acres, in something the size of Washington, D.C. It would be very naive for anybody to expect that this kind of area would not be part of the allowable inspection.
Tonight and in other debates I also heard concern that the United States is setting Canada's foreign policy, that Canadians are being sucked into having to follow the United States and its foreign policy. I would suggest that people should be equally as concerned if we were to let the United Nations set our foreign policy, if we expect the United Nations to set Canada's foreign policy. I think Canadians expect the Canadian government, the House of Commons and the Canadian Parliament to set Canada's foreign policy, keeping in mind what is in the best interests of Canada.
I think that what has to be and has been brought up in the debate is the role of the United Nations. It was established precisely to deal with conflicts between countries, hopefully to bring the collective will, thought or pressure of the world communities into peacefully settling these conflicts between nations rather than having nations unilaterally taking military action.
As a Canadian, I am pleased to see that the United States has gone that route. The United States has not at this point unilaterally gone to war against Iraq. The United States is willing to recognize the role of the United Nations, albeit it has run into problems enforcing the 17 resolutions currently on the table. The United States has said to the United Nations “Let us try to get a tougher resolution and then let us go to bat to support it”. That is a critical point. It is not good enough for the United Nations to pass resolutions and look like it is doing something. It has to be seen by the world community as doing something. It has to be seen that when it makes a decision, when it makes and passes a resolution, it has the will and the might to enforce it. If all the UN does is put a piece of paper on the table and is not prepared to enforce it, then it is just a paper tiger.
I think the United States is correct when it says to the United Nations that it is willing to recognize the UN's authority or place in this debate, that it is willing to recognize the world community in dealing with this issue, but that in the end game, if it can be shown that the United Nations is not prepared to act on it, then the United States will have to act on its own or with its allies.
The best way to describe Canada's situation is that Canadians need to be convinced by the United States, Great Britain, Australia and those that have gathered as part of the growing allies of the United States that there is justification, that it would be a just action for us to join them. The best way to describe where we are is to borrow the phrase of former American supreme court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: There must be “a clear and present danger” to justify this pre-emptive strike. Canadians have to be shown that there is a clear and present danger to us and to the western democracies.
It is important that we go through this process of having the United Nations look at a new resolution to make sure that all areas are part of the inspection. In the event that the United Nations does not come up with a new resolution, in the event that the United Nations is not prepared to support the resolutions already on the table, and if Canadians feel it has been shown that there is a clear and present danger of biological, chemical or nuclear warfare being used against the United States, against us, or against the free world, then we are obliged to be part of the effort to make sure that does not happen.
I think that is what Canadians have to deal with: the decision may come down to the fact that we have to take part in the American-led allied team action against Iraq. That leads us to a concern a lot of Canadians have, and that is the sorry state of our military. Here we are, once again being asked to put our military into harm's way. It is a disgrace that the government has allowed our military to get into the state that it is in. The military lack the equipment, the personnel and the funding to properly equip themselves and to be in a readied state to assist in any kind of armed conflict in which they may be asked to participate. It is interesting that it was the Liberal chair of the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs who stated last spring that our foreign policy is this: writing cheques that our military cannot cash. That is a very interesting statement coming as it does from a Liberal committee chair.
It reflects how all Canadians see the situation our government constantly puts our military in. I think that Canadians feel, regardless of what happens with Iraq and whether we end up in a military conflict with the allied forces in Iraq, that the government must pay more attention to and give more resources to our military so that when they are called upon to act on behalf of Canada or the world community they are in a position to do so.
I look forward to the end of this debate and hope the end result is that there are satisfactory resolutions coming out of the United Nations, and I hope that the United Nations will show the strength and the will to support those actions and support what has to happen to make sure that Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat to the world community.