Madam Chairman, if we go back to the practice in the House over the last 50 or 60 years, dating back to the second world war, obviously there was a declaration of war on September 10, 1939, I think it was, when Canada declared war against Nazi Germany. Since then, however, the record has been mixed in terms of whether or not Parliament has voted on the deployment and engagement of Canadians troops abroad.
We saw a significant delay, for instance, when Canadian troops went to Korea. I do not believe there was a debate in the House. I think the troops went sometime in the summer of 1950 and the House did not come back until September or October. If we look at the record we will see that Mr. St. Laurent said at the time that it was the role of the executive to determine whether or not Canada went to war and the House had its say on the basis of the appropriations for the war.
We had a vote in 1990 when the gulf war occurred. I do not believe we had a vote dealing with Kosovo in 1999. It really has been a rather mixed record.
Clearly the one thing we have to keep in mind when we are dealing with grave matters of international crisis is that it becomes very difficult under certain circumstances. This is a factor that has to be borne in mind in terms of what the public believes is the view of Parliament. If the executive, based on intelligence information and other information that it has available, working with its allies, feels very strongly, and I am saying this hypothetically, that Canada must be involved in an armed conflict, and if that were to be put to a vote in the House without all of the members necessarily being aware of all the information that is involved, we could end up with a very mixed message. A very mixed message could be sent to the people whose co-operation and compliance, in connection with UN resolutions perhaps, we are trying to coerce in abiding by the will of the international community. I think that is a consideration.
Perhaps in the years to come we will have more parliamentary jurisprudence on this which will determine a particular course of action that meets all the needs of Parliament to discuss these issues. We are having this debate tonight, which I think is important, but at the same time there are some other factors that have to be borne in mind.