Madam Chairman, the member opposite said in her remarks that the United Nations is the only multilateral institution that works in situations such as this. I think I am accurately paraphrasing her.
If that is the case, then how does she explain the support that her party, and perhaps she could comment on whether she was included in this, gave to NATO to engage unilaterally, quite explicitly outside the ambit of the United Nations Security Council, to prohibit the government of Serbia from ethnic cleansing in Kosovo? Did she support that unilateral, non-UN sanctioned action at the time? If so, is she not prepared to admit that there are times when the UN is indeed fallible? That responsible democracies from time to time must take action when the UN system simply does not work. Would she not agree with me that the failure of the UN to act in Rwanda, was a object lesson in the failure of the United Nations sometimes to use force appropriately to protect human lives?
I ask this again very specifically. If the UN is always the only multilateral institution through which we can legitimately act, then why did her government and presumably herself support the NATO action in Kosovo and endorse the 1998 bombing strikes against Iraq which were not explicitly authorized through the UN Security Council but indeed was a “unilateral” military action led by the United States which Canada supported?