Mr. Chairman, I welcome the opportunity to once again address the issue of Iraq.
Let me first recap the position I laid before the House on October 1, 2002. I argued then that the time had come for Canada to pledge support to the developing coalition of nations, including Britain, Australia, the United States and others, in their determination to send a clear signal to Saddam Hussein that failure to comply with an unconditional program of inspection would justify action to remove Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction.
I noted that the position is justified in international law. The 1991 gulf war in which Canada participated did not end in an armistice. It ended in a ceasefire agreement in which Iraq agreed to a series of United Nations resolutions requiring the unconditional and unrestricted inspection of any and all Iraqi sites. Iraq has defied this and numerous other resolutions over the past 12 years, including non-compliance with the current UN resolution 1441.
I noted that there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein operates programs to produce weapons of mass destruction. Experience confirms this. British, Canadian and American intelligence leaves no doubt on the matter. Saddam Hussein's continued non-compliance and non-cooperation with the United Nations only confirms this information.
Finally, while I noted and I continue to note that Canadians do not want to see war, they do want to see Canada's national security interests and international values upheld. The limits of UN declarations are not the limits of Canadian foreign policy or our security needs. While Canada has always strived to work with the United Nations and other multilateral bodies, we have also pursued independent policies with our allies.
Based on these arguments, I gave the government the following advice in October.
First, should Saddam Hussein not fulfill an agreement to an unconditional and unrestricted access to UN weapons inspectors, Canada should stand with its allies in spelling out clearly to Saddam that failure to comply will bring consequences.
Second, should the UN Security Council issue a declaration to demand Iraqi compliance and should Iraq fail to meet those conditions, Canada should stand with its allies in telling Saddam once again that failure to comply will bring consequences.
Finally, should some UN Security Council members falter in re-emphasizing their own past declarations, Canada should stand with its allies in ensuring that Saddam understands once again that failure to comply will bring consequences.
Now, four months later, let me be very clear. Enforcing UN resolutions and getting Saddam to disarm could still be done without war. For this to occur, the international community must stand four-square behind the existing UN resolutions and we must understand the nature of Saddam Hussein. Ironically, it was our current Prime Minister who said this in 1998:
Make no mistake, Saddam's behaviour to date indicates that he will not honour diplomatic solutions so long as they are not accompanied by a threat of intervention. The least sign of weakness or hesitation on our part will be interpreted as incitement.... We believe that Canada cannot stand on the sidelines in such a moment.... Canada will be counted.
If the international community understood this better today, and if the Canadian government kept true to the Prime Minister's own words, then we would stand a good chance of avoiding war. Only with a credible threat of force behind resolution 1441 does the world stand a chance of avoiding war.
Instead, what we have are members of the international community failing to stand behind UN resolution 1441. They are failing to back the multilateral coalition including Britain, Australia, the United States, Spain, Italy and others, that is prepared to show Saddam a credible threat of force by redeploying in the gulf region.
Canada can most assist the United Nations process by standing unequivocally with countries prepared to act to remove Saddam Hussein and his weapons. The failure of Canada to stand with its allies can only lead to one of two possibilities.
The first possibility is that the entire international community decides not to enforce Security Council resolutions. This would leave the tyrant Saddam Hussein in place, but worse, he would be emboldened as a threat to the region, his own people and eventually to world stability. His known ties to terrorist organizations and his continued development of weapons of mass destruction would accelerate, leaving the world a less safe place and heightening the possibility of a repeat of September 11 or far worse.
We should be under no illusions. As the nation closest to the United States geographically, culturally and economically, we will inevitably be subject to the full consequences of any attack on the United States, if not also subject to any attack itself.
With or without such an attack, the failure to enforce resolutions to disarm Saddam Hussein will mean the UN itself will cease to be a credible body in world security affairs. This failure would directly parallel the failure of the League of Nations to address the emergence of global fascism in the 1920s and 1930s.
The second and more likely possibility of the failure of the world community as a whole to enforce disarmament of Saddam Hussein is that the allied coalition led by the United States and the United Kingdom goes to war with Iraq with the goal of disarming this evil regime.
This would force Canada to choose between its most important and closest allies and many of our other friends around the world. This would force us to choose war or to avoid participation in it.
There can be no mistake that war has been made more likely by the failure of some members of the international community to stand behind UN resolution 1441 and its predecessors in presenting a credible threat if Saddam fails to comply.
Let there also be no mistake that if the U.S. and the U.K. lead a coalition into Iraq, this will be fully defensible under existing UN resolutions, even if the UN does not sanction the action with yet another resolution by the Security Council.
What position should Canada take under such circumstances? More important, how should it decide its position? The answer: It should be clear and it should demonstrate leadership.
This party will not take its position based on public opinion polls. We will not take a stand based on focus groups. We will not take a stand based on phone-in shows or householder surveys or any other vagaries of public opinion.
We will take our position the way real leaders and great nations make decisions at such moments in history. Real leaders, and I do not mean brutal psychopaths like Saddam Hussein, real leaders like ordinary Canadians, do not want war. They never have.
My parents and my grandparents and their many friends and relatives of their generation have always told me that war is at worst horrific and at best a terribly inadequate way of dealing with the problems of humanity. They also told me that Canadians have nevertheless gone to war many times. In fact, they remember when Canadians were among the leaders in war, when it became the only option for the long run security of Canada and the world.
In my judgment Canada will eventually join with the allied coalition if war on Iraq comes to pass. The government will join, notwithstanding its failure to prepare, its neglect in co-operating with its allies, or its inability to contribute. In the end it will join out of the necessity created by a pattern of uncertainty and indecision. It will not join as a leader but unnoticed at the back of the parade.
This is wrong. It is not fitting with the greatness of our history or with our standing as a nation. We need to be standing through tough times and taking tough decisions.
We in the Canadian Alliance will continue to take tough public positions and urge the necessary military preparations that make the avoidance of war possible. I can only urge and pray that our government will do the same.