moved:
That this House consider the sending of troops to Iraq by the government only after the Unites Nations Security Council has passed a resolution explicitly authorizing a military intervention in Iraq.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise this morning to speak on this motion of the Bloc Quebecois, especially since there is a glimmer of hope now. For the past little while, the past few months, the world appeared to be trapped in a logic of war. With the new proposal put forward by France and Germany, which Russia seems to support, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. We are witnessing something of a shift toward a logic of peace instead. Is there any way of resolving this conflict peacefully rather than militarily? I will come back later to the Franco-German proposal.
I would like to caution my colleagues and those listening against taking extreme positions on this issue. As in many issues, nothing about this issue is black and white. I think it horribly wrong to say that the conflict can only be resolved militarily and that a military intervention is necessary.
I think that saying the opposite is just as valid. We cannot say that we will never take military action. That too would be wrong. So, both extremes must be avoided.
The proposal put forward by the Bloc Quebecois today fits in the wide gap between both extremes. It leaves the door open to resolving the conflict peacefully rather than militarily, without stating that military action will never be taken. It seem to me that the Bloc's position is rather wise.
It is a good thing that the official opposition and the Bloc Quebecois are there to raise fundamental questions on this issue, such as having a vote in the House. The motion we are moving today basically provides that troops cannot be sent as long as the UN has not passed a second resolution explicitly mentioning military intervention. If it where not for the opposition, the government would not be holding this kind of debate. The government seems to be saying that it will not allow us to vote on this issue, that it is up to the executive branch alone to make such a decision. It might be prepared to consider holding a consultative vote in this House after a decision has been made by the executive.
The opposition has to force the government to vote on the important issues in this debate. We have to resort to procedural tactics and opposition days to force the government to take a stand and vote. Otherwise, the executive branch would just make the decision, based on its own criteria, its own evidence and its own philosophy. The House would have no input at all, which is totally unacceptable to us.
If we look at Canada's position from the beginning, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of National Defence and even the Prime Minister has frequently told us, “Wait, wait”. No wonder we keep referring to the government's “wait-and-see” approach in most of our questions. That is Canada's approach.
I want to remind my hon. Liberal colleagues that they are breaking with tradition and with a purely Canadian way of doing things. There was world recognition of Canada's vision with regard to international matters. Remember Pearson and Trudeau. They had clear positions that were often different from those of the United States.
What have we been seeing since this debate began? There has been shilly-shallying and pussyfooting around. We get the feeling that the Canadian government does not know where it is going, or does not want to know as long as it does not have the green light from the Americans. This is a sovereignist speaking. I think that Canada's sovereignty is even under attack right now on a number of fronts, the war against Iraq being one of them.
I am certain that the telephone lines between Ottawa and Washington are humming every day and that the Americans are putting pressure on Canadian ministers. The latter must try to maintain a balance between Canada's traditional position, which favours pacifism and making an international contribution, and the American position, which strongly favours war and seeks Canada's support in this war.
Sometimes, it almost seems as if Canada is the 51st state. Canada's military is regularly integrated into American units. There is the whole issue of interoperability with the American forces. This is extremely important for Canada. There is also the whole issue of customs. Almost identical systems are being established. In the event of a catastrophe, there are agreements that would allow American forces on Canadian soil. And then there are all the American takeovers of Canadian companies.
In the end, we wonder if we are not the 52nd state. Sovereignty like that—I am telling you, I am a sovereignist—is not something I would want.
Would we be able to resist the attraction and economic power of the Americans? We probably could do better than Canada is doing right now.
It is a little harmful and a shame to listen to this debate and to see that Canada is still following in the footsteps of the Americans. I wonder where the days of Canadian credibility on the international scene have gone. I think Canada's credibility is tarnished right now. However, it is not too late to do something about it.
Yesterday, some countries within NATO protested because they were no longer willing to protect Turkey in the event of American action in Iraq. Turkey lies between Europe and Asia. The people there are afraid, because if they allow the Americans to use their base, it is certain that the Iraqis would retaliate.
France, Germany and Belgium have said that it would perhaps be important for NATO not to state its position immediately. However, the Americans had wanted NATO to indicate where it stood. There still has not been any word from Canada. Therefore, it is felt that Canada has not expressed its opposition to NATO protecting Turkey.
People have been too quick to press for military action, and in that sense, France and Germany's proposal is welcome.
I would like to talk about the work by the inspectors, which is not finished, as everyone agrees except for the Americans and probably the British. The inspectors have returned after two days of consultations with Iraqi authorities and seem to be saying that there is better cooperation.
One could say that the only good thing about America's threat against Iraq is that Iraq is being forced to do something. However, the way Americans are handling this issue leaves us wondering.
Since the beginning, we have clearly preferred leaving the inspectors to do their work. Mr. Blix, the chief inspector, had said it would be very slow going in Iraq. The inspectors should be given all the time they need to do their work.
Until now, inspectors have not found much. The chief inspector even said that they have not found anything compromising against Iraq. They have been there for a few months already. He criticized the lack of cooperation, but Iraq now appears to be demonstrating better intentions.
It is therefore important to allow the inspectors to do their work. In this light, the French-German proposal is very interesting, because it would triple the number of inspectors. The most positive aspect of it is that there would be no military intervention; it would be peacekeepers who would assist the inspectors and who would control the territory to ensure that Iraq complies with resolution 1441.
We believe this to be a very good approach. In my opinion, and I think the members of the Bloc Quebecois would agree with me, if a resolution of this type were before the UN, the Bloc Quebecois would support it, much more than military intervention based on the little proof gathered so far.
Let us take a look at the facts, or what the Americans often refer to as intelligence. Mr. Powell failed to convince me last time he gave his presentation of the evidence. I think that the Americans may know a great deal, but they still do not want to reveal it.
If the Americans know where weapons of mass destruction can be found, why do they not tell the inspectors? That does not appear to be the case. Colin Powell went to the UN to give a dubious demonstration, which does not justify, in my opinion, a major armed intervention in Iraq. Many people are questioning the veracity of the facts.
It was mentioned that the last time Iraq was attacked in 1990, it was because babies had been strangled in nurseries. Some years later, we learned that it was staged, and that those events had not taken place at all.
As a result, we are justified in wondering if the CIA is not trying to present us with evidence that does not exist in order to justify an armed intervention like last time. Since that the inspectors have some sort of neutrality, it should be up to them to provide us with an explanation. And so far, they have said that there is insufficient evidence.
As for the link between al-Qaeda and Iraq, no one was able to publicly demonstrate the existence of such a link, and particularly not the British. The last time, they got caught with a text written by an American student that they retransmitted directly. They released this text and said it was the British position. However, that report had been written several years earlier by an American student. Even the spelling mistakes were the same.
One wonders about the validity of this evidence. This is why we feel it is important to let the inspectors complete their work.
As regards the logic of war, it is my opinion that the Americans have been using it since the beginning. It is easy to realize that it is indeed the case. With a deployment of 150,000 troops at Iraq's doorstep, they are very present in the area. It is obvious that they absolutely want to get in there, that they do not want to leave any room for a peaceful resolution to this conflict. They are positioning their troops in the area, and this will make it very difficult later on to remove these troops and say “we are going home” without making the President look like a fool. There is every indication that the Americans want to get involved at any cost. This logic of war has been there from the beginning.
Now, with the suggestion made by France and Germany, we have a proposal for a peaceful solution under which no shots would be fired, and under which the inspectors would be able to do their job three times more quickly, because there would be three times more inspectors and they would be under the protection of peacekeepers.
I am also familiar with peacekeeping missions, because I went to Bosnia on an observation and peacekeeping mission, with the Royal 22nd Regiment. Road blocks are a common thing. If there are laboratories that continually produce weapons of mass destruction, although we have not seen them—we were told that they are in operation, but we have no evidence of that—I imagine that the peacekeepers could set up road blocks and control traffic on a regular basis.
So, what the French and the Germans have proposed, with the increasingly obvious support of the Russians, seems to me to be a very feasible solution.
What is this suggestion currently creating? It is creating a terrible split between the U.S. and Europe. The French and the Europeans—particularly those from what Rumsfeld calls the old Europe, that is France and Germany—want to downplay the logic of war. They have been trying to do so from the beginning. They have taken an additional step by making a very constructive proposal.
There are divisions of this type within a number of bodies. I have already referred to NATO. There are 19 allies, with others added at the latest Prague summit, which I attended. These 19 are not, however, unanimous on protecting Turkey from retaliation by Iraq. These splits are quite evident and not good for international relations.
Why do the Americans insist on such bellicosity? We presume it is out of a desire to establish a new order in the Middle East. Israel's support of the Americans, moreover, is not without significance. Having been there recently, I understand why there is general agreement that a new world order is needed in the Middle East. Some are of the opinion that such a new world order is possible with the Americans.
There is much to be discussed. There is all the matter of pre-emptive strikes, in other words that the United States could attack a country on the basis of what is sometimes superficial evidence. This is very dangerous, because it could create an international precedent and Pakistan, for instance, could not be stopped from attacking India, or North Korea South Korea, because the Americans have done the same on their own initiative.
The only international forum there is, as we have often said, in the UN. Action must be multilateral, involving all the countries within the UN. That is, moreover, the reason behind the creation of the UN: to settle international conflicts without resorting to the law of the jungle, where the strongest wins out.
These debates must, therefore, involve the UN. What our motion says is that the Bloc Quebecois will not budge until such a time as there has been a second, and explicit, resolution on the deployment of troops. Even then, we retain the option to object, if there has been no vote in this House. We dealt with that point last week. We are now dealing with the second UN resolution, which is extremely important to us.
What is important at this time to the Bloc Quebecois is to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. Everyone has children, and many of my colleagues have spouses. We need to put ourselves in the shoes of the Iraqis. They cannot complain about the regime under which they are living, the regime of Saddam Hussein; they know what would happed to them if they did.
Rumsfeld's philosophy is to drop 3,000 bombs over a 48 hour period. Is that not too high a price to pay for a single individual? We must consider that.
I have a 21-year-old daughter, and some of her friends have children now. I can imagine the lives of Iraqi people; they get up in the morning, the children are a bit nervous and the slightest noise makes them jump; the mother goes out to buy some groceries wondering if war will break out by the evening; the father leaves for work, to earn a living, unsure of whether or not he will still have a family when he comes home; people look up at the sky to determine whether the Anglo-American thunder will be striking them that day.
I think these people must be given a voice, and this voice is that of the international community. That is what it is there for. We waited too long to take action in Rwanda and hundreds of thousands died because we did.
Today, we must not wait for war to come. If 3,000 bombs are dropped on the presidential palaces in Baghdad, there will be civilians losses, and young children who are in school today will not get to go in the future, because they will be dead.
This conflict must be averted. Efforts must be made to find a peaceful solution. We are not excluding military action as a last resort. But at this stage of the game, it would be premature to take military action immediately. We would not be giving peace a chance. It think it is important that we give peace a chance.
Today, the Bloc Quebecois is putting its proposal on the table. It is pretty simple: unless there is a second UN resolution, we are against sending troops. The issue of the vote was resolved last week when we said that, unless the House approves such action in a vote, we are against it. For us to give consent, it must be explicit in the UN's second resolution that troops will be sent. But that is the very last resort.
In closing, I urge Canada to stand up and to try to improve its image internationally—right now it is seen as the 52nd American state. I believe that we can find a way around this internationally and make a positive contribution to the resolution of this conflict in the peaceful tradition of Canada.