Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part again in the debate on an opposition motion on Iraq. I think it is important to listen carefully to the wording of this motion, which reads as follows:
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.
I will come back to the wording later, because there is something wrong with it, to say the least.
I will begin by reminding the House that since our government took office in 1993—we all remember this happy day—we have honoured the commitment made that same year in our red book, when we said, and I quote:
A Liberal government will also expand the rights of Parliament to debate major Canadian foreign policy initiatives, such as the deployment of peacekeeping forces—
The opposition keeps suggesting mistakenly that this House has not looked into the Iraq issue. That is just plain wrong. And to say that a vote is in any way necessary, because of some past practices, has no basis in terms of current House practices.
Some opposition members claim that past precedents show us that only Parliament decides to commit Canadian forces to active service overseas. Of course that is not the case. Even last Thursday's motion which still remains to be voted on does not make that request and it came from another opposition party.
As I indicated in the House on February 6, Parliament's role in considering the sending of troops for offensive deployment or peacekeeping was not consistent before 1993. There were about eight different ways of doing it. Only since 1993, thanks to the initiative of our Prime Minister, do we have the very consistent way that we have now.
Involvement of Parliament in the decision making process before 1993 looked something like this. There was no consultation at any time in the case of the Korean conflict. There was a debate and a vote after the Canadian forces were sent in the case of the gulf war in 1990-91. There was a full debate and a vote in the House before a formal commitment was made in other cases and a debate with no vote in other cases. In other cases there was a vote on the estimates without a debate, and so on and so forth. There was never a consistent way.
Since 1993 the government has met its red book commitment, as it has of course with most other red book commitments, that is to say, to engage Parliament on international issues, including before Canadian forces are sent.
I personally consulted with House officers on several occasions about this in the past. I reached them at home or elsewhere when the House was not sitting so we could do things to consult Parliament. We used the procedure of take note debates to give all members the opportunity to express their views and their concerns. The government has used other mechanisms to engage Parliament once Canadian forces have been involved abroad, such as having the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of National Defence appear before the standing committee if Parliament was not in session. Things like that have been done in order to keep Parliament fully involved.
Let us compare our approach with that of other countries. Members sometimes go to great lengths to do that. Our approach with the Iraq situation to date has been consistent with the approach taken by many other Commonwealth nations.
For instance, the Australian house of representatives began, guess what, a take note debate on the Iraq situation, but there has been no vote by the Australian house. The British house has had a number of debates on the subject but no vote, nor has the British Prime Minister stated that there would be a vote. Indeed, in the U.K. as in Canada, there is no requirement to do so. We are all familiar with how our Constitution works.