The hon. member said that they do it in the United States. I do not apologize for having a different kind of government.
Perhaps the Bloc motion before us today could sound attractive to some on first reading. However, a closer examination shows that the motion actually reduces the role of the House and denies members of Parliament the right to discuss the Iraq situation if certain conditions are met.
The motion says that the House can only consider the sending of troops to Iraq after a UN resolution authorizing military intervention has been passed. Unless there is a UN resolution, the government is not prevented from sending troops. It could send troops without a UN resolution but would be forbidden to debate it in the House until there is a UN resolution, if there ever is one. Those terms will not even expire under the motion. It limits members debating a unilateral decision.
Let us say there was a unilateral decision to send our troops to war, Canada and the United States together, or Canada alone as it does not matter for the purpose of the argument. I hope of course we have neither but it would mean that could be done, but we could not debate it if we passed the motion.
Let us reread the wording of the motion more carefully:
That this House consider the sending of troops to Iraq by the government only after the United Nations Security Council has passed a resolution explicitly authorizing a military intervention in Iraq.
Perhaps what the hon. member meant was “that the government consider only after UN approval”. He is free to propose this, but I would not agree. Nevertheless, in terms of logic, I think it would work. He could have said, “That the government consider only after UN approval—” or “That the government consider only after UN authorization, on the recommendation of the House of Commons--”.
I am not saying I would be in agreement with the motion, but at least its wording would be more logical. What we have before us at present calls for the following: In the event that Canada should support the United States in a military intervention without the support of the UN, the government would, as it is of course constitutionally empowered to, be totally authorized to participate, but it would be absolutely forbidden to discuss this in the House.
I am re-reading the motion and I invite all members to do the same. I do not understand why people want to impose a ban when we read, “That this House consider the sending of troops—”. Not that the government should not send troops, but that we are considering the matter or, in other words, that we are talking about it. The motion goes on to say, “—to Iraq by the government only after the United Nations Security Council has passed a resolution—”.
As it now stands, the motion does not prevent military participation with or without the UN, it does not prevent the government from acting with or without the UN but, under certain conditions, it would prevent the House from debating it.
I do not know what the hon. member intended. I can speculate but, as it now stands, this motion almost directly opposes the amendment proposed last week by the Bloc Quebecois to the Canadian Alliance's motion. That motion said that if a decision were made, with or without the UN, Parliament must be recalled immediately to debate the question. In the motion before us, if a decision is made, if the UN has not made a decision in this respect, we cannot debate it. In other words, if we adopt this motion, debate would be prohibited. However, by adopting the Canadian Alliance's motion, with the Bloc Quebecois' amendment, the debate would be authorized again five minutes later.
So the wording is faulty. We have a practice in this House, and it should be respected. I talked about it last week and I encourage, once again, all my hon. colleagues to vote against the motion before us, the Bloc Quebecois' amendment from last Thursday and, of course, the main motion proposed by the Canadian Alliance last Thursday. All three motions should be defeated for all the reasons I mentioned today and last week.