Debates of Feb. 6th, 2003

Supply

[Jim Abbott, Canadian Alliance, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for helping me explain. I will speak as slowly as I can to give him the opportunity to understand.

To recap, it is the position of the official opposition, and I believe of all members of the opposition, that members of Parliament have a right to vote in this chamber. The Government of Canada has stopped the ability of members of Parliament to vote in this chamber on the issue of Canada potentially going to war. We cannot put a hypothetical motion. We cannot. It would simply be ruled out of order by the people who understand parliamentary procedure between the Table and Chair.

We chose the wording on the same basis as the House leader chooses, and indeed as the finance minister chooses when the budget is brought into the House of Commons. This is what happens. The cabinet brings a motion into the House of Commons with respect to how taxpayers' money is going to be spent, or in the case of the Liberals, squandered. After that there is a vote where members of Parliament have an opportunity to vote to confirm what the government frontbench has done.

It is very clear. I cannot possibly explain or parse all of the sentences in the motion. They are simply there because they have to be there. That much detail is needed in order to comply with parliamentary procedure. The intent of the motion is no different from the intent of other motions or the intent of the budget when they are put before this place. As I pointed out, today's motion is exactly the same as 80 motions of this type that were presented between September 2001 and June 2002.

If our colleague from the Liberals does not understand the idea of putting democracy back into the House of Commons, I say shame on him. If he does not understand how the motion is supposed to work, I would suggest he take advice from the Table just as we and our House leader have.

[Myron Thompson, Canadian Alliance, Wild Rose, AB]

Madam Speaker, I really appreciate the message that the hon. member gave.

Today he, as well as myself and others, have listened to the Liberals speak to the debate. Only one member from the Liberal side even alluded to the motion. The rest of the speeches were so far from the motion that we had to call on the Speaker on a number of occasions to intervene and get to the topic, which they did not. They were asked to get to the issue of the day and the issue of the motion and they did not. They spoke about everything else.

I have come to the conclusion that the reason they are not willing to speak to the motion is that they do not really believe in democracy. There is no other conclusion to draw from it. I wonder if the member would comment on that.

[Jim Abbott, Canadian Alliance, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Madam Speaker, of course I can only agree, but I think there is a little more to it than that.

It was interesting that when the Alliance House leader rose in the House of Commons to present the motion, he was not immediately met by the House leader of the Liberals. That would be very ordinary. He was met in debate by the foreign affairs minister who interestingly split his time with a backbencher from Durham, which I guess says something about how seriously the Liberals took our motion.

Why, I ask myself, would the House leader of the government not engage in debate with the House leader of the official opposition at that time? Why was there a time lapse between 10:30 a.m. and 3 p.m.? The reason is he was out polling his backbenchers to make sure he could get them on side to vote against this motion.

[Sarkis Assadourian, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Mount Royal.

We are debating a very important issue today. The opposition motion, as I have said, is very confusing, very political. There is no need to play politics with the lives of Canadian soldiers who may be sent to Iraq.

Ten or 12 years ago there was an expression in the U.S., “It's the economy, stupid”. On this occasion the statement could be, “It's the oil, stupid”. This issue--

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member but there is a question with regard to the type of language used in the House. I did give a lot of leeway earlier on a certain word that was used by a certain member without naming the member. The word “stupid” is borderline.

[Sarkis Assadourian, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, this war with Iraq has nothing to do with nuclear weapons, has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction, has nothing to do with terrorism and has nothing to do with chemical weapons. It has to do with oil and nothing else.

I would like to give some historic background about the situation in the Middle East.

Iraq was part of the Ottoman empire going back to the 15th century. At the beginning of the last century and the breakup of the Ottoman empire, Iraq was under the mandate of the British government, part of the Middle East government and the French government. Iraq was basically under English occupation. It was a kingdom until 1958 when there was a coup against the king.

Saddam Hussein came to power about 30 years ago and has been in power since then. Over the last 25 or 30 years Saddam Hussein has done terrible things against his own people and terrible things in the region.

Iraq and Iran were involved in a war where over one million people died. At the time, Iraq was supported by the United States and the U.K. It was given all the weapons it wanted. Iran was supported by Israel because both of them had interest in the area and wanted to ensure the control of it.

Ten years after the Iraq-Iran war was finished, he attacked Kuwait for no reason. Saddam Hussein claimed that Kuwait was stealing oil from them. The whole situation began with oil and it continues on today as a war about oil.

It is no secret that I was born in the Middle East. There was a time when our governments there closed down the schools and asked us to take part in demonstrations against what they called American imperialism or Israeli Zionism, whatever the case may have been.

I was there last year and it is now the other way around. People want to demonstrate but the government is oppressing their demonstrations. Why? There is so much anti-Americanism in the world and no one can explain why. Anti-Americanism is so bad in the Muslim world that the U.S. government ran TV commercials saying there were no problems between Muslims and the American government. That shows how bad the situation is.

In today's debate we are talking about Canadian participation in a possible war. A survey of Canadians was done recently asking how many would support the war without the UN. Ninety per cent of Canadians said they do not want a war without UN approval. Why do we have to go to war without the UN?

This morning's Globe and Mail reported on a survey of 8,000 people in 14 countries which was conducted from November 11 to December 14. In Canada 58% said they are against going to war. Of the 14 countries, Turkey is the only country on the border with Iraq and 80% of its citizens are against a war. That country is supposed to be a bad neighbour because there is bad blood between Iraq and Turkey and in that country, 80% of the people are against a war. In the United Kingdom 75% of its citizens are against a war. In the U.S.A., 62% of its citizens are against a war. This war is less popular than the war in Vietnam.

During the war in Vietnam the House of Commons took a vote. Everybody voted against the war in Vietnam except the late Right Hon. John Diefenbaker. He was the only soul against the resolution. It took us 20 years to find out that the war in Vietnam was the wrong war. If people are going to wait 20 years to find out this is the wrong war, then God bless their souls.

Our colleague the hon. member for Don Valley West wrote a very nice article in the Toronto Star yesterday. I hope everybody will take a minute to read the article because he makes a very good argument. Many of our--

[Myron Thompson, Canadian Alliance, Wild Rose, AB]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. There is probably a time and a place when somebody might be interested in the member's opinions. I would really like to know if he is going to allow me a chance to vote.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

I am sorry but that is not a point of order.

[Myron Thompson, Canadian Alliance, Wild Rose, AB]

Get him to the topic.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

If you want to talk about relevance, yes, but it is not a point of order that you raised.

[Sarkis Assadourian, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, I and many members of Parliament received hundreds of letters against the war. I have a bunch of them here. I have about perhaps 2,000 or 3,000 signatures here.

I take it that the member will not give his consent, but if I did have unanimous consent, I would table these letters and petitions so that people could see where the Canadian people stand. Ninety per cent of them are against war.

[An hon. member]

How are you going to vote?

[Sarkis Assadourian, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

I want to come back to the resolution--

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

I see we are deteriorating at the end of the day. The hon. member for Wild Rose has an opportunity for questions and comments allowed for under the Standing Orders of the House. I would appreciate if the same courtesy were shown to the member as was shown when other members were speaking in the House.

The hon. member wanted unanimous consent to table his petitions. Is there unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[Sarkis Assadourian, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, if the hon. member is very upset perhaps he could step outside while I finish my speech.

Getting back to the motion, the motion asks us to vote again in the future. I made the point earlier that it is so confusing. All the opposition had to do was to ask the House in a motion do we agree with the idea of sending our troops to fight the war in Iraq, yes or no. If members agreed, they could vote yes, that they wanted to send their sons and daughters to war. If they did not agree, then they could vote no. The way this motion is written, the day after we send the troops, we would have a debate and we would say yes or no.

If it happened that we sent the troops to the Middle East to fight the war and we had the vote the day after, as I made the point earlier, and we decided to defeat the motion, would the opposition expect us to call back the army, turn back the ships, turn back the planes, stop the bombing because here in the House we said no, we do not want to have a war? In the meantime soldiers would be there fighting.

What is the point of having a motion like this? It is so confusing. It plays so much with politics and with human lives it is unbelievable. I do not know why the opposition would bring forward this motion. I do not know who would support such a motion. I am sorry to say that the Bloc Québécois seconded the motion and made additions to it.

I will be voting against the motion. This motion is totally unacceptable as far as I am concerned.

We spoke earlier about the presentation made yesterday at the UN by Colin Powell. I do not think in my point of view many people accept the fact he made a very good point. The French government and the Russian representative asked for more inspectors. What is wrong with that, rather than having 120 inspectors, having 220 inspectors? What is wrong with having planes fly over Iraq to find out where the weapons are being kept? Why does Iraq not provide the inspectors with the information? They claim they know where this person is keeping the weapons, so let us work together to make sure this person is disarmed so we can prevent a war without having to kill hundreds of thousands of people, most of them innocent people. That would be good for everybody.

I look forward to questions from the opposition members. I am sure they are itching to ask me questions.

[Kevin Sorenson, Canadian Alliance, Crowfoot, AB]

Madam Speaker, I listened intently as the member spoke. He mentioned that he was born in the Middle East. Obviously he is concerned about what is happening there.

My question emanates from a number of speeches from the government side today. The members have said that Iraq is not the main threat. Some members have talked about North Korea and some have talked about other countries. The government would say Iraq is not the main threat.

I am at the point now where I am not sure if the weapons inspectors are there necessarily because they see Iraq as the main threat or if they are there because Iraq for the last 12 years has totally disregarded United Nations resolutions.

We are talking about the weapons of mass destruction that Iraq has. It is up to Iraq to clearly show that those weapons have been disarmed or eliminated. It is not the responsibility of the United Nations to go on a scavenger hunt or a search and rescue for these weapons.

The responsibility of the United Nations is to see the evidence that these weapons that everyone knows Iraq has have been destroyed. We are not there because Iraq is the greatest threat in the world. We are there because for 12 years we have not had the resolve from the United Nations to stand up to the resolutions it has put in place. The threat here is that the United Nations will end up becoming an old senior citizens debating club and lose its relevance.

I do not want Parliament to lose its relevance. We want Parliament to debate the issue of sending our people to war. We are not saying that once our soldiers are over there we will take a vote. We are saying when the government decides that we will side with our allies, if it does, then members will have the opportunity to stand up in the House and vote yes or no.

The New Democratic Party has said that regardless of what happens we should never go to war. The Canadian Alliance believes that we give the United Nations the opportunity for time. If the United Nations decides that the resolutions are not being upheld and that Iraq has not complied, then we believe we must side with our allies.

Let us all have the courage to stand up in the House and vote. Why is it a double standard now when the government argued so much in favour of a vote in 1991 or 1992 in the gulf war? Why has the government said that it was good then but it is not good now? Why is this member so adamantly opposed to standing up and being counted?

[Sarkis Assadourian, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, that was a very long question.

First, I would like to apologize, on his behalf, to seniors. Seniors are just as important to me as everybody else. They have the right to speak on this issue, be it in the UN or whatever.

The member asked why the government was picking on Iraq? Last January George Bush gave a speech to the U.S. congress. He used the phrase “axis of evil”. By that he meant Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

We all know North Korea has weapons of mass destruction. We all know of its capacity to bomb Hawaii or Japan. How did the U.S. react? It is sending the army over to Iraq and confining North Korea within its region.

The other point the member made about resolution 1441 was that Iraq was not cooperating. Resolution 1441 asked specifically for the west to provide intelligence information for the inspectors to do their job. The U.S. and the west has failed to do that.

Mr. Blix will have to come to a conclusion. Next week he will present a concrete resolution to this issue by saying that, yes, Iraq has weapons of mass destruction based on intelligence, or no, it does not. If Mr. Blix is not provided with the tools to work with how can we expect him to make a recommendation to resolve the conflict and come back with a report that says, yes, Iraq has weapons of mass destruction?

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will organize my remarks around two basic themes: first, UN Security Council resolution 1441 as the legal framework for the determination of Iraqi cooperation and compliance with its disarmament obligations under the resolution; as the legal framework for the determination of whether there has been a material breach of these obligations; the determination of the serious consequences that would result from such a material breach; and as the background frame of reference for this motion and the appreciation of the merits of this motion; and second, the international juridical principle of the exhaustion of all remedies short of war as a precondition for military action; and again, as a background frame of reference for the appreciation of this motion.

Let me begin with some basic truths respecting the oft-cited, but apparently not well read, UN Security Council resolution 1441. For what is not sufficiently appreciated is that the UN Security Council, in this resolution, had already determined “that Iraq has been and remains in material breach of its obligations under relevant resolutions, in particular through its failure to cooperate with UN inspectors and the IAEA”, since the enactment of UN resolution 687 in 1991.

Accordingly, the United Nations Security Council decided by resolution 1441 to afford Iraq one final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations by setting up what it called an “enhanced inspection regime” with the aim of “bringing to full and verified completion the disarmament process”, and resolved that any false statements or omissions in the declarations submitted by Iraq, or failure by Iraq at any time to cooperate and comply with implementation of this resolution “shall constitute a further material breach of Iraq's obligations and will be reported to the council for assessment”, and that Iraq would face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations.

On January 27 chief weapons inspector Hans Blix reported that Iraq “appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance of the disarmament which was demanded of it” in the course of submitting a comprehensive and critical 15 page catalogue of Iraq's failure to demonstrate with documents, interviews and other evidence, that it had eliminated its prohibited weapons program, particularly chemical and biological weapons.

The United Kingdom concluded at that point that Iraq was in material breach of the UN resolution. President Bush, in his state of the union address, concluded that Iraq's intent was “not to disarm but to deceive”.

Yesterday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell disclosed telephone intercepts, satellite photos, and statements from Iraqi defectors which he characterized as “irrefutable” and “undeniable evidence” about Iraq's alleged and illegal weapons program, its attempts to hide these weapons from inspectors, and its links to terrorist groups.

In conclusion on this first theme, it would appear both from a reading of the report by Dr. Hans Blix, let alone the evidence submitted by Secretary of State Powell yesterday, that there is prima facie evidence in the form of witness testimony and documentary evidence of a material breach of UN Security Council resolution 1441.

However, what appears to be missed here is that what has to be determined at this point is that it is the UN Security Council that has to make the determination, based upon witness testimony and whatever documentary evidence is put before it, as to whether there is a material breach. It is similarly up to the UN Security Council to then determine the serious consequences that would ensue in light of this finding.

In a word, it is for the UN Security Council and the UN Security Council alone, not any other interlocutors, however compelling their evidence may be, to determine whether there has been a material breach of UN Security Council resolution 1441 as a finding of fact, and whether serious consequences including military action would follow as a conclusion of law.

Indeed, even U.S. President Bush, in his initial request for the convening of the meeting yesterday of the UN Security Council and for the production of evidence of material breached before it, appears to appreciate the legal authority of the UN Security Council in this matter.

This brings me to my second theme, the bedrock legal principle that requires that all remedies short of war be exhausted if resorting to war is to be sanctioned.

I would submit that all remedies short of war have yet to be exhausted. In particular, and having regard to the Blix report, even leaving aside Secretary of State Powell's submission yesterday, I would recommend that the following approaches be pursued and which have been made more compelling by Secretary of State Powell's submission.

First, the inspection team should be further enhanced, both in terms of personnel going from 120 to at least 360 and in terms of physical resources such as an additional office in the southern city of Basra. Second, Iraq must make a complete and exhaustive inventory of concerns regarding weapons capacity.

The 1,200 page dossier that was to be Iraq's “full, final and complete declaration” was utterly flawed. Iraq, as per the Blix report, must account for, and this is again without reference to Secretary of State Powell's submission yesterday: thousands of tonnes of chemical precursors, thousands of litres of biological warfare agents, thousands of missing chemical munitions, the unaccounted for Scud missiles, the missing weaponized VX poison, the disappeared mobile biological laboratories, the missing and deadly anthrax, and the violations on the restrictions of ballistic missiles. Iraq must provide the necessary and verifiable responses to these and other disarmament concerns posed by Dr. Blix who also spoke of a capability that his team could have for these purposes.

Third, Iraq must permit unfettered access to the dozens of skilled scientists who are at the core of the Iraqi weapons program. Their witness testimony is crucial to determining whether Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have been destroyed. Yet the evidence is not only as Dr. Blix has disclosed, that Iraq has impeded access, but that it has intimidated--

[Grant McNally, Canadian Alliance, Dewdney—Alouette, BC]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I wonder if we may have unanimous consent to hear the end of our colleague's speech.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

Is there unanimous consent of the House to let the hon. member conclude his speech?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will conclude quickly in that regard.

The evidence that we have now is not only, as Dr. Blix has disclosed, that Iraq has impeded access to skilled scientists on the Iraqi weapons program, but that it has intimidated them on penalty of death including their families should they provide any witness testimony or should they even try to leave the country for that purpose.

Fourth, Iraq has withheld the necessary documentation regarding its weapons programs, especially nuclear programs, which require an array of supporting data which need to be cross-checked against the material that has been declared.

Fifth, there needs to be a determination of nuclear capability data including the exposing of new technologies like those developed by North Korea and which can be used to mask, as we have learned, a nuclear program. In this connection allegations respecting importation of controversial shipments of aluminum tubes must also be addressed in this regard.

Sixth, Iraq must guarantee the safe deployment of a U-2 reconnaissance plane for aerial imagery and surveillance during inspections which it has not done.

Seventh, the inspections regime should also factor into their own inquiry the serious allegations made by Secretary of State Powell regarding Saddam Hussein's weapons capacity.

In conclusion, the military option may at some further point, if so determined by the UN Security Council respecting both the gravity of the material breaches and the compellability of serious consequences, become necessary. However it is not yet inevitable. The remedies have not yet been exhausted. The UN inspections regime has yet to be reported to the UN Security Council on February 14. The UN Security Council has yet to deliberate even upon such a report and determine whether there has been a material breach based on all witness testimony and documentary evidence available to that point.

Again, we appear to forget that it must be the UN Security Council which makes that finding of fact as to whether there has been a material breach, not all the compelling evidence which we now have in the form of witness testimony and in the form of documentary evidence which appears to make that prima facie case. That determination can only be made by the UN Security Council from a juridical point of view. Only the UN Security Council can determine what are the serious consequences to follow and only the Security Council can authorize military action.

In that sense, the motion before the House in some sense is jumping ahead of ourselves, though I can appreciate its merits. As President Bush himself said, and this may have been forgotten, “War should be a last resort”. That itself, by President Bush in that statement, was an acknowledgement of the foundational, juridical principle of the exhaustion of all remedies short of war.

We are in that process right now. We are seeking to exhaust all those remedies short of war. When the inspection regime reports back to the UN Security Council on February 14 another deliberative process must take place to for the purpose of whether there is a finding of a material breach, a determination of whether serious consequences should follow, and a determination of what those serious consequences may be which follow. It is not necessarily automatically military action.

Even then all the serious consequences of war must be factored into such a decision: the humanitarian, political, economic, juridical and regional consequences of resorting to war as well as consequences of perhaps not resorting to war.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

It being 6 p.m., pursuant to order made earlier today, every question necessary to dispose of the business of supply is deemed to have been put, and the recorded division is deemed to have been demanded and deferred until Tuesday, February 11, 2003, at 3 p.m.

It being 6 p.m. the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's Order Paper.