Mr. Speaker, I am grateful that the House has an opportunity to debate the prospect of war in Iraq and the position that the Canadian government has taken in respect of that prospect. I say thanks to the Bloc Québécois for seeking an emergency debate and making this debate possible.
But I begin by saying that I do not think we should have had to rely on an opposition party procedurally for a debate about the prospect of war in Iraq. I feel that Parliament has not been treated well throughout the period leading up to today. Although we welcomed the Prime Minister's statement in question period, today was really no departure from that disrespect for Parliament, because the Prime Minister, instead of making a statement to the House either in the context of ministerial statements or seeking unanimous consent to do it in some other context, basically tried to fit what really belonged somewhere else into question period. It was not done as well as it could have been done.
Tonight, we have an emergency debate. The Prime Minister kept saying that if we wanted a debate, we should cause one to happen, we should use an opposition day or, in this case, create an emergency debate. Yet the Prime Minister himself is not here. Instead, we have a very brief statement from a junior minister. It is almost as if the government does not have much to say about its position. It seems to me that it would have been much more appropriate for the Prime Minister or the Minister of Foreign Affairs to have been here this evening and for many more members of Parliament from all parties to have been in attendance to hear the respective positions of the parties in the House on the prospect of war on Iraq.
Compare this to the United Kingdom where, I believe, and perhaps it is over by now, there has been a debate going on today at Westminster. The prime minister there has, on many occasions, in the lead-up to the situation we find ourselves in now, spoken to that house. All members of parliament have been there to hear him, or at least it has been a full house to hear the prime minister and to hear others. There was a vote a number of weeks ago. There is a vote today, if it has not happened already. Yet here in the Canadian Parliament, we are having a rather pathetic excuse for a debate, a debate not initiated by the government, nor can we get any commitments from the government, ever, to have a debate that it causes to happen, or even better, what we would like, a debate that it causes to happen by putting down a motion of its own, and then to have a vote on the Canadian position. What would be so wrong with that?
Why is that a fantasy I have about a Canadian Parliament that does not exist, a Canadian Parliament where on a major issue of war and peace the government comes in and lays down a motion? It does not have to be long, just a paragraph which lays out its view of this situation. The Prime Minister comes into the House, gives a lengthy, intelligent and articulate defence of the government's position, not necessarily one that everyone agrees with but something that we can respect, and other positions are put forward. Why does that have to remain part of my fantasy life? Why can we not have that here in Parliament, in this very House of Commons? It shames me as a Canadian that our Parliament is so Mickey Mouse when it comes to these big issues instead of being the kind of parliament that it ought to be.
We do not have to compare the situation we find ourselves in now to just the United Kingdom. We could even compare it to things that I remember here in this House, the debates that went on at the time of what unfortunately might soon come to be called the “first gulf war”, when in this House we had, on three different occasions, resolutions put down by the Conservative government of that day for debate and a vote. Now that comes near to starting to approach my parliamentary fantasy life.
Let us imagine this: important things happening in the world; the government has a position; it puts a resolution before Parliament; members of Parliament debate it; and then they vote on it. Why is that scenario so foreign to the Prime Minister's mind? Why is that scenario so foreign to the collective Liberal mind when it comes to Parliament?
When we have been pushing the Prime Minister for a vote, we have done it thinking that probably we would be in a position to vote against the government. We wanted to express our opposition to what we thought the government was going to do or might do.
On the basis of what the Prime Minister said today, which is that Canada is not going to participate in a war in Iraq in the absence of a second resolution at the United Nations, even though we have a different position about what the government should have done or might have been called upon to do if there had been a second resolution, we nevertheless welcome the Prime Minster's position today.
There would have been a way for the government to put its position today in a way that probably could have received the support of the NDP, the Bloc and perhaps even the Conservatives but I am not sure. I am not sure about the hon. member for Kelowna. I somehow think he would be offside. Yet the Prime Minister does not seek this.
Why not put down a motion that would enable Parliament to speak, three or four parties out of five, a motion that the Prime Minister could use to express the Canadian position to the United States and to President Bush? What would be so wrong with that?
I guess all we have to be grateful for are small parliamentary mercies; that we did not hear about the Canadian government's decision on a talk show in Chicago, during a lecture to a university in the United States, or in some other non-parliamentary venue.
We do welcome the Prime Minister's statement that Canada will not be part of a war in Iraq. The reason given by the Prime Minister was that there was no second resolution of the United Nations Security Council authorizing such a war.
I think this bears some reflection because we in the NDP had been worried, given some of the things that the Prime Minister said in the past, that the Prime Minister might have taken the position that resolution 1441 would be justification enough for Canadian participation in a war in Iraq. This seems to be the American position. The fact that the Prime Minister has not taken that position is a very welcome development but it is a fact that in the lead up to this decision today the Prime Minister said so many different things in the House that he could have taken any position today and cited something he said in the last three weeks to show that this had been his position all along.
We can call that a smart politician.