Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to speak to the motion that the government has placed before the House of Commons today.
Before I address the motion that is under debate, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Prime Minister on his 40 years of uninterrupted service to Canadians. I am sure that not just members of all political stripes but all Canadians would also want to take this opportunity to congratulate him on his service to them. That is no small feat. We do have differences in our viewpoints more often than points of agreement, but on this occasion we must acknowledge the fact that he has served his country as he has seen fit. He has done so with surprising longevity and determination. The only other comment that I would make is that perhaps now having passed his 40th anniversary, he too will see that one of the calls to leadership is to know when to pass the torch to one's successor.
Before I address the specifics of the six part motion, I want to say that in a way it is a tragedy. It is disappointing that given today's decision of the government to take the somewhat unprecedented measure of introducing the motion, that it has not taken the opportunity to do what has been sadly lacking over the last many months since the beginning of the debate about a possible war on Iraq to state in clear principled, substantive, and unequivocal terms the basis for Canada's decision not to participate in the war on Iraq.
If the government had done that, it would not only have had our hearty applause and strong support, but it would have gained our support for such a motion which is not a critically important thing. More importantly, it would have made Canadians by and large stand tall, stand strong, and stand firmly behind the decision not to participate in the Iraqi war.
I have never been so acutely aware of how important such a statement could have been had it been made early in the debate or on the eve of Bush launching his unilateral war. Perhaps the most fitting occasion of all would have been for the Prime Minister, on the 40th anniversary of his election to Parliament, to stand firm for peace and do so in a way that would have aroused the sentiments of Canadians to support him, and to do it with a sense of real pride, promise, and hope and optimism for the future. The motion before us is sadly lacking if that were its objective.
This makes us stop in order to understand why today's motion is being placed in an unprecedented way before the House of Commons. When we look at the reasons that have given rise to the motion, it becomes clearer why it is a flawed motion. It is a motion that is fundamentally lacking in the call for strong and principled support for the position of non-participation in the war.
In some respects this is a motion that is reactive. It arises out of the fact that the government has been in many respects quite equivocal, somewhat waffling, and wanting to have it both ways. That makes it hard for Canadians to fully understand what the government had in mind when it decided not to participate in the war in the first place.
It is a motion that is pathetically reactive in the extent to which it is attempting to engage in damage control in response to the raving reactionary ranting of the official opposition, the Canadian Alliance.
I do not think that becomes a government that had the courage to take a decision which my party supported, a decision not to participate in the war on Iraq. In the process of the government thinking that it has to respond to the marginalized view, the pathetically uncritical, and in many respects un-Canadian view, that has been espoused again and again by the Alliance, the government abandons the moral ground and the strength of conviction that would have made Canadians proud had the government stood firm and tall.
I have just returned from three days in Washington. In my three days in Washington I met with many people across a wide spectrum. I was out in the community morning, noon and night. What I encountered, what I saw, and what I heard surprised me very much. Maybe it should not have surprised me, but in many neighbourhoods in Washington there were households that were proudly displaying wonderful signs like, “War is not the solution”, “No war in Iraq”.
There were events happening. There were proud, strong, and articulate messages opposing the war coming from Americans who no more support Bush's pre-emptive strike and decision to bring about an illegal regime change than do members of the House who have opposed the war.
What it made me realize is that the most fundamental flaw in the resolution that is before us is the notion that there is an American position which is absolutely pro-war and that there is a Canadian position which is absolutely anti-war because nothing could be further from the truth.
It seems to me that if the New York City council can overwhelmingly adopt a strong unequivocal position in opposition to Bush's war, then the least we could hope for from the government would be that it could introduce a motion that would be at least half as strong, if not as strenuous in stating its opposition to the Bush war.
Why do I think the government has not had the moral courage to make the kind of statement that New York City council has made? It is because it wants to have it both ways. It has an eye on any possible negative electoral consequences there might be to having taken a stand against the war.
I happen to believe that Canadians overwhelmingly support the position to remain out of this Bush-led war. Surely there is no decision that a government can make that is as serious as the decision of whether to send troops to participate in a war. There can be no decision that is more serious. The fundamental principles and a clear analysis of what is happening in the world must form the foundation.
There are equally strong positions being taken by members of congress on a regular basis in congress and outside of congress. Barbara Lee, who has been so respected for her consistent position in the U.S. congress going right back to the launch of the war on Afghanistan said:
The doctrine of preemption does not make us safer; it makes us less secure. I believed and still believe diplomatic alternatives existed; diplomacy remains crucial to advancing our long-term interests
She goes on to talk about how she will continue to speak her conscience on issues of war and peace, and that she believes it is part of her patriotic duty as an elected official and an American. She states strongly that non-violent protest and free speech are vital elements of democracy.
If members of the U.S. congress can speak that clearly and in those principled terms, then what is it that prevents the Prime Minister of Canada, who has had the courage to oppose this war, to stand in his place today and make a similarly strong, principled and unequivocal statement?
Chris Van Hollen happens to be the member of congress in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It is just on the border of Washington, which is where I stayed on the weekend. He made a statement outside the U.S. congress. In his address, that he delivered to the University of Maryland, he did a scathing analysis and a damning condemnation of the national security strategy document in which a doctrine of so-called preventive law was set out. He called it a recipe for international chaos. These are proud Americans serving their communities who had no difficulty being unequivocal.
Let me turn to the motion that is before us. I do not think the government wanted to have the support of New Democrats when it introduced the motion. I personally find that surprising. I would have thought that if the intention was--and this is what the Prime Minister said--to send a message to the American people and the American administration of where Canadians stand, then it would have been a good idea to introduce a motion that met at least two basic tests.
First, that the position would be clear and unequivocal. Second, that it would be crafted in such a way that the largest number of members of the House that one could possibly mobilize would stand behind it.
It was perfectly clear that anything short of giving uncritical support to the Bush administration for just about whatever it might want to do, even if it is illegal, even if it thumbs its nose at the UN charter, and even if it violates well-established international law, none of those things would be an impediment to the government voting against a principled statement that could have been introduced by the Prime Minister or the Alliance.
However, if the government had wanted a clear, strong statement then it probably could have talked to the whips, party leaders, House leaders or talked to foreign affairs critics to get as broad a consensus as possible. This is not a motion which was given a great deal of consideration for its value in communicating unequivocally either to Canadians in a way that would make them feel strong and stand with the government with a sense of conviction and pride, or a motion that could clearly communicate to the Americans with whom we stand in solidarity in their opposition to the war.
If Canadians think about it, there are more citizens in the United States who oppose Bush's war than there are citizens in Canada that oppose Bush's war, simply because they are a much larger population and a significant number of Americans stand solidly in opposition to the war. It is solidarity toward the Americans who stand in opposition to the war that should have been one of the things in the mind of the Prime Minister or the drafters of the motion that is before us. Clearly, that was not the case.
We have a motion that has six different clauses. It would be a big stretch to rationalize our way, and I say that as a New Democrat, to support more than one or two of those six clauses.
The very first one refers to a reaffirmation of the government's decision to not participate in military intervention in Iraq. Of course we would support a reaffirmation of the decision not to participate. However let us be clear, even that clause is problematic in that it does not acknowledge the reality that Canadian military men and women are participating in the war in Iraq.
The government cannot have it both ways. Perhaps I feel it more strongly and perhaps my colleague from Dartmouth and my colleague from Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore feel it more strongly than some members, but other members here also represent communities in which there is a very strong military presence, where there are military bases, navel ships and military planes, for example.
We find it very difficult to have the government on the one hand saying that we are not participating in the war, then ending up reluctantly admitting, because the evidence could not be quashed, that in fact there are Canadian ships accompanying warships and that, yes, some Canadians are actually part of the AWACS program, which means that they are participating directly in the targeting of bombs directed at Iraqis. Now that there are pictures identifying the actual members of the Canadian military, who are on tanks and who are part of the brigade rolling into Basra and Baghdad, the government has admitted that they are there because we had an agreement and we could not break our agreement. That is wrong.
What my colleague, the defence critic, very quickly zeroed in on is that those agreements provide explicitly for Canada to withdraw its troops under the conditions of another government, with whom we are involved in an exchange program, going to war, a war in which we are not participating. However did the government avail itself of that measure which, to my understanding, it has always done in the past? No. It wanted to have it both ways so it decided to leave those troops in the situation and did not recall them.
Second, we have no problem supporting the reaffirmation of our bonds with the American family. Most of us have family in the U.S. Many of us, as the Prime Minister himself has said, have lived in the U.S. and have studied in the U.S., and go, as I did on the weekend, to reaffirm some of those bonds.
Third however, the government members talk about the work of members of Canadian Forces who are deployed in the Persian Gulf. Of course we pray for their safety but we do not agree with the government's complicity and the government's duplicity in not acknowledging their direct participation in the war.
Fourth, our hope is that the U.S.-led coalition accomplishes its mission as quickly as possible. Of course we pray for the fewest possible numbers of casualties. The way to ensure that is to invoke the ceasefire for which we and humanitarian agencies have been calling because people are starving or are nearing starvation. People are being killed by cluster bombs which should be absolutely illegal. People are not only being killed now by weapons that are based on depleted uranium but who will be killed for years and decades in the future. That is why we need a ceasefire.
For us to say that we support Bush in the accomplishment of his mission is just wrong-headed because his mission is regime change. His mission is to conduct a pre-emptive strike which is against all international law.
Fifth is the importance of self restraint in anti-American rhetoric. We should not just be saying, “while our American friends are in battle”, which is what the clause says. We should restrain ourselves from comments that are anti-American, period. When any one of us engage in that, we should call each other on it, and I say that with respect to my own members.
My last comment is on the commitment of Canada to assist in the reconstruction of Iraq. It surely is a glaring omission for the government not to have stated that the reconstruction of Iraq should be conducted under UN auspices. Even Tony Blair is vociferously arguing publicly with George Bush to say that it has to be under UN auspices. The government does not even have the vision, the courage or the intestinal fortitude to tell George Bush the truth, which is that he cannot lead the reconstruction of Iraq without there being massive problems.
In conclusion anybody who wants to understand how lacking this statement is in comparison to what it could have been should visit, as I had the privilege to do on the weekend, the FDR memorial in the heart of Washington on the edge of the Potomac. In statement after statement, engraved in stone to last forever, were the kind of inspirational statements that would have made the Canadian people proud and would have been an important message to the American people, had the government seen fit and had the vision to do that in this statement today.
More than an end to war we want an end to the beginnings of all war. Unless the peace that follows recognizes that the whole world is one neighbourhood and does justice to the whole human race, the germs of another war will remain as a constant threat to mankind. The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man, or one party or one nation. It must be a peace which rests on the co-operative effort of the whole world.
Those kinds of statements made in the 1930s and early 1940s by Franklin Delano Roosevelt would have been the kind of statement that would have made every member of this House stand and cheer our Prime Minister today as a leader with whom we could be proud, leading a government that should be proud enough of its non-participation in the war to state it unequivocally, not in the kind of waffling, wobbling, contradictory way in which this motion has been worded.