Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the member for Barrie—Simcoe—Bradford.
I would like to say right away that I am very proud of the decision of the Canadian government not to enter into the war against Iraq. I know that victory by the English, Australian and American coalition is imminent. However, despite this imminent victory, we must make our position perfectly clear. My position is that I am totally opposed to a war that I feel is completely unjustified.
I have received a great many messages recently, some of them very critical and many of them raising the issue that our trade with the United States will suffer because of the decision not to support the war. I would like to quote one of our colleagues who said in caucus the other day—and I am sure that this colleague would not mind me saying it here, “What is more important? Money from trade with the United States, or human lives?”
On way or another, war entails casualties. Often, innocent people are involved, as is the case here, with troops sent to war by their leaders and especially families, women and children who are injured and die on the front lines.
The Leader of the Opposition talked about resolution 1441. He brought up all the flip-flops that the government was supposed to have undergone.
First, I would remind him that resolution 1441 was backed by all the countries of the Security Council, including the U.S. and the U.K. Logically, we could also say that the U.S. and the U.K. themselves flip-flopped. At one point they had said that resolution 1441 was sufficient for them to use as a step toward war and then they changed their minds. The U.S. and the U.K. initiated, with Spain, the second resolution they presented to the Security Council, in addition to resolution 1441.
If, therefore, they were satisfied with resolution 1441, why would they have presented a second resolution? If they did present a second resolution, surely, in fairness, they should have had to be bound by its result. However the decision really was if they won the second resolution in the Security Council, then they would go to war. If they lost, they would still go to war.
The opposition has brought up the veto of France. That was never the question. The fact is the second resolution did not have the backing of the small powers that made the difference; Mexico, Chile, Guinea, Cameroon, which resisted all the pressures to vote for the second resolution.
I point out that resolution 1441 had nothing to do with a change of regime. It was strictly about disarmament. In the view of this government, and so many governments around the world, disarmament was happening.
Now that the war is a fait accompli and is about to end, of course we hope for a rapid end to it. We certainly hope that there will be a cease fire soon, that the coalition will judge that its aims have been accomplished and that firing will cease.
We were told that one of the reasons this war was so imperative was that we had to get rid of weapons of mass destruction on the soil of Iraq. Today, after 20 days of war, there have been all kinds of rumours that these WMDs, as they are called, were found here and there, that so-called barrels of chemical warfare agents were found and that white powder was found. Every time these were tested, a new press conference was held to say that, no, that these were not weapons of mass of destruction after all.
We went to war on the basis of destroying weapons of mass destruction. The war is nearly over and we have not found any.
War, at times, is inevitable. We concede that sometimes there is no other way. We entered the first world war, the second world war and the Korean war. We felt that war then was inevitable. This time the war was not inevitable. The Security Council was dealing with it, inspections were working and Iraq was disarming. The reason war happened was the Security Council was set aside and a new objective came into being, that of regime change. If wars become legitimate to ensure regime change, where do we start and where do we end?
My colleague very fairly put this question to the opposition a few minutes ago. Where next do we strike in the Middle East and elsewhere? Do we strike against Libya? Do we go against Syria? Do we go against Mugabe? Do we go against North Korea?
Today we heard that our foreign minister made an intervention regarding Cuba, denouncing the tremendous penalties that had been visited upon Cubans who had spoken against the regime, namely prison terms ranging from 25 to 30 years. The foreign minister intervened to state that this was completely unacceptable under the declaration of human rights.
What do we do? Do we move against Cuba to remove Castro? Where does this cease, if the doctrine of pre-emptive war becomes the doctrine that rules the international world? How do we select the next dictator? What do we do if we do not like that individual and want to push that person aside? This is fraught with imminent danger because it is selective. Surely we would not select someone we could not remove. We would have to make judgment calls.
Was Tiananmen Square enough for us to take action against the Chinese government?