Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to speak to the motion and to again reaffirm the position of the party that we will not be supporting it.
The Liberal government is once again attempting to have it both ways. After much urging from us, from the peace movement and from a whole cross-section of Canadians, it finally indicated a few weeks ago that it would not involve this country in any military action in Iraq. I wonder if it understood that it did that. However it did it based on the principle that the war being proposed by the U.S. administration and the Blair administration in the U.K. was one that was ill-founded under international law, ill-founded under the UN charter and ill-founded, quite frankly, on any kind of moral basis. We stood on that principle when the Prime Minister stood up in the House and made the announcement.
What we see now and what we have seen over the last few weeks is the government attempting to have it both ways. It is trying to move away from principle, to vacillate and to appease that part of the U.S. government that is so strongly against the position that we took. I suppose one might say, even to appease the Alliance Party, but I am not sure about that.
If we go back to the basic principle and look at the terms of the resolution we see repeatedly where the government is moving away from principle.
There is no issue about our relationship with the United States historically but we do have to keep it in the historical context. That relationship has been extremely friendly but it has also had its frictions.
When Prime Minister Pearson said back in the sixties “We are not going to be involved in the Vietnam War. You're wrong about that”, our relationship was very frosty for a while. In fact, it became quite physical when the president of the United States, Mr. Johnson at that time, literally assaulted our prime minister over that particular issue.
When I hear today just how bad the relationship has become, has it become that bad? I do not think so and we certainly hope it will not.
I come from a background where my father was an American. My oldest sister and youngest brother are Americans. They reside in the United States. The motion mentions negative comments and that we have to be careful as members of the House. I have some support in terms of sentiment for that and I have some questions on that part of the motion. My sister and brother would be very upset with me if I did not say how hurt we would be if comments were made about our legitimacy, whether our parents were married, and that comment that we heard.
I am also very concerned about other comments coming from the other side which I regard as anti-Canadian. When I hear, for instance, the Leader of the Opposition use the term “cowardly”, or the staff of the Premier of Ontario in a written press release use the term “coward” to address the government's position, I cannot support that either. I have to speak out against that. That type of language on either side is offensive, uncalled for and unwarranted.
To go to the very essence of this motion, it is about the U.S.-led coalition accomplishing its mission and we as a country expressing our hope that it is able to do so. Our party does not support that and we will, for that reason particularly, be opposed to the motion. The war is an illegal war. The coalition that is in Iraq now has no justification in being there.
We talk in part of the motion about casualties and wanting to limit them. The quickest way we could limit them is to impose, as Russia and a number of other countries have proposed, an immediate ceasefire. I have a very personal connection with regard to casualties. I was in Iraq about six months ago. I visited a school which was about two blocks from the market that was bombed in the first week. I do not know it but I live with the thought that some of the children I saw were some of those children who were killed in that bombing incident. How many other children may die or have died as a result of this incursion?
We needed to proceed with the UN sponsored inspections. It was working, as much as we will hear from some other elements that it was not, and for nothing else than it would not produce those civilian casualties we have seen.
We have been friends of the United States and we have been its ally in any number of other cases, as it has been with us in any number of other cases. Because it is our friend and ally we have the moral responsibility to say when it is wrong, as have a good number of its citizens. Its incursion into Iraq is wrong.
We have a similar responsibility to the United Kingdom. We told it in the Suez crisis back in the fifties that it was wrong, that we would not be there with it and that it was not justified under international law or under the charter of the UN. It is the same message. It is one of principle. It is a principle in which the country should have every pride. We should be able to say the citizens of Canada that in our foreign affairs we will look to multilateralism and the UN as methods of resolving these types of disputes. War, as the UN charter tells us, is always the last resort. We have to tell the administration in the U.S. that the principles it is enunciating of pre-emptive strike is one we cannot support; that we will never support.
There are a good number of elements in the motion that our party cannot support. It comes back to what we agreed to back in the middle part of March when the Prime Minister stood up and said that we would not be involved in the war. That is the principle on which we are standing.