Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise and debate the motion today.
I want to compliment my friend from Calgary Southeast for the outstanding job he has done of defending the interests of Canada and of western civilization in general and for pointing to the flaws in the arguments of I think well-meaning members across the way who are completely naive about the degree of evil that exists in parts of the world like Iraq under people like Saddam Hussein.
The first thing I want to do is point to the motion that we are debating today, wherein the government speaks of the “unbreakable bonds of values, family, friendship and mutual respect that will always characterize Canada's relationship with the United States of America and the United Kingdom”.
The first thing I have to do is point out how contrary to the spirit of that motion the speech was that we heard from the member for Kitchener--Waterloo. He referred in sneering terms to the neo-conservatives of the United States and basically spent his whole speech running down United States foreign policy. He did not speak about the friendship between Canada and the United States and the United Kingdom. All he did was run down our American friends, our friends who are not only our biggest trading partners. That is not what the debate is about, by the way, but it is an important point to make. Somebody pointed out to me that out of Kitchener--Waterloo about $9 billion worth of exports in high tech goes to the United States every year.
I am surprised that the member is completely unconscious of that fact, but what this is about is doing what is morally right. Irrespective of what the member across the way said about war never being about God and morality, I do not know what else it could be about. Should war be about economic concerns? Is that a reason to go to war? Or should war be about morality? Should it be about protecting innocent people? I think it should. I think that is what it should be about. I think the only time we should be going to war is to protect innocent people.
Sometimes it is a defensive war and sometimes, as in this case, it is a pre-emptive war, where the United States rightly said, “We are not going to allow our enemies to attack us on our soil again”. The United States had just gone through it. The United States said that it was not going to allow a nation that has weapons of mass destruction to continue to threaten it and to continue to defy the United Nations for 12 years.
I want to take up a point that my friend raised during the questions and answers, and yes, the member for Kitchener--Waterloo conveniently ignored the question. He said, “Is it not true that the United Nations would never have been able to enforce the inspections unless there had been 250,000 American and British troops poised on the border of Iraq?” That is the only reason there were inspections going on. So here is the question for the member for Kitchener--Waterloo: Did he really expect that they could just stay there month after month, 250,000 people poised on the border? Obviously not. They could not stay there.
The only reason the UN had any luck at all with trying to get inspectors in was that the Americans had acted so-called unilaterally, even though that in itself is ridiculous when there are 49 countries in the coalition. I hardly see how it can be unilateral when there are 49 countries in the coalition.
In other words, the only reason it worked to the degree it did is that the United States went in and pre-deployed troops, along with the U.K. Thank God they did, because finally they moved in and today we have an Iraq that is freer, an Iraq where people are ultimately celebrating their liberators, an Iraq that will soon be free of that tyrant, Saddam Hussein, who has killed in excess of a million people. He has been responsible for the deaths of over a million people.
I am surprised at my friend across the way, the member from Ancaster, who is chirping away on this. In the lead-up to this debate he spoke about what he calls the fact of the Turkish democracy being superior to the democracy of the United Kingdom and the United States. He spoke about that in the debate that we had on the Bloc motion.
All of this clamouring to get on the bandwagon now is so disingenuous when it comes from people like the member from Ancaster and the member for Kitchener--Waterloo. How much do they really value our friendship with the United States and the United Kingdom? We know very well they are being dragged kicking and screaming to the point where they have to support this resolution, because they do not believe in it. We heard it just a minute ago from the member for Kitchener—Waterloo. All he could do was sneer at the United States for his entire 10 minute speech.
It is very difficult for me to stand here and be composed. I have to say that this is the most disappointed I have been in this government in the nine and a half years I have been here, not only as a member of Parliament but as a Canadian.
Today we celebrated the anniversary of the Prime Minister's election to the House of Commons. Good for him, but I think it more than passing strange that he would celebrate this anniversary on the same day that he brought forward a motion that underlines perhaps his greatest failure as a member of Parliament: his undermining of our traditional friendship between Canada and the United States and the United Kingdom. What an unbelievable legacy. He has made himself relevant by making Canada less relevant on the world stage. Is that not a wonderful legacy for the Prime Minister? But that in fact is what he has done.
For our entire history as a country we had a privileged place at the ear of the United States. The United States has emerged as the world's greatest superpower. We had the chance to temper the Americans if we felt they were acting in a way that we thought was unreasonable. Do hon. members think that they will listen to Canada now after the way the Prime Minister has allowed the slurs to flow from the government side of the House? Of course they will not. We have already seen the repercussions of what the Prime Minister has permitted. We have seen the United States freeze us out on all kinds of discussions.
Unbelievably, members across the way are now suggesting that Canada should play some kind of important role when it comes to the humanitarian effort in Iraq. Of course we would like to, but now that we have completely alienated the one country which basically has the control of Iraq right now, what are the chances of Canada playing the role that we really should be playing there? What are the chances of that? We refused to support the United States. Now we are trying to clamour our way onto the bandwagon. I expect that we will get exactly the response we deserve, which will be, “Where were you when we needed you, our best friends?”
About a year ago I went to NORAD along with members from all sides of the House. I saw how Canadian and American soldiers worked so well together, fantastically well together. We get a tremendous bargain in NORAD. We pay hardly any of the bills. We share joint responsibility for the defence of North American airspace.
On September 11, 2001, when those planes flew into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it was a Canadian at the helm of NORAD. It was a Canadian who made the decision to work with the Federal Aviation Administration to pull the planes out of the air. It was a Canadian general who had to be called to make the ultimate decision. Canadians were in control.
We have a privileged relationship with our best friends, the United States, and what did we do to it over the last 18 months? When the World Trade Center was destroyed and the Pentagon was attacked and that plane went into the fields in Pennsylvania, it took a week for this government to respond. Unbelievably, there was an outpouring from Canadians, but from this government, nothing.
Where were we when it came to supporting the United States at a time when it felt threatened by what was going on in Iraq? Rightly, the Americans decided that we cannot allow Saddam Hussein, a murderous thug, to continue to do as he wants to do, which is to build weapons of mass destruction and thumb his nose at UN sanctions after 12 years. When they wanted to deal with that issue because they were afraid for their security, what did we do? We sat on the sidelines. We could have pre-deployed troops. We could have helped those inspectors do their jobs. What did we do? We did nothing.
This resolution coming from the government after what it has done is just a joke. It is an absolute joke; to run them down on the one hand, for the Prime Minister to allow his caucus, his staff and his cabinet ministers to run down the Americans, and then when they are on the verge of victory, to say, “By the way, we value your friendship”. It is just unbelievable that they would have the moxie, the nerve, to do that.
I will vote against this and I will simply say in closing that I have never been more ashamed of my government than I am today.