Mr. Chair, first I have some overriding comments related to what is happening with Haiti and to some things on which we should be focused. Then I would like to present some concerns. I have some questions, some of which will be rhetorical. I would suggest that this whole conflict has raised some questions in terms of Canadian foreign policy and how it is constructed and implemented.
First, we all agree and we say wholeheartedly that we want to see things in Haiti settled peacefully, as we do wherever there are places of conflict. If we can play a part in that, good.
Also, we want to recognize our troops who are there. As usual, whenever Canadian troops are abroad they distinguish themselves in terms of their courage, their bravery and their training and in how they conduct themselves. They are in fact ambassadors for Canada in very dangerous situations. Therefore we want to acknowledge our troops and commit to them our full support in every way we can.
We also acknowledge the benefits of Canada being involved in diplomatic processes in terms of trying to bring a settlement in that particular area.
We acknowledge the importance of protecting our citizens who are in Haiti, the many who are still there and those who needed to be safely evacuated.
I also have concerns, not just from people across Canada but even from my own constituency, related to children who right now are in orphanages in Haiti. There are families whose adoption processes have already gone through and have been approved, yet it seems to be difficult. These children are in a dangerous situation. Adoption processes have been approved, but they are still waiting for their passports. There should be some way, whether it is through our armed forces or our diplomats, in which we can recognize the danger that is involved. Is there some manner in which those children can be safely taken from a somewhat tenuous situation and joined with their soon to be adoptive parents? That would be those for whom the processes have gone through and everything has been approved.
Those are some of my overriding comments.
What the situation in Haiti has done is once again show the result of more than 10 years of reduction of resources to our armed forces. Though the commitment level and the training level of our forces are I think the highest in the world, our forces are limited in what they can do and in how long they can be maintained in another theatre of activity.
We raise this constantly in the House. We are raising it again today. We need this government to begin to replace and to put back. Our forces have been subjected to a drastic reduction of resources for over more than 10 years. I will even say that a government previous to this one actually began that reduction process, so I am not saying in a partisan way that it is just this government that has done it, but this has to be addressed. It affects how long we can have troops in an area. It shows how thinly they are spread out. We already have an incredible commitment in Afghanistan, where we should be. The whole problem of underfunding by the federal government is exacerbated every time a conflict comes up. We need to address that.
A fascinating question has arisen in this conflict in regard to Canada's involvement. Here is the question that it begs: What criteria do we as a nation use when we make a decision to send in armed forces, and armed forces that are prepared to use those arms? The minister has already said that there could be situations in which they have to literally disarm people in another nation. We have made a decision to send in troops and it begs that question: on what criteria?
Let us look back at very recent international history and another country, another leader, this time by the name of Milosevic, who had embarked on a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Some 8,000 people had been slaughtered under his direct command when Canada, along with some other nations and without UN Security Council approval, moved in there in a military way to stop what was happening.
Using a more recent and tragic example, our government determined not to have anything to do in the Iraq theatre, saying that we were opposed to regime change. I may have differences of opinion with that, but I accept that the government said that it was opposed to a regime change in Iraq, where there was a non-elected leader who was well on the way to setting the all-time record for mass slaughtering, abuse that went beyond description, attacking other countries, and gassing thousands of his own people to death. The coalition forces and the Red Crescent have discovered massive graves that go into the tens if not the hundreds of thousands.
Here we have Saddam Hussein, a non-elected monster of untold proportions in the Iraq situation. Our government stated that we were opposed to any regime change. All right, I accept that. I still do not know what the criteria were, but I accept that.
Now, we have an elected leader Aristide. We may not have wanted to vote for him. He may not be the type of person we would vote for. But the government makes a decision that there should be a regime change.
It is a serious question that we need to address. That decision was based on what criteria? We must have this discussion.
This leads right into my next point. Any time we are talking about troops being deployed, other than emergency action where there is no time to convene Parliament, these types of questions must be debated, must be looked into by members of Parliament, and consensus from Parliament must be achieved. When do we move into a country, when are we party to regime charge--which we have been now, we are party to regime change in Haiti--and to what degree do we involve ourselves? These are the questions that this whole operation begs.
I say that recognizing that we had to send troops there. We had to protect Canadians; we had to evacuate Canadians. However, we actively have supported a regime change of an elected leader.
Yes, there have been some killings going on. It does not even touch the order of magnitude of what Milosevic or Saddam Hussein were doing.
It leads us to the other question, how much influence does Canada really have and how much can it have? Secretary-General Kofi Annan was just here addressing this, asking Canada to do more.
A two-year operational base corps operational budget of the UN runs about $3.1 billion, almost $4 billion U.S. We contribute about $53 million of that, about 1%. In terms of costs, Canada has contributed about 2.2% in peacekeeping operations that have been ongoing in the last year.
I would like to suggest that we can have influence if we are willing to articulate certain principles. When the Secretary-General was here and said Canada had to do more, he talked about poverty, for instance. There is poverty in Haiti. There is poverty, unfortunately and tragically, in many parts of the world. Do we just do more? Does that mean just more dollar dumping? Does that mean we take more Canadian taxpayer dollars and dump it into a situation often in which, and possibly in this case, a leader absconds with those funds, or banks them in Switzerland, or does something and it never gets to the people who really need it?
We support urgent humanitarian needs. We support the use of NGOs, in terms of money having a better chance of flowing to the people who really need it.
I would like to suggest that Canada could be very effective at the United Nations, and in these discussions, if we talked about the principles that lead to a have nation or a have not nation.
Have nations do not just happen and have not nations do not become impoverished just by the luck of the draw. The last century is filled with classic textbook cases of nations that became have nations because they established certain principles. I would suggest those principles would be individual freedoms: the freedom of speech, the freedom of religion, the freedom to be enterprising, and the freedom to own private property.
How often at the United Nations, or when we were in discussions with the Secretary-General or other countries, did we say and did we bring influence and even pressure on other regimes, other nations, whose elitist leaders did not want to put these principles in place?
We know they work if we look at the last century. North Korea and South Korea are an example. Here we have a population, obviously genetically and ethnically the same, with the same thousands of years of past history. One implements a regime which is not democratic and does not promote these principles; the others does. What do we have? Generally speaking, a higher standard of living.
The same comparison can be done with West Germany and East Germany, Taiwan and mainland China. The same comparison can be done with democratic Israel and its surrounding undemocratic neighbours. Here is one country with a relatively high quality of living and around it there are nations awash in oil but brimming in poverty.
I would like to encourage our minister and our government, not in a tangential reflective way, but in very clear ways at every opportunity at the United Nations, to challenge those nations which do not allow these individual freedoms to exist. That is the principal reason we have these crises of poverty. That is the way that in the mid and long term these crises can be avoided, if they would start to move on those principles with the encouragement of Canada. That is the way Canada could have a great influence at the United Nations.