Mr. Chair, as averse as I am to redundancy and repetition, I will simply restate the dilemma. The government has not answered the question of inconsistent policy in these situations.
I will say it again. We went into Kosovo, bombing and killing, to stop a genocide. We would not go into Rwanda. There was no African Union at that time saying that we could not. For all the reasons articulated, we have stayed out of Sudan.
We are not the government. We are saying to the government that there are some areas where the government is saying, “Let us get in there and bomb and kill and invade”. In other areas, the genocide is even more horrific, as it is in Sudan. More people are dying in Sudan. The Islamic Janjaweed warriors are killing more people than Milosevic ever did and we did not wait for permission from a few surrounding neighbours in that Balkan contest. I am simply asking the question: where is the policy?
The Prime Minister talked about the responsibility to protect. We have to admit that we are not protecting the people in Sudan. We are not protecting the people in Darfur. Depending on whose estimate one goes with, they are still being killed at a rate of anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 people a week. That does not even count the massive population displacement as people flee, running for their lives.
That is the dilemma we have. We have a situation in which the government is not able to explain to us a coherent, consistent policy related to when we go in to help or when we go in with military action. The government made a decision to go into Afghanistan and we support that, but where is the consistency in policy? Why yes to Afghanistan and no to Rwanda? Why yes to Kosovo and no to the people in Sudan and Darfur?
There is no cogent explanation coming forward. As I said before, I do not expect the minister to be able to articulate policy which in fact has not even been developed. It is a dilemma and it needs to be settled. It is something that a Conservative government would put before the people of Canada in open debate in Parliament before a decision would be made. There would be a consistent and coherent policy so that Canadians would know what to expect, our allies would know what to expect and our enemies would know what to expect.
We can do a to and fro on this all night. I am simply saying that it is a dilemma. I am not blaming the minister for the dilemma. I am saying that it exists and that no coherent, consistent policy has been articulated.