Mr. Chair, I welcome the opportunity to take part in the debate tonight and to address this most urgent and vital of international issues. In fact, I consider it not only an honour to participate in this debate but a duty.
A country's foreign policy should be one with the values of its people, both to be legitimate and to be successful. At the same time, this foreign policy should necessarily find resonance with the country's history, namely, with its previous foreign policy actions.
I believe Canadians have a heightened sense of the vulnerability of minorities, whether they be cultural, linguistic, religious and so on. It is commonplace to say that Canada is a nation of minorities but it is true, and this sensibility has impacted on our world view. Canada is not just a nation of immigrants. It is a nation of minorities and that nuance is important to our understanding of ourselves and of our foreign policy objectives and actions.
We, as elected representatives, are in a unique position to understand the values and wishes of our fellow Canadians. We meet and speak with them every day in the hearts of our communities, in arenas, shopping centres and coffee shops. We, as members of Parliament, receive correspondence, including emails, increasingly from our constituents and our fellow Canadians. We receive phone calls, sometimes passionate phone calls, from our constituents.
Over the past few months, I have received much correspondence from my fellow citizens and constituents deeply concerned with the situation in Darfur. I even had a young constituent visit me at my office while he was in Ottawa with the Encounters with Canada program. He was a young man of about 17 years of age, incredibly knowledgeable about the world and passionate about making the world a better place. He pleaded with me to ask the Government of Canada to do something. He said that we must send Canadian troops to Darfur.
While I receive correspondence from constituents, like all members do, both in favour and sometimes against specific government policies and actions, when it comes to Darfur, the correspondence has been unanimous. I have not received one piece of correspondence or one phone call from a constituent saying that Canada must pull back and be neutral on the issue of Darfur.
My constituents want us to act now. No one has to take my word for it. There is broad based support in Canada for our country to be at the forefront of an international effort to prevent further catastrophe in Darfur. Fifty organizations representing Canadians of all religions, ages, political views and education supported the Global Day for Darfur this past September 17.
Moreover, Canadian NGOs have formed Save Darfur Canada to represent the voices of thousands of concerned Canadians. Canadians want Canada to take bold action and bold leadership that is consistent with our Canadian values and our previous international actions.
The previous Liberal government crafted and promoted the doctrine of the responsibility to protect, a ground-breaking notion adopted more than a year ago at the United Nations General Assembly. Canada was the architect of this doctrine, which is based on the idea that while the primary responsibility for the protection of a population lies with the sovereign state that governs it, in the event that this state is unable or unwilling to do so or is itself the cause of the threat, the responsibility to protect shifts to the international community of states, in other words, the United Nations.
The Sudanese government has clearly demonstrated that it is unable to stop the violence in Darfur. In fact, it is itself a perpetrator of this violence. Canada must take the lead as a credible middle power in mobilizing the international community to support action in Darfur.
We have the benefit of having with us a colleague who has particular wisdom on this issue, wisdom that he so painfully acquired. Senator Roméo Dallaire, whom I happen to sit with as a member of the Quebec Liberal caucus, is resolutely in favour of Canada taking a leadership role in advancing the cause of international action to protect the people of Darfur. We should heed his advice. We must not waste his wisdom.