Mr. Speaker, I, too, stand with great honour to support this initiative, this bill, and I thank the mover for following this initiative.
From time to time in this place we have initiatives on which everyone can agree, and I think we all welcome those opportunities. This day to honour peacekeepers is one initiative I fully support and I believe everyone in the House supports. It is one that is in step with what we all came here to do, which is to certainly represent our constituents, but to also represent what makes our country distinctive, what we can be proud of as Canadians.
Canadians, from time to time, are noted for being modest, which is a good thing, but there are times when we need to celebrate our history, our institutions and what makes us so different and unique.
It was the former prime minister, Lester B. Pearson, who came up with the idea, and if he were still living he would certainly say that he had a lot of help with the idea, but he clearly was the person who was able to capture the imagination at the right time to come up with a different way of solving conflict.
Hon. members will know their history. In 1956, when there was a problem in terms of how to deal with the Suez conflict and how to have a proper troop withdrawal at the time the French, British and Israeli troops were extricating themselves from Suez, the brilliant idea of peacekeepers came forward.
At the time, we were suffering from a lack of imagination about how to deal with conflicts. It was the post-World War II era. There were, quite frankly, conflicts similar to what is going on in the world now. We did not have the capacity, the ideas and the institutions to deal with conflicts in a creative way. It was in 1956 that the idea of what is really the first modern peacekeeping initiative took place. Lester B. Pearson was given the Nobel Peace Prize after that.
I honestly hope we figure out a way that this day, notwithstanding that it is in August, can be brought in to our school curriculums across the country.
I might add that if members have a chance, they should travel down Highway 7. Not far from Tweed is the Pearson Peace Park and the Pearson Peace Award is given out every year. Those are extremely important ideas and touchstones for our country. The Pearson Peacekeeping Centre is an important well from which to draw, particularly now.
It is important to note that many veterans are working in support of this. In fact, the Canadian Peacekeeping Veterans Association will be more than delighted to see this initiative. It happens to have its own mission statement: “To be a strong and leading advocate for all veterans, to create and nurture a forum of comradeship for veterans and to govern the CPVA democratically and effectively on behalf of all its members”.
It does that because it wants to ensure that the idea of peacekeeping is not seen as something just thrown into the history books, that it is something that stays with us, that the important historical concept not only is referenced, but is something we employ.
I have to say that presently we are at a crossroads where we do need to invigorate our commitment to peacekeeping. We see that now and we know that Canada has, in terms of peacekeeping commitments, fallen behind. However, I will not get into a long discourse about that.
I think the idea of honouring peacekeepers might invigorate the debate about Canada's role in the world. There is no question that peacekeeping has changed. Things change and evolve, but the idea of having blue helmets resolving conflicts throughout the world and dealing with human security is an important one.
I want to reference an initiative that actually falls in line with honouring peacekeepers. It was something that was presented to the previous government but it still has merit. It is the idea of the United Nations emergency peace service, a proposal that is in keeping with our tradition of peacekeeping. The proposal is straightforward. It states that when we see a humanitarian crisis, such as a genocide or massive human rights abuses, we should have a United Nations emergency peace service, a rapid response to: first, take action to prevent war and dire threats to human security and rights; second, to offer secure emergency services to meet critical human needs; third, to maintain or reinstate law, order, penal and judicial processes with high professionalism and fairness; and fourth, to initiate peace building processes with focused incentives to restore hope for local people, their society and economy so they may have a promising future.
The UN emergency peace service proposal would be designed to provide a rapid response to these needs. It would possess five unique strengths. It would be permanent and based at UN designated sites, including mobile field headquarters, and be able to act immediately to cope with an emergency. The proposal goes on to talk about all the other things the service could do.
The proposal of having a United Nations emergency peace service is to take the concept that is a Canadian one of peacekeeping, and see it evolve. It needs to be resourced and to be given a little more permanence and structure but it is something that would honour the history and veterans of our peacekeepers.
It is an idea that has been discussed. I know that Dr. Peter Langille, who is presently with an organization called Global Common Security, which happens to be here in Ontario, has promoted the idea. He has worked with other stakeholders.
It would be interesting to take this opportunity for a peacekeeping day to have a conference on the idea of a United Nations emergency peace service to see if we can engage not only our government but other stakeholders in the possibility of doing that.
It is a terrific idea and I hope it is one that we can use to leverage more support for the idea of peacekeeping so that it does not become a footnote in our history books but it becomes a very robust and important institution that we have for our present day.