Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to this motion which I cannot support.
I look at this motion and I remember the debate last year or maybe the year before when NDP members were saying that our troops should not be in Afghanistan but that they should all be in Kandahar. I do not know what they thought they would do in Kandahar. Maybe they thought they would have a marshmallow and a weenie roast. I think the bullets pierce the skin there also. It is just as dangerous.
I was part of the government that, in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001, had to come to grips with a brand new international situation. The West went through something it had never experienced before: a major terrorist attack at home. A NATO member country, a Canadian partner, was attacked by an organization sponsored by a country. An attack on one NATO member country is an attack on all member countries, and they must respond. That is what Canada did. We made a commitment, along with other NATO partners, to oust the Taliban regime, which had planned the attack with al-Qaeda. We knew that we were not setting out on a quick, three to six month-long international mission. We knew that our soldiers would not be coming home soon.
As a member of this House and a minister at the time, I knew in my heart that it would be a long mission. We were going into a country in trouble, and if we ousted the regime, we would create a period of total instability, which is what we have now. NATO asked us to play a very demanding role: to go into Kandahar, probably the most difficult region in all Afghanistan. We agreed.
The current Conservative government introduced a motion in this House to increase our involvement and guarantee to NATO member countries that we would remain in Afghanistan until 2009 at least. I voted in favour of that motion, not because I agreed with it, because I was opposed to it in principle. But I maintain that this is a decision by the government. The government has to explain it to Canadians and suffer the consequences. The decision cannot be made in the House of Commons after only three hours of debate and without all the information we need to come to a decision about something like this.
The decision was imposed on me, and I voted in favour of the motion, which supported our men and women serving in Afghanistan or preparing to leave for duty there. The motion also supported the other NATO member countries which, like us, are taking risks.
I believe that it is quite reasonable to tell the other member countries that we are going to put an end to this situation, where we are most at risk. I do not believe that we need to tell NATO right away when we are going to withdraw completely from Afghanistan. Our party proposed a motion saying that we would withdraw from the Kandahar region in February 2009, which would have given the other NATO members plenty of time to find a replacement to take over our role in that region.
That is not what is being asked here. The New Democrats voted against our motion and today they are asking us to say so long to the member states of NATO, to say we are leaving, we are gone. They want us to say the same thing to the Afghans whom we are currently protecting and who, like us, had hopes for a better country. We have to tell them that we are no longer there to protect them, to help with their development, and that they can be massacred by internal factions in Afghanistan that want to go back to the days of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and all that. They want us to leave these people behind. I cannot accept that.
I attended a conference organized by the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre from my riding, at the building across the street, the National Press Club in Ottawa. I listened to soldiers who served over there. Some sergeants said that Canadians had won all the battles in Kandahar—all of them. I also listened to representatives from the Red Cross and the RCMP who told us that if we withdraw, it would be game over. We want there to be to assist in development and bring in diplomacy. The Liberal Party, and everyone else, wants the 3D system. We cannot have development and diplomacy without security, and that is what our troops are there for. This is a difficult role that they are fulfilling wonderfully, and I commend them for that.
However, we must protect them. We have to let them know how much longer they will be there and what their involvement will be. We have to assure these troops, these young men and women, that there will be one rotation, not two or three. They are not going to be in that region for 10 or 15 years because there is going to be one rotation and they will no longer be there.
What I should absolutely mention, and what I think is important for Canadians to understand if they are questioning the decision of whether or not we should be in Afghanistan, is what our military stands for, and that is the right to debate the decisions of the government. That is what freedom is.
It is not an absence of support for our troops when Canadians say we should or should not be there, or when they have their discussions or we have them here in the House. When I hear the government say that people who question the role are not supporting the troops, I find that completely idiotic and completely counterproductive. I support the role they are playing. Others may not. They have a right to that opinion. That is democracy.
The other question that I think is very important to raise at this time is the question that we have been debating on the Geneva convention. If we members of the opposition in this House are so strong in support of the Geneva convention and making sure that we are not contravening it by turning our prisoners of war over to people who may be contravening it, it is in defence of our fighting women and fighting men.
Either in this conflict or future conflicts 50 years down the line, our fighting women and fighting men may be prisoners of war. Their protection of not being abused and tortured is that all countries live with the agreement of the Geneva convention. They live within its boundaries and its restrictions. If we knowingly or unknowingly break the convention, we are ultimately putting at risk our soldiers, our fighting women and men, in the future.
Therefore, I hope and I ask that the Prime Minister will take this question seriously, that he recognize that his government has been unable to do that at present, that his minister has been unable to have the confidence of Canadians, of our allies and of our military. He has the ability to do that.
It is not the fault of the military. We do not blame the military. The members of the military do their role in the field and they turn prisoners over in accordance to the instructions that are given. The instructions have been to turn them over to the Afghani authorities rather than create prisons.
There are serious questions, questions brought forth at many levels by Canadian organizations, the foreign affairs department and Corrections Canada, and by the Afghani government and international organizations that say these prisoners may be at risk.
I am not going to give absolutes as to whether or not they were tortured because I do not know, but they may be at risk. That in itself is a contravention. If we are turning them over in a situation where we are not sure, where even our Department of Foreign Affairs tells us that it is not sure, that it cannot guarantee they are being handled properly and in accordance with the Geneva convention, I would not accept that for a moment if a combatant country, an enemy of Canada, was doing that with our soldiers in a conflict.
I would not accept it for a moment if a country that kept prisoners, rather than treating them in accordance with the convention, turned them over to another country where they might be at risk. I think it is what we talked about in the Arar case, where the Americans turned over to Syria a person they had in their possession. We know about the rest of that case.
I think it is important to take this matter seriously. I think it would be the wrong message to send to our partners and to Canadians and to our military if we did not. I went to three funerals of soldiers who died in Afghanistan. I have seen their families.
There is a soldier in the last incident who is from the Yarmouth area, whose legs were severely damaged. Six of his colleagues were lost. He supports the mission. To tell him today, without any resolution to the conflict, without any security for the Afghanis, that his six colleagues were lost for nothing, for no resolution, for no future for this, and that he will have difficulties with his legs for the rest of his life and it was all for naught, it would be completely irresponsible.
To tell Jim Davis of Bridgewater, whose son died there, that his son was lost for nothing, that it was a mistake, that in one resolution of the House without fully considering the repercussions on those people for whom he lost his life to improve their situation, to do that with one vote, it would be completely irresponsible.
To tell the Thibodeaus in my riding, whose son took a year off university with the reserves and is now in Afghanistan, that his risk is all for naught, it would be completely irresponsible.
I cannot support the motion.