Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this debate. Let me say that this was an issue that we debated, and thought long and hard about at the citizenship and immigration committee. I remember when my colleague from Burnaby—Douglas first broached the topic that there was initially not a great deal of support. However, we talked about the issue. Afterwards, the committee came out with its report which is now before this House and is asking the House to concur in the majority report of the citizenship and immigration committee.
Having listened to the debate, I want to touch on a few cases where this issue has a historical background when we are talking about people seeking refuge in Canada rather than engaging in combat, doing military service and going to war.
The first case we had in our history was in 1793 when the First Assembly of Upper Canada passed a law exempting Quakers, Mennonites and Tunkers from military duty. This cleared the way for thousands of these people to arrive in Ontario and Canada.
In 1877 there was a large number of German Mennonites living in Russia that expressed an interest in moving to Canada to settle on the Prairies. The government passed an order in council confirming that they too could be exempted from military service.
In 1898-99 the government passed similar orders in council for Doukhobors and Hutterites respectively, thereby facilitating the arrival of more newcomers to the western Prairies.
This whole issue of offering refuge in this country relates to those who are against compulsory military service or against military service where they might have volunteered, but found out during the course of their duty that they were engaged in an illegal war and the cause that they were fighting for was not the cause that they originally joined up for and subsequently developed a conscientious objection.
We do not have to go very far away to show that the issue relates to the war in Iraq and how the administration of the United States misled the American people. Yesterday, we had the reports from the former press secretary to President Bush, who made the allegation that indeed while he was the press secretary and having reflected on the matter, it was an exercise in deception in terms of getting the American public behind the war in Iraq.
The fact that the president's former press secretary is now under attack by associates of the White House is not surprising. If we think back to the timeframe of the Iraq war and the debate that raged throughout the world, where the world community was pleading with the United States not to take unilateral action, that was not to happen.
The United States did invade Iraq with the coalition of the willing. I must say that the ranks of the coalition of the willing has shrunk a great deal. We are now talking about the United States standing virtually alone in Iraq.
The motion we are debating today could very easily be the same action as that taken by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who stated in regard to the Vietnam war:
Those who make the conscientious judgment that they must not participate in this war...have my complete sympathy, and indeed our political approach has been to give them access to Canada. Canada should be a refuge from militarism.
When Prime Minister Jean Chrétien made the courageous decision and the right decision that Canada was not going to engage in the war in Iraq, he and the Liberal government were attacked by the leader of the Canadian Alliance, the present Prime Minister, and the present day public security minister , who was also with the Canadian Alliance at that time. I quote from a letter they sent to the Wall Street Journal:
Today, the world is at war. A coalition of countries under the leadership of the U.K. and the U.S. is leading a military intervention to disarm Saddam Hussein. Yet Prime Minister Jean Chrétien has left Canada outside this multilateral coalition of nations. This is a serious mistake. For the first time in history, the Canadian government has not stood beside its key British and American allies in their time of need.
The Canadian Alliance--the official opposition in parliament--supports the American and British position because we share their concerns, their worries about the future if Iraq is left unattended to, and their fundamental vision of civilization and human values. Disarming Iraq is necessary for the long-term security of the world, and for the collective interests of our key historic allies and therefore manifestly in the national interest of Canada.
Make no mistake, as our allies work to end the reign of Saddam and the brutality and aggression that are the foundations of his regime, Canada's largest opposition party, the Canadian Alliance will not be neutral. In our hearts and minds, we will be with our allies and friends. And Canadians will be overwhelmingly with us.
We do not need to have people coming to Canada and asking for refuge because they do not want to participate in a war that has been judged to be an illegal war.
Canada likes to think of itself as a peacekeeper, and Canadians are most comfortable in that role that Canada plays in the world. As we all know, it was Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, prior to becoming prime minister, who received the Nobel peace prize for inventing peacekeeping. That peacekeeping situation with the blue berets came into play in the Suez.
We ask the government to stand up and make a decision to support people who seek not to serve in unjust wars and people who are against serving in wars. That is the right thing to do. That is what the Canadian public overwhelmingly expects us to do. I believe the American public does the same.
Look at the support for the president who led the United States into war, which is recorded in history. To their chagrin, the American people realized, unfortunately too late, that this war has had a tremendous cost to the social, economic and moral values of the United States of America.