Debates of Oct. 6th, 2014

Military Contribution Against ISIL

[Maria Mourani, Independent, Ahuntsic, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like my colleague to clarify one thing for me. I am not sure that I understood correctly, and she could perhaps even reassure me. Does the NDP consider the al-Nusra Front to be a terrorist organization? I did not quite understand what she said.

In closing, what I find very frustrating about this situation is that with this whole humanitarian disaster, both in Syria and in Iraq, I have actual files in my riding concerning Canadian children currently in Syria. The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration is refusing to issue visas to some of the relatives, the mother, father and younger brother, who are not Canadians, to allow these families to come to Canada. That is a key issue in my riding. I have been trying to work with this minister for almost a year, and nothing has happened so far. The children are Canadian and are still in Syria.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I did not really mention the al-Nusra Front in my speech. I think that clearly shows the ambiguities we are dealing with. We are striking groups that are fighting against the Islamic State armed group and against the al-Assad regime as well. At the same time, it seems that the Canadian government is prepared to work with the al-Assad regime in order to fight the Islamic State armed group. There are many ambiguities and contradictions in this situation. That is definitely one of the concerns.

With respect to visas for Canadian children in Syria who could return to Canada, I share my colleague's concerns. Unfortunately, Syrian refugees are not coming to Canada, and young Canadians are not getting their visas to enter the country. We know that there have been cuts at Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Furthermore, I believe that the government has a very negative approach to this issue. That is truly deplorable.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, today's debate in the House is of the utmost importance, and I appreciate the opportunity to participate in it. I join my NDP colleagues in opposing the Conservative government's ill-conceived and ill-advised plan to deploy the Canadian Forces to a combat mission in Iraq.

I would like to thank my colleague from Laurier—Sainte-Marie for her speech and for her very relevant remarks, which shed some much-needed light on the current situation in Iraq. What is more, given the member's extensive diplomatic experience, I think that the Conservative government would do well to listen to her words and consider them more carefully than it normally would.

The motion that the Prime Minister moved in the House on Friday is disappointing, to say the least. However, when we look at how the Conservative government has been managing Canada's potential participation in a mission in Iraq, we should not be surprised that it presented such a disappointing motion that contains so little information.

What is worse, the government has expressed its willingness to work with the al-Assad regime in Syria, should it ask Canada to drop bombs in that country. That goes way beyond what little discussion we have had in the House on this issue.

All the members of the opposition have tried repeatedly to get details about the first 30-day mission to Iraq, which just ended. As of today, we are still pretty much in the dark. We have very little information about our troops' mission over there. I do not know how many soldiers we sent. Was it 26 or 69? The government has been keeping us in the dark. We still do not know what those soldiers actually accomplished on the ground. We do not have any idea of the cost associated with this first deployment. We are completely in the dark. Today, the Conservatives are engaging in the same sort of obscurantism.

They show up in the House, move a motion and ask for members' opinions on that motion—or at least they seem to be asking our opinion. However, we are well aware that they have already made up their minds. There will not be very much consultation since we have only a few hours to debate the motion in the House. Then, we will have to vote on it either today or maybe tomorrow. Who knows?

As parliamentarians, we do not really have the freedom to fully debate what Canada's participation in Iraq should be. No matter what party we belong to here in the House, we all agree that Canada has a role to play in helping the Iraqi people. We have the means to help them, whether we are talking about civilians or even the Iraqi military forces that are currently fighting against the Islamic State.

The absolutely horrific acts of violence that the Islamic State has perpetrated have shocked the entire world. No one in the House can ignore this violence, regardless of our position on Canada's participation in Iraq.

Despite these horrors, we cannot blindly engage in a potentially indefinite combat mission in Iraq, and maybe even in Syria. We know very little about how this mission could develop on the ground.

Over the past few days I have listened closely to the Conservative government's attempts to justify Canada's participation in air strikes in Iraq, and today, I am still not convinced that this is how we should proceed.

The government has not clearly and unequivocally demonstrated that air strikes will put an end to the horrific acts being perpetrated by the Islamic State. The government is not even able to answer basic questions from the opposition and cannot specify the objectives of an armed mission in Iraq. We still do not know what would be considered success and how we will measure progress.

In six months, the government may decide to present this information to Parliament, since it has said that any military action by the Canadian Forces would be put to a vote in Parliament. I have my doubts.

Since it has a majority, the Conservative government has not been open. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of reasons to doubt what the government is telling us.

At any rate, in six months, when it is time to consider extending the mission or shifting its objective, we will not even have the information we need to determine whether Canada met its objective. How will we be able to determine whether the Islamic State armed group is no longer capable of harm? Nothing has been defined thus far. There is nothing that would lead us to believe that the mission, as presented by the coalition and the government, will produce concrete results.

Furthermore, if Canada is deemed to have participated sufficiently in the mission after a certain number of months or years, is there an exit plan so that Canada can pull out? We know that it was extremely difficult to pull out of Afghanistan, especially since we left the country in a more or less stable political position. We need to take that into consideration when considering armed intervention in countries such as Iraq and Syria.

Beyond simply bombing rebel groups and, if necessary, working with dictators who use chemical weapons against their own people, does the government have a political solution that will bring about some measure of stability? The Conservatives' plan does not include any of those kinds of elements and, frankly, that is unfortunate.

I mentioned the mission in Afghanistan, as did many others in the House. Unfortunately, there are many similarities between what is being presented today and what was presented at the time as a reconstruction mission in Afghanistan. That is quite worrisome.

I represent the riding of Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, which is home to the Valcartier military base. Many young men and women from the military base were deployed during the war in Afghanistan. Early in my mandate, I had the privilege of going to the airport to welcome them home.

Many of them were my age or younger. They had proudly served their country. They were not prepared for the kind of combat and the horrible situations they encountered over there, so they returned scarred by unspeakable horrors. They had trouble telling combat soldiers from civilians.

When they come back here, they have questions. Did they really achieve the objectives of the mission in Afghanistan? They are looking for help from their government, They come back with physical and mental injuries, but are left to their own devices. They are released before they can collect a pension. The government is unable to take care of the men and women it sends abroad to fight.

In this case, the government is not even clearly defining the plan or the mission objectives for the soldiers that it wants to send abroad. How will those soldiers succeed? The government is once again asking our brave men and women to go serve abroad without even knowing whether the immediate plans will actually have a positive impact on the current situation in Iraq.

My colleague from Laurier—Sainte-Marie mentioned that the bombings conducted by the coalition countries in Syria and Iraq over the past few months have had a negative impact, and have mainly led to higher recruitment for the Islamic State armed group.

Meanwhile, the coalition has had difficulty determining which rebel groups it could collaborate with in Syria, if a military intervention is conducted there. There are a lot of unknowns on the ground, and we have not received any clarification in that regard either.

In light of these arguments, I do not see how we can just rush into a mission involving air strikes without having any idea of how long the mission will last or the costs associated with it.

We also need to keep in mind the care that we will have to provide to our men and women who participate in the mission. For now, we are talking about air strikes, but who knows what will happen one, two, three or four years down the road. The next government could ask to send in ground troops.

Today, we are being told no, but how can we trust this government? I am very proud to be a member of the NDP, which opposes this military action in Iraq.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and for Intergovernmental Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the member might reiterate under what specific circumstances the NDP would approve of the military deployment.

We know that in the United Nations, more often than not, any military deployments are subject to a veto by one of the five members of the Security Council, and that often happens. Could the member comment on that?

Could the member explain how we would protect the people who are providing humanitarian assistance, especially in light of the fact that we want to move deeper into Iraq to protect and provide assistance to more people than we currently are? Could the member comment on how we would do that, especially in light of the grisly atrocities that we saw even just last week by this group?

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his question. I find it refreshing to hear him ask a serious and considered question and not to hear rhetoric alone. It is a nice change in the House.

His question had a number of parts. I will try to answer as best I can. The UN resolution did not mention military intervention. The UN mainly wanted countries to try to prevent their citizens from joining the Islamic State armed group. It also wanted countries to focus on humanitarian aid.

Before considering military action, the NDP would first like to focus on humanitarian aid, an area in which Canada has always had a great deal of expertise. We do not hear a lot about that from this government, even though that is what political representatives in Iraq have asked for.

My colleague from Ottawa Centre had the opportunity to visit the area, and that is what people told him. They need help providing assistance to civilians and minorities who are suffering atrocities at the hands of the Islamic State. They want to have the means to defend themselves. They know how to fight on the ground, and that is the help they asked for. They never asked Canada to send troops to fight. That is not the kind of military action the NDP is considering.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member a very specific question related to the amendment the NDP have brought forward. One of my colleagues also posed this question to another member.

The amendment is calling on the government:

...to contribute to the fight against ISIL, including military support for the transportation of weapons for a period of up to three months....

Can the hon. member tell the House to what degree she believes our Canadian Forces troops could actually be engaged? Is this an example of something, or does the NDP have other thoughts on that issue?

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

The proposed amendment is a response to the requests made by the political representatives in Iraq whom my colleague from Ottawa Centre and others met with. For the time being, they are asking for the means to be able to fight themselves on the ground, as I mentioned earlier. That is the type of intervention we are currently looking at.

That is what we are calling for to respond directly to the needs of the Iraqi people. If there are other requests from the Iraqi government, they can be considered in order to respond directly to their needs. We will have to deal with them when the time comes. It is hard to respond to a hypothetical situation. For the time being, we have responded to the requests made by the Iraqi government. We hope that the Canadian government will take action to ensure that the requested humanitarian assistance arrives as quickly as possible. We need to help the women and children who are suffering and the religious and ethnic minorities who have been displaced and are suffering atrocities at the hands of the Islamic State.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, at the outset I will say that I am sharing my time with the Minister of State for Democratic Reform.

I am grateful to have the opportunity to rise today to contribute to this important debate. There is nothing more significant that a parliament can debate than whether to send its men and women into harm's way. In that deliberation, Parliament must act as a responsible body, worthy of our democracy.

There is nothing more telling about the character of a country and a people than their willingness to go halfway around the world to protect people who cannot protect themselves. Those characteristics reflect courage and determination, but most of all a simple understanding of an undying commitment to humanity. Throughout its history, Canada has demonstrated that courage, determination, and commitment to humanity, and this is no time to stop.

I want to spend a few minutes on why our participation in the multinational campaign against ISIS is the right thing to do and then spend a few minutes on why our contribution is appropriate.

For the moment, considering the depravity that ISIS demonstrates daily with its savage beheadings of men, women, and children, its barbaric use of crucifixions, the systematic elimination of non-believers, and the enslavement of what remains, nations and people have been compelled to act notwithstanding their natural and deep-rooted reluctance to do so.

Seeing pictures of Iraqi and Syrian soldiers being lined up, digging their own graves, and being systematically executed is painfully reminiscent of pictures of Jews being slaughtered and piled in mass graves by the Nazis. This is the Islamic State version of the final solution, and it publicly revels in and celebrates its savagery and barbarism. Despite our reticence based on a strong desire to wish the best, and the naïveté that attitude can engender, we have to be able to recognize evil for what it is.

The roots of ISIS were spawned in Sunni suppression and its subsequent marginalization soon after the Iraq invasion. Gains realized after the extraordinary U.S. effort were squandered by an Iraqi government that reopened sectarian divides and further marginalized the Sunnis, resulting inter alia in an Iraqi army that could no longer fight.

Syria has also been most problematic. Civil demonstrations against Bashar al-Assad became a rebellion and then a full-fledged civil war. International red lines proved to be nothing more than posturing, and opportunities were missed that might have resulted in a moderate opposition with western support. This potential was quickly overrun and divided by fundamentalists. Between these two powder kegs, the Islamic State was born.

The words and actions of the Islamic State should provide sufficient motivation to act against it. It is expansionist and acting like a state, occupying territory and administering its own brutal form of justice. It has its own economy, based largely on black market oil.

Despite its connection to the wider issues in the region, it has a life of its own. It has redrawn boundaries, committed well-documented atrocities, and threatened Canada directly. With many fighters coming from Europe, North America, and Australia, there is no reason to regard this as an idle threat. Several plots have already been apprehended in Europe and Australia.

The ISIS army is disciplined in its own way. Its bloodlettings are organized as a matter of policy and are not just a lack of discipline. It patrols, fights, and moves in a fashion that indicates some level of coordinated training, and it has weapons that only a quasi-state could support. Degrading and ultimately defeating ISIS will take time and money and, unfortunately, blood.

Rather than an argument to avoid going to war against ISIS, that is quite the opposite. It is an argument to fight it with all means possible and available and end it as decisively and quickly as possible, even if that requires land forces, boots on the ground, from regional coalition contributors. The quicker ISIS is degraded, if not destroyed, the better.

Canada will be joining a large and growing coalition of dozens of traditional and new allies, all horrified at the extreme nature of ISIS actions. To simply bomb ISIS over the course of six months or more will not resolve the baseline issue of Sunni marginalization in Iraq and Syria; I think we all recognize that. In both Syria and Iraq, simply turning the page will not be enough, but for a lasting and positive outcome to be achieved, ISIS will have to be rapidly defeated.

This is a more complex question than a simple choice between humanitarian aid and military action. Today, to be humanitarian often requires the military, which often must come first. It is simplistic to think that we can provide humanitarian aid and support, free from conflict, without the need of some force. The Kurds, Iraqis, and Syrians now struggling with the villainy of ISIS are welcoming the various militaries coming to their aid and are not contemptuous, as some hon. members seem to be.

World affairs are complex and ambiguous, and there are no simple answers. Dealing with those daunting complexities in a mature and measured fashion is what we in Canada and countries around the world want from our leaders.

Thankfully, we currently have that kind of leadership in our Prime Minister.

Now allow me to address what Canada is doing and what we are prepared to do.

Our extensive humanitarian aid has been covered by others, and our CC-177 Globemaster and CC-130J Hercules will continue to provide humanitarian airlift as necessary. I will focus on our military combat commitment.

Canada will play its role alongside allies and partners from across the world in taking on a force that threatens to destabilize the international system. This is what a responsible global actor does.

The third priority of our defence commitments is to project leadership abroad by contributing to international peace and security in support of Canadian interests and values. Canadians expect our military to respond and excel, and that is what it has done.

Readiness is the degree of preparedness and responsiveness of our forces that allows us to deploy them with little notice in response to government direction. Readiness depends in large part on the skill, knowledge, and professional dedication of our men and women in uniform.

The House is well aware of the bravery and many sacrifices made over the years by members of the Royal Canadian Navy, the Canadian Army, and the Royal Canadian Air Force.

The Canadian Armed Forces are equipped, trained, experienced, and ready to make important contributions to international peace and security, efforts such as those we are embarking upon in Iraq.

What is being proposed is the kind of operation we ran successfully in the first Gulf War, in Kosovo, and in Libya, and for which we train annually in the multinational Maple Flag exercises in Cold Lake. I was personally involved in mounting the mission to the first Gulf War and in participating in and supervising Maple Flag over many years.

While our combat commitment is being mounted by the Royal Canadian Air Force, the special operations forces of the Canadian Army will continue to supply training and mentoring support to the Iraqi Army. That is a task that our army was very successful at in helping to build the Afghan National Security Forces.

The operation will be supported by approximately 600 aircrew, ground crew, maintenance support, logistics, and security personnel. What will be most visible, of course, are the six CF-18 fighters, two CP-140 Aurora surveillance aircraft, and one CC-150 Polaris air-to-air refuelling aircraft.

In case anyone needs to know, the CF-18 is 56 feet long, 40 feet wide, 15 feet tall, and weighs over 50,000 pounds.

Contrary to the ill-informed and politically motivated comments by some opposition members, including leaders, the CF-18 is fully capable of carrying out the combat mission alongside our allies. The CF-18 will obviously supply combat power, along with a variety of fighter aircraft from our allies. The aircraft is capable of delivering a wide variety of ordnance, and the emphasis will be on precision to minimize collateral damage, as we did in Libya.

The Auroras will conduct surveillance operations that will assist in targeting and tracking ISIS movements and activities. As others share with us, that intelligence will also be shared with our allies.

The Polaris air refuellers will give the CF-18s longer legs when necessary and also provide air refuelling service to our allies.

Missions will be planned based on intelligence shared with our allies. Steps will be taken during mission planning to ensure that everything we do complies with international law.

Missions will be conducted with the consummate professionalism for which our military is known. There were many times in the Libya campaign when Canadian pilots exercised extreme caution in decisions to deliver weapons, thereby saving many innocent lives. On many missions they brought their weapons home because they were not 100% sure of what they were seeing.

We will give the Canadian Armed Forces a mission, we will specify the parameters, we will give them the equipment, and then we will let them get on with the job. That does not mean that we will not be following the mission very closely, and it does not mean that we will not be supplying information to Canadians, but there are many things we will not do.

We will not be running the mission from question period, and we will not allow the opposition to do that either.

We will not get into a silly and irrelevant numbers game about identifying a precise number of people in any given location on any given day. It just does not matter.

Other than the overall mandate of the mission to degrade ISIS, we will not discuss strategy and tactics. They are what we do, not what we talk about.

We will not discuss rules of engagement. That is not public information.

Will it be a perfect operation? No. Will we learn valuable lessons? Yes.

Will any mistakes made, no matter how small, bring out all the Pollyannas who like to sit around a campfire singing Kumbaya and let someone else do the hard work? Yes, I am afraid that will happen. However, it is a mission we are doing. It is the right thing for a serious country like Canada to do.

Are there any guarantees? No, but I can guarantee one thing: if we do nothing, ISIS will continue beheading men, women, and children. That is not good enough for me, it should not be good enough for anybody in this House, and it is not good enough for Canada.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.

There is probably only one thing in his speech that I agree with: that voting on sending Canadians to risk their lives abroad on behalf of our country is one of the most important decisions for parliamentarians to make.

I have a more specific question for him about the concerns that some experts, not just members of House, have raised. Some people in the know are concerned that the bombing will not have the desired effect. Bombing is not the sole solution to all problems. It seems that every time members from the governing party stand up, bombing is provided as a solution, while many experts say that it is probably not the best solution. It would even be counterproductive.

What does the member say to the concerns that simply bombing areas of Iraq will not have the desired effect?

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I never said that bombing is the only solution. We have never said that bombing is the only solution. We have said that we are practising a mix of humanitarian aid and kinetic military effort.

The point I have raised a couple times in questions to the member's colleagues is that with regard to long-term solutions, I get that. We all get that. There are a lot of things we need to do and we should have started them already, but the immediate question is, how do we stop ISIS from beheading men, women, and children tomorrow? What can we do?

We can be selective. We can be accurate. The kinds of weapons we are talking about are extremely accurate. We cannot sit back and do nothing.

People are playing various roles. The 60 countries are all playing different roles. Some are playing more humanitarian roles. Some are playing more kinetic military roles. It is a package, and no one thing is going to be the silver bullet. There is no silver bullet. It is a combination of efforts, and as I said, there are no guarantees.

However, I do know we have to do something to stop ISIS killing women and children tomorrow.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, to my hon. colleague, I listened quite intently to the comments you made, and certainly you are as sincere as all the rest of us—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

I would like to remind the member and all others to please direct your comments to the Chair, rather than directly to your colleagues.

The hon. member for York West.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will try to do that.

I believe we all share the same concern and interest here as to what Canada can do. Canada's ability to do a whole lot is restricted in different ways, but with this coalition of 60 partners, I wonder how much discussion took place with them on the best way for Canada to contribute. Is it with CF-18s and getting into combat, or could we be doing it in a variety of other ways? How much consultation was done with the 60 countries that are part of this movement to put us into war?

My biggest concern is protecting and preventing some of the human casualties. What intentions does the government have to try to reduce the number of casualties?

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member raises a number of valid points. I was not privy to discussions. It was obviously between the foreign affairs minister and his contemporaries.

However, when she mentions whether we should be doing this or that, we are doing both. It is not that we are just doing one or the other. We are doing both and we will continue to do both.

There are 60 countries, each doing their own thing. They bring whatever they can to the table. Some can bring more humanitarian aid; some can bring more military power; some can bring both. Canada is in a position to be able to bring both.

What we intend to do with the folks who are involved in more of a combat area is, through intelligence, pinpoint concentrations of ISIS and go after those specifically. That intelligence comes in a lot of different ways. Whether from drones or from people on the ground, there are all kinds of ways of gathering intelligence.

It is not going to be a perfect mission. Nothing is perfect. Any combat situation is extremely dynamic. We have to adjust to it every day, and we will look back on it to learn lessons. There is no question of that. We always do. We learn lessons every day. We learn lessons every day in this House. Sometimes we even pay attention to them.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Minister of State (Democratic Reform)]

Mr. Speaker, the principal purpose of government is to protect its citizens. It is the purpose that we must, above all else, serve in our response to ISIL. To guide our course, I believe we must answer the following questions. First, does terrorism threaten Canada? Second, does ISIL in the Middle East add to that threat? Third, if so, how do we counter the threat of ISIL?

The first is the threat of terrorism in Canada.

Since 9/11, we have a clear chronology of threats on our soil. April 2004, Sleiman El-Merhebi firebombed the library of United Talmud Torah's Montreal Jewish School. He was sentenced to 40 months in prison.

In 2004, RCMP arrested Momin Khawaja and courts later convicted the born-and-raised Ottawa resident for financing terrorism and building a remote controlled device, dubbed a “Hi Fi Digimonster”, to trigger terrorist bombs.

In 2006, police announced they had uncovered the Toronto 18 terrorist bomb plot, which also included a plan to assassinate the Prime Minister, kidnap MPs and blow up the Parliament buildings. Eleven of the eighteen were convicted or pled guilty and the ringleader, Zakaria Amara, got a life sentence.

Then there was Misbahuddin Ahmed, also from Ottawa, found guilty three months ago of facilitating terrorism, or his inspiration, Hiva Mohammad Alizadeh, who just received a 24-year sentence for plotting an attack within Canada and possessing the explosives with which to do it.

In July 2013, John Nuttall and Amanda Korody were charged for an alleged al Qaeda-inspired plan to use pressure cooker bombs at festivities in Victoria.

To answer my first question, does terrorism threaten Canada? The answer is proven yes in roughly two dozen convictions by Canadian courts since 9/11, showing clear and present danger that terrorism presents to Canada.

Yet some will ask, what does any of this have to do with ISIL? That brings me to the second question, does ISIL in the Middle East add to the terrorist threat against Canada?

Ask Farah Mohamed Shirdon. He is a Calgarian, a recent student at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. This summer he appeared in an ISIL video from the Middle East where he now fights, saying “This is a message to Canada...we are coming and we will destroy you”. If Farah Mohamad Shirdon can commit terrorist atrocities with ISIL in Iraq or Syria, why could he not have done the same when he was a college student in Calgary?

There is Salman Ashrafi, a privileged and prosperous business analyst also from Calgary, who helped murder 19 people in a suicide bombing in Iraq in November 2013. What would have stopped him from orchestrating the same suicide bombing at the Calgary Tower, or the Saddledome or Encana's skyrise building, The Bow? Does it sound far-fetched? Consider this excerpt from a recent National Post article:

But in Calgary, [Ashrafi] had apparently fallen in with a circle of extremists who lived in the same apartment building above a small Islamic centre....According to an account posted online by one of the men, who now goes by Abu Dujana, they worshipped Anwar Awlaki, the pro-Al Qaeda propagandist whose videos urge Muslims in the West to either go abroad and fight or conduct terrorist attacks at home.

Again, while they lived and operated in downtown Calgary, they worshipped a pro-al Qaeda propagandist who urged them to attack their home communities.

They were not alone. Three months ago, the RCMP charged Hasibullah Yusufzai with travelling for the purpose of terrorism, alleging the B.C. resident had joined a terrorist group in Syria.

Then there is Ali Mohamed Dirie, the same terrorist who served two years for plotting to blow up this very building along with the Toronto Stock Exchange. He recently turned up again. He was fighting for al Qaeda in Syria. Thankfully, he was killed there. However, his life and story illustrate the overlap between Middle Eastern terrorism and terrorism based in Canada. This individual tried to attack here before going to fight there.

CSIS indicates that roughly 130 Canadians have travelled to conflict zones, including Syria and Iraq. They are thought to be taking part in front line combat, fundraising, operational planning and disseminating online propaganda. This phenomenon is not unique to Canada. There are an estimated 2,000 westerners who are fighting alongside these terrorists.

I want Parliament to consider this question. If such terrorists walked freely on Canadian streets yesterday and are killing civilians as part of ISIL in Iraq today, what makes members think they will not execute the same atrocities in Canada tomorrow?

Imagine the platform they will have if their dream of ISIL statehood is fulfilled. They are close already. They have seized control of an area as large as Belgium. They rule lands covering 40,000 kilometres and 8 million people from northwestern Syria to within an hour of Baghdad. Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, has fallen into the hands of these terrorists, as have Tikrit, Fallujah, Tal Afar and the main power base in Syria, Raqqa. The group reportedly has $2 billion in cash and assets, making it the wealthiest militant group on planet earth, according to the BBC.

Within ISIL's territory, it is beginning to lay down the foundations of government and state, hence the name. The group has erased old borders and videotaped itself literally kicking down border fences between two different countries. It now has a court system, law enforcement, taxes, tolls, administrative buildings and street signs, all of which could eventually form the apparatus of a state.

To answer the second question, does ISIL add to the terrorist threat against Canada? Undeniably. The risk to Canadian civilians multiplies exponentially with a new terror state intent on attacking us. Imagine the launch pad it would have from which to carry out these attacks.

To my third and final question on how we counter this threat. Some say with humanitarian aid. Aid is worthy, and we are providing it. We will feed, clothe and treat the victims, but that will not stop the victimizer. Members of ISIL beheaded a taxi driver from London last week, precisely because he was an aid worker.

We must remind ourselves that the root cause of terrorism is the terrorist himself. He, and he alone, has chosen his path. It is he and the evil within him that we fight. We know we must degrade and, where possible, destroy him before he destroys us. That means delivering critical military supplies to Kurdish peshmerga forces, using CC-130 and CC-17 cargo planes to airlift military supplies, donated by countries like Albania and the Czech Republic. It means using special ops Canadian Armed Forces personnel in northern Iraq to advise and assist. It also means that Canadian CF-18s will join with President Obama's coalition to strike ISIL terrorists from the sky.

It takes purpose and planning. What is our purpose? It is to protect Canadians from ISIL terrorists. What is our plan? To block them when they enter Canada, to lock them up when they are here, to strip their citizenship when we can and to join with our allies in order to attack them abroad before they can attack us here at home.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated the speech by my distinguished colleague, but he failed to address a certain problem. To effectively combat a terrorist organization, we must occupy the land. An Iraqi army, 220,000 strong, in theory occupied the land. However, those 220,000 soldiers wasted no time in abandoning their weapons and taking off. Mosul was defended by 50,000 men. The city was abandoned after two days of combat against 15,000 terrorists.

Do we have to do the fighting for them? As long as the local army refuses to defend its territory, we will have to keep coming back. That is the problem with this military intervention. It is military only and does not solve the local political problems that are preventing the Iraqi government from finding anyone to defend it.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, clearly, if the Iraqi army had already successfully beaten the terrorists, we would not be having this discussion. A Canadian military contribution is needed precisely because the others have failed, that is clear. If Canada got involved only after the battle was already won, I cannot think of any past battles we would have participated in.

The reality is that if we wait for the Islamic State group to become a real state, it will be 1,000 times harder to fight it. That is why we must join our allies now to combat this threat from the air and help our allies on the ground fight and win their own battle.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments of the hon. member across the way, his detailed laying out the case for the dangers from ISIL and his view that a combat role is an appropriate way forward for Canada. What I want to explore in my question is whether he views that as being the only honourable way forward?

The Minister of Foreign Affairs claims that anyone who is not accepting or supporting a combat role is sitting back and letting others do the heavy lifting, or is a free rider. It is very much a positioning of either people are for air strikes or they are losers. Germany, Italy and dozens of our allies are not accepting a combat role.

The member for Edmonton Centre was very thoughtful in saying that this coalition of 60 states had the vast majority of members who were doing constructive military, non-military contributions, all of which were valid.

Which does my colleague believe? Is it either/or, it has to be air strikes or one is a loser, as the foreign affairs minister claims, or does he subscribe to the idea that there are many contributions—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

The hon. Minister of State.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we are the only party in the House of Commons which does not believe that it has to be one to the exclusion of the others. I respect the position of the parties across the way, but their position is only humanitarian aid. Let us just consider that.

What if every country in the world said only humanitarian aid? Think about that. What would happen if all the countries in the world said that there would be no combat, that we would simply arrive to present humanitarian aid to people without any protection whatsoever from the combatants that ISIL had put onto the field?

Everyone here acknowledges that somebody has to do combat against ISIL. The position then becomes that somebody else should do it, but that Canada should not. The opposition members seem to acknowledge tacitly that ISIL presents a threat to Canada through the various linkages that have been demonstrated time and time again between this group and Canadian terrorists, but they say that we should not attack that threat, that as Canadians, we should allow someone else to do that difficult work in our place.

We understand that our national security is also our own responsibility and that while we join with a broader coalition, we cannot simply sit on the sidelines and let others do it for us.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I take very seriously the debate that we are having today just as New Democrats take very seriously the threat posed by ISIL. Most serious for all of us is the treatment of religious minorities in Iraq, the destruction of religious shrines, the forcing of non-Muslims from their homes, and mass killings in the most brutal way. None of us would deny that what is going on is reprehensible and should not be tolerated.

Horrible as beheadings are, we have to take care that we do not let ISIL provoke us into taking rash action propelled by anger or revulsion. In fact, that may be the way they were designed.

I should mention at this point that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Toronto—Danforth.

As I said, horrible as beheadings are, we have to make sure we are not actually doing what ISIL wants us to do by taking rash action in response. Our challenge here as parliamentarians is to figure out what the best response would be.

No doubt the Canadian Forces are ready, able and willing to answer the call. I represent a riding with a large number of members of the military and retired military members. CFB Esquimalt is not likely to be directly involved in the next six months but as a Vancouver Island MP, I am quite aware that many of those from CFB Comox may end up taking part in this mission. All New Democrats wish them well when they do so. We have no doubt about their capabilities and their willingness to serve.

We on this side of the House are not saying that we should do nothing. In many of the speeches we have heard from Conservatives and in their discussions, they seem to have forgotten the history of Canada as a very important humanitarian aid donor in the world. We also have a proud history of peacekeeping. It is not either war or humanitarian aid. There is some big area in the middle where Canada has always played a large role.

I do want to acknowledge and thank the government for the $5 million in funding it announced earlier today to support investigating and prosecuting crimes involving sexual violence. It is one of the things that we had called for from the beginning and is part of the conditions for our support of the extension of the mission in Iraq.

The government motion before us does not have that in it. It does not have a lot of other things in it. It is a vague motion on an ill-defined mission.

I have heard members on the other side say that the NDP would never support a mission. Of course, that is factually incorrect. One of the most difficult votes that I cast when I came to Parliament was on the question of whether to extend the mission in Libya. In that mission we had clearly defined objectives. We had a timeline assigned for ending that mission. I felt able to support that because what we intended to accomplish and how we intended to do that was clear.

We do not have that before us in this proposed mission in Iraq. What we have is a proposal for a six-month air strike mission. Some of our allies are participating in that, such as the UK, France and Australia. Many more are not. Germany, Norway, South Korea and New Zealand are some examples.

We also do not have clear rules of engagement. I heard one of the members on the other side say that rules of engagement are not for public discussion, but that is odd, because the United States is having a very public discussion right now on the terms of engagement for the air strikes in Iraq. It is also having a serious discussion about apparently reducing the standard by which it judges those air strikes in terms of their impact on civilians. We have had no discussion of any of those kinds of impacts, which are sometimes called collateral damage but which really mean death and destruction for many of the people that we are supposedly trying to protect.

We had a worrying precedent just in the last week in that the government said the initial non-combat mission would go on for 30 days and then it would be evaluated before we moved to some other mission. It is clear from the debate about who was there and when. It is not a question of numbers, as the hon. member for Edmonton Centre tried to imply. It is a question of when were people there and could we do an evaluation of their impact before deciding to go to another kind of mission. It seems clear to me that the government had already made up its mind when it started on this 30-day non-combat mission. It seems clear to me that it was going to extend into a further mission that involved combat.

When we say we do not think we should do nothing, the question then becomes: what else should be done? The Minister of Foreign Affairs cited the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2178, which does not do what the Minister of Foreign Affairs tried to imply. It does not in any way authorize the kind of military mission that the government is talking about.

It does have two very big demands in it. Resolution 2178 calls for the cutting off of recruits and funding for ISIL, so this would in fact help strangle the movement by denying it arms and supplies. The second thing it does, within that first part, is to cut off the flow of recruits. We have had a lot of talk, again from the last speaker on the Conservative side. We have had some 130 Canadians go abroad to join terrorism, and none of us think that is a good idea. I think all of us would agree that normal criminal prosecutions should take place for those people, should they return to Canada.

I am pleased the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness has announced he will be at the public safety committee on Wednesday to talk about this goal that was set in resolution 2178 of cutting off the flow of foreign fighters to terrorism abroad. However, I worry he will continue to talk about after-the-fact measures.

The Conservatives like to talk about the fact that the government will revoke citizenship after individuals have joined in terrorism and caused destruction. If they come back, it will take away their citizenship. I have some questions about the fairness of that versus those who are dual nationals and those who are only Canadian-born. However, more than that, it is after the fact. It does not do what the UN resolution calls for. It does not cut off the flow of recruits to ISIL.

I would like the minister to come to committee and talk to us about more proactive things, like suspending passports, subject of course to due process. However, if they are going to do that, it requires resources and the current government is the one that has systematically cut the resources to the CBSA, including cutting more than 100 intelligence officers at CBSA. The very people who might be expected to identify the people who want to go abroad and join terrorism are gone. They are laid off. We need that intelligence there. If they are going to cut the resources, I have my doubts about whether they can meet that goal of cutting off the supply of recruits.

I also hope the minister will come and talk about even earlier interventions. One of the things we talked about on this side, and I know the hon. member for Ottawa Centre has talked about it, is that we need to have a politics of inclusion in this country so that people have lives that are worth living and are meaningful to them, which blunts the appeal of extremism. To do that, we need to work with the Muslim communities in this country. We saw an initiative in Winnipeg trying to work on this where apparently, after working a long time with the RCMP, somebody higher up decided that co-operation on this project between the RCMP and the local Muslim community was not a good idea. I am looking forward to our being able to talk to the minister about why we are not pursuing the demands that are being made in the Muslim community that we work together to prevent radicalization of Islamic youth in this country, and that we do it through a politics of inclusion.

The second thing that resolution 2178 asks is for nations to address the refugee crisis in the region. The refugee crisis is a humanitarian crisis but to me it is also a recruiting crisis. Having hundreds of thousands of people who have lost everything provides fertile field for recruiting for Islamic extremism. One of the dangers of the use of air strikes is that we will inadvertently end up creating more recruits for the ISIL cause.

We have more than three million people displaced in the region, with over one million of those who have gone across the border into Turkey. In the last week of September alone, more than 100,000 refugees went from Syria into Turkey. The most vulnerable among those may need resettlement. We have heard the Conservatives claiming that we are doing a great job on that, versus the actual figures on the ground where very few of those most vulnerable were resettled in Canada. Most do not want or need resettlement, but with winter coming to the region, they do need shelter, food and employment. They need a source of income. Canada has been very slow to meet that part of the goals of Security Council Resolution 2178.

I want to talk just for a minute on what the member for Edmonton Centre implied, which was that the NDP was full of peaceniks who like to sit in camp and sing Kumbaya. That is what he said. He was not talking about me, thanks very much. Certainly we have veterans in our caucus. We have a doctor who served in the first Iraq war, and I want to talk a bit about my own experience in conflict zones.

In 1999, I was the co-chair of the largest human rights observer mission for the referendum in East Timor that led to independence. I was the author of a letter to the Secretary-General before that vote, calling for an international peacekeeping force to be sent to East Timor because we could see the amassing of militia forces who were in favour of staying with Indonesia and the very direct threats they were placing on voters, that they would kill people who voted for independence. The Timorese population very bravely voted for independence. However, the peacekeeping force did not arrive for a month and more than 1,500 people died and the infrastructure of the country was destroyed.

Eventually, it did arrive and it kept the peace for three years. This was of course a good thing. Therefore, there is another role there: peacekeeping.

I also served in Afghanistan in 2002. We ended up with a very mixed mission there. I believe there was a very important mission of rebuilding that we initially started out on in Afghanistan, but it got mixed up with fighting terrorism again and it became very difficult to make progress on that rebuilding.

Let me conclude with a quote from the UN Secretary-General, which I think says much about the direction we have to take. Ban Ki-moon said:

Over the long term, the biggest threat to terrorists in not the power of missiles—it is the politics of inclusion....

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, we have heard various comments today in the House and it is immensely valuable that we are having this debate.

However, does the member opposite really think that military action, including air strikes, should be withheld because they might generate more recruits for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant? Does he really think that by standing by, as the international community has been doing for two years, not taking military action and wishing it away, that we will somehow bring this terrorist menace to heel?

We have seen this movie before. In Afghanistan, in the 1990s, when the international community did nothing, the result was 9/11. We have seen this film in Syria. The international community has done nothing. ISIL started there before gaining the footholds and the control that it now has over large tracts of Iraq.

Could the hon. member please tell us how inaction would prevent ISIL from continuing to strengthen its hold over Iraq, and indeed the whole region?

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. Minister of Citizenship and Immigration was the ambassador in Afghanistan when I was there as an international human rights observer, so I have known him for a very long time.

I would say he has, from my point of view, asked the question incorrectly. What we are saying about the motion in front of us—

[An hon. member]

Answer the question.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will answer the question.

What the minister has said, I believe, places the question kind of backwards to us. We have asked what the objectives are and what we are going to achieve. What is it we are going to accomplish through air strikes?

We do not see what that is and they have not told us what that is. Therefore, we cannot support a motion that calls for air strikes at this point.