Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak to the motion of the government. I believe we have to put it clearly on the record what our concerns and views are with respect to the motion.
We are dealing with a motion that sometimes has been framed as air support and sometimes as air combat. Really, it not air combat, because we are not engaging fighter jet to fighter jet. This is clearly an air strike, a bombing mission, within Iraq.
We have clearly stated through our leader and elsewhere that we do not support this aspect of the mission. The motion calls for other things as does our amendment, but the question is whether we should join about a dozen other countries in bombing raids. We do not believe that is an effective Canadian solution to save lives now.
When we are talking about bombing and air strikes, there is a lot of controversy about whether it would even be effective in this situation. Even those who believe it is necessary are saying, and these are military strategists and other people who do not believe in military action, we will run out of targets very soon. Therefore, how effective will this be in the kind of contribution Canada could and should make?
The third thing is that air strikes of this nature, and in this case we are talking about air strikes in Iraq and Syria, are a bridge too far in the kind of mission we were told about on September 5.
I would like to make it clear that we did not support the first mission because we were not given the information to support it. We did not say that we would not support assisting, advising and helping the Kurdish Peshmerga to be strong enough to take on this threat. We did not get a chance to say it. We were not even getting the answers as to when the government was planning to go or what it was planning to do.
The member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie actually provided the answers for the government because the government was not providing them in committee. It was one of the more humorous things I have ever seen. Direct questions were being asked of the Minister of National Defence and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. We were not getting answers from them as they were stonewalling the questions. Rather the member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie was giving the answers for them.
We also do not support this action because it does not respond to the direct ask that Canada got from the Government of Iraq. My colleague for Ottawa Centre described this from the visit he had with the president of Iraq and the president of the Kurdish regional council. They spoke of the terrible tragedy they were facing with the immense crisis of the 1.8 million now internally displaced persons in need of help. We support the idea of doing something about that and we support the coalition.
This is a big coalition. There are some 60 nations involved and they are all playing different roles. As I mentioned, there are about a dozen now that are engaged in certain aspects of military support in terms of air strikes, including about five of the Arab nations in the region. That is what they have chosen to do.
A lot of nations are providing different military support, like Canada was doing up until now, in delivering munitions and ammunition from the Czech Republic and Albania. Italy has been doing things like that, as have other countries as well. However, we have a lot of other countries that are doing different things solely on the humanitarian side, for example, Norway, Italy and Germany, with a combination of military efforts and supplies as well as humanitarian aid.
Effectively, the amendment to the motion would be to put Canada in the same group as that. Saving lives now is a priority for Canadians.
I did a little research and it seems that the Libya mission and air strike mission cost about $350 million. Imagine that. If that was the level of commitment made then and if the government is prepared to make a similar level of commitment to an air campaign, imagine how many lives could be saved and what Canada could accomplish using its military, resources, expertise and history in helping some of those 1.8 million people get through what is to be a very harsh winter? There is a need for food, shelter, clothing, and those kinds of things. A significant effort could actually save lives.
We are dealing with a question of choice, and Canada has that choice. This is a legitimate disagreement, as my friend just pointed out, morally outrageous and not a strategy. It is all right to be morally outraged. We are all pretty outraged, frankly, with the kinds of atrocities that are being committed in Iraq. We are looking for a long-term solution. We have seen the Americans, Brits and others try to deal with the situation in Iraq for the past 10 years and what we are left with is this situation.
We want a long-term solution. We are outraged by the activities of this group as well, but we want to know what Canada can best do right now that will help save lives immediately and help the Peshmerga and the others get to the point where they can deal with this on the ground. As anybody in the military world says, air strikes are not going to solve the problem. Some even go so far as to say that they are counterproductive. Peggy Mason, who is a prominent former Canadian ambassador and adviser to a former prime minister, says that they are counterproductive, that they will not be effective and that we have to do something different because it has not worked in the past.
We want to do something that is going to be effective, in keeping with Canadian history, and save lives now. We believe that it will take a serious effort. I am not talking about sending another few million dollars; I am talking a serious commitment on behalf of Canada to address, to the best of its ability and resources, the humanitarian crisis as a result of the tragedy due to the atrocities going on there.
If members look at the amendment that the New Democrats have put forward, we have made it pretty clear that we want changes in the motion that would ensure that we first support the coalition. We want to ensure military support for the transportation of weapons. That is something we do support. We want a significant boost in humanitarian aid. We call on the government to provide assistance for the investigation and prosecution of war crimes, which I think there has been some nod toward today, especially dealing with sexual violence using rape as a weapon of war.
This requires significant investigation. It is not something we can simply forget about and hope that someone will bring them to justice. We have to get the evidence, provide the means to do that and put effort into getting the stories and collecting all of that. Many of these people who are victims of these atrocities and have that evidence are in these refugee camps or hope to be in refugee camps. Many of them do not want to leave the country and want to stay there, but they will need help until that country is safer.
We call on the government not to deploy Canadian Forces in combat operations and to report back on the cost of the mission on a monthly basis. We have made it clear. This is not supposed to be divisive. This is not about people who support the military and people who do not. We are calling for military support, but we also want to add that the government continue to offer its resolute and wholehearted support to the brave men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces who stand on guard for all of us.
It is a question of what choices we would make to contribute to this international mission. We believe the amendment to this motion contains them. They are serious, they are robust and they are part of the Canadian effort that will save lives now.