Mr. Speaker, perhaps some people who are watching do not know what this is about. These are bombs the size of a household water heater that may contain as many as 2,000 small explosive capsules. The bomb is set to explode just before it touches the ground, and its effect is spread over a 100-metre radius. This weapon was invented to kill civilians. In a real combat theatre, it is useless, because soldiers are protected since they are in bunkers or armoured vehicles. This is a genocidal weapon.
When you get to that point, it is because there is a moral problem. We have to ask whether, by accommodating allies who use these weapons, we are not simply becoming accomplices. All of the little provisions in this bill to accommodate the users of these monstrosities mean that we share the blame with murderous countries like Russia and, in certain situations, the United States and China.
All of the countries that refuse to sign want to reserve the right to use them. There is absolutely no justification for using weapons of this kind. Starving children find pretty little coloured canisters and think they contain food. They try to open them and they are disfigured or killed.
The only way to protect our soldiers from being accused of something because these weapons were used is not to engage with allies who use them. We must place conditions on our engagement. I think we are no longer in that position, because we have virtually no diplomatic presence left. We have lost much of our lustre.
The first few times I went to Europe, a lot of Europeans told me what an example our country set and how much Canada had done for peace, in humanitarian terms. Canada is admired for helping to put an end to apartheid.
Every time we make compromises in situations like this, our popularity rating goes down, and we get nowhere. All the legal loopholes are dangerous and pointless, in addition to undermining the spirit of the treaty. If we had some dignity and some leadership, we would be ensuring that Canada’s humanitarian reputation is not tarnished by actions like these.
We have to have some dignity and a right to criticize regimes that violate human rights. These days, for example, the Syrian army is dropping fuel barrels packed with explosives and shrapnel on civilians. That bears a strange resemblance to a cluster bomb, since civilians die when they explode. If we want to be in a position to criticize actions like those, we have to set an example and we have to demonstrate leadership. If we continue in this way, then instead of sewing Canadian flags on their backpacks, the Americans are going to be sewing Norwegian flags.
It is all very well to want to protect our troops from prosecution, but that should not prevent us from asking ourselves moral questions about the legitimacy of using weapons of this kind. If we accommodate those who use them, we become their accomplices and we must then bear that shame.
It would be very simple to remove clause 11. I prefer to deal with the difficulty of finding legal language rather than deal with the moral difficulty of indirectly endorsing the use of this kind of weapon.
It is important that Canadians know that the reason we want to debate this is that we have some very serious questions and we want them to know what the government is dragging them into. As soon as the bill has been passed and this is ratified, critical international voices are going to discover that we have the weakest law of all the signatory countries. We are going to make a reputation for ourselves like the one we had with the Arms Trade Treaty and in all the other situations where we have a weak position and make compromises without assessing the consequences.
I am not a moralizer, but I think that ultimately, we reach a point where we really have to look at our decisions head-on and see whether we are not on the wrong track and violating all our principles and the principles of the Canadians we represent.