moved:
That this House do now adjourn.
Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to lead off on this emergency debate, which deals with Canada's military involvement in Iraq. I think it is the essence of democracy that we, as a House, should have the opportunity to debate this rather important subject, given the fact that we are talking about sending some of our Canadian soldiers into harm's way.
What the government has told us so far is this. Today the Prime Minister mentioned 69 people. It is not clear to me whether those are special forces or whether that includes some of the military that are already flying our Globemaster and Hercules aircraft over there. Be that as it may, a number of special forces will go into the northern Iraq portion of the country, in the Kurdish part, and provide strategic and tactical advice to the Peshmerga forces there. They will clearly be behind the wire during this time, and after a 30-day period, Canada will review whether it will continue with that particular role, and I am not exactly sure when that clock started ticking. Essentially, that is what the government has told us.
In committee last week, I made the point of asking for assurances that there would be no combat role; in other words, those Canadians would not go to the front lines, would not accompany the Peshmerga on any offensive forays across the front lines or be involved in any defensive operations in case ISIL decided to mount a counteroffensive. I was assured that Canada would not be in any combat role.
I further asked the question whether the government would be sure to inform Parliament if it was at any point contemplating a change in the role that it has described to us thus far. The Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of National Defence assured us that would be the case.
Having said that, there are still many questions. I mentioned the details. We found out about the 69 today. We do not know exactly when they will arrive over there and when the 30-day clock will start.
Let me say for Canadians that it is particularly important that we get a sense of the time scale we are dealing with here. This is not a 30-day operation. If one listens to what President Obama has said, this will be a multi-year effort. Therefore, we are going way beyond the initial 30 days, and I think it is important for Canadians to realize that in order to weaken and eventually defeat ISIS or ISIL, it will take a rather long period of time; so there is a very real possibility that Canada's role could conceivably change. That is why it is important for us to get as much information as we can from the government on what possibly can happen and how this mission can evolve.
We all know that ISIS needs to be defeated on the ground. It is fine for the coalition to provide modern weapons to Iraqis and Kurdish forces. It is also very well for us to provide tactical advice, as Canada will be doing, or as other coalition members may be providing in terms of air strike support, but eventually ISIS will have to be dislodged and defeated on the ground. That is something we cannot get around.
At the moment, ISIS is firmly entrenched in a significant part of Iraq as well as in Syria, and if it is going to embed itself into some of the villages, towns and cities—Mosul, for example has two million people—it is very important for us to realize that this will take a long time and will involve some very serious operations where we want to make sure there is no collateral damage.
I was in Iraq for a few days two weeks ago and it is very clear, and all of the parties agree, that we must provide a greater contribution in terms of humanitarian effort, that we must continue our diplomatic efforts and that we must continue to deal with Iraqis refugees. However, the question is this. Militarily, other than our current role of providing airlift and the fact that we are going to provide tactical advice, what is the potential that this role could modify itself in the coming months, because it is going to take a long time? That is why it is extremely important for Canada to think this through and for Parliament to be informed in case there are any changes.
I apologize for not mentioning earlier that I will be splitting my time with the member for Vancouver Quadra.
I want to thank the Minister of Foreign Affairs for including me and the NDP critic in this trip. We had the opportunity to see something that we do not see when we just read clippings and watch the television. We saw some of the refugees who are in the camps up in northern Iraq. United Nations officials told us that they were planning to build about 8 to 10 camps, and they had the money to do so, but they needed 25 of them. These officials have been overwhelmed by literally hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have fled the terror of ISIL and are now crowding into northern Iraq. We met Chaldean Christians who were huddling around the Chaldean church in Erbil and literally could not even go to a refugee camp. That is how drastic the situation was, because there was no refugee camp to accommodate them. It is very clear that we need to do a great deal more on the humanitarian side.
But what about the military side? Why should Canada care? Why, as some Canadians have asked, are we getting involved over there? The reason is that this affects all of us. This is not just an Iraqi or a Syrian problem. This is a problem that concerns the collective security of the world.
According to foreign affairs, about 130 Canadians have gone over to that region and some of them have come back. They have been radicalized. They are in this country right now, possibly trying to recruit more soldiers to go over and fight for ISIL. This is something that concerns us. We cannot turn our backs on this.
The question is this. What will our military role be? Mark my words; this is going to last a long time, not just 30 days.
We need to think about this seriously. We need to follow it very clearly. We need the government to provide us with answers to the questions, when they are worked out. Some of these things will take a while to work out because military operations are complex. We cannot arrive at all of the answers right from the beginning. Some work has to be done with the Kurdish Peshmerga to define the roles. Work has to be done with the other coalition members. This will be a complex operation that will involve not only ground operations but also air operations. We expect the government to keep us informed, and most of all, we expect the government to tell us if it is contemplating any role change.
We need to do more with respect to the humanitarian issue. We all agree with that. The Minister of Foreign Affairs even agrees that we need to deliver on results there. We need to continue our diplomatic efforts, as we did when we met with the president of Iraq and the foreign affairs minister. We have to encourage that country to be inclusive of its Shiite, its Sunni and its Kurd citizens but also its minorities who are Christian and other ethnic minorities, so that they are all working with one common purpose, which is to get ride of ISIS.
Many questions will need to be answered in the coming weeks and months with respect to what roles the different members of the coalition will perform. We do not have the answers to that. We have to understand that it will take a while to get the answers.
My parting message is that Canadians must get used to the idea that this will not be over in 30 days, and Canada will not walk away from it then.