Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to rise to speak tonight, but I regret that this is an emergency debate, a debate that will not be followed by a vote.
For those members on the other side who are saying we wasted our opposition day today on a topic they do not think is important, I was pleased to speak earlier on the importance of a higher federal minimum wage for more than 100,000 Canadians who go to work every day and do not earn enough to support their families.
As a representative of a riding with a large military component, I know that the Canadian Forces are ready to serve whenever they are asked, no matter how difficult the situation. Our responsibility as elected representatives is to set clear directions for any mission we are sending the Canadian Forces on so that they can properly prepare and so they know what they are expected to do when they get there.
Like my colleagues in the NDP, I am concerned not just about this debate, even though an hon. member calls having a debate in the House of Commons trivial. I am concerned that the nature of this mission and its goals are not clear.
I have heard many good ideas on the other side. Perhaps we should be confronting ISIS. Perhaps we should be protecting minorities. Perhaps we should do this. Perhaps we should do that. What is it we are actually asking the Canadian Forces to do? That is the question we think ought to be clearly answered by the government before the troops leave.
I am also concerned about mission creep, where one commitment leads to something quite different. My concern about this lack of direction or lack of clarity and mission creep is based on my own personal experience in Afghanistan in 2002. I want to talk about this for just a minute, because I think it is an important precedent for what we see happening now.
In 2002, I spent four months working for Amnesty International as a human rights observer and investigator in between the first two Canadian missions in Afghanistan. Nothing I am about to say should be interpreted as criticism either of Canada's involvement in Afghanistan or of the way the Canadian Forces carried out their duties in Afghanistan.
What I want to say is that our commitment in Afghanistan began as one sort of mission, anti-terrorism in the wake of 9/11, switched to another mission, rebuilding democracy and infrastructure, then became a hybrid mission of combat and reconstruction at the same time, and finally became a training and reconstruction mission.
What began as a very small mission with, in that case, a clear purpose became something quite different as we stretched our involvement over a decade. It is useful to walk ourselves through those shifts as a kind of cautionary tale when the Conservatives are in the process of committing Canadian troops in Iraq.
There is actually an eery parallel with the Prime Minister confirming today that he sent 69 special forces troops to Iraq based on a request from the United States. In December 2001, a different Prime Minister, from a different party, sent 40 members of the JTF2 special forces unit to Afghanistan, also without a vote in Parliament, without a debate in Parliament, and also on a request from the United States. That mission suddenly expanded just a few weeks later when 750 combat troops arrived in Kandahar from Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.
Then, in May 2002, the Liberal government announced that the withdrawal of Canadian troops had been set for August 2002. Those troops left just about the time I arrived in Afghanistan. We had already had a very narrow special forces mission that expanded into a large combat mission that was then shut down. All of this happened within a few months.
I was fortunate, as part of my job, to travel throughout Afghanistan. Amnesty International does not use armed body guards, so we were very close to the people and what was happening there. I saw very clearly the need for international assistance in rebuilding both civil society and government institutions and in rebuilding the physical infrastructure of Afghanistan after the debacle of Taliban rule.
In February 2003, when I arrived back in Canada, I was among those who supported Canada's commitment to an ISAF mission that was focused on reconstruction. Initially Canada sent 1,000 troops in early 2003 and added another 1,800 by July. This mission, called Operation ATHENA, was to last two years and was to provide assistance with civilian infrastructure and with rebuilding the democratic process. We had a clear statement, but a different statement than the original missions in Afghanistan.
That mission ended in December 2005, though no one would really argue that much had been done other than start that process of rebuilding both democratic processes and the civil society infrastructure necessary for democracy to prosper.
When Canadians realized that the government was considering some new extension of the mission, the NDP leader at that time, Jack Layton, and the current Prime Minister, as leader of the opposition, jointly demanded that we have a debate and vote in Parliament before any new commitment was made to some different expanded mission in Afghanistan. Of course, without debate and without a vote, in February 2006 the Liberal government committed Canadian troops to a re-engagement in Afghanistan, this time in the south, in Kandahar, a very difficult region, and once again for two years. However, this time, we joined the U.S. war against the Taliban and terrorism in what was called the Regional Command South. It was not a UN mission. It was not a NATO mission at that time. It was simply a request to go to the assistance of the Americans. A Canadian general actually assumed command of Regional Command South, and it was not until July of that year that the NATO-led mission of ISAF actually took control of that operation in southern Afghanistan.
The mission became a hybrid mission of fighting terrorism and doing reconstruction at the same time, something many of the civil society organizations in Afghanistan and international aid organizations heavily criticized, saying that it not only placed aid workers at risk but placed civil society members in Afghanistan at risk, because it connected reconstruction to the fight against terrorism. Had there been some kind of public debate before this recommitment was made at that time, those concerns could have been raised and I think could have been addressed. Certainly they would have been raised and might have been addressed.
To try to draw this parallel with Afghanistan to a close, Canada then stayed on in a combat role until 2010, and then from 2010 to 2014 played a non-combat advisory role until the final flag was lowered on March 12, 2014. More than a decade after the first small group of Canadian special forces arrived in Afghanistan, we had seen the deaths of 158 Canadians. More than 2,000 had serious physical injuries and many more were suffering the effects of PTSD. We also saw the death of one diplomat, three civilian aid workers, and one journalist. The parliamentary budget officer estimated the financial cost until the end of 2011 only at $18.5 billion.
I raise these questions tonight because the commitment in Afghanistan started exactly the same way we are seeing things start in Iraq, and I wonder whether we have learned the lesson that we need to consider this very carefully before we get engaged in an unclear mission in an area where the conflict is sure to last at least another 10 years. I raise these questions, again, not to argue that Canada should not have gone to Afghanistan and not to argue about whether any particular strategy there was right or not. That can be left to historians at this point, but I raise them to demonstrate where ill-considered commitments with unclear goals can lead us and also to remind us all that this is a serious step the government is now taking.
I am honestly disappointed that Parliament is not being allowed to have a say in this mission and a vote in the House. I am disappointed, given the commitments made by the Prime Minister when he was leader of the opposition, not once or twice but repeatedly, that no troops would be committed abroad without a debate and vote in Parliament. Parliament would have a say. I do not believe that in a democracy we should ever say, as I have heard from the other side, that having a debate and vote in Parliament is trivial.
I am also disappointed with the position taken by the Liberals tonight. When they jumped in front calling for this emergency debate, I thought they had had a change of heart from their days in government. I thought they would now be joining us in calling for a clear mission statement from the government, followed by a vote in the House, but I am afraid that what we are seeing tonight is the same thing we have seen with some of the trade deals, where the Liberals are quick to climb on board with the government and to ask for details later.
The only specific thing I heard tonight from Liberals was a demand to be fully briefed and to be informed of any future change in the mission. I assert as a parliamentarian and a representative of my riding that we have much larger responsibilities and much greater rights than just to be told what the government is doing. I know that fits well with the government's interpretation of what a government does when it has a majority, but there was a very powerful speech by the Leader of the Opposition on the contempt being shown to the House at this time.
In conclusion, as the member for Ottawa Centre has reminded us, the assessment mission, which consisted of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the member for Ottawa Centre, and the member for Westmount—Ville-Marie, heard a clear request for humanitarian assistance. They did not hear a request for military assistance.
Again, we know that the things that have happened in terms of the actions of ISIS are quite evil, and no one here makes any excuses for them.
The last thing I have to say is that I cannot support sending Canadian forces to Iraq on some ill-defined mission, and I cannot understand why the Conservatives selected this mission over the humanitarian assistance that is so desperately needed.