Madam Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure to be able to rise today. I want to thank my colleague from Parry Sound—Muskoka, our critic for global affairs, for bringing forward this motion today. This is important.
I am disappointed that the government never brought forward this motion. When we were in power as government, we established the principled position that all military deployments and all changes in missions should be debated in this place.
It is important to engage every member of Parliament in making the decisions on how we use the Canadian Armed Forces in fighting terrorism, deploying our troops, going against oppressors, and making sure that we stop mass atrocities.
It is disappointing that changes are going to be made to this mission. We are still not sure why the Liberals made this promise in this first place during the last election campaign. We have still not heard from the Prime Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, or the Minister of National Defence on why it makes sense to withdraw our planes from the fight against ISIS.
Later today leaders from all parties, I believe, are going to Toronto to welcome the first planeload of Syrian refugees. All these refugees are fleeing ISIS. If we want to stop the humanitarian crisis, if we want to stop the genocide that ISIS is carrying out, we actually have to defeat ISIS itself. We do not do that by taking a back seat.
We have to remember that ISIS has declared war on Canada. As the member for Parry Sound—Muskoka was saying earlier, when we were talking about the atrocities, the terrorist acts, and the murders that were committed in San Bernadino, Paris, Beirut, and Egypt, let us not forget that ISIS inspired the attacks that took the lives of Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent and Corporal Nathan Cirillo.
ISIS has declared war on Canada. It is paramount that the government defend and protect our nation and our citizens.
The United Nations gets this. The Security Council determined on November 20 that the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant or al-Sham or ISIL or ISIS or Daesh or whatever one wants to call them constituted an unprecedented threat to international peace and security, calling upon member states with the requisite capacity to take all necessary measures to prevent and suppress its terrorist acts on territory under its control in Syria and Iraq.
The council urged member states to intensify their efforts to stem the flow of foreign terrorist fighters into Iraq and Syria, and to prevent and suppress the financing of terrorism.
As our global affairs critic said, this is a three-legged stool. We have a humanitarian crisis and we have to deliver humanitarian aid in a major way, and refugees are a part of that. We have to stop the ability of ISIS to fund itself and finance its war and its terrorism. Ultimately it comes down to stopping ISIS in its tracks. The only way to do that is with military intervention.
Canada has a long, proud history of taking on those who commit mass atrocities. Let us think of Passchendaele and the Canadians cutting their way through on Vimy Ridge. We can talk about how they fought the Nazis and led the attack on D-Day on Juno Beach. We can talk about how they stood up against the genocide in Bosnia in the Medak Pocket. We can talk about how they took the fight to the Taliban in Afghanistan, in places like the Panjwayi.
We have always distinguished ourselves. We have tremendous Canadians, the best Canadians, who are members of the Canadian Armed Forces. In every discipline that they have, whether it is in the Canadian Army, Royal Canadian Navy, or the Royal Canadian Air Force, each and every member is always up to the fight and up to the task that Parliament sometimes has to put upon them.
We want to make sure that we are doing what is right, and in the absence of a motion from the government to define what its plan is, the Conservative Party brought forward our motion today so that Parliament has a chance to pronounce itself on the battle against ISIS.
More importantly, I was concerned that if we did not have this motion today that we would hear the change in the new plan withdrawing our CF-18s, maybe taking out the entire air task force, including bringing back our Polaris refuelling Airbus, our Aurora reconnaissance aircraft, and the 600 members of the Royal Canadian Air Force and others who are stationed right now as part of the air task force in Kuwait, bringing all of them home without doing anything to increase the military training for the Kurdish peshmerga, and that those decisions would be made and announced when Parliament was not sitting over the Christmas break, when Canadians would be busy doing other things and not paying attention to what is taking place on the international scene. So it becomes even more important that we have this debate today.
We have yet to hear one of our coalition partners say it is great that Canada is taking a step back. The only people who seem to be excited about withdrawing our CF-18s are the Liberals and ISIS, and that is downright embarrassing and dangerous. We have to continue to step up. The Canadian way is always to go in and punch above our weight, and I expect that of our government, especially in light of the recent attacks, especially in light of how the coalition partners have really coalesced around a more robust military intervention, bombing ISIS positions on a more frequent and upscaled basis. Canada should be doing the same. At a bare minimum, we should be leaving the CF-18s in the fight.
Yes, we can do more on training. If the government wants to come forward with a proposal on putting more planners, more special operations forces, in the field to work alongside the Kurdish peshmerga and Iraqi security forces, it would have our full support. We believe that ultimately it is boots on the ground that will win this fight. Those who are most at risk there are the ones who are going to have take up that fight.
If we look at the record we have been able to achieve under the special operation forces training with the Peshmerga, by far, it is the most successful in the region. Why is that? Not only are we giving them the tools and skills that are required in training, but we are also a part of the command structure. It is an aid, an assist, and it is training, and they are required to go to the front lines to observe how the Kurdish Peshmerga forces are performing. There is definitely more danger involved in that, but it has been, by far, more successful.
A Mr. Hillier, a veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces who went and fought with the Kurdish peshmerga, came back and said that our training has been very successful. He also said that the CF-18 bombing strikes have been even more successful. When we heard from the Kurdistan regional government officials, they said that if it were up to them, they would ask Canada to keep the CF-18s in the fight because they have saved lives and have destroyed the enemy.
Now, we as Parliament, really do need to look at how we can best contribute. That is what we keep hearing from the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. They think the only way we can contribute this is through the training mission, but this has to be a whole of government approach and it has to involve all aspects of our military assets. We have already expenditured for the establishment of the air task force. We have already set up camp, we have already deployed troops, and we already have equipment and materiel in theatre. It is more important now that we leave those assets there and maximize their use in the fight.
As my friend from Wellington—Halton Hills pointed out earlier, if it is okay in the first week of December to continue to send our CF-18s out, flying their sorties, collecting intelligence, and making the ultimate decision on whether or not they drop bombs on ISIS targets, why will it not be good enough next week, in January, or all of next year?
We should stay involved until we actually defeat ISIS. That is what we are hearing from world leaders. That is what we are hearing from the United Nations.
It is important that Canada stays engaged if we want to be a serious player on a global scale. Our allies expect us to do our share. Stepping back, away from—