Mr. Speaker, whenever we talk about the deployment of the men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces into a combat or combat-related mission, it is one of the most important debates we have in the House. Certainly as someone who served in the military, I take very seriously my chance to speak in the House of Commons.
I was proud to speak on October 7 of last year on the mission against ISIL, when the Prime Minister first brought it to the House. Now I speak in a unique role as well, as Minister of Veterans Affairs, recognizing that when we send our men and women into areas of the world like this, there are risks. I think of those risks and of those people, the moms and dads who are serving their country, the sons and daughters, people like Sgt. Andrew Doiron and his comrades who in their training mission encountered friendly fire. It just shows the risks and uncertainty when we send the Canadian Armed Forces in. We send them because they are professional and among the best in the world. As Minister of Veterans Affairs, I am not just proud of them, but I am here to assure those men and women and their families that we will serve them after their deployments and after they leave uniform.
I think back to October 7 and look back at my speech to see where we have come as a country, as one of the allies fighting the ISIL movement worldwide, and what has happened since October 7. I read the Prime Minister's speech to the House. It is important because we are bringing this debate and a vote to the House, unlike the Liberal Party before the 12-year Afghanistan mission. The Prime Minister said in October of last year, “It has never been the Canadian way to do only the most easy and praiseworthy of actions and to leave the tough things” to other nations.
Our country has had a proud history of playing a role commensurate with our size and ability. That is what we have been asked to do here alongside our allies like the United States and others, and that is what we are doing with professionalism.
Let us look at the world and indeed Canada since the first debate in the House in October of last year. We are now renewing the mission because we have taken very concrete timelines that were monitoring the impact of our mission to degrade and restrain ISIL from its advance and to halt its activities of barbarism in that part of the world.
What have we seen since October? We have seen attacks in the Middle East, terrorism attacks in Africa, Europe, and here in Canada. We have seen the rise of the foreign fighter phenomenon. Last year there were estimates of 20,000 foreign fighters joining the ISIL mission in that part of the world, 500 or more from Great Britain and Germany and more than 1,000 from France. There have been Canadians. We have been troubled by the fact that there are Canadians who have been misled and swept into this global jihadi movement, who are actually travelling there to commit these atrocious acts. That gives us a further responsibility as a leading nation of the world to not ignore what is happening.
There has also been progress. Sgt. Doiron and the CSOR, our F-18 squadrons, our Aurora crews, our Polaris crews, Canada, and our allies are making a profound impact. Religious minorities have been protected. There are refugees leaving these areas where their lives are at risk. We have degraded ISIL and we have constrained it out of large parts of Iraq, which it was essentially overrunning last year.
However, there is still progress to make. There are still inherent risks with allowing a terrorist force that has as its mission to create a state and execute and encourage attacks throughout the world. Canada is not immune. We have seen that in this city. Therefore, we have a responsibility to play an active role.
I am proud when the Prime Minister also highlights our leadership on the humanitarian aid side of the mission, because the subject of refugees and aid cannot be divorced from the fact that we need to bring security and safety to that region. Just this week in the House, the Prime Minister said, “We do not...choose between fighting... [terror] and helping its victims. We will continue to do both”. We are providing some of our world-class expertise from the Canadian Armed Forces, but we are also one of the lead nations in aid. We are one of the lead nations responding in the refugee crisis. We will continue to do that.
In my speech on October 7, I said debates like this define the very character of Canada.
The fact that we have the opportunity to have this debate is part of our Canadian values, values that we must defend.
A debate like this calls for a Churchill quote, because he was a leader to whom many parliamentarians from around the world look. Churchill, in debates like this, would say let us worry less about action but worry more about inaction. That is paraphrasing Winston Churchill. Our government is taking deliberate and measured action against not just a threat in that region but a threat to the world and to stability.
It is measured in that we are back debating a timeline of this deployment. We are also in a limited combat role where our fighter aircraft can degrade and pin down ISIL. We are doing a training mission to help the Iraqis and the peshmerga defend their own territory, to give them the tactical knowledge to help them defend against the atrocities. It is a limited, measured, and temporal mission that we are bringing to our Parliament to debate.
One of the most troubling parts of the debate in October and, indeed, this week is the sad position of the Liberal Party of Canada. In fact, it is a deviation from that party's traditional approach to Canada's position in world affairs, and it is troubling. In my speech last October, I quoted Mackenzie King from 1939 in this place, who thanked Conservative leader Robert Manion, a Vimy Ridge veteran, for taking the politics out of the debate about World War II. King said, “This deep-lying instinct for freedom is, I believe, characteristic of the citizens of Canada from one end of this great country to the other”. That was said by Mackenzie King in this place, thanking the opposition for supporting Canadian involvement against tyranny.
What did Lester Pearson, another leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, say in 1951 in the era of Canada in Germany as part of the Cold War and the Korean mission? Pearson said, “We should accept without any reservation, the view that the Canadian who fires his rifle in Korea or on the Elbe is defending his home as surely as if he were firing it on his own soil”. These are not foreign acts that we can ignore. Indeed, Canadian security is inherent in what is happening across the world.
Even in 2001, the foreign affairs minister and deputy prime minister for the Liberal government, John Manley, said in that very foyer, after 9/11:
Canada has a good reputation...in the world, but let‘s make no mistake about it: Canada does not have a history as a pacifist or a neutralist country.
Canada has soldiers who are buried all over Europe because we fought in defence of liberty....
Those are three quotes from three generations of Liberal leaders in Canada. What will historians look back on as the current Liberal leader's profound quote in defence of liberty? Would it be that this is not about whipping out our CF-18s to show how big they are? It is sad. The Liberal Party has disappeared from what most Canadians knew that proud party to be. Even its defence critic today criticized what she called the laundry list of atrocities being conducted by ISIL that we are trotting out. This is what we are fighting. Canada does not let a laundry list like that be read and say that it is not our mission, that we have no role there.
We are a proud country that benefits from globalization, that benefits from trade, that gives aid and helps on a humanitarian basis around the world, and we are doing that, but we also do not shirk our responsibility to play a role that is commensurate with our size and ability. I am very proud of the men and women of the Royal Canadian Air Force. I am very proud of all uniformed figures in the operations centres working with our allies. I am very proud of our soldiers from JTF2 and the CSOR units who are giving the tools to some of the people on the ground to prevent these atrocities.
Canada has a role to play. Our party, our government, is bringing this to the House of Commons to show Canada that this is an important role. I truly hope that those members in the Liberal Party remind their leader of his responsibility in that regard.