Mr. Speaker, I find the NDP's position as expressed in that amendment to the motion completely incoherent. The amendment calls for war crimes investigations, but opposes military action to prevent the commission of the very said war crimes.
In the last two days we have been visited in Ottawa by leaders of the Canadian, Iraqi, Syrian, Chaldean, Yazidi, Kurdish, Shia, secular Sunni, Arab communities, all of whom have enthusiastically endorsed the motion before the House on the extension and expansion of the Canadian military operation against this genocidal terrorist organization. I emphasize the word genocidal.
There used to be a time when the NDP, representing the Canadian left, supported efforts to combat genocide. Whatever happened to that NDP? Whatever happened to the NDP's commitment to the international convention on the prevention of genocide? Whatever happened to its support for the concept of the responsibility to protect?
If the responsibility to protect means anything, and I do not mean the kind that is encumbered by the vetoes of Russia and China at the United Nations Security Council, but the principle of it, does it not mean that in instances such as this, preventing genocide, preventing ethnic cleansing, preventing sexual slavery of women and preventing the execution of gay men by throwing them off towers?
The member talks about humanitarian relief. The point of our military operation is to prevent more IDPs, more refugees, more victims and more genocide. Does the member not understand that had we not begun this military operation several months ago, there would have been thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of additional victims of ISIL's genocide? Does he not think we therefore have a moral responsibility to actually act and prevent the creation of yet more victims?