Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the House for the opportunity to speak to the very important motion we are debating today. I am pleased to be addressing parliamentarians on behalf of the people of Sherbrooke, who have afforded me the privilege of being here today.
This is a very important motion. As parliamentarians, one of the most important decisions we must make is to deploy the men and women in uniform who defend Canada on our behalf. This is clearly the most important decision that we are asked to make.
Therefore, it is with a great sense of responsibility and duty that I will make this decision. I will try to state my position as clearly as possible, a position that I share with many of my colleagues who have already spoken on this subject.
I would like to go back to the beginning of the Canadian mission in Iraq, which the government now wants to expand into Syria. In the beginning, the mission proposed by the government was to last 30 days. It simply consisted of advising the Iraqi and Kurdish soldiers.
However, when those 30 days had passed, the government made a request to extend the mission by six months. Six months ago, we also debated a motion about this mission in Iraq. Today, the government is asking us to vote on extending that mission for another year. We went from 30 days to six months to a year, and each time, we had to ask dozens of questions to try to get clear and consistent answers from the government.
People like me who watch question period every day noticed that the government kept contradicting itself. For example, some ministers were saying two different things about whether we would accompany or assist Iraqi troops. Contradictory answers were given about whether or not our soldiers would be engaging in combat and whether or not they would be near the front lines. How can the government say that our soldiers are far from the front lines when they were only 200 metres away?
In that respect, an unfortunate incident occurred not that long ago. One of our soldiers lost his life for his country. I want to express my sincere condolences to his entire family and to thank them. This soldier gave his life for our country. He was 200 metres from the front lines, when the government told us that our troops were two kilometres away from Islamic State positions. Two kilometres may seem like a lot but it really is not in situations such as this. Unlike the Americans, who did not get that close to the front, our government allowed Canadian soldiers to get only 200 metres away. That also shows that the government is not giving us clear answers about what our soldiers are doing. Just in the past few days, we heard new contradictory remarks.
This time, they had to do with the purpose of the mission. Will the government say that the mission has been accomplished when the Islamic State's capacities have been degraded, when the group has been eliminated completely or when it has been stopped in its tracks? The government has been describing the goal of the mission in several different ways.
Sometimes their descriptions were even contradictory. Has the government earned our trust? That is the question I asked myself when I was assessing the motion and deciding how to vote. Can we trust the government, based on the seven months that have passed since the start of Canada's mission? The answer is no. As the leader of the official opposition clearly demonstrated on Tuesday, any trust we might have had in this government going forward was broken as a result of its contradictory statements and unclear information.
I will not vote in favour of the main motion today for several reasons. As I just said, I cannot trust the government going forward. In addition, there is a lot missing from this motion. As military experts have said, there are two things we are supposed to have when deciding to engage in a mission: a clear and specific objective, and a planned exit strategy. We cannot simply get on a plane and leave, as the government is implying. It is more complicated than that. Military strategies are more complicated than getting on a plane and leaving. It is rather rich to hear Conservative ministers say that it is as simple as that.
Thus, there are these two things: establishing whether there is a clear objective and whether there is a clear and well-defined end to this mission. The answer is obviously no. That much is obvious.
Earlier I mentioned that there are several definitions for the end of the mission. Some ministers spoke about degradation and others about annihilation. The ultimate objective of the mission is not clear. When will the government say that Canada has done its part, that the mission has been accomplished and that we are withdrawing? It is not clear. We cannot support a mission that, in our view, does not have a defined objective and is still unclear. In this case, the objective is vague to say the least.
We are supposed to learn from our past mistakes. When we make a mistake, we try not to repeat it. However, if we look at the outcome of George W. Bush's war, which began in 2003, the results are mixed. After many years in Iraq, the results of the U.S. government's efforts in that conflict are uncertain.
The situation we are in today might, to a certain extent, be a result of that conflict, which created a situation and internal conflicts in that country. Perhaps the impact of those conflicts is being felt today. The resulting situations are certainly not pleasant for the civilians in those countries.
The Conservative Prime Minister supported the war back then; he was in the opposition. We might ask ourselves whether the mission being proposed reflects the Prime Minister's desire to go back to his 2003 position, which was to wage war. We could say that this is the Prime Minister's war and it has no legal basis. This will be my last point, since I do not have a lot of time left.
Today, we are talking about the motion to expand the war into Syria. I will not repeat the entire argument made so well by my colleague from Toronto—Danforth, but the legal basis is questionable and unfounded. We are having a hard time getting answers from the government on this legal basis. If the government wants to move forward, it will have to prove that there is a legal basis in international law.
Without that, I cannot support the one-year extension of the mission in Iraq.