Mr. Speaker, I am pretty sure I can cover off the five minutes. The 45 seconds might be a bit more of a challenge. The difficulty of having my speech interrupted halfway through is that in some respects, I will have to summarize what was said.
At the point at which we initially ran out of time, I was talking about the NDP position, which was that the NDP supports the government's position on the upping of humanitarian aid. It certainly supports the government's position on the welcoming of the refugees here. By the way, more than 20,000 Syrians, possibly even 21,000, are now sheltered here in Canada. The NDP also certainly supports the position with respect to enhanced diplomatic engagement.
The NDP wants the government to engage in the interdiction of both arms and funds. However, there is a perception, at least as I understand the position of the NDP, that it can be done without military engagement. I would invite them to rethink that position, because to do those interdictions, we certainly have to have robust intelligence capabilities. We certainly have to have robust training and advising capabilities, because unless there are those boots on the ground, those local boots on the ground, the interdictions and the laudable goal of cutting off arms and funding will simply not happen.
The Conservative position, on the other hand, is that they wish to keep the jets in theatre. The rhetoric I have heard, which has been a little over the top at times, is that somehow or other, by keeping the jets in theatre, things will somehow or other work out and we will all be that much safer.
I would just point out to the hon. members opposite that Paris happened while the jets were in theatre. Beirut, Jakarta, Burkina Faso, and California, all of those events that affected us all, happened with jets in theatre, which leads me to the conclusion that this has to be a far more robust engagement than merely jets in theatre.
It is clear at this point that if there is to be a complete degrading of ISIS, ISIL, Daesh, however one wishes to refer to it, there need to be boots on the ground. Those boots on the ground need to be the best trained boots on the ground that can be there. They need to be local forces, and they need to have the best possible intelligence available to them.
The jets have done what the jets can do, and the only lines between Mosul and Iraq at this point are the rat lines. The actual connections between those two centres of ISIS activity are in fact controlled by the jets. Of course, the coalition, and we are in a coalition, has significant capability to maintain the gains the jets have achieved.
I want to conclude with some observations from others with respect to what our new, and I would argue, more robust engagement in this conflict is. I would start off by referencing Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve. He says:
everybody likes to focus on the air strikes, right, because we get good videos out of it and it's interesting because things blow up—but don't forget a pillar of this operation, a pillar of this operation, is to train local ground forces. That is a key and critical part.
Then James Stavridis, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander says:
Now I understand you're going to shift from doing training, which is...perhaps the most important of all. So I applaud the fact that our Canadian military and NATO colleagues will be working on the training mission with the Iraqi security forces, potentially with the Kurdish Peshmerga in the north because we don't want to send 100,000 troops or 150,000 troops like we did in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We want local forces to fight ISIS. We need to train, advise, and mentor them. NATO can do that very effectively.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to participate in this debate. I would end by quoting an editorial by a national newspaper, which said: “It's a sensible way to proceed”.