Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this important debate on Canada's effort to defeat ISIL. There has been a considerable amount of debate on this matter, although there is one aspect of the motion that needs full exploration and that is really the crux of the motion.
If we are going to into details of our refocused mission, I would like to read the preamble, which says:
That the House support the government’s decision to broaden, improve, and redefine our contribution to the effort to combat ISIL by better leveraging Canadian expertise while complementing the work of our coalition partners to ensure maximum effect...
That we better leverage our expertise is the crux.
We have heard from the Minister of National Defence and other hon. members, but we need to look at that the last part of that sentence, and that is complementing the work, which is very important because it maximizes our strength. It explains why the government is refocusing the mission. It explains why we are making the contribution we are making, and why the fine work done by our CF-18 pilots is no longer the most pressing need.
As part of a very broad coalition, we each bring our strengths and contributions to the table. We have allies and partners we can trust by our side.
Co-operation and collaboration have long been part of the Canadian way. We should recall the First and Second World Wars, the Korean War, the Balkans, the liberation of Kuwait and the mission in Afghanistan. In all these cases, Canadians fought side by side with partners and allies, and we were part of a wider strategy. It is our responsibility to contribute into that large strategy if we wanted to defeat ISIL.
In the case of air power, our CF-18s have done an outstanding job. As the Chief of the Defence Staff said last week, when the CF-18s were initially deployed, it was in order to stop the rapid advancement by an aggressive enemy. If we think back to those times, ISIL was quickly claiming territory. Its members were seizing equipment that had been abandoned. They were committing atrocities on civilian populations, and were threatening Baghdad itself.
Thanks to that initial deployment of air power, the advance of ISIL was checked. The United States central command, which has overall responsibility for coordinating the coalition's efforts, has stated that the areas under ISIL control are shrinking. Thanks to the coalition's efforts, the complete effort of air strikes, we have reduced them from 30,000 to 19,000 and we continue to do battle with them.
Yes, there will be a need for air power in the short term, and those needs are being met by the coalition as a whole. The coalition has conducted more than 10,000 air strikes, most of them by newer fighters, but in addition to Canada, many of our close allies have also been participating in the air campaign. They include almost a dozen countries, including Australia, France and the United Kingdom, and beyond the air strikes, more than 65,000 sorties have been flown by the coalition's assets as a whole.
As I said earlier, the government acknowledges that there is a continued need for air power in the fight against ISIL, but that need is covered. We should get it straight. There is strength within which the coalition brings its whole community together. What remains truly needed to defeat ISIL is a trained, well-equipped, motivated, local force. This is an area where Canada as a whole has a great ability to provide that need.
That is why, when Canada changed its mission, the Pentagon spokesman, Peter Cook, said the following, “The Canadian announcement is the kind of response the secretary's been looking for from coalition members as the United States and our coalition partners push to accelerate the campaign against [ISIS]...”. He was speaking of the U.S. defense secretary, Mr. Ashton Carter, who met with the Minister of National Defence last week in Brussels, where Canada was held up as an example of what other countries should be doing in the fight against ISIL.
He wants other countries to follow our example, because it is the right way to do it, such as: adjust to the evolving conflict; bring our strengths to the table and put forward what is truly needed; do a gap analysis and determine what the coalition requires; and, above all, work with our allies to ensure the coalition mission is a success.
As a Canadian, I am proud of the work of our men and women in uniform and what they have done to date, including the pilots and support crews who fought to stem the advance of ISIL and pushed it even further back. They have done good work and they deserve the thanks and appreciation of all Canadians. However, the situation has evolved, the mission has changed, and the needs of the coalition are different than they were a year ago. This newly focused mission will bring our strengths to the table and allow us to make a meaningful contribution to this global effort.
As we move forward, Canada will continue to be a major contributor to the coalition efforts in Iraq and Syria. By ending air strikes in Iraq and Syria, the Canadian Armed Forces will increase its presence on the ground and increase the number of trainers and advisers to train and support the local ground forces to deal with the security threat and, ultimately, lead to sustained stability in the region.
I will end with a quote from Colonel Steve Warren, who was the Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman. He said:
We are not going to bomb our way out of this problem, right? It's never going to happen. So we've got enough bombers -- you know, we always could use more but what we have has worked -- but we can't lose sight of the fact that we have to train this Iraqi security force. This Iraqi army needs to be trained, it's one of our primary lines of effort and as we see nations like the Canadians agree to triple their presence, we find that extraordinarily helpful.
I am thankful our friends and allies who have our backs, just as we have theirs.