Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure of sharing my time with the member for Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, whose good comments I am very much looking forward to hearing.
I have been listening to this very important debate over the last couple days and think I can maybe offer three distinct points about it and what it says about the mission in general.
First, I want to talk about how we are being offered false choices by the other parties. Then I want to talk about the lack of definition around what is actually going on in the mission and some of the terms that have been used to describe it and the situation in general. Finally, I want to talk more generally about the question of intervention, when we intervene, how we intervene, etc.
In terms of the first point about false choices, we have heard members of the government and the NDP talk about the importance of different things we should be doing in the region and, for the most part, I would agree with them. We have heard some good comments from our NDP colleagues about the importance of anti-radicalization, as well as the importance of addressing terrorist financing. These things no doubt should be part of a comprehensive approach.
The government has talked about humanitarian assistance, about helping refugees, and about training. These are all very good things as well, and on this side of the House in particular, we have emphasized the importance of the bombing mission, but more broadly than that, the importance of being involved in fighting Daesh, not just supporting those who are doing the fighting but actually doing some of the fighting ourselves.
More than that, I think what we have said is that there needs to be a multi-pronged approach that includes all of the things the other parties have been talking about. We believe in humanitarian assistance—the Liberals did not come up with that just now—and helping refugees, training, anti-radicalization, and addressing terrorist financing. These are things that we have all been involved in for a very long time as a country. However, it is also part of our historic tradition to be involved in fighting evil, in trying to protect the innocent and being willing to to be there on the front line. This is the right thing to do and we have long tradition of doing it.
There has been discussion in this House of a multi-pronged approach. Our approach very clearly has the largest number of prongs. We all agree that there need to be multiple prongs in response to Daesh. What we are arguing against is what we see as a government trying to break off one of those important parts of the mission. It is a false choice. We are told we have to decide between training and humanitarian assistance, and being involved in the fight. We do not have to decide between those things. We can and should be doing all of them. That is our position on this side of the House.
Another false choice we are hearing is some members' comments about how Daesh will ultimately have to be defeated on the ground, as if somehow we have to choose between a response on the ground and a response in the air. Of course, Daesh has to be fought on the ground and of course it is important that we partner with local troops in the area that are fighting Daesh, but surely no effective ground combat mission can happen without some kind of support from the air. That much I should think is obvious, that any cohesive military response involves activity on the ground and activity in the air. Again, this is a false choice that we get from the government. We can be involved in the military component from the air as well as assisting training local forces on the ground.
We should not buy into these false choices as if we cannot be doing more than one thing at the same time. In fact, generally speaking, since these different parts of the mission are done by different parts of the government, it is not at all problematic to have different areas involved. Anti-radicalization, terrorist financing, these are things that are addressed either through law enforcement or at the community level. Humanitarian assistance, helping refugees, training, these are done by different parts of the government from those that would be involved in front-line fighting. We can be doing all of these things at once quite effectively. We have the capacity to do them.
The second point I want to make is that there is a real lack of definition around certain aspects of this mission. I recall a comment by the member for Surrey—Newton, who just spoke, the other day in questions and comments when he alluded to this as being some kind of peacekeeping mission. A number of other members have referenced the legacy of Lester Pearson in the context of peacekeeping, as if they are under the impression that these are people going into this region in blue helmets, which clearly is not the government's approach and clearly is not happening.
We have heard terminology around a humanitarian mission, around a training mission. There has been such a lack of clarity from the Liberal side on whether or not this is a combat mission. Whether or not we call this a combat mission has significant implications for the people involved, for the troops, because the kind of support they receive while they are there and when they get back home is informed by how we describe this mission.
There is such a lack of definition. There is such a soup of terms coming from the other side.
I recall another speech in which a member—I cannot recall which one—referenced Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage. The member who just spoke again talked about playing to our strengths. I do not know if they have thought through the implications of those kinds of arguments, because the implication of that argument is that being involved in the front lines, being involved in the bomber mission, is somehow not a strength we have.
I think that is a strength and we have a comparative advantage because of the effectiveness of our air force, because of the effectiveness of our women and men on the front lines. Therefore, the implication of that kind of statement suggests somehow that we are less able to do that than other countries, which is totally fatuous and frankly quite troubling.
We have all these terms floating around from the government without clear definition. I know we have heard the suggestion that somehow its approach is a more sophisticated one. I will say respectfully that perhaps it is so sophisticated that the government members do not even understand what the mission is all about, because we have heard so many different kind of things about the mission. They will have to get that sorted out, and they should be willing to answer some very basic questions about the nature of the mission.
There is another much more important area where there is a lack of definition. The members of the government are not willing to accurately describe the situation on the ground. The reason they are not willing to describe it accurately is that it has implications for how we would respond. Those of us on this side of the House have frequently pointed out that what is happening in Syria and Iraq right now is nothing short of genocide. The word genocide has been used by former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. It has been used in a resolution passed by the European Parliament. It has been used by many human rights groups.
Why is the government unwilling to call a genocide a genocide? The reason it is unwilling to use that word is that it understands that the use of the word genocide entails a responsibility to protect. It entails a responsibility to respond in a much more serious way than the government is willing to do it.
If the government is fully confident that it is doing all it can do and that it is doing the best it can do, then why not use the word and describe the situation accurately? We see, in the unwillingness to use the word genocide to describe a genocide, a tacit admission that Canada is not willing to own up to the responsibility entailed in this idea of responsibility to protect. Therefore, we have a lack of definition both in terms of this mission and in terms of the actual situation happening on the ground.
As my final point, I want to address questions of intervention in more general terms. Often when we talk about Canadian troops being involved in a conflict in the Middle East, there is some discomfort, which is maybe people looking at past conflicts and wondering if we are getting into a similar situation.
There has been some discussion in this House about Canada's involvement in Libya. Nobody has pointed this out yet, as far as I have heard, but there was general agreement within this House about the mission in Libya. Liberals, and I think even New Democrats at the time, voted in favour of Canada being involved in a bombing mission in Libya. In retrospect, we can certainly say that what happened in Libya did not end up the way we would have hoped. However, that is a mission that all of us own, to some extent.
However, there are some important differences between the situation with the Daesh and the situation in Libya. For one, we are not going in to overthrow an existing government without a strong understanding of who we are fighting in support of. In fact, we are working very closely with an existing Iraqi government and with existing Kurdish forces. We are supporting ground troops, so we are involved from the air, but we are doing it in concert with troops on the ground. That is the best possible recipe for success.
There are many examples of intervention gone badly, but there are also many examples of non-intervention gone badly. I can think of cases where terrorist groups were left in power far too long and were able to wreak havoc as a result.
These are important points to consider: the government is offering us false choices in this debate; there has been a general lack of definition; and the questions of intervention should point us in the direction of getting involved in a multi-pronged way in this case.
Canada has a long tradition of being willing to stand up for our values in armed conflict, and we should do it in this case.
