Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the member for Beloeil—Chambly.
Since 2011, 270,000 people have been killed because of the war in Syria. To give people an idea of what that represents, that would be like wiping out the entire population of four RCMs in my region, from Vaudreuil-Dorion to Hemmingford, Valleyfield, and Ormstown.
The victims include men, women, children, and seniors, people who may have carried a weapon or simply their clothes as they fled the bombings and the atrocities committed by ISIL. There are also 4.5 million refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Europe. That is comparable to all the residents south of an imaginary line running from Mirabel to Lac-Mégantic having to leave Quebec to seek refuge in Ontario, New York State, Vermont, New Hampshire, or Maine. It is one of the largest human displacements in recent history.
For the past two years, the Canadian government has responded with relatively meagre humanitarian assistance and increased military involvement, as it has sent in fighter jets and several dozen trainers.
Today, the Liberal government has moved a motion that talks about withdrawing the CF-18s and tripling the number of Canadian special forces members, an advise and assist mission coupled with a combat mission, including target painting for air strikes. Humanitarian assistance is increased to $840 million over the next three years.
Unfortunately, the Liberal government, like the Conservatives, believes that increasing our military contribution will help resolve the conflict in that region and allow us to defeat ISIL.
It feels as though we have not learned our lesson from the mistakes made during the war in Afghanistan. First, the parameters of the mission are very vague. The Liberals criticized the Conservatives for that and now the Liberals are doing exactly the same thing. Neither the Prime Minister nor the Minister of National Defence has provided any details as to what defines a successful Canadian mission. No exit strategy has been presented.
Will the troops stay until ISIL has been defeated? If so, does the government realize that one shot cannot kill an ideology in two years?
The government is giving itself two years before again bringing this issue before the House for debate. I would remind members that this is not a NATO or a UN mission. It is completely unacceptable for the Liberals to ask us for a blank cheque. Even the Conservatives had a debate in the House after six months and then a year.
This is about the lives of our soldiers. Every day, there are more lives at risk in the region. In the meantime, Canada will provide arms and munitions to the Kurds and perhaps to the Iraqi army.
A series of questions come to mind. Which Kurdish group will we give arms to? Will we give arms only to the Iraqi Kurds or to the Syrian Kurds as well? What will happen if Canadian arms are used against Turkish soldiers? What guarantees can the government give us that our arms will not be used to violate human rights?
These are important questions because we have seen in the news recently how a weapon built by a Manitoban company that was sold to Saudi Arabia ended up in the hands of a fighter in the Yemeni civil war. The arms trade is a key component of the war in Syria and Iraq. Every ally provides the side it has chosen with arms and munitions, with very little thought to civilian casualties. The motion does not address this issue at all.
Academics have looked into how to resolve the conflict in Syria. The Observatory on Radicalization and Violent Extremism in Quebec published an article on its website that proposes several solutions. Here are some of the main actions it suggests: link oil revenue to local development, stop adding arms to the conflict, cut off ISIL's oil revenue, push local stakeholders to impose peace in their area, provide logistical and financial support to countries with refugee camps, and cut off tribal and public support for ISIL.
I do not see many connections between the action being taken by the Liberal government and the solutions proposed by experts on the geopolitical situation in the Middle East.
There is something else. I am thinking about proposals at the national level and measures to counter ISIL's messaging in cyberspace, on the Internet. There is nothing at all about that, even though I believe that action desperately needs to be taken in that regard.
As the NDP critic for youth, I find this extremely irresponsible of the government.
By taking military action, we are simply reinforcing the terrorists' ideology and giving them more reasons to recruit young people who feel excluded from western societies. I do not see a single measure in the motion to help us understand the causes of terrorism or learn how to prevent radicalization and keep young Canadians from going to Syria or Iraq to join ISIL. These young men and women feel excluded from our society because they do not have jobs or are subject to racism. They feel excluded and rejected. They are subject to discrimination, among other things.
The terrorist group capitalizes on these feelings of isolation and vulnerability. It attracts these young people with visions of an ideal society in which young people have a role to play. These young people slowly disconnect from our societies and their social networks and spread ISIL's slick and misleading messages.
What is the government doing to counter this? I do not see a single measure in this motion.
ISIL propaganda is dangerous and destructive. Al-Qaeda was responsible for the September 11, 2001, tragedy, and that group has the same backward ideology as ISIL. According to the Observatory on Radicalization and Violent Extremism, ISIL is a kind of al-Qaeda 2.0 because it is even more adept at manipulating social media and messaging and it is better at attracting people. That is why we need to figure out how to tackle ISIL's ideology and messaging just like we need to figure out how to deal with the problem of youth radicalization.
I have not heard anyone in this debate talk about what we can do about cyberspace. Young people between the ages of 15 and 35, people around my age, get a lot of information from the Internet, through social media and websites. It is pretty easy to find ISIL propaganda, as many reports have shown. I am not talking about censorship or trying to prevent ISIL from being on the Internet, because that would be impossible.
However, we need to provide tools to ensure that our young people resist extremist rhetoric. Once again, the motion does not provide any tools to combat ISIL's toxic, regressive and violent ideology, which is flourishing on the web. While we may be having some problems with our youth now, imagine what is going on in the minds of teenagers who have suffered barrel bomb attacks by the Syrian army or physical or psychological torture at the hands of jihadists. Young Syrians who are in refugee camps or trying to cross the Mediterranean will have no hope if the conflict does not find a political solution and if we do not provide any assistance in that regard, especially neutral humanitarian assistance.
Once again, this is not covered. The motion does not place any emphasis on neutral humanitarian assistance. By linking humanitarians assistance with military action, as the Conservatives did in the past, the Liberal government is tainting its assistance and making it harder for our humanitarian organizations to do their work. We are talking about children, teens, and young adults who have been traumatized and have very limited access to basic services like running water, electricity, schooling, and health care.
In closing, I would say that continuing to add weapons only reinforces ISIL's messaging. It thinks this is a war of civilization between Muslims and the west. The best proof that this is absolutely not the case is the fact that currently in Canada, Muslims, Christians, and atheists, regardless of the colour of their skin or their origin, live side by side.
A number of experts have said that more bombing is not going to contain ISIL. On the contrary, the bombings have caused ISIL troops to disperse and find shelter in civilian homes and on their lands. This makes it even easier for them to recruit new soldiers.
What the NDP is proposing and has always proposed for fighting ISIL is not to get involved in a combat mission, but to disrupt the arms trade, the flow of money, and the influx of foreign fighters, in addition to enhancing deradicalization efforts here in Canada.
I will close by quoting United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon:
Over the longer-term, the biggest threat to terrorists is not the power of missiles—it is the politics of inclusion.