Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure to be here at this time of night to talk about a question that I originally raised on December 12, 2016.
Surprisingly, here it is five months later, and we still do not have any answers to a question about peacekeeping. The questions were these: Where will our troops be stationed? What are their objectives? What are the rules of engagement? Will the UN be in command of our Canadian troops? What is the exit strategy?
Finally, I asked if the Liberals would be transparent and provide us with the facts, or was this just another political move to get a seat at the UN Security Council? Ultimately, I asked on numerous occasions if we will we have an opportunity for a full debate and a vote before we deploy our troops.
We know for a fact that the Minister of National Defence got ahead of himself back, at all times, on Remembrance Day last year when he suggested that we were going to deploy up to 600 members of the Canadian Armed Forces as peacekeepers to be in North Africa. More than likely, I keep hearing Mali. We know this situation is incredibly dangerous. To be committed to an area like that for three years is something that is troubling to Canadians and indeed to the members of the Canadian Armed Forces.
What we are seeing again is that there is no plan. We had the minister get ahead of himself on Remembrance Day when he announced we were going to be peacekeeping instead of honouring those who have fallen in service to this country. Ultimately, a day later, his press secretary had to backtrack and say the minister got a little ahead of where we are as a government.
No doubt he was ahead of himself in November 11. That is why I raised the question a month later, on December 12, and here we are on May 3, with still no answers and no direction. Ultimately, we see that the government has gone mute on whether or not we are going to send any of our forces over to Africa as part of a UN peacekeeping mission.
Hopefully, they have had a chance for sober second thought and have looked at the risk factors that are out there. We have already seen over 100 peacekeepers killed in Mali. This is a very unstable country with many different factions, as well as terrorism running rampant across the countryside. Other opportunities for peacekeeping are even more risky throughout the region.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs knows this file better than anyone. He understands the danger that we are facing when we deploy our troops into those types of peacekeeping missions. I urge him, as well as the government, to make sure that, first, we do not use our troops as pawns for political games to try to win seats at the UN Security Council, and second, that we do not place our troops under the command of a UN bureaucracy that was so ineffective in Somalia and Rwanda. What we are seeing now is that peacekeepers who are currently deployed in Africa from other countries are tied up in accusations of sexual assault, torture, and other things that would be considered war crimes in most situations. The UN is completely paralyzed on how to deal with it.
Finally, let us not get caught up in the Prime Minister's nostalgic view of trying to paint a romantic situation of what peacekeeping means. We know that peacekeeping no longer exists and that this has to be peacemaking. We have to go in under proper rules of engagement and under a Canadian commander.