Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise on a question I asked last week about the UN mission in Mali, to which the Prime Minister announced we would be going. I would like to point out that in the question I quoted some Liberals who had raised some major questions.
General Roméo Dallaire said back in 2016, “I wouldn't touch Mali with a 10-foot pole.” He is talking from experience. This is a general who went on UN missions to places like Rwanda, witnessed the atrocities, and had to deal with the UN bureaucratic chain of command and very restrictive rules of engagement.
On top of that, Aileen Carroll, a former Liberal member and minister for international co-operation stated, “Mali is wrong-headed and a folly” and “There is no peace to keep.” I could not agree with her more and her assessment of the mission in Mali.
It is also important to point out that over two years ago the Liberals, the Prime Minister and the Minister of National Defence made a promise they would increase the number of UN peacekeepers that Canada would provide on an annual basis. They said that there would be 600 troops and 150 police officers deployed around the world on multiple UN missions, carrying the flag and being used as political pawns for the Prime Minister's aspirations and self-ambition to have a seat on the UN Security Council.
However, it is important to note that the number of actual troops deployed on UN missions around the world today stands at only 22, the lowest level we have ever had. As much as the government likes to say the Conservatives let the UN mission slide under prime minister Stephen Harper, that number was never below 130. We are at 22 troops today. That is a huge embarrassment for the government. I think that is one of the reasons why the Liberals are rushing this announcement, without having lined up all the details of this mission. They are trying to turn the page on their disastrous trip to India, on the complete folly we are seeing with respect to so many files on the foreign affairs front, and on the number of peacekeepers, which are down to only 22 Canadian soldiers on missions around the world.
We are also seeing a complete inability and lack of articulation of exactly what our troops will be doing on this mission to Mali. How many troops will there be? We have heard that there will be an air task force, four Griffin helicopters, two Chinook helicopters, medevac transport and logistics, maybe special operations forces, and maybe some close combat support. However, we have not heard exactly what anyone will do and when they will leave. There is talk that it may be sometime late summer.
The Prime Minister has yet to explain to Canadians, and to members in the House of Commons, how the UN mission in Mali is of international interest. Why is there no peace to keep? Why would we put our troops into a situation, as we have done in previous UN peacekeeping missions, where they go into a mission and there is no peace to keep? They will be among two warring factions. They essentially will have to sit on their hands and only shoot back if they are shot at themselves. That is the type of restrictive rules of engagement they have. They cannot proactively take out the threat. They cannot really fulfill their responsibility to protect civilian people and prevent casualties among the population. All too often soldiers who are on UN peacekeeping missions come back dealing with PTSD and other operational stress injuries. They have witnessed the types of atrocities like they saw in Serbia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Somalia.