Mr. Speaker, since the Peace of Westphalia was concluded in 1648, the international system has developed into modern nation states and international law. In the almost 400 years since those treaties were established, the world has created nation states that conduct relations based on international law. That international system further developed after 1945, a period during which Canada was instrumental in creating the current rules-based international system that has ensured our relative peace and security here at home.
Our forebears here in Canada well understood the need for a rules-based system, because Canada paid a high price in the Great War and in the Second World War in defence of freedom, democracy and the rule of law. Some 60,000 Canadian soldiers died during the Great War. Some 40,000 Canadian soldiers died during the Second World War. Over 100,000 Canadian soldiers gave their lives in two world wars. Hundreds of thousands more were injured physically and mentally, came home and suffered for the rest of their lives.
As a result of that suffering, our forebears understood the need for a rules-based international system that would ensure not only the peace and security of Canadians here at home but also the peace and security of all humanity abroad. That rules-based system, which we have enjoyed for 80-some years, has given us relative peace and security.
I want to highlight some very stark statistics to illustrate what I am talking about. There is no doubt that millions of people around the world today have suffered and are suffering. However, that pales in comparison to the bloodshed and the suffering before 1945. Life before 1945, for the vast majority of humanity, was nasty, brutish and short. In the First World War, the Great War, some 40 million people died. In the Second World War, some 75 million people died.
That scale of human misery, suffering and death has largely been avoided because of the rules-based international system that Canada was instrumental in founding in 1945. The deaths from the two world wars were the smallest part of total deaths before 1945. In the period before 1945, people suffered not just because of conflict and war; hundreds of millions more suffered and died because of extreme poverty.
Two-thirds of all humanity before 1945 lived in extreme poverty. Today, only about one in seven people on the planet lives in extreme poverty. In fact, the number of people living in extreme poverty today is not only much smaller as a proportion of the planet's humanity, but it is also smaller in absolute numbers of people suffering, compared to prior to 1945. This is despite the massive growth, the trebling or quadrupling of the world's population, in the last half-century and more.
The rules-based international system for trade and investment has significantly reduced suffering and increased prosperity. It is the rules-based system that has led to a huge drop in extreme poverty and a massive increase in prosperity for peoples around the world. It is the rules-based system that has led to a significant drop in deaths and suffering from war.
It is a system that states such as the People's Republic of China, the Russian Federation and the Islamic Republic of Iran want to dismantle. They do not want this system. They have been very explicit about this in their speeches and their declarations. They would rather have us revert to a pre-1945 world where power determines relations between states. None of us should want to return to that world.
An essential part of the international rules-based system is international humanitarian law, otherwise known as the law of armed conflict. International humanitarian law is the heart of what we are debating tonight in the House: whether actors in the conflict in the Middle East today are acting in accordance with international humanitarian law, the law of armed conflict.
Under international humanitarian law, states have the right to defend themselves. On October 7 of last year, a Liberal democratic state was attacked by Hamas. On that day, two and a half thousand Hamas terrorists invaded a sovereign state, breaking through the sovereign 1949 armistice border and killing over 1,100 innocent civilians.
These 1,100 civilians were not killed inadvertently or accidentally. They were not killed incidental to the targeting of armed combatants or military objectives. The innocent civilians were the target. The 1,100 innocent civilians were deliberately and systemically targeted and murdered by Hamas in what constituted a massive war crime.
They were gunned down execution-style, just like with the mobile killing squad of the Nazis, the Einsatzkommando, which executed some 1.5 million Jews during the Aktion campaign in 1941 in eastern Europe. On October 7 last year, whole families were executed, innocent babies were killed in their cribs and the dead were mutilated. Some of the dead were paraded through the streets of Gaza. There were Canadians among those people deliberately killed, and there were Canadians among those who were deliberately taken hostage.
Since Hamas began its attack on Israel last October 7, Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran have joined in. Hezbollah has launched some 8,000 rockets at Israel over the last 12 months, forcing the displacement of some 60,000 civilians from the north of Israel to the south, essentially making northern Israel a vacant zone for civilians. These civilians have had to leave their homes and their communities, and the government of the State of Israel has had to evacuate them out of Israeli territory to the south. Today Iran launched yet another attack on the State of Israel by launching some 200 ballistic missiles.
All states have a responsibility to defend their citizens and to defend their territory. The State of Israeli is no different. Israeli is at war. This is a legal war under international humanitarian law. The war the State of Israeli is conducting against Hamas, against Hezbollah and against the Islamic Republic of Iran under international humanitarian law is a justifiable war against two terrorist groups and a state that sponsors terrorism.
Israel has the right to prosecute this war under international humanitarian law and to prosecute this war to its conclusion that the State of Israel has so determined and ensure that Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran no longer threaten the citizens of its state or its territory. Canada did the same thing during the Second World War. We defended our citizens and our territories against a hostile threat, and the State of Israel has the right to do the same.
Millions of civilians are suffering because of the war in Gaza, in Lebanon and in Israel, and we mourn the loss of innocent civilians, particularly women and children. The combatants in this conflict need to ensure that they distinguish between combatants and civilians, and take all feasible precautions in the targeting of military objectives to minimize harm to civilians and civilian objects.
Ultimately, the solution to the conflict and the war in the Middle East is for Hezbollah and Hamas to lay down their arms to protect innocent Lebanese and Palestinians, who for too long, for decades, have been subject to these brutal terrorist entities.
For too long, Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian and Iranian civilians have been the victims of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic regime in Iran. For too long, these regimes have suppressed democracy, human rights and freedoms, and the rule of law through brute force. For too long, millions of Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians and Iranians have suffered. If there is any ray of hope in recent events, it is that they mark the end of the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah, and the beginning of the end of the Islamic Republic of Iran's hold on much of the region.
Canada is a western liberal democracy. What is going on in the Middle East is a clash between a rising authoritarianism, backed by states such as the People's Republic of China, the Russian Federation and the Islamic Republic of Iran, and democracies, such as Taiwan, Ukraine and the state of Israel, and in that clash between a rise in authoritarianism and democracies, there is no question on which side of the line Canada should stand.
Canada must stand for democracy, Canada must stand for human rights and freedoms, and Canada must stand for the rule of law as it is articulated in international humanitarian law. Conservatives support the state of Israel. The state of Israel is a liberal democratic state. It is also the homeland of the Jewish people. It has the right to defend itself. It has the right to use all legal means necessary under international humanitarian law to ensure its peace and security.
Israel, like Ukraine and Taiwan, is at the front lines of a clash that is unfolding before our eyes: a clash that we did not anticipate a decade ago, that has unfolded over the last several years. In that rising clash between two very different models of governance, there is no doubt where Canada's interests and values lie.
