Bill Graham

[Foreign Affairs, March 12th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, as the House knows, because we have discussed this many times before, participation in the World Health Organization requires the support of all members of the World Health Organization.

We have told the Taiwanese government, and many others have done, and offered complete help for World Health Organization issues through other means. We inform and participate with the government of Taiwan. We recognize their legitimate interest in these issues. We wish to work with them, but we cannot control completely ourselves what happens in other international organizations.

[Haiti, March 10th, 2004]

Mr. Chair, I just want to perhaps use the House's time to draw on the minister's personal expertise.

The minister comes from the Caribbean region herself. She has family there. She has experience there. She has deep roots in the Caribbean community in her own city of Toronto. The government has sought to work closely with CARICOM as a way of recognizing that it is the people of the Caribbean community themselves who best can contribute to Haitians making their political system work better.

This is complicated because there are British traditions, French traditions and other traditions in the Caribbean. The minister spoke movingly about these issues. Could she help us from her own experience as to how she sees us working with the CARICOM nations as a way of helping Haiti come through to a political culture which will enable us to solve their problems?

[Haiti, March 10th, 2004]

Mr. Chairman, I understood the game well. Since the opposition member asked me a question, I will ask him a question once again by asking him to answer the question that he asked me and, therefore, everyone will be very happy. We may proceed in this fashion.

The issue is very important. He asked me why it took one week to know the extent of Canada's contribution to the UN authorized force. I suggest to him, and I ask the member to respond, that this was totally reasonable.

First, Canada sent troops to save lives. We made a humanitarian contribution. The armed forces were there to get Canadians and other foreigners off the island and to save lives.

Then, an international and multilateral intervention was required. Planning was needed for this. Canada is playing its role. I hope the member will agree with me that we are playing a major role in this, an appropriate role that is in keeping with requests made by our colleagues, since this is a multilateral force in which mainly Americans, the French and Canadians, as well as others, are involved.

I hope that the member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve agrees with me that the important thing in this matter is that Canada is acting within a multilateral force, and not unilaterally. To me, at least, this explains why this force had to be planned in order to take into account the political situation and the forces involved.

[Haiti, March 10th, 2004]

Mr. Chair, I hope you will permit me to answer a question that the hon. member asked me during his speech. He asked me how we can explain the—

[Haiti, March 10th, 2004]

Mr. Chair, I have listened with interest to the remarks of the hon. gentleman. I listened earlier to one of his colleagues speak about what happened in Haiti as being a regime change and that he regretted the fact that Canada had not been involved in regime change last time.

I was very interested by the member's stirring words about what his party would do if it had more armed forces. What is his party's theory on this? Are we going to go into a regime change by ourselves? Are we going to decide to do these things on our own? Would the hon. member help with this? What is his party's position? Does he believe that we need the United Nations to give legitimacy to what we do, or does he just believe that Canada and other countries can go off and use our military in any way in which they deem appropriate at any given particular moment in time?

Since he seems to be so anxious that we have a proper military, and he does not feel that this government has a foreign policy, which I certainly disagree with, where is the coherence in the policy of the party opposite on these issues?

[Haiti, March 10th, 2004]

Mr. Chair, I wish to thank the hon. member very much for his comments.

I took from his speech that he agreed with our premise that Haiti was a situation in the hemisphere with a great crisis taking place, and Canada could not have stood back and not have intervened, in conjunction with other parties that were capable of doing it.

In terms of the principles which justify our action, in this case it was clear that we were willing to intervene. We were only willing to intervene if others that had the capacity were willing to intervene. We were not prepared to intervene by ourselves. Also, we were only willing to intervene in the case of international legitimacy.

As I said in my speech, that legitimacy was conferred by the Security Council resolution. I do not accept the member's point that this was a regime change, any more than I accepted his views about the issue of Baghdad.

If the member had clearly said, at the time of Baghdad, that his party was in favour of regime change, that might have been a different debate. However, members will recall that in that debate we were faced with the terror of weapons of mass destruction which were going to come and destroy us all at any moment. Nobody at that point in that debate was discussing the legitimacy of regime change and this was not a regime change.

Mr. Aristide resigned. The new president, as the chief justice, was sworn in in accordance with the constitution and the Security Council took it on that basis.

I do not quite accept that. I do accept the member's point that we have to be active in the United Nations about democracy and about building democracy. Ultimately, countries will not survive and Haiti will not survive if we cannot build democracy in Haiti. That is what we will all be called upon to do. It will be a very challenging process. I agree with the hon. member in that respect.

[Haiti, March 10th, 2004]

Perhaps, Mr. Chair, if the hon. member would permit me, I could suggest that the Minister of National Defence, who will be speaking later in the debate, will be able to answer that question better than I can in terms of the actual budget of the military. I appreciate his concern about where the money is going to come from. I quite agree that this is an issue which we have to look at. We are very proud of what we are doing there and what we are achieving there, but we have to look at how that is done in the context of our resources as well.

[Haiti, March 10th, 2004]

Mr. Chair, this morning I discussed this matter with my colleague from Jamaica, K.D. Knight. This is a preoccupation of many countries, but I have to frankly tell the hon. member that our preoccupation at this time is rebuilding Haiti. I am not convinced that a lot of focusing on past problems, on who did what to whom in the past, is going to advance what we have to do in Haiti, which surely is to rebuild the political climate in Haiti to enable us to have a rebuilding of the country.

It is a fragile democracy. It is a democracy that works with a lot of difficulty. It is clear that there are going to be proponents of President Aristide. There are going to be proponents of those who took up arms against him. Our desire at this time is to avoid replicating the conditions that led to Mr. Aristide's departure by encouraging that debate at this time in Haiti. Our efforts will be to say to the people of Haiti, “Put aside past quarrels. Let us build Haiti. Let us look to the future for the children, for the prospects of a decent society and a decent life”.

If we focus on the past quarrels, we will not move forward into the future. I understand the hon. member's preoccupation with this issue, but I would advise and suggest that we should focus on the future rather than on the past. There are huge problems out there for us, the international community as a whole. If we focus on the past, if we get engaged and ground down in that, we might find that the international community will not be willing to come up with the money or put it into a situation which they do not believe is moving in a positive direction. That is the way in which I personally would advise the government to move.

[Haiti, March 10th, 2004]

Mr. Chair, I believe that is normal. The hon. member for Mercier is very well aware of the conditions we are talking about. I think that she understands that Canada had to reduce slightly its aid to Haiti in recent years, because of that country's lack of ability to absorb the aid. It was a governance problem.

For example, we have tried to train the police. We found that the money earmarked for the police did not go to the police. Thus, there was some question about how money was being spent.

We have supported NGOs and other agencies. The fact is that Haiti is our number one priority in the hemisphere. That said, it is obvious that it is difficult now to predict exactly what should be done. That is why we discussed with the Secretary-General yesterday and with Mr. Powell this morning, and with others as well to figure out what to do. I am sure we will also be talking with the financial institutions. Perhaps my colleague will be able to elaborate on that.

If conditions in Haiti are favourable, if there are conditions of governance that allow aid to reach the people and society to rebuild, as I said in my speech, the international community is prepared to act. Mr. Iglesias is prepared to act in behalf of the InterAmerican Development Bank. The Americans are prepared to act.

Still, before we spend our taxpayers' money, we must have the right conditions, and that is our priority right now.

[Haiti, March 10th, 2004]

Mr. Chair, I would like to thank the member for Prince George--Peace River for an excellent question. This is certainly an issue that we have been considering. This morning I was discussing this very matter with the secretary of state of the United States. The Prime Minister, the Minister of National Defence and I had a long conversation with the Secretary-General of the United Nations yesterday. We are all concerned about precisely these issues.

Members will recall that Canada was in Haiti for a long time the last time. It took several years. It is clear that this mandate of the United Nations, this force, is for three months. I am sure the minister of defence could speak more to that issue, but my understanding of the international community with which we are having a conversation at this time is that the expectation is that we will move to a chapter 6 authorization for a follow-on force, or what the Secretary-General has called a pull-out force, after the end of the three month period. That force will be composed of more civilian types of police activities and will be less heavy on the military end.

I think that has a good possibility of being successful this time, because members will have noticed that the colonel in charge of the American forces was quoted this morning as saying that they have been given instructions to disarm people. One of the problems last time was that vast amounts of arms were allowed to collect there. I think there is going to be an effort by the international community for disarming.

That is not going to be all, the member will appreciate. I spoke in my speech not only of the military and peacekeeping dimension of what we are trying to do; there will be a lot of focus on institution building in Haiti. The problem is with the democratic institutions, which have broken down. Clearly there is going to have to be a considerable focus on rebuilding the judiciary and rebuilding the democratic institutions. We intend to do that by working with our colleagues in CARICOM. Being on the neighbouring islands, they tend to be the ones who know the political situation best.

There are two dimensions to this issue. There is a peace and security side, which will be a chapter 7 resolution for three months--