Bob Mills

[Kosovo, April 21st, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, does the Prime Minister really think that he can make this decision over cocktails in Washington instead of consulting parliament?

[Kosovo, April 21st, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the war in Kosovo seems to be escalating and new military commitments by Canada seem to be most likely. Does the Prime Minister think he is some sort of king who can simply send his peasants off to war? Does he really think—

[Privilege, April 20th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege in regard to the leaked government response to the committee report on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade tabled in this House yesterday after question period.

As you are aware, reports destined to be tabled in this House are confidential until tabled. Yesterday before question period I was asked to respond to the government's response by three different journalists, one of whom had the report at noon, a full three hours before it was tabled in this House.

Since I had not seen the response, I waited until it was tabled in the House. After it was tabled I had to wait over an hour and a half to receive a copy. Journalists had copies of this report as early as noon yesterday.

Mr. Speaker, I have done a number of items of research which I can make available if you require them.

It is common knowledge that leaked committee reports are in contempt of parliament. I would argue that leaked responses to committee reports are also in contempt of the House. Since the government was responding to a request of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 109, it was not at liberty to leak the information before it was tabled in parliament.

This action by the government demonstrates its total lack of respect for parliamentary systems. This leak represents a new low for this government, I believe.

It was not that long ago that the Minister for International Trade announced the creation of a Canada-China parliamentary association before the House had created such an association. We have other examples as well which I could list. The Speaker ruled on some of these that it was a mockery of the parliamentary system. Once again the government is making a mockery of parliament by tabling a report in the media that had been requested by the parliamentary committee.

I believe the government by leaking the response to the foreign affairs committee deliberately diminished the respect due to parliament and parliamentarians. It is no wonder there is a growing dissension among the ranks of the Liberal caucus who also indicated disgust in this matter.

A government, if it is to survive, must respect parliament and parliamentarians. It must respect its authority and grant its members dignity. Mr. Speaker, the government has offended both the authority and dignity of the House and the authority and dignity of members of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

Mr. Speaker, I ask that you rule this matter be a prima facie question of privilege.

[Kosovo, April 19th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about a vote and the Prime Minister should know that.

Over the weekend Canada added six more CF-18s to our NATO campaign, bringing our total commitment to 18 fighter bombers. The planes we have committed have taken over half of our combat ready pilots.

How big does the involvement have to become before the Prime Minister will think it is necessary that we have a vote on whether we should be involved further in Kosovo?

[Kosovo, April 19th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, with the secretary general asking for our involvement, will the Prime Minister agree to a vote? That is what we are here for.

We stand against the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. We stand with our forces that are already involved in the NATO campaign. Why will the Prime Minister not let us stand in the House and vote to establish the conditions for our future involvement? Does he really believe he has the right to ready this country for war without letting Canadians have their say?

[Kosovo, April 19th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday NATO Secretary General Javier Solana admitted that NATO was no longer ruling out the possibility of ground troops in a NATO offensive in Kosovo.

He said that if the moment came when it was necessary to invade Yugoslavia “I m sure the countries that belong to NATO will be ready to do it”.

NATO says we should be ready for the ground offensive. Will the Prime Minister finally get approval from the House and consent to a vote to clarify Canada's involvement in any such offensive?

[Supply, April 19th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I have been talking about Kosovo in our caucus for at least a couple of years, so it is not a surprise this was going to happen.

Concerning 1991, I will go back to the outrage and total disgust the Prime Minister and the foreign affairs minister voiced for the then Conservative government for not bringing it to a vote immediately before troops were deployed. I have pages and pages of quotes from committee and the House of how upset they were because it was not put to a vote. They then condemned the government for putting it to a vote so late.

Now that the Liberals are thinking about doing the same thing, how can they speak with any conscience at all on an issue like this?

[Supply, April 19th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, it is certainly not a matter of confidence. As I pointed out, it should be a non-partisan approach to the whole question when we are talking about the lives of our soldiers.

Regarding the take note debate, I cannot believe that anybody in the House would stand and say one, that that was a debate and two, that it was an opportunity to let every member in the House become informed on the issue. I do not need to talk about how many people are here when take note debates occur in the middle of the night, but certainly it is not many.

When we talk about lives, when we talk about something as important as war, we say that we should put it to a vote. We believe that most parties in the House would vote honestly and would vote for support of what is happening in NATO. I think that would be the case.

I do not understand what the government is so afraid of in putting this to a vote. Once that vote occurs and the majority position is held, then I would hope that 100% of us would support our troops in this war situation. But put it to a vote. That is politically such a wise thing to do I cannot imagine why the government is not doing it.

[Supply, April 19th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, the motion before the House today is relatively straightforward. It calls on the government to commit itself to hold a debate and a vote prior to the commitment of any ground troops to the war in the Balkans.

There is really nothing odd about such a request. There is nothing controversial or partisan about this motion. It is consistent with the best democratic traditions this country can lay claim to.

What is odd is the fact that the government did not itself bring forth a votable motion on this issue. What is controversial is the government's repeated refusal to allow such a debate or vote to occur. That is what gets our constituents asking why the government will not let this go to a vote.

The refusal to allow the House to decide what the role of this country should be in a war is truly astonishing. Let there be no misunderstanding. The government does not have a mandate as a result of the three take note debates on Kosovo. Its claim that it has such a mandate are simply unacceptable and is certainly not why any of us participated in those take note debates.

In August 1914 this country was simply notified by the Governor General that it was at war. The decision was made in London. In September 1939 Canada waited 10 days to enter the second world war on the side of Britain and France, 10 days in which parliament debated and voted on the issue. On September 9, 1939 Prime Minister Mackenzie King accepted that the Commons should decide if Canada should go to war.

That has not happened in 1999. Our pilots have already flown more than 100 combat missions and the present government has repeatedly argued that we are not at war. That position is simply a word game and would please many of the lawyers here, but it certainly does not please the Canadian public. The man on the street, the members of this House and our adversaries in Yugoslavia see things a lot differently. They are calling this war.

In 1991 when we supported the UN coalition, this House also debated and voted on a resolution concerning Canadian military involvement. At that time the current Prime Minister, then the Leader of the Official Opposition, criticized the Mulroney government. I quote: “Really Canadians have had enough of these ambiguities and playing the dice on the table without telling Canadians exactly what the situation is. Should we have Canadians involved in war, yes or no?”

The high-minded principles so strongly endorsed just eight years ago seem to have been mere words, nothing more. They have apparently been forgotten by the Prime Minister. They have vanished like smoke in the political wind.

The foreign affairs minister is no more consistent. Before this House in 1991 he said: “My deepest concern is that they, the Tories, will be simply using parliament to try to rubber stamp or ratify decisions already taken, as opposed to letting parliament be the forum in which those decisions are formulated”. Last Thursday in the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade he also appeared to forget his concern for this House. He argued that because this is not a republic, the crown retains the right to make foreign policy and to decide matters of war and peace.

Canadians might rightly ask what is the cause of this uncertainty? Why would ministers with such long parliamentary careers change their opinions so drastically? I will not try to offer any answers to those questions. Given this lack of certainty on the government benches, I would suggest we err on the side of democracy. It is, after all, what this country expects. We preach democracy abroad, we sell democratization to other countries, and we must practise it at home.

Eight years after the gulf war this country finds itself once again involved in a war. It does not really matter at this point in the debate that our current military intervention was not sanctioned by the UN. It does not really matter in our debate today if NATO's long term strategy is unclear. It does not really matter that we have no idea what the long term objectives of the current conflict are, beyond the basic moral considerations that my hon. colleague the Leader of the Opposition raised a week ago.

These issues are not the most pressing issues of the debate today. The government's arguments that we cannot debate something that has not yet happened is equally unimportant. This motion is to commit the government to a debate when and if the need to send ground troops should arise. A week, a month, whenever that should happen, we should have a vote in this House.

This motion is not about the war. It is about Canadian democracy. Because this issue is so important to our democracy is why I can strongly endorse this motion before us today. Despite the fact that I might disagree on many other Bloc ideas, certainly this is one we should commend it for.

This chamber is the House of Commons. It is the only place in the entire land that the elected representatives of the Canadian people can meet and debate the future of our country. This room, not the cabinet chamber, is the focal point for our democratic system of government. Here the government of the day must answer to the people through their elected members of parliament. Here the laws are made. Here the great issues that affect our people are supposed to be decided.

Before we send any ground troops to fight in distant lands, members of parliament must take a position. It is the only right thing we can possibly do. I do not want to ever stand accused by the parents, wives, husbands, children of our soldiers that I failed to take a stand in this House and ask all the questions that should be asked.

This government does not seem to want to understand these simple facts. The motion before us is not an attempt to embarrass the government. It is not about expressing confidence or lack thereof in the Prime Minister and his cabinet. It is quite simply a call for the government to respect the rights and privileges of parliament and to adhere to the most basic standards of Canadian democracy.

The precedents of 1939 and 1991 clearly and forthrightly demonstrate that matters of war and peace are not, I repeat not, the sole prerogative of the crown in this country. The Prime Minister and foreign affairs minister understood this in 1991. I am at a loss to explain why they have forgotten that fact in 1999.

The motion before us is several weeks overdue. The official opposition has been urging for some time the necessity of a vote in the House before Canada commits ground troops to the ongoing war in Kosovo. The other opposition parties have also agreed with us and have been urging the same thing. I commend my Bloc colleague again for having brought forward this motion today.

There is a saying that there is a time and a place for everything. The time for a votable motion on the deployment of ground troops to Kosovo is now and the place is in the House.

[Supply, April 19th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, certainly I have heard the parliamentary secretary say that the Prime Minister will consult with parliament before he commits to any ground troops. It still comes back to the very question today which is, are we going to have a vote on it?

It is pretty hard to justify to the Canadian public that the government would not vote on committing the lives of men and women in our armed forces. What is really wrong with that?