Bob Mills

[Peacekeeping, February 17th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, we have quite a different situation. There was no information provided, as much as we tried. I got the information I just presented. I trust that it is true. If it is true, we are in a total different situation than we were then. Obviously our 47 people are in jeopardy, if the information I related to the House is true.

If it is not true information, I would certainly stand corrected. It certainly is not because we got any help from the government in finding out what the truth really was.

[Peacekeeping, February 17th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, we have responsibilities as a member of NATO. We cannot live up to the full responsibilities in NATO because the government has undermined our military for 30 years. That is why we cannot live up to what we would want.

If we had the best, if we were able to deliver on what they are asking, yes, we are for that. Because of what the government has done, we have to take a lesser role. That lesser role means we cannot send troops into combat in these areas.

I do not now how else to say that more clearly to you except to answer in that way. We should not send troops into a combat zone. Show us all the answers to these questions and then we will say what kind of support we can give.

[Peacekeeping, February 17th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the obvious answer is that we are talking about going into a very difficult area, into a war zone. Obviously I am saying we are not equipped to send troops and therefore we cannot send troops.

We can provide some support, but we basically cannot get into this without knowing more details about our ability to deliver. We just do not know any answers. The government has not given us anything.

[Peacekeeping, February 17th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, there are a number of issues I would like to deal with.

The first one is central Africa. We have a briefing set for central Africa tomorrow. Of course the debate is tonight but that is probably not a problem to the government.

I contacted foreign affairs yesterday, five times today, and at 6.53 this evening I got my briefing sheet on the Central African Republic. I think that probably tells us the level of importance of what we are doing here tonight when this kind of blatant abuse goes on in parliament.

To deal with this situation first, the government did not have the briefing and therefore I felt it was essential that somebody at least try to find out a bit of what our mission is all about. This is a rather unstable former French colony of 3.3 million people. It has had a very fragile France sponsored democracy since 1993. Basically the French government has propped up various dictators and regimes from about 1979.

There was a 1,400 man French force that was withdrawn on April 15 of last year and replaced by 1,350 international francophone peacekeepers, of whom Canada had 45.

Today the number of Canadians there is 47 and basically they are attempting to maintain stability. When we look at the stability that is being created this is the sort of thing we have.

President Patasse has faced three armed rebellions since May 1996 and really could not have remained in power without these foreign troops, the French and 47 Canadians.

Mutinies are motivated by unpaid wages, ethnic hatred of the president and the story goes on. Human rights records are that there are routine summary executions, torture, restrictions on basic freedoms, looting by the peacekeepers, mistreatment of women and of a whole race of pygmies in the area.

With no information from foreign affairs or DND we are here to endorse the keeping of Canadian troops there.

There are only 47 but those are 47 Canadian lives we are saying we should leave there or extend there, whatever. But we do not live in a dictatorship. We live in a democracy where we need the information. Canadians need the information. We should be talking about this and it should not be a partisan issue. We are talking about Canadian lives, men and women, our armed forces. That is the kind of disrespect the government shows for those fighting people of our country.

There is much more that we can talk about with Kosovo because all of us have watched CNN, we have read the news and we have been part of this debate for a long time. It was back in about 1990 that everybody felt Kosovo would be the part of Yugoslavia to break away first. It has always had a problem and that goes back maybe 1,500 years.

We can also be fairly certain as Canadians that a decision has already been made as to what we will do. On January 29 when the Prime Minister committed Canadian forces he did not do that by accident. That decision had already been made. The defence minister of course immediately questioned it. The general questioned it. He said we really could not do that. Our critic from Calgary North questioned it.

Certainly we said we should be debating it. In the February 16

Toronto Star

the defence minister also said maybe we will have to skip a debate in the House and go on with that. On February 16 when asked that question in the House, it was rather interesting to see the House leader jump up and answer the question. He said dare you ask that question because at the House leaders meeting today we are going to be discussing that issue.

How am I supposed to know what will be discussed at the House leaders meeting after question period? Our House leader certainly did not know what the agenda would be and I am not even sure what that answer was all about.

The decision has already been made. The government does not care much about this. It wants this for bragging rights, to say the issue was brought here to be debated by parliamentarians so that parliamentarians had a say in what would happen. Of course that justifies anything that happens.

These are men's and women's lives we are talking about. We should not be talking about politics. It should be non-partisan. We should be talking about whether we should participate, what we are participating in, how much it will cost, what our role will be and who will command those troops. All those are the kinds of questions that should be dealt with here tonight but which I doubt will even be mentioned.

How could we do it better? This will now be the sixth time I believe we have had a take note debate since I have been here. The proposal I will put forward again will be very simple. The way to really accomplish all we want to accomplish is to have a committee of the whole with 301 MPs who should be responsible. They should be in the House listening to this because it is men and women from their ridings who could conceivably lose their lives. We should be here to give support to those troops who do such a heck of a fine job. I will always remember meeting those troops in Yugoslavia and thinking wow, these people are Canadians. I was proud of the flag and proud of seeing them there. They need to know we are 100% behind them.

What should we do? We should have the experts come in and tell 301 members of parliament the exact and complete information. Then what we should do is have two or however many party members from each party and extra ones from the government present the party position. Then we should have a free vote. We should be voting on this item because it is the lives of our men and women. That is what is really important.

I do not know why the government does not like that idea. We would inform members of parliament, we would inform Canadians and we would then have an intelligent presentation and a free vote. The government would not fall if it was the decision of 301 members to not go to a country. Maybe we should not be going to the Central African Republic or staying there. Maybe we cannot be the 911 number for all peacekeeping missions. Those are the kinds of things this House should decide and the onus should be on us to decide.

Let us get to the committing of troops to this imaginary UN or maybe NATO force that we might send. Should we commit them? Obviously all of us have seen the newsreels. We have seen the 40 people from a village brutally killed and mutilated and tortured. All of us are sickened by that. They are unforgettable sights. All Canadians are hurt by those. All Canadians say we should be involved in trying to stop those. That is not the issue.

It is a lot deeper than that. We have to understand the cultural nature of these conflicts. We have to understand the propaganda involved. We have to understand the interrelationship of history, religion and the conflict going on.

I think we would all say those tragedies have to stop. We all abhor them. We cannot stand them and we want to do something. I think the question that comes down is what should we do. As Canadians I am not sure that it is fair or that it helps us to send troops, to send planes, to send whatever it takes unless they are equipped and unless they can do the very best possible job they are required to do. I am not saying they would not try. The problem is that we handicap them.

Again I go back to Bosnia when I saw those Canadian vehicles with patches, part paint jobs, 35 years old, belching diesel fuel and then I saw some of the other countries' equipment, silent and fast moving. I thought our guys and girls are there trying to do the job for us. But we are handicapping them. We have to be hurting them and their pride just because of what we do.

We have to take that into consideration. We cannot simply go everywhere. Many of our veterans are particularly touched by this issue as well. During the world wars we were right there. We were part of the decision making. We were leading in a lot of situations. There was a huge amount of pride. We had a huge role in many of those conflicts.

It was a Canadian prime minister who started peacekeeping back in the Suez Canal days. There was pride. There was pride when we went to Cyprus. I believe we have hurt that pride. We have done in this country something to lessen our position. By sending off troops and again asking them to do something, we do not really know what, we are doing nothing to help enhance that pride.

I cannot help but remind the House about 1996 and the Zaire mission. The Prime Minister and his wife were sitting around watching television. They saw a terrible massacre on CNN and said “We should call Raymond and tell him to do something about this”. They called Raymond down in Washington and Raymond went flying over and said “Yes, we will be the saviours; we will be the white knights”. The only problem was that nobody else followed.

We started moving troops there. We did not know what they would do. It was probably one of the biggest military-foreign affairs embarrassments we had ever had. A week later it was all cancelled, and we said we had to watch the Prime Minister watching television.

We also have to ask about our UN Security Council position. I am glad we are there. I hope we can make a difference. We must remember that we held it in 1948-49, 1958-59, 1967-68, 1977-78, 1989-90 and 1999-2000. We have had it every 10 years for the last six decades. That is what we would expect. We are along with Gabon, Namibia, Slovenia and so on.

We should not brag too much about that. We should do something. Instead of just talking we should do something. As far as soft power is concerned, as long as there are no bad guys left in the world it might work, but flower power will only go so far.

There are lots of bad guys out there: the North Koreas, the Kadaffes, the Saddam Husseins and the Angolas. The minister is very proud of our record in Angola where we have spent $2.3 billion on UN peacekeeping. We are about to reduce the 1,000 peacekeepers down to 100 and basically leave in disgrace. The British ambassador says that the crises in Sudan, Angola, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Eritrea and so on demonstrate that the UN is powerless to cope with crises as they arise. While we brag a lot, maybe we should ask what we are to do.

A lot of questions need to be asked about Kosovo. Who will make the decisions on what happens there? Who is in the contact group? Will we have any say as to what happens to our 500 to 800 troops? What are the NATO objectives? Do we agree that there should be a referendum in Kosovo in three years and a vote possibly to separate? Do we agree with those kinds of politics?

What will we bomb if we bomb something? What sort of long term plans do we have? Will we just be a police force with a big stick? The minute we leave will it go back into crisis again? Or, will we really try to accomplish something? What about the expansion of this conflict? What are the chances of it spreading to Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro and so on? Has anybody thought about that? What happens when we put this force in Kosovo? Will it spread out?

We have to ask about the cost. We have to ask about the 300,000 refugees. Who will take care of that problem? Who will work on that? What kind of plans are there? We are being asked to provide troops. Will we also provide infrastructure? What are we being asked? Are we being asked for a blank cheque, or what exactly is it that the government wants?

These questions have not been answered. We are not equipped to handle it. We will not have any control over our troops. As I say, it is a blank cheque. We are showing no leadership. We are showing no new spending.

Basically I am embarrassed when NATO calls upon us that we are not prepared to deliver. It is embarrassing for us as parliamentarians. It is embarrassing for our troops. How can we support a full mission? We want to support it. Obviously we owe that to NATO. I think we have tied our hands behind our backs. Governments for the past 30 years have made it very difficult for us to support something like this.

[Kosovo, February 16th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the government does not intend to tell us about the plan until after the fact. It does not want to debate the plan in the House.

The Minister of National Defence gave parliament the salute in classic Trudeau style yesterday when he said that he did not think it was necessary to hold a full parliamentary debate over the deployment of troops to Kosovo.

Canada is not a dictatorship. There should be an open and frank discussion about it before the decision is made. I ask again—

[Kosovo, February 16th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the truth is the government does not intend to—

[Kosovo, February 16th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of National Defence is planning an end run around parliament over the decision to send Canadian troops to Kosovo.

Apparently he does not think Canadians should be consulted and does not intend to hold a full parliamentary debate on the matter. This is a slap in the face to democracy and an insult to Canadians.

Will the minister commit to a full parliamentary debate before sending troops to Kosovo.

[Kosovo, February 15th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, today the two sides in the Kosovo crisis are sitting down face to face and trying to reach some type of settlement. The clock is ticking and the deadline of Saturday noon has been set.

It is time Canada addresses our involvement in a NATO led force. We first have to ask what is the mandate. Then we have many questions that must be answered including the following.

Do we support a referendum on separation in three years in Kosovo? Do we have a long term plan? If we bomb what do we bomb? If we send ground troops will they simply serve as police with big sticks, or will they attempt to build a long term solution? How long will the mission last? What will the mission cost? Do we have the manpower and equipment? What will we do with the refugees? How will we keep this issue from spreading to surrounding countries?

The government will come in and say that we must hold a quick take note debate. That is not good enough this time. We need some answers first.

[Armenians, February 15th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize the members of the Armenian National Committee who are in the gallery, members of the Turkish community who are here, and all those who are watching this issue so carefully. What we have just seen indicates probably how volatile the issue is. We are talking about a time period from 1915 to 1923. Among all parties and all Canadians we find a great deal of misunderstanding and hostility which shows how volatile the issue is.

In reading the documentation on both sides of the issue, one starts to realize how terrible the word genocide is and the type of killing that can go on over religion, various ethnic mixes and so on. We have listened to some of the history and we could get the same history on either side. I was moved by the severity of the information we can read on the issue.

I would like to talk about four points. The first is a motion like this one being dealt with in the House. In the ethnic communities across Canada, of which we are all very proud and which are an intricate part of the country, we so often fail to let them know how the House of Commons works. A motion like this one is put and they actually have hope that their particular area will be dealt with, that they will get something from the House of Commons.

Mr. Speaker, you have been here long enough to know that will not happen. A motion like this one is not really a debate. It does not put all the issues on the table. It is not coming to any kind of a conclusion. I think that is wrong and is one area we must change in the House of Commons. We must make these things more meaningful because they are so deep in the hearts of the people who are involved.

Second is the issue of genocide itself. We could get out the dictionary and talk about what it is. I probably could bring forward the best meaning from my visit to Bosnia where we went out and actually talked to the people. We went into churches, mosques, bars and restaurants. We stopped little old ladies on the street and asked them what they thought of what was happening.

I was in nine different schools where I asked the students to write in their own words what it meant to be part of ethnic cleansing. I asked them to tell me what their futures were and what would really happen. The words of those kids were pretty touching. They made us cry. If we talk to Serbian children they tell us about the terrible killings that went on and about the 600,000 people who died. They would describe it like it was yesterday, but they were talking about back in 1943.

We could talk to Croat children and Muslim children and they would tell us about things as if they happened yesterday. I will always remember one little girl's face when she was telling me about the killings. She was talking about the killings in 1536 like it was yesterday. That is what genocide is all about.

Whether we are talking about the Roman empire, the Greeks, Napoleon, the Vikings, the African tribes, the first world war or the second world war or whomever, we will find incidents of what we would classify as genocide, a holocaust. Whatever words we use they are all horrible.

In parliament we often have a double standard in the way we think about things. Quite often we do not have all the information. Every time I hear that our prime minister or foreign affairs minister has visited Cuba again—I know about the horrible human rights abuses in that country—I get mad because of that standard. People are being persecuted in Cuba.

I read all the material and to try to put some real meaning to it I took some quotes at random from either side. I heard things like: “People fled with whatever property they could carry. On the road they were robbed, the women were repeatedly raped and then the men were killed. Women and young children were then killed systematically. My mother's cousin, with her child still nursing at her breast, was shot. Later that still nursing baby was killed with a bayonet”. That is genocide. That is horrible. All of us would say that is inhuman. We cannot let that happen.

When we talk about this sort of thing, it is the human issues we are talking about. I can see why people feel so emotional about them and why they remember 1915 and why they remember 1536 and so on. The events are so horrible that they would undoubtedly change people who witnessed them for the rest of their lives and it would be passed on from generation to generation.

It is time to move on. We need to get all the information on the table, whether it is the Armenian-Turkish situation, what happened in World War II or what happened in Nanking, China, when the Japanese came. Wherever it happened it is time to get historians to put all the cards on the table. In a House like ours we look at the history but most important we move on.

Canada has an important world role. We are members of almost everything. We are members of all important organizations and have a very important role in them. The level of respect for Canadians gives us that role. Our role is one of a negotiator. We are good at that. It is one thing we can do well.

Canada has a role whether it is solving the problem of the Armenian-Turkish-Ottoman crisis that is so real to people, or whether it is something between India and Pakistan, between Israel and Palestine, in Sudan between the north and the south and 43 years of war, or north Korea and south Korea. The list goes on and on.

I could talk about the genocide and the killings on both sides, but if there is one message to send it is what should Canadians be doing in foreign affairs. I do not believe a soft power approach is the way to go. I do not believe in simply waiting and seeing what happens, kind of coasting along and making grandiose statements about people and so on.

Let us do something. Let us not let the Rwandas happen. Let us not let the Kosovos happen. Let us take an active role and let us back it up with a modern, well mandated military that knows what it is doing. Let us back it up with some power. We need to do some real reform of how we look at the UN and of how we handle all these issues. It is diplomacy. That is what it is about.

As Canadian politicians we should be putting forward, instead of more conflict, an academic approach to the records. Some of these countries will not even open up their records or files so we have to do that. If there is one message it is that we must move on.

[Maple Leaf Gardens, February 12th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow, February 13, will be the end of an era. Canada's hockey shrine on Carleton Street, the Maple Leaf Gardens, will host its last hockey game for all to see on Hockey Night in Canada .

Nothing is as intrinsically Canadian as hockey. Nothing captures the souls of Canadians like hockey, and Maple Leaf Gardens has been the stage for many defining moments in our history.

There was nothing quite like the feeling of attending a game at the Gardens. It is like stepping back in time: the ghosts of battles won and lost, the memorabilia of the glory days of the original six, and the haunting voices of Foster Hewitt and Danny Gallivan. That was hockey. Con Smythe, Foster Hewitt, Frank Mahovlich, Darryl Sittler, Lanny MacDonald, Punch Imlach, Wendel Clark and oh, yes, Harold Ballard, are just a few of the names that will live on in the legacy of the Gardens and the Canadian dream.

For generations of Canadians the home of hockey will always be the house that Smythe built.