Svend Robinson

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, October 3rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a question of the hon. member for Halifax West with respect to the Speech from the Throne and his response to it in two particular areas.

One is the area of fairness and equity. I would like him to comment in that context on the recent draft proposal to significantly weaken the disability tax credit for people with disabilities in Canada. It is a shameful decision which would reverse a number of court decisions and which would in fact require that people with disabilities be cut off the disability tax credit as long as they are able to somehow get a fork from their plate to their mouth while in any meaningful way they may not be able to get food into their home at all. I want to ask the hon. member if he will, as part of this commitment to fairness he spoke about, make a commitment to fight against that outrageous proposal.

Second, will he call on his government and the Prime Minister to ratify the Kyoto accord clearly, without any weasel words, and specifically without any demand that we must get credit for--

[Speech from the Throne, October 2nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Malpeque, the outgoing chair of the fisheries committee, for his comments. I certainly associate myself with a concern that was raised about the absence of any reference to fisheries in the Speech from the Throne and will put two very specific questions to the hon. member, particularly in his capacity as the outgoing chair of the fisheries committee.

First, as a British Columbian member of Parliament, I want to say to the member that we in British Columbia are deeply concerned about the massive cuts to the budget of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans on the west coast. Salmon enhancement programs and other programs are being absolutely slashed while the budget of the headquarters here in Ottawa is just bloated. Is the member prepared to take up that issue seriously?

The second issue is one that was raised by the member for Delta—South Richmond, by me and by a number of other British Columbians, and that is the very serious concern about the situation following the tragic loss of five lives on the Cap Rouge II , and particularly the incoherent response of the minister of fisheries on the issue, the really shameful attempt--

[Speech from the Throne, October 2nd, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I know time is limited so I will try to be brief. I want to congratulate the minister on two specific initiatives. One is with respect to control of immigration consultants. We know there has been serious abuse in that area. Second is the recognition of foreign credentials. It is long overdue and I welcome that. I want to ask two specific questions.

First I will ask for an assurance from the minister that there will be absolutely no weakening in the government's resolve to ensure that those who are alleged to have been responsible for war crimes, Nazi war crimes, will in fact be brought to justice in Canada or will be denaturalized and deported.

My second specific question is with respect to the recent denial of a visa to the foreign minister of Taiwan who was in Seattle and wanted to come north to Vancouver for a very brief visit with a representative of the Taiwanese economic and cultural office in Vancouver. He was denied a visa. It was shameful. Taiwan is a thriving, vibrant democracy and a strong trade partner. I would like to ask the minister if he will assure the House that this mistake will not be repeated.

[Petitions, October 2nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I have a second petition which was also signed by residents of my constituency of Burnaby--Douglas, and in particular by [name removed on openparliament.ca] in Burnaby.

The petitioners draw to the attention of the House their concern that the creation and use of child pornography is condemned by the clear majority of Canadians. They note that the courts have not applied the current child pornography law in a way which makes it clear that such exploitation of children will always be met with swift punishment.

They call upon Parliament to protect our children by taking all necessary steps to ensure that all materials that promote or glorify pedophilia or sado-masochistic activities involving children are outlawed.

[Petitions, October 2nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present two petitions today.

The first petition is one which is signed by a large number of residents of my constituency of Burnaby--Douglas on the subject of a space preservation treaty. The petitioners refer to concerns about the termination of the ABM treaty on June 13 this year.

They call upon Parliament to ensure that there is an immediate approval, signature and ratification of a space preservation treaty by Canada and that the treaty be deposited with the Secretary-General of the United Nations as a treaty depository.

They ask as well that the Government of Canada convene a treaty signing conference for the space preservation treaty.

[Foreign Affairs, October 2nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Last July, Omar Khadr, a 15-year-old Canadian citizen, was arrested by the U.S. army in Afghanistan. To date, the U.S. has allowed the Red Cross access but has refused all Canadian consular access, in blatant violation of international law.

I want to ask the minister this. What action is the government taking to ensure that this teenager will not be held at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely, tried before a secret military tribunal and possibly sentenced to death? What is Canada doing to defend the rights of this young Canadian citizen from this abuse of U.S. power?

[Iraq, October 1st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the hon. member for his remarks and refer him to the statement that was signed just last week by over 100 prominent Canadians strongly opposing the impending war and arguing that a military attack on Iraq at this juncture would be profoundly immoral and would almost certainly result in destabilizing repercussions that would endanger the whole world.

Would the member agree with the concluding remarks in the following statement? It reads as follows:

Peace can only be built upon a foundation of diplomacy and justice. We must work to uphold international law and to safeguard human rights, the environment, and global human security. Then, and only then, can the world move beyond terrorism and war.

[Iraq, October 1st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, if I have to choose for my facts between an extreme right wing member of the Canadian Alliance and an extreme right wing Republican who was actually on the ground in Iraq for seven years, who was the deputy chief weapons inspector and who has said unequivocally, and I repeat again, that no one has substantiated the allegations that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction or is attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction, with great respect to my friend from Calgary, I think I will go with Scott Ritter on this one in terms of the actual facts on the ground.

We want to get the inspectors back in there absolutely. Hans Blix has arrived at an agreement today to do that. I suggest that we allow that to work.

Just a couple of weeks ago the foreign affairs committee took the same position. I want to pay tribute to the member for Mercier and to my own leader, the member for Halifax, for ensuring that the foreign affairs committee had an opportunity to speak out on that very important question.

In terms of the Labour Party, perhaps my colleague is not aware of the fact that the Labour Party motion that was passed in fact just yesterday made it very clear that both international law and the United Nations must be fully respected in any response on weapons of mass destruction.

[Iraq, October 1st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, we have to be very clear. Saddam Hussein is a ruthless and brutal dictator who has gassed his own people, the Kurds in Halabja, and who has suppressed in the most violent and bloody manner the civil liberties of his own people. I said that in May of this year in Baghdad in the presence of Tariq Aziz. I made that very clear that those who are responsible for terrible war crimes whether the killings at Sabra and Shatila or the gassing of Kurds at Halabja, must be brought to justice.

I look forward to the day when the brave people of Iraq are able to live in a democratic society that respects the fundamental human rights of all of its citizens.

This is a ruthless and tyrannical dictator. However why on earth would we punish the people of Iraq in the way that is suggested by Bush? Nelson Mandela said that they think they are the only power in the world. Americans are not and they are following a dangerous policy. One country wants to bully the world. We must not allow that.

The member asksed me what this was about. In March of this year Colin Powell said about the U.S. policy that regardless of what the inspectors did, the people of Iraq and the people of the region would be better off with a different regime in Baghdad. This is about fulfilling what his father did not finish. It is about regime change. It is about oil. It is about mid-term elections and we in Canada must not be a party to that violence and that brutality.

[Iraq, October 1st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the Minister of Foreign Affairs for this opportunity to debate one of the most important issues that I believe will face this Parliament in many years.

I am probably the only member of the House who was present during the debates in 1990 and 1991 and also probably the only member of the House who has actually had the opportunity to travel to Iraq on three occasions: initially in the fall of 1990 with my former colleagues Lloyd Axworthy and Bob Corbett, a Conservative member from New Brunswick; again with a delegation in the early part of the year 2000; and most recently in May of this year, along with a number of British members of parliament.

It is very clear to me that what is at stake here in this debate and in the very critical decisions that will be made in the weeks and months ahead are the lives of literally tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens, the environment in that region and stability throughout the Middle East. It is desperately important that Canada speak out in the strongest possible terms against any possible unilateral military strike that would have disastrous impact on the people of Iraq and on this region.

We have heard eloquent testimony before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

I see my colleague from Mercier and other colleagues also who are members of this committee.

We have heard eloquent testimony before our committee from former UN humanitarian coordinators, Denis Halliday and Hans Van Sponeck, about the devastating impact of economic sanctions on the people of Iraq. We know as well that the impact on the environment has led to the very adverse results of depleted uranium on children and indeed huge increases in the level of congenital birth defects. I was in the south of Iraq. I visited the hospitals in Basra and Baghdad and saw for myself those results.

We have heard evidence before the foreign affairs committee and certainly I have had to respond personally to the anguished plea of an Iraqi mother in a children's hospital in Baghdad that was desperately short of the most basic supplies. She asked “Why do you feel you we must kill their children”. I could not answer that question.

I was very proud of the fact that the foreign affairs committee stood and spoke with one strong, powerful and eloquent voice. I might add that the chair of that committee at the time this decision made was the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the hon. member for Toronto Centre—Rosedale. I want to remind members of the House what that committee unanimously called for. The committee called for an end to the economic sanctions, the delinking of economic and military sanctions and a rapid lifting of economic sanctions and a contribution to the overall goal of regional disarmament, a Canadian diplomatic presence and so on.

It is in that context, a context in which hundreds of thousands of innocent children have died, in which a nation's infrastructure in terms of clean water and sewage has been paralyzed, that we are now told by George Bush that there is a concern about weapons of mass destruction, that we must pass a new resolution and obviously that there must be some sort of firm military action to enforce United Nations resolutions.

To accept Bush's insistence that we move in this way is a recipe for disaster. It is also fundamentally dishonest and ignores the history of that region. In fact, members of the House must know that according to the former chief UN weapons inspector, Rolf Ekeus of Sweden, the United States and other Security Council members were manipulating UN inspection teams for their own political ends. I do not have the time to go into that at length, but certainly both Rolf Ekeus and Scott Ritter made it very clear that was the case. In fact Scott Ritter said that far from Iraq kicking out the weapons inspectors in December of 1998 that:

It wasn't Saddam Hussein or the Iraqi government who gave the boot to weapons inspectors from...(UNSCOM). Rather it was the United States. In the person of former President Bill Clinton...

It pushed them out so they could bomb in December 1998.

One might ask who Scott Ritter is. Here is how Scott Ritter describes himself:

I need to say right out front I'm a card-carrying Republican in the conservative-moderate range who voted for George W. Bush for President. I'm not here with a political agenda. I'm not here to slam Republicans. I am one.

This is the source about information about the presence currently of weapons of mass destruction. Ritter said, and he said it clearly and unequivocally to our committee, a committee of this Parliament, that no one had substantiated the allegations that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction or was attempting to acquire weapons of mass destructions. Scott Ritter said:

This is not about the security of the United States. This is about domestic American politics. The national security of the United States of America has been hijacked by a handful of neo-conservatives who are using their position of authority to pursue their own ideologically-driven political ambitions. The day we go to war for that reason is the day we have failed collectively as a nation.

For God's sake, surely our nation, Canada, must be speaking out strongly and clearly to reinforce that message.

Today we received good news. Hans Blix, the chief of the United Nations, UNMOVIC, the monitoring and enforcement inspection commission, has said about Iraq that “On the question of access, is clarified that all sites are subject to immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access”. What more can we ask for? Each time they comply, the bar is raised higher and higher.

The spokesperson for the Alliance says that we cannot trust them. Surely we must recognize that when the inspectors go in, they have unfettered access and if there is any suggestion of obstruction of those inspectors, obviously Blix will be in a position to report back quickly to the United Nations, which is where this question belongs.

The hypocrisy in this area is breathtaking. I have heard from a number of my colleagues on this issue already. The silence in March 1988 from the then American government included a number of key administration officials now, about the gassing of Halabja. There was not a word nor a peep. In fact it obstructed the United Nations Security Council efforts to condemn them. Why? Because then Saddam Hussein was our guy.

As well, we have to be honest and recognize that if we are seriously concerned about respect for United Nations resolutions and Security Council resolutions in the Middle East, what country has violated over and over again UN Security Council resolutions with the support, often alone, of the United States? Israel. Yet there is not a word on that. It is the only country in the region that we know for certain possesses over 200 weapons of mass destruction. I remind members of the House that Israel has refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty. It is hypocrisy.

Which country just last year blatantly refused to sign onto United Nations protocol on developing, producing or stockpiling biological or toxic weapons? The United States of America.

I want to once again appeal to the government and to the minister to recognize that it is within the framework of both international law and the United Nations that this must be resolved. It must be resolved with consistency and equity. It must be resolved in a manner that respects the lives of innocent Iraqi people who have suffered already too much.

Over 100 prominent Canadians, Québécois et Québécoises, Canadiens et Canadiennes from everywhere in Canada, Anton Kuerti, Margaret Atwood, Pierre Burton, David Suzuki, and many more have signed a statement calling on our government to endorse the principle of a peaceful resolution of this conflict. They have said it is time to move beyond war, il n'y a pas que la guerre. I urge the minister to heed the eloquent words of these Canadians.