Sarkis Assadourian

[Foreign Affairs, February 7th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Ottawa Centre for his question and interest on this file.

During his active visit to Algeria, the minister met with the minister responsible for overseas community, ministers of foreign affairs, justice and interior, as well as the prime minister of Algeria and the president.

The minister also expressed a desire to establish a working group with these ministers to address issues related to the movement of people. Further, the minister also met with editors of major newspapers to discuss the situation in Algeria. He also met with Algerian human rights NGOs to discuss the situation of human rights in Algeria. Overall, it was a very successful visit.

[National Identity Card, February 7th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday when the minister made a presentation to the committee on this subject, the hon. member herself said it was a good idea because her husband has one. Why is she complaining again in the House?

[National Identity Card, February 7th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the opposition was asking for consultation. This is nothing more than consultation by the minister with Canadians. Next week the committee will travel across the country to listen to their points of view on the issue. It will come up with a proposal if there is a need for a proposal, but it is only consultation, nothing more, nothing less. There is no proposal by the minister at this stage.

[Supply, February 6th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, that was a very long question.

First, I would like to apologize, on his behalf, to seniors. Seniors are just as important to me as everybody else. They have the right to speak on this issue, be it in the UN or whatever.

The member asked why the government was picking on Iraq? Last January George Bush gave a speech to the U.S. congress. He used the phrase “axis of evil”. By that he meant Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

We all know North Korea has weapons of mass destruction. We all know of its capacity to bomb Hawaii or Japan. How did the U.S. react? It is sending the army over to Iraq and confining North Korea within its region.

The other point the member made about resolution 1441 was that Iraq was not cooperating. Resolution 1441 asked specifically for the west to provide intelligence information for the inspectors to do their job. The U.S. and the west has failed to do that.

Mr. Blix will have to come to a conclusion. Next week he will present a concrete resolution to this issue by saying that, yes, Iraq has weapons of mass destruction based on intelligence, or no, it does not. If Mr. Blix is not provided with the tools to work with how can we expect him to make a recommendation to resolve the conflict and come back with a report that says, yes, Iraq has weapons of mass destruction?

[Supply, February 6th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, if the hon. member is very upset perhaps he could step outside while I finish my speech.

Getting back to the motion, the motion asks us to vote again in the future. I made the point earlier that it is so confusing. All the opposition had to do was to ask the House in a motion do we agree with the idea of sending our troops to fight the war in Iraq, yes or no. If members agreed, they could vote yes, that they wanted to send their sons and daughters to war. If they did not agree, then they could vote no. The way this motion is written, the day after we send the troops, we would have a debate and we would say yes or no.

If it happened that we sent the troops to the Middle East to fight the war and we had the vote the day after, as I made the point earlier, and we decided to defeat the motion, would the opposition expect us to call back the army, turn back the ships, turn back the planes, stop the bombing because here in the House we said no, we do not want to have a war? In the meantime soldiers would be there fighting.

What is the point of having a motion like this? It is so confusing. It plays so much with politics and with human lives it is unbelievable. I do not know why the opposition would bring forward this motion. I do not know who would support such a motion. I am sorry to say that the Bloc Québécois seconded the motion and made additions to it.

I will be voting against the motion. This motion is totally unacceptable as far as I am concerned.

We spoke earlier about the presentation made yesterday at the UN by Colin Powell. I do not think in my point of view many people accept the fact he made a very good point. The French government and the Russian representative asked for more inspectors. What is wrong with that, rather than having 120 inspectors, having 220 inspectors? What is wrong with having planes fly over Iraq to find out where the weapons are being kept? Why does Iraq not provide the inspectors with the information? They claim they know where this person is keeping the weapons, so let us work together to make sure this person is disarmed so we can prevent a war without having to kill hundreds of thousands of people, most of them innocent people. That would be good for everybody.

I look forward to questions from the opposition members. I am sure they are itching to ask me questions.

[Supply, February 6th, 2003]

I want to come back to the resolution--

[Supply, February 6th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I and many members of Parliament received hundreds of letters against the war. I have a bunch of them here. I have about perhaps 2,000 or 3,000 signatures here.

I take it that the member will not give his consent, but if I did have unanimous consent, I would table these letters and petitions so that people could see where the Canadian people stand. Ninety per cent of them are against war.

[Supply, February 6th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, this war with Iraq has nothing to do with nuclear weapons, has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction, has nothing to do with terrorism and has nothing to do with chemical weapons. It has to do with oil and nothing else.

I would like to give some historic background about the situation in the Middle East.

Iraq was part of the Ottoman empire going back to the 15th century. At the beginning of the last century and the breakup of the Ottoman empire, Iraq was under the mandate of the British government, part of the Middle East government and the French government. Iraq was basically under English occupation. It was a kingdom until 1958 when there was a coup against the king.

Saddam Hussein came to power about 30 years ago and has been in power since then. Over the last 25 or 30 years Saddam Hussein has done terrible things against his own people and terrible things in the region.

Iraq and Iran were involved in a war where over one million people died. At the time, Iraq was supported by the United States and the U.K. It was given all the weapons it wanted. Iran was supported by Israel because both of them had interest in the area and wanted to ensure the control of it.

Ten years after the Iraq-Iran war was finished, he attacked Kuwait for no reason. Saddam Hussein claimed that Kuwait was stealing oil from them. The whole situation began with oil and it continues on today as a war about oil.

It is no secret that I was born in the Middle East. There was a time when our governments there closed down the schools and asked us to take part in demonstrations against what they called American imperialism or Israeli Zionism, whatever the case may have been.

I was there last year and it is now the other way around. People want to demonstrate but the government is oppressing their demonstrations. Why? There is so much anti-Americanism in the world and no one can explain why. Anti-Americanism is so bad in the Muslim world that the U.S. government ran TV commercials saying there were no problems between Muslims and the American government. That shows how bad the situation is.

In today's debate we are talking about Canadian participation in a possible war. A survey of Canadians was done recently asking how many would support the war without the UN. Ninety per cent of Canadians said they do not want a war without UN approval. Why do we have to go to war without the UN?

This morning's Globe and Mail reported on a survey of 8,000 people in 14 countries which was conducted from November 11 to December 14. In Canada 58% said they are against going to war. Of the 14 countries, Turkey is the only country on the border with Iraq and 80% of its citizens are against a war. That country is supposed to be a bad neighbour because there is bad blood between Iraq and Turkey and in that country, 80% of the people are against a war. In the United Kingdom 75% of its citizens are against a war. In the U.S.A., 62% of its citizens are against a war. This war is less popular than the war in Vietnam.

During the war in Vietnam the House of Commons took a vote. Everybody voted against the war in Vietnam except the late Right Hon. John Diefenbaker. He was the only soul against the resolution. It took us 20 years to find out that the war in Vietnam was the wrong war. If people are going to wait 20 years to find out this is the wrong war, then God bless their souls.

Our colleague the hon. member for Don Valley West wrote a very nice article in the Toronto Star yesterday. I hope everybody will take a minute to read the article because he makes a very good argument. Many of our--

[Supply, February 6th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Mount Royal.

We are debating a very important issue today. The opposition motion, as I have said, is very confusing, very political. There is no need to play politics with the lives of Canadian soldiers who may be sent to Iraq.

Ten or 12 years ago there was an expression in the U.S., “It's the economy, stupid”. On this occasion the statement could be, “It's the oil, stupid”. This issue--

[Supply, February 6th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I was following the comments of my colleague from the Alliance very carefully. He spoke about resolution 1441 and he blamed Saddam Hussein for not complying with and cooperating in a proactive way on resolution 1441. He is 100% correct.

At the same time, the same resolution calls upon the western countries, upon England and the United States, to provide the inspectors with intelligence. So far everybody complains. If the U.S. says it has intelligence, the inspectors ask to have the intelligence so they can do their jobs. If the U.S., England, France and other western countries claim to have intelligence but do not provide that intelligence to the inspectors, how do we expect the inspectors to do their jobs?

If we are going to lay blame, I think it is fair to blame Saddam Hussein for not being proactive, but it is also fair to blame western countries for not being proactive by providing the inspectors with proper tools to do their job, to inspect the place and report back us. If there are weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons or chemical weapons, we will know where they are so we can destroy them or take action accordingly. It is fair that the west be asked to provide intelligence, and not one week before the bombing.