David Collenette

[Peacekeeping, September 23rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member does note that we had a very good debate with expressions of points of view on all sides. I think it is the general consensus that Canada wishes to remain active in United Nations peacekeeping engagements.

I have outlined in my speech that the resources of the Department of National Defence have been considerably strained over recent times. However, there is the capability within the Canadian Armed Forces to take on a number of engagements.

Yes, the government has decided that Canadian troops will stay in the former Yugoslavia, Croatia and Bosnia for another six months.

We have decided to renew for a further six months our engagement in those two former republics of Yugoslavia.

I would like to put some words of caution here. We have made this decision but it is subject to review if the situation on the ground changes or if the political or military situation calls into question the safety of Canadian troops or the usefulness of the UNPROFOR mandate.

[Public Service, September 23rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, all of the ministers in the government have been charged with looking at their own departments, the administration and the saving of money. The Minister of Public Works and Government Services is doing what everyone else is doing. They are looking line by line at the budget to see where savings can be made.

We make no apologies. As a national government we are proud that there are public servants across this country, not just in Ottawa.

The hon. member should not read something into what is in effect a legitimate task assigned by a government minister to deal with a very difficult situation.

[Public Service, September 23rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I want to categorically assure you and members of this House that there is no division on this issue within cabinet.

The administration of the federal government is complex. We have hundreds of thousands of employees. Perhaps on a supplementary my colleague the President of the Treasury Board might address some of the more specific issues relating to public servants.

As the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs has noted, we are planning to reshape government and reorder our financial priorities. This will be done in an orderly fashion. Certainly the statements made by my colleague the Minister of Public Works and Government Services are in no way at odds with government policy.

[Peacekeeping, September 21st, 1994]

Madam Speaker, we would not send people outside of the country to do this work if the equipment were not good. I can assure you and all Canadians the equipment is good.

However, we do have some needs to replace various components of armed forces equipment. Those questions will be addressed in the context of the defence review. I know one of the points that the hon. member made for which he should be commended is he is trying to put our peacekeeping engagements in some kind of conceptual framework in terms of the priorities.

I do not particularly agree with the conclusions that he drew with respect to Rwanda and Haiti, but the fact is the defence review and the foreign policy review will I hope help set those criteria so that we will be able to answer the hon. member and the UN when it comes knocking on our door for future commitments.

[Peacekeeping, September 21st, 1994]

Madam Speaker, that is a very good question. I thought I did address it although I am not used to having to speak in 10-minute periods. Perhaps I did not have the time to enunciate it.

More and more we discharge our obligations whether it be peacekeeping or whether in aid to the civil power, domestic crises such as the ones we saw this year. We helped in the search for a young Saskatchewan girl. We helped with the forest fires in B.C. We helped last winter with the floods in Quebec. We are going to have to turn more and more to reservists, those men and

women who train part time, on the weekends, the unsung heroes of the Canadian military tradition.

It costs money and to continue to do this we have to reorder our priorities, reshape our budgetary priorities.

I want to assure the hon. member that we will not be so stretched that we will not be able to discharge those very emergencies of which he speaks. That is why I have raised the subject of our future continued engagement in Bosnia and Croatia. We are getting not to the breaking point but to the stretching point. If we are to continue the multiplicity of peacekeeping engagements, and they have been coming fast and furious, we are now talking about the possibilities of Haiti and we have been in Rwanda, which was unforeseen certainly when I became minister, obviously we are going to have to redirect more and more of our budget to this. This could mean that we will have to take it from other very deserving components of the military budget.

I want to assure the member that when we have disasters such as the ones of which he spoke a little earlier we will be there. We will not let the Canadian people down.

[Peacekeeping, September 21st, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I will take 10 minutes. I will be succinct.

I had some comments planned but I am absolutely shocked at what I have been hearing this afternoon, the cynicism of the member for Red Deer who just spoke on behalf of the Reform Party dealing with our engagement in Rwanda and Haiti. I understand my colleague, the Secretary of State for Latin America and Africa, will deal with that in her speech following me.

However I am even more shocked at the belligerent tone of the Leader of the Opposition both in question period and this afternoon in what had been until now really rational and well ordered debate. His belligerent criticism of what happened on the weekend, the agreement that former President Jimmy Carter ironed out in Port au Prince, is beyond belief. His shooting from the hip is incredible. If he conducts the affairs of his party that way then I do not know what the rest of this parliamentary session is going to be in for.

The hon. Leader of the Opposition should have reflected and been a bit more statesmanlike. He perhaps would have found that the deal that was made on the weekend had to be explained to all the parties and indeed has been explained. Shortly after three o'clock this afternoon, President Aristide issued a statement in Washington. I quote: "In the past three days something has happened in Haiti to uphold democracy which was the result of President Clinton's decision for the commitment to lead a multinational effort in carrying out the will of the United Nations to help restore democracy in Haiti".

He has thanked the United States for its military intervention to restore him to power. He said he will be back within 24 days. He also said that to help foster the environment of civil liberties and political stability he has asked his minister of defence, General Jean Beliotte, to head a transition team and recommend the next steps to be taken in order to ensure the quick restoration of constitutional order.

To listen to the Leader of the Opposition this afternoon one would have thought that he did not want President Carter to avert the disaster that would have occurred with a military invasion. I think the statement that President Aristide has just issued should calm everyone and help bring some rationality to the debate. President Aristide declared this afternoon that he will be back within 24 days. After he is restored to power, as we have said publicly on a number of occasions, we will take part in any effort to help reconstruct Haiti, certainly using the Canadian Armed Forces.

I will not give any details on what we will actually be doing because we will be part of an international reconnaissance team. In fact a Canadian colonel will be leading as chief of staff that team in the days immediately following President Aristide's return and stability being established there to determine what requirements will be necessary of a UN peacekeeping engagement. Canada will be happy to take part in helping with the reconstruction of Haiti wearing blue berets.

I want to talk for a few minutes, since we have not got much time and have divided our time on this side, about the changing nature of peacekeeping in the world. We are seeing that the peacekeeping that was enunciated by former Prime Minister Pearson and the peacekeeping tradition that was established in the post Second World War era has drastically changed over the last number of years. We are facing situations around the world which are vastly more complex. They require a multiplicity of responses. In some cases, as we have seen in Bosnia and Croatia, the circumstances are incredibly dangerous.

In the past five years international operations have involved three or four different types of peacekeeping arrangements: humanitarian work in Ethiopia, Somalia and Bosnia. Let us not forget that our troops have been in Bosnia as a humanitarian effort under the auspices of the United Nations to bring relief and supplies. I think our men and women have done a remarkable job in the last two years in bringing that kind of humanitarian relief to Bosnia. They are still there as we debate this issue today.

We have been involved in demining and reconstruction in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Kuwait, Iraq and Haiti. We have been involved in nation building. We have been involved in embargo enforcement such as in the Persian gulf, the Adriatic and the waters off Haiti, and we have been involved in confidence building through arms control and verification.

When we talk about peacekeeping we do not just talk about the strict conflict resolution and patrolling the line as we did in Cyprus for many, many years in a very civilized fashion. We use the word peacekeeping in a much wider context. For Canada to take part in the world governance through the United Nations requires a multifaceted capability on the part of our armed forces to try to discharge the missions that come forward.

One of the points I want to raise today is that there is an ongoing commitment of the armed forces. We have about 3,400 people actually deployed, not counting what we perhaps send to Haiti and which we can discuss in the next few weeks. With a whole group of people waiting to go, a whole group of people just coming back, and those who are being deployed at the moment, we are getting somewhat stretched. We have about 10,000 peacekeepers involved in this kind of rotation. One of the concerns the government has at the moment is how much of our resources should we continue to devote to these peacekeeping missions.

In particular I want to talk about the commitment concerning Yugoslavia, Croatia and Bosnia.

I will outline our contribution to the United Nations force deployed in the former Yugoslavia, which is our main commitment at present. The mandate of the UNPROFOR expires on September 30 this year, and will likely be extended.

Canada's commitment towards the force also ends on September 30, and it has not yet been decided whether to extend it.

In other words, we have not made the decision in fact to let the members of the House know. We do have about 1,500 to 1,600 personnel ready to go to Croatia and Bosnia starting in the early part of October, which is only about 10 or 15 days away. These are the Royal Canadian Regiment that will be going to Croatia and the Royal Canadian Dragoons that will be going to Bosnia. They have both been training in the last little while at CFB Petawawa.

This training is worth noting as more and more, because of the engagements that we are taking on, we are having to deploy reservists. This summer I spoke at a function in St. Thomas, Ontario, one of the constituency functions of my colleague, the member for Elgin. I was really quite touched by the fact that the members of the Elgin Regiment, a reserve regiment, will be offering nine people for this next engagement as part of the Royal Canadian Regiment to go to Bosnia and Croatia.

We may well ask why is he saying that they are ready to go? What is this debate all about? We want to know before we actually send our people that the members of the House of Commons are comfortable with a continuation of this arrangement. The purpose of the debate is to get the views of the men and women in the House who have been talking with their constituents over the summer to see if we should continue this engagement, how long, should we pull back a battalion or should we cut it in half? We have 750 people in Croatia and 750 people in Bosnia. The balance is near Split as a supply unit. We want to know whether or not we should continue that operation for the next engagement. As I said earlier, the engagement ends September 30.

While no decision has been taken, the government is very cognizant of the depletion of our resources. We are cognizant of the fact that the armed forces budget is under pressure. We are trying to find other, more effective, cheaper ways of discharging our duties in terms of peacekeeping. As the Minister of Foreign Affairs said, this government remains totally and absolutely committed to the concept of peacekeeping, of Canada playing a role as a bridge between other nations, whether it be at the sharp end, as we see it in Bosnia and Croatia, or whether we see it in terms of reconstruction as we have seen it in Rwanda and as we may see it in Haiti. The Canadian Armed Forces has the most enviable reputation. When the Prime Minister was in Bosnia this summer the Prime Minister of Bosnia said we have outstanding troops and he wanted us to stay and be part of the effort to help bring peace to the area.

We had the Serbian leader, General Karadzic, who said the same when we were faced with the problem of how we would relieve our forces in Srebrenica.

We have the best armed forces in the world. They have suffered as a result of some of the deployments. We have lost 10 people in the former Yugoslavia. We have about 50 wounded but those men and women are prepared to continue to discharge any obligations that the government will seek to discharge and those obligations will be determined by consultation with members of the House of Commons and that is why we are very interested in having the views of the members today.

[Department Of Labour Act, June 20th, 1994]

moved that the bill be read the third time and passed.

[Department Of Labour Act, June 20th, 1994]

moved that the bill be concurred in.

(Motion agreed to.)

[Kingston's Francophones, June 1st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know where the hon. member is getting her information. We have been having some very fruitful discussions with the commanding officer at CMR who, as I have announced, will be going to Kingston, Brigadier General Emond, Mr. Carriere, who has been the principal at Collège militaire royal, and the members of the faculty about their transfer to Kingston.

I do not get the same sense of disquiet from those officials of our department at the Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean or the professors that the hon. member has.

[National Defence, May 30th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, this whole process is going quite well. I will make available to the hon. member either privately, or by giving a statement in the House or depositing a document at the table, all the measures we have taken in the last year to address these very serious problems.