Art Eggleton

[Terrorism, September 21st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the United Nations and the United Nations Security Council have already been engaged in this. Of course the right of a country to defend itself is set out quite clearly in article 51 of the UN charter.

We have had our neighbour under attack. This act of terrorism is a threat to them, to us and everyone. We intend to act with our United States partners in this matter, as well as the UN and the UN Security Council. NATO will also be a key part of all that.

[Terrorism, September 21st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, we have made it abundantly clear, and let me repeat what the Prime Minister and what so many others have said in this government. We stand with the United States in this campaign against international terrorism. The safety and security of our people, the people of the United States and indeed freedom loving people right around the world, depends on this coalition coming together.

No one has said that anyone would get carte blanche. We have said that we want to work together to suppress terrorism.

[Canada-U.S. Meeting, September 20th, 2001]

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate that at this late hour members have come together because of the concern over the meeting on Monday between President Bush and the Prime Minister, the importance of the meeting following on the tragedy of September 11 and the importance of it in terms of Canada-U.S. relations. Certainly the stakes are very high in terms of those relations in the future.

When I came into the House a few moments ago I heard the remarks by the member for South Surrey--White Rock--Langley and previous to that the member for Burnaby--Douglas who spoke on behalf of the NDP. They went in two different directions altogether. One said that we were not doing enough to support the United States at this time and the other said that we were going too far down the road leading to war.

The government takes a balanced approach to all this. The Prime Minister has made it abundantly clear that we stand shoulder to shoulder with our friend and ally, the United States, and in NATO and other parts of the world that join with us in the campaign against terrorism.

We will be a part of that campaign and we will play a meaningful and significant role in it. We do it for a number of reasons. We do it first and foremost because it relates directly to the safety and security of Canadians, and really there is nothing more important than the safety and security of Canadians in all this.

Terrorism has taken on the ugliest form than we have ever seen. It exists in many different parts of the world. There are thousands of adherents of bin Laden and other terrorist organizations that are prepared to do the kinds of things that we saw in New York and Washington on September 11. We cannot allow that to continue. That becomes a threat not only to people in the United States but people in Canada and in other countries of the world. We cannot allow ourselves to be held hostage by people who would carry on these evil acts. We must take action and we must take action together to protect our own interests, safety and security.

There is no imminent threat to Canadians. We do have a counterterrorism plan but we do need to look at it again and look at various aspects of security in light of what happened on September 11 to ensure that we continue to protect the safety and security of all Canadians. We need to work with the United States and with our allies because this is an international problem. We need to be in concert together, standing shoulder to shoulder as the Prime Minister has said on more than one occasion.

I have said on numerous occasions that this will not be a conventional war. I think the president of the United States said words to that effect this evening. It will not be like World War II or Kosovo or the gulf war. This will be dealing with an enemy who is illusive, who operates in the shadows and who operates in many different countries of the world.

We need to build a coalition of countries that recognize the need to suppress terrorism. We need to convince those countries that harbour terrorists that they need to stop that kind of support, even if it is passive support. In a number of countries, even countries that we would not have expected to indicate their concern about this, have indicated a concern because they understand the threats to them. They understand just how hideous and evil the dimension of these operations have become.

This kind of conflict will not be a traditional war. Hopefully it will minimize the kind of military action that will be required. We need to look at all the different tools that we have at our disposal, everything from diplomatic to economic, to try to bring an end to this kind of terrorism.

Yes, there will be some military action. Some of it may even be of a conventional war nature. I hope not but it is possible that it may be. However it will take a long period of time and a concerted action by many countries in many different ways.

The United States has already pre-positioned some of its military forces into the Middle East area where many of the terrorist organizations exist, near Afghanistan, near the operation that is the headquarters of bin Laden. It is normal in times of crisis for military forces to move in such a fashion and pre-position. No decision has been made by the United States as to how this campaign will be carried out and whether these forces will be used in the numbers that it is massing. This is a pre-positioning. It is also quite obviously a tool to put pressure on the Taliban, to put pressure on Afghanistan to give up bin Laden. These methods and many other methods will be used in future.

The United States, as the leader of this endeavour, is still in a planning stage. The Americans have not asked anything specific of us with respect to this campaign on terrorism. They have asked some things of us in the stage between September 11 and now which we have delivered on. They asked us to put more of our jet fighter aircraft at the disposal of the NORAD system. That has been done. They have asked us to assist them in intelligence analysis and that has been done. They were grateful that when those incidents occurred on September 11 we were able to take a number of aircraft into our airspace and airports; over 200 aircraft and some 33,000 people. I must commend Canadians who showed great hospitality and understanding of the situation and reached out to the people who were part of those special landings that occurred in our country, particularly in the eastern part of Canada.

The things the United States has asked us to do we have delivered on. We have been there with the Americans and they have thanked us for what we have done. We have indicated to them, as the Prime Minister said, that we will be there, shoulder to shoulder. We will be there. They are our friends, our allies. They are family and we will be with them.

We do have a number of capabilities. We have capabilities in the Canadian forces that can be made available. They know what we have. They know what our assets are. They know what our personnel is. They know, in spite of the Alliance members who run down the Canadian forces, that we have people who are dedicated and professional and have served well in Kosovo. They were a major part of the operations in Kosovo. Two weeks ago we took our high tech, state of the art Coyote reconnaissance vehicles and their crews into Macedonia. We have a number of niche areas of capability.

As the United States comes through the planning stage it will then consult with Canada and our other allies to determine how we can work together, how we can provide our capabilities in a complementary way which can then be brought together in this campaign against terrorism.

However it should not be just a military campaign. In fact I hope that the military aspect of it, if it exists at all, will be a minor part of it. I hope that will be the case. We have to be prepared. We have to make our assets available. We are making our assets available. We are not saying they cannot have this or they cannot have that. They know what we are capable of doing. We certainly want to be with them and play a role, a front rank role in terms of assisting in this regard because it is in our own interests.

It is in our interests to ensure the safety and security of Canadians as well as freedom loving people in all parts of the world.

We will be there. We are fully committed. We have to be fully committed. This is an important campaign against terrorism. Canada will stand with the United States and its allies. Most important, we will do it for our own people to ensure their safety and security for now and in future.

[National Defence, September 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is clearly wrong. He does not seem to know that we have a sharing agreement with the United States on the protection of North American air defence called NORAD. We have had it since the 1950s. We share in the assets and the personnel. We will continue to do that to protect the air space of all the people of North America.

[National Defence, September 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the Canadian Air Force is part of the NORAD system along with the United States. It has the responsibility, the assets and the personnel that are required to protect the air space of North America.

I am not going to talk about specific deployments. That is not the kind of thing that is in the national interest to talk about. However those kinds of matters are under constant review to make sure that we continue to ensure the safety and security of Canadians and all the people of this continent within the NORAD framework.

[National Defence, September 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the United States decided to take a bipartisan approach. Here the Alliance wants to play cheap politics with this terrible disaster. I think that is disgusting.

Let me say that we will meet all of our commitments in the white paper.

[National Defence, September 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, first, at the time of the Kosovo air campaign we had some 40 pilots. Today we have more than that available for any possible commitments.

Second, we did make additional planes available to NORAD at the time of the September 11 incident at the request of the United States. They thanked us for that. I am not going to talk about what weaponry they may or may not have had on board.

[National Defence, September 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I think the Minister of Foreign Affairs has quite clearly and properly outlined that there is a considerable amount of consultation.

What I was asked, though, by the hon. member was not in that general context. I was asked about the specifics of the pre-positioning of the military assets and personnel, to which I answered that it is the normal function they carry out and they have carried it out on many other occasions. They do not consult with everyone before they do that.

[Terrorism, September 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, there has been no specific request from the United States to Canada or to any of the other allies. The United States is still in a planning stage to determine how this campaign against terrorism should in fact be handled. As it comes through that planning stage, it will be consulting with us. It will be consulting with other allies. It is trying to build a coalition.

It is not just a question of the use of the military. There are diplomatic means, economic means and many other ways in which this campaign against terrorism will be carried out, hopefully with a minimal amount of use of military assets of the United States or of any other kind.

[Terrorism, September 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, it is not normal for a country when it wants to pre-position its military assets to consult other countries. This has not been done with any other country in this case or in past cases. This is not a decision by the United States to actually use them in a forceful way; this in fact is a forward positioning of its assets and personnel.

In terms of the kind of tone in the meeting that will go on between the Prime Minister and the president, I think the Prime Minister has made it quite clear that all of those become aspects of the conversation that he will have.