Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the Bloc Quebecois to address this motion we have put forward in the context of the growing crisis in Kosovo.
Today's newspapers are reporting that Kosovo is becoming empty. Therefore, it is essential to continue the debate in this House, to give members an opportunity to address the serious crisis being reported by the television, the media and the newspapers. Quebecers and Canadians have been closely following this conflict, and there is evidence that ethnic cleansing operations are indeed taking place and getting worse every day.
Civilian populations are being displaced to neighbouring countries, including Albania, which is welcoming thousands of refugees—over 40,000 in the last few hours—Macedonia and Montenegro. These countries will have to share that task with other nations such as France and, some day, in all likelihood, Canada, which said it was prepared to welcome some of these refugees.
This is ethnic cleansing bordering on genocide, the most terrible of crimes against humanity, a crime which saw the creation, in 1948, of a convention whose 50th anniversary we celebrated last year. The convention provides not only that the crime of genocide is punishable but also that nations have an obligation to prevent it.
Today, as the century comes to a close, countries, including Canada, seem too little concerned with trying to prevent a genocide that echoes the genocides with which the century opened: the genocides of the Armenians, the Jews during World War II and, more recently, the Cambodians and Rwandans.
We must say publicly that we have an obligation to prevent a genocide. We must say it in parliaments, for parliaments have the role of informing the public, of presenting the situation and informing the public through its elected representatives. Until now, elected representatives have had the less than satisfactory task of receiving information and passing it on to the public that duly elected them.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs is the primary spokesperson and we have had debates on this topic. When the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who is the government's leading spokesperson on this issue, tells us that it is the government's prerogative to decide to send troops abroad, he is forgetting that, in 1991, this parliament voted in favour of sending troops to Iraq. There is a precedent for voting in favour of sending troops to Kosovo, whether to impose peace there or maintain it.
This is an important precedent. We invoke it, and continue to invoke it, because it belies any notion that the government does not have to consult parliament and put the question to a vote because its prerogative does not necessarily require it to consult that body.
The government should follow the lead of other parliaments. The Minister of Foreign Affairs himself, during a hearing of the foreign affairs committee, gave the example of Germany which, by the way, has proposed a peace plan that the Bloc Quebecois had asked the Government of Canada to sponsor.
Germany is not afraid of its parliament. There have already been two debates and two votes in the German parliament on this issue. The government cannot invoke what is going on in foreign parliaments to justify an opposition to a vote in the Canadian parliament.
Hungarian and Czech parliamentarians also had an opportunity to vote on this issue. The Czech constitution even provides that the deployment of troops in a foreign country must be debated and approved by parliament.
This shows that other NATO member states trust their parliamentarians and their parliaments, and I believe that the Canadian parliament should also have a decisive role to play on this fundamental issue.
Apart from saying that parliament must have a decisive role to play, I cannot exclude dealing with other dimensions of this conflict which the Bloc Quebecois has been concerned with since the beginning.
There is a humanitarian aspect about which we must have the highest concern: there are too many refugees. There are now hundreds of thousands of them. Kosovo, as I already said, is being emptied and its people is the victim of ethnic cleansing and, likely, of genocide.
We must help. We must be generous and show solidarity in this terrible ordeal the Kosovar people is undergoing. The government must act in a more transparent way. It must share information. Militants of the Bloc Quebecois participating in a general council during the weekend asked the government to be generous to refugees and to spend the $100 million committed to aid for the refugees in those countries where they have found refuge.
We must not forget the criminal dimension of this conflict. There are people, heads of state, politicians who are presumably taking part in crimes against humanity, crimes of genocide. They must not escape punishment.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia should one day soon, real soon, bring to justice the individuals who committed and are still committing crimes against humanity. As for the man responsible for such crimes, the head of the Yugoslav state, he should not be spared and escape punishment.
There is also a political role or dimension to this conflict that should not be overlooked. We in the Bloc Quebecois have always been concerned with the role the UN must keep on playing when it comes to putting an end to international conflicts, settling differences, in order to maintain international peace and security.
We still believe the security council should play a role, and Kofi Annan, who is very well received by the Europeans, should also be invited by Canada to play a more active role.
If it proved necessary, we could eventually ask the General Assembly of the United Nations, in keeping with the Acheson resolution, to play a role in maintaining international peace and security with regard to the present conflict. We think it is important for the United Nations not to be cast aside, not to be marginalized, to take part in the dispute settlement process so that it can maintain its role in the future.
I conclude by putting forward an amendment. I move:
That the motion be amended by replacing the words “debate and a” with the following:
“prior debate and”
Lastly, I would like to quote not Euripides like I did last week, but Victor Hugo. The celebrated poet once wrote that war is the clash of men and peace is the clash of ideas.
Let us restore peace in Kosovo through every possible means, so that one great idea, peace, can prevail and future generations of Kosovars can be spared the horrors of war.
