Fred Mifflin

[The Balkans, December 4th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I congratulate the hon. member for a good presentation. This is the kind of debate we were hoping to get, not just the usual political rhetoric even if it has to be within our own party. There are some different ideas about the kind of troops, the numbers and that kind of thing.

I want to comment on a very important statement the hon. member made. I have to agree with her. When we were in ex-Yugoslavia, in Croatia and particularly Bosnia, we did receive from the troops a justified concern that equipment was not the best for what they had to do.

In military operations one is seldom equipped 100 per cent for what one has to do. Even then measures had been taken with respect to the armour of the APCs and the other vehicles. Corrections were being made. Every member in the House is aware we have gone forward with priority, as indicated and agreed in the special joint committee, that we would rectify the deficiencies in APCs. That is under way.

Another aspect was quite glaring to us. We were concerned as a committee with the number of rotations individual soldiers had. The recommendation was made by the joint committee and it was agreed, certainly by the third party if not by the official opposition, that we would increase the army size by 3,000 troops. We recommended 2,500 in the report but I believe it worked out to 3,000 ground troops instead of headquarters personnel. That adjustment has been made. It should greatly improve the rotation of combat soldiers and should also make it better for logistic soldiers. I wanted to set the record straight on that.

[The Balkans, December 4th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know who is banging on the member's door. The member spoke of the HMCS Calgary and the brave actions of an outfit that he claims has difficulty with morale. Has he considered the awards that have been made, and I hope he attended some of the presentations by the Right Hon. Roméo LeBlanc at Rideau Hall, for some outstanding acts of heroism? Has he considered this action of an outfit that is plagued by bad morale?

[The Balkans, December 4th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, do I understand from the hon. member that the druthers of the third party is not to send any troops to participate in this operation?

[The Balkans, December 4th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for a presentation that certainly relates to the debate. I want to make a couple of comments with respect to the more pointed nature of my feelings on what he had to say.

I certainly do understand his concern as a member of the opposition about the possibility of changing the structure, the participation, the withdrawal, or the future of any NATO force and the Canadian participation without a debate in the House. I would at the same time quickly remind him that his leader was a member of the government who not more than four years ago participated in committing a very large Canadian force to the Persian Gulf without

as much as one word of debate in the House. I will tell him that if that has to happen, I would ask him to be considerate because it is not without precedent.

The previous government, of which his leader was a cabinet minister, used the phrase that it was not expeditious and propitious to do that. It is not always propitious and expeditious, so I would ask him to have understanding for these kinds of things.

I was expecting to hear from the parties opposite some comment on the size and structure of the force. I will give the hon. member credit, he talked about the possibility of surveillance and communications troops. But he did not give any indication of the scope of money he or his party were prepared to support.

The opposition parties, both the main opposition and the third party, have been mouthing off to the press. They have been going through a great litany and lexicon of rhetoric about not having a debate. Now that the time has arrived, lo and behold, they do not want to tell us what is on their minds. I have not heard a member of the opposition, with the exception of the possibility of surveillance and communications troops, say anything about what they would like to have in the way of whether it should be military, quasi-military, should we be a member of the commission, what kinds of rules of engagement we should have, what kind of a force we should have that is tailored to this kind of a mission, what kinds of conditions we should have in place to withdraw.

The conditions are right for the members of the opposition to stand up and put their money where their mouths are and tell us what they want to do. Do not be afraid. We will consider it. We may not do it to the letter of the law, but give us some range. What do they have in mind? What are we good at doing? Should we continue doing what we were doing before or should we do something differently? What other areas of expertise would they like us to use? Mr. Speaker, ask them to tell us what they would like to do.

[The Balkans, December 4th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted the hon. member gave me an opportunity to comment on some of the things he said.

I really have a problem with this. The opposition parties say there must be a debate in order for them to have input and say what it is they believe the government should be doing. I have heard three speakers and they have sat on the fence saying: "I wish the government would tell us what it is going to do".

In my presentation I went through the roles and missions of the NATO force and what it is supposed to be doing, as did the minister. I listed the participating countries. I mentioned precisely some of the things we may be doing. Last week opposition members had a briefing for over an hour and received a 19-page document with maps, options, command and controls and rules of engagement.

I have some idea of what I would like to do, but I am not permitted to do it. We have to wait for a debate and we want to wait for a debate. The opposition parties are cajoling us. Now that we are having a debate they are criticizing us because we have not told them what it is the government wants to do. If they want us to do that, I imagine the government could accommodate them. We have a lot of good decision makers here, so we could decide.

I thought the purpose of the debate was to allow the opposition parties to have input with respect to roughly how much money they thought would be reasonable and what roles we should continue in peacekeeping. Should they be military roles or would they like the preponderance to be in the human rights area? Should they be quasi-military or quasi-civilian roles? Would they prefer us to put all our eggs in the special commission basket? That is what I want to hear from them. If they want us to tell them, we can do that. Which is it? Do they want to participate or do they not?

[Balkans, December 4th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I remind myself that I am speaking on a motion by the Minister of National Defence:

That this House take note and welcome the recent Dayton peace agreement and the international community's continued efforts to bring enduring peace and security to the Balkans, and Canadian support of these efforts by participation in a multinational military implementation force under NATO command.

In the next 10 minutes or so I plan to talk about the new ground we are breaking, what are the trends, talk about what I see the missions are and give some possible areas of the difficulties that I foresee. Maybe from that one could draw some ideas about some of the things that Canadians could do with the considerable experience they have had in peacekeeping.

I want to start by going back to 1947. It depends on how one reads history, as the member for Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke mentioned. If members look at history they have to look at the trends. If they look at the trend beginning in 1947 and the 40 years until 1987, there were really 13 peacekeeping missions.

From 1987 until this year there have been double that or 26. If members look at 13 in 40 years and 26 in 5 years, there are twice as many in one-fifth the time. Therefore there is a factor of 10.

Whether that factor of 10 will continue to rise, I am not sure. It is an indicator that what we are doing now we are likely to have to do again some time in the not too distant future.

This is peacekeeping operation No. 40 in the world. I believe it is the most challenging one and that it will allow us to break new ground.

There is another aspect of this which, if it does not bother me, it guides me in my personal belief of what should be happening. There are 184 countries in the world. Some are very large. We are the second largest of the countries. Some are very small. Of the 184 countries, what is important to remember with respect to ethnicity, cultural differences and various other differences is that only 10 per cent of those countries have any kind of homogeneity in their population. Of those countries the 10 per cent has an ethnic grouping of about 75 per cent.

What we are seeing here may not be the end of our involvement in historical patterns. For that reason it is important for us to debate this issue. What we decide today will be debated in cabinet and will eventually become the Canadian decision. It will set ground rules for future involvement in what will inevitably be the result of these kinds of actions downstream, hopefully not too soon, but in all likelihood before this Parliament ends.

When considering the 44 months of difficulty which has existed in Bosnia, it is uplifting to talk about a chance to change the horror of war to the prospect of peace. A quarter of a million people have been killed. In the city of Sarajevo 10,500 people were killed. There are up to a million refugees. It is a very sad situation. They have a decimated landscape of shattered buildings, roofless homes, deserted towns and countless graves scattered in the hillsides, bearing the names of young men and women who were born after 1970.

The special joint committee of which I was privileged to be a member saw all of this. There is a battered, bombed out mental institution in Bacovici being run by Canadian soldiers and the wretched inhabitants of this institution depend on Canadians for their very existence.

In a civil war such as the one we have witnessed in Bosnia there are no winners nor are there likely to be winners. The only likelihood of a winner is the prospect of peace. Peace can be the only victor in this lexicon of issues.

The peace implementation plan, although it is not perfect, offers hope that some things will be no more. There will be no more days of dodging bullets and nights of artillery barrages. There will be no more winters of freshly dug cold and sinister graves. There will be no more years of isolation from the outside world.

There are 10 highlights to the Bosnia peace accord that were mentioned by the Minister of National Defence this morning. First, Bosnia remains a single state within a present border. There will be a Bosnian-Croat federation with 51 per cent of the territory and a Bosnian-Serb republic with 49 per cent.

Second, there will be a rotating presidency, beginning with a Bosnian-Muslim, a two-house Parliament and a constitutional court. The central government will have responsibility for foreign policy, foreign trade, monetary policy, citizenship, immigration and other collective issues.

The capital, Sarajevo, is united and under Muslim-Croat control. This may prove to be difficult in the future honing and improving of these negotiations.

International supervised elections should take place next year, or in the foreseeable future.

Almost a million refugees will be able to return home and people may move freely.

The control of Brcko, a Serb held town, will be decided by an arbitration panel made up of Muslims, Serbs and Europeans.

It is important to the issue that there will be a corridor of between three to five miles in northeast Bosnia linking the Serb held smaller territory to the east to the central northern part by a corridor called the Posavina corridor. That is still the subject of some intense negotiation.

The Muslim held town of Gorazde will be linked to the federation by a land corridor. The Serbs retain Srebrenica and Zepa, Muslim enclaves they overran last summer. Last but not least, the NATO implementation force will be participating in the near future. In fact it has already started.

What are the NATO objectives? There are two, primary and secondary. The primary objective, as I see it, which I will put slightly differently but with the same thrust as the Minister of National Defence, is to oversee the withdrawal of warring factions from a buffer zone about five kilometres or two and a half miles wide created in most places along the current ceasefire lines. After a certain period of time, maybe 30 or 45 days, this zone will be widened to five miles or more, except in Gorazde, Sarajevo and Brcko which, as I mentioned earlier, will have special boundaries.

The secondary mission is removing land mines and also quasi-military roles such as providing security for relief agencies, delivering food and other necessities of life and ensuring passage for the thousands of refugees that I mentioned.

To try and prevent small conflicts from growing there will be an agreement that several commissions could be created to discuss this.

I have given the background of what I believe is the setting for Canada's participation. We are breaking new ground. This is the first time that NATO has had a pure peacekeeping role. It is not only NATO. We are involved with the partnership for peace, our future allies, and Russia has a role to play with a command and control system that has been set up for the very first time.

Quite frankly, as a parliamentarian and a member of the government, there are risks involved. There have been risks in every peacekeeping operation. However, I quote the hon. member who stood up a few moments ago and said: "The risk of not participating either monetary wise or the risk of lives or wounded may be much greater than not participating".

From the various debates we have had in the last two years, from the special joint committee on defence, the white paper discussion and the present discussion on reserves, it is very clear to me that Canadians are prepared to and want to take this risk and participate in this operation.

It is the role we have to play. I really implore the opposition members, after their political rhetoric, to give the government some indication of what they believe the Canadian people would like us to do so that we can be guided in the cabinet discussions and downstream decisions.

[Balkans, December 4th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his presentation. I am left in some doubt as to what he was proposing in particular.

First I want to clarify the record. The hon. member said they do not have enough information in the third party. If my understanding is correct-and I am not sure if the hon. member was there-there was a briefing on Thursday. I do not know how long it went on, but I understood from at least two members of the third party that they were happy with the briefing.

At the briefing it was presented what Canada's role might be. They were given 15 options of some of the things we may be able to do, what the command and control arrangements were. I would have thought there was enough information there to provide the basis, with further learning and research, to come to the House in a debate with at least four days' warning to provide some useful input.

I am not really sure where third party members are coming from. I am very serious about this. For the last week they have been complaining that morale is not good enough to participate. I can only assume they received irate telephone calls from members of

the Canadians forces, because that does not now seem to be part of their presentation. I am not really sure where they are on that issue.

On the issue that they are not being included, we have had countless debates in the House, and he knows that no decision has yet been made on the troops that will be committed. I do not know if he expects that the third party and the opposition can go over to Brussels and meet. In our system of democratic government it is the ministers of the crown, the Minister of National Defence and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who go and meet with their counterparts in the NATO countries and the partnership for peace countries. There is no built-in system, other than corresponding with the minister. Have they ever heard of letters? Have they ever heard of meetings in the minister's office?

We have today this special presentation, a debate. As parliamentary secretary-and I am sure I am speaking for my colleague, the Minister of National Defence and Veterans Affairs-I want to hear from the member and from other members who speak from the third party, the opposition party and our own party. We have this debate today to find out what the opposition parties want to do. Give us some proposals. Help us. That is why we are having the debate, not to hear the sort of rhetoric we hear: we are not really sure what we should do, sitting on the fence, maybe we should and maybe we should not.

This is a golden opportunity. It is the first time in 45 years NATO will do a peacekeeping job all on its own, with the approval of the security council, with the possibility of participation of partnership for peace countries, with the involvement of Russia, our old cold war ally, under a system that should cause so much excitement and so much possibility for fertile imaginations and learned debate.

I am very disappointed at what the hon. member had to say. What would he like to do?

[Balkans, December 4th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Are there questions and comments on the hon. member's presentation?

[National Defence, November 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question, which I believe is of importance to all members of the House.

I have to tell the hon. member, and I believe the House is aware, that this spring a special commission was struck on the restructuring of Canada's reserves. The commission was chaired by a retired Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. Two acknowledged experts in the field were his compatriots on the study. The study was completed at the end of last month and was reported to the minister and indeed to the parliamentary committee.

The Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs is now in its third week of hearing witnesses with respect to the recommendations that were made on the report, which was tabled in the House about three weeks ago. The hon. member should also be aware that the other place has recently struck a committee and it too will be studying the contents of this very important report.

Regarding the timeframe, both committees are to make a report to the minister by mid-January.

[Peacekeeping, November 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, in response to the hon. member's questions, they are very valid.

The standing committee on defence, with the input of the third party, has agreed to a set of criteria in the white paper. I can assure him that these criteria will be looked at. They were developed basically by all parties in the House. We will try to provide

reasonable and responsible answers to these questions when the debate takes place.