Mr. Speaker, my preliminary remarks stand.
I want to congratulate you and say that I am delighted to stand and speak on this subject. It is a tribute to our men and women in uniform involved in peacekeeping operations, indeed to the Canadian military and to the institution of this House where members are allowed to speak without fear of being castigated by their whips and party officials.
With this kind of debate and the number of speakers we have heard this morning I have found the level of the debate to be very enlightening, non-partisan and what the Canadian public is looking forward to seeing, not just in the early days of this Parliament but as the 35th Parliament of Canada continues to operate.
I have had to change what initially was my approach because of the time. I will try to finish by two o'clock when Question Period starts although I may have to spill over.
What I want to do very briefly is look at why Canada has become so expert in peacekeeping. Why has it become the acceptable operation? We can look at some of the things that have changed that. Perhaps we can look at the future of these kinds of peacekeeping operations and then suggest some ground rules that may need to be looked at because we are now involved in a different kind of operation.
If we go back to the early beginnings of peacekeeping, I guess it really started during the cold war when most UN operations were paralysed except for peacekeeping in areas of the world that were either of little importance to the superpowers or the area of operation could be dangerous to the superpowers' interest.
I believe our first substantive peacekeeping operation took place in response to a United Nations request for officer observers in Kashmir that is strategically located between India and Pakistan. Canada agreed after some negotiation to send four officer observers from the army in 1949. The following year this was increased to eight officer observers and in fact was changed from the militia to the regular army. It is my understanding that this was the beginnings of peacekeeping.
That was in the late 1940s and we are still involved. We are still engaged in that operation. Shortly after, our participation in the United Nations Truce Supervisory Organization, UNTSO, took place in the Middle East. We are still there.
In 1954 Canada became involved in the International Control Commission in Indo-China. Although we were there for a different reason we are still there.
In 1956 Canada's military peacekeeping operation increased tremendously and dramatically when the Suez crisis erupted. The involvement of a Canadian who was then the external affairs minister, the Right Hon. Lester B. Pearson, is well known. We stayed there until our peacekeepers were kicked out by Mr. Nasser in 1967.
Our government contributed a battalion to Cyprus in 1964. It was supposed to last for six months. It has lasted for 30 years. As the hon. Minister of National Defence mentioned we still have peacekeepers in Cyprus. It is not the battalion that we had before, but we still have 10 members of the Canadian forces in Cyprus.
What am I saying? I am saying that in our involvement in peacekeeping operations, 44 since the first one, we have regrettably lost, not including Korea, 98 young Canadians of the 100,000 young men and women in uniform. That is our peacekeeping record. If we examine the operations we have to ask how Canada established this reputation. Was it because our population was benign? Was it because of the nature of our military forces? Was it because we had an extraordinary interest in world events? Was it because we were a middle power?
I do not think there is a simple answer but we need to look at some of the operations individually. We were involved in Cyprus because we were a NATO power interposed between two NATO countries. We were involved, I would suggest, in the International Control Commission in the mid-1950s because we were a western democracy.
We were involved in the Middle East operations, I suppose primarily because in both world wars we established a kind of professionalism and a general purpose force that was deployable, had good logistics, a good reputation and the ability to do it. As each of these 44 operations continued the success of one fuelled the other. Whenever a troubled part of the world lent itself to peacekeeping who was going to be called? Canada.
While the operations that took place until a few years ago were not standard in the sense of being the same in each operation, they were more or less, with the possible exception of the Belgian Congo to which reference has already been made and Korea, peacekeeping operations in the sense that they were policing. They became acceptable to Canadians because we as a military force and as a country made a change. We made a difference. We helped to keep the world a better place in which to live. Our military people became expert in it and it became acceptable, with minor exception, to all political parties.
A few years ago at the end of the cold war, the demise of the Berlin wall and the invasion of a foreign country attempting to take over the sovereignty of another country-and I refer now to the gulf war-the ground rules changed. After some discussion in the House and with some division of Canadian opinion we in Canada became involved in the gulf war.
After the gulf war I would suggest the situation changed. To begin with, the definition of peacekeeping did not stop at policing. It involved-and I am using simple terms-peacemaking which involved enforcement. It involved humanitarian aid which called up support in the feeding of people and the protection of lives. It involved other kinds of operations like for example in Cambodia with helping to run the country until a government was put in place.
Other things happened as well. The power of the United Nations changed in what was referred to as a new world order. It is what many of us in the House today have made oblique reference to as perhaps a world disorder.
Has that made a difference to the intensity and the number of operations in which we are going to be involved? I suggest it has. It is my thesis that we will see more requirements for peacekeeping in its general sense. We will see more in the intensity and more in the requirements to get other countries including Canada involved in the sovereign affairs of other countries.
I say that because in the 179 countries in the world today there are 4,000 languages. Some 60 of these countries have populations of one million or less and 40 of them have populations of less than 200,000. More important, and I think this is germane to the argument, less than 10 per cent of these countries have a homogeneous ethnic population and less than 5 per cent have an ethnic group that accounts for more than 75 per cent of the population. What we are seeing is an explosion of nations downward, to the point where they are really comprising the smallest ethnic and religious groups.
If we add to that the low levels of tolerance that seem to be dominant in the world today, poorer tolerance for religious, social and ethnic differences, we are going to see more requirements for peacekeepers.
What should our response be in Canada? Our response has to be relative to what it is we can do. What can we do? I want to suggest at the outset to the House and to anybody listening to this presentation that whether we stay, participate, do not participate or withdraw, it will never be related to the will of the Canadian forces in the sense that they will do the job they have been asked to do.
Our history recalls Canadian participation in an operation that heretofore had been impossible to achieve. I refer members of the House to Vimy Ridge. As a Newfoundlander I recall the heroic action of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment in 1916 when practically every member of that battalion was wiped out in a few hours. Let us make no mistake about it. It will not be a withdrawal because we do not want to stay.
However we have to look at some of the ground rules. Has the United Nations changed in its ability to control what is happening in the leadership of these operations, in the command and control of these operations? Have the mandates been clear? I recall a speech many of us would recall made in the Congress by General MacArthur when he returned from Korea. I remember his last resounding message was: "Of the corps, of the corps, of the corps".
I remember a presentation when I was a young officer being made by perhaps the father of peacekeeping, General E. L. M. Burns who commanded the Middle East involvement in our first real sizeable contribution to peacekeeping. If he had a refrain it was: where is the mandate, where is the mandate, where is the mandate? Without a mandate we can do nothing. Without an effective United Nations what we do may not be the right thing. It may not be done properly. It may not be timely. Where we go depends on the support we have, not just in Canada but in the world at large.
In my concluding remarks I would say that before we become involved as a country in peacekeeping operations we must check to see what is our mandate. What is the ability of the United Nations to command and control these particular operations? We can look at our requirements because of the kind of country we are. Because of our makeup it is in our interests to be involved in any activity that makes the world a more stable place to live.
It is also incumbent upon us to ensure that the things we do will not jeopardize the resources of our country, to say not the least of putting our young men and women in uniform in harm's way more so than we should be expected to do as a sovereign country.
