Simon de Jong

[Pre-Budget Consultations, February 1st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to congratulate the member for Brant for presenting some interesting ideas, particularly concerning some form of the guaranteed income. I think she will find that notion has wide support in this House. I hope that the Minister of Human Resources Development will look at the option as he reviews social policy as well.

My question for the hon. member concerns the government and the Liberal Party's promise of solving the problem of the deficit through more employment. It is an argument I totally accept.

Statistics Canada did a study as to the cause of the debt. I believe that study was done last summer. Statistics Canada said that of our accumulated debt, 50 per cent was due to interest payments, i.e. the high interest rate policies of the former Liberal government that the Conservative government continued. I believe 44 per cent was due to loss of income. The loss of income is due to the tax breaks of the former Liberal government that the Conservative government continued and only 6 per cent was due to increased government expenditures of which only 2 per cent was due to increased social spending. This is a study by Statistics Canada on the cause of the debt.

We have to increase our revenues. In other words we have to plug some of the tax loopholes. I encourage the government to continue to look at that but also we have to get people back to work.

The free trade agreement killed over 400,000 jobs. NAFTA is going to kill more jobs. Since coming into power the government has increased the tax on employment, discouraging employment by increasing the UI premiums. Second, it has ratified the NAFTA which is going to create more unemployment. How can the government in fairness state that creating more employment and therefore more revenues is its central concern when in fact the record so far indicates it has taken the opposite direction?

[Foreign Affairs, January 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, consider the role of the Canadian forces in Croatia where one-third of Croatia is still occupied by Serbian forces. We must surely keep our forces there. To take our forces out of Croatia and Bosnia would invite a much greater holocaust. There is absolutely no doubt about that.

Even though the situation in Croatia has not been resolved, at least the fighting and the massacre has stopped. The Croats and the Serbs are talking. They have made an agreement. They are going to open up embassies in each other's country and eventually through negotiation that dispute can be settled without the slaughter of men, women and children.

Canadian men and women have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Surely now is not the time to stop in our worthwhile effort.

[Foreign Affairs, January 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I ask for unanimous consent of the House for one minute to finish my remarks.

[Foreign Affairs, January 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity of joining the debate on this very important question. I appreciate the opportunity of being involved in this debate because my involvement as a person with both Croatia and Bosnia stretches back a few years now.

As I mentioned earlier in the House I helped to initiate the organization of a group of members of Parliament. We acted as observers in the first free election in Croatia. As well I helped do the same thing when the elections in Bosnia-Hercegovina occurred.

I remember spending election night with the Muslim party and celebrating with them their victory and the success of the first free election. At that time I had the hope that in Bosnia we would find a bridge between the middle eastern and western or European cultures. I was quite impressed by the people. I had met the Muslim people in Bosnia and I had high hopes that such a bridge would be built between the two different cultures and religions.

I experienced hope as well in Croatia as they started up their new government and in many ways I helped them. They wanted to know how to organize a public service commission, set up a department and what the environmental regulations were. It was the basic things in starting a government from scratch. There was the excitement as well of re-establishing their nation and their nationhood.

It was a period of a lot of hope and optimism. I made some basic understandings that even though one had many years of a totalitarian government that tried to suppress both religion and nationalism, I understood that one cannot suppress it. I am an internationalist, but one cannot suppress nationalism.

The only way to do it is as we have seen in western Europe and on the North American continent. It is the evolution of different nations coming together and beginning to realize that they have more in common with each other and a whole new attitude and a whole new approach starts to develop.

However, what I saw in both Bosnia and Croatia is that all the suppression did was to drive it underground and the moment the suppression was released it came back up to the surface right from where it left off. In the evolution of cultures, peoples and religions you cannot suppress. Suppression does not work.

I was concerned at that time that with the fall of the Berlin wall and the removal of the suppression that all sorts of groups of people who had been suppressed were going to demand their nationhood. I suggested at that time in a letter to the external affairs minister in a speech I made in the House that three principles should be observed.

First, it is the right to self-determination. The people in Croatia through a democratic process decided to become independent. They had that right.

Second, there is the principle that boundaries should exist the way they are and that that armed force would not be tolerated by the international community to change boundaries. The only way boundaries could change is through negotiation and in some instances perhaps through arbitration but only through a process such as this should boundaries change.

Third, there is the principle of the right of minority groups. Minority groups and people of different ethnic groups have been shifted around in the former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union.

How can one deal with this? One has to respect minority groups not just by putting it in high flowing terms in the Constitution but in having the mechanism as we have here with the human rights commission. We need some tribunal that could hear complaints, lay charges and levy fines and penalties if need be. It would be able to enforce the rights of minorities in order to ensure whether they are the minority Serbs in Croatia, the minority Muslims in Serbia or whatever that their rights would be respected and they would be respected as human beings. Unfortunately this did not happen and the whole former Yugoslavia has descended into hell.

I remember being back there in January 1992 and standing in a little village called Vocin. They had a 16th century church that was totally blown up. As I entered the village I thought it had hailed all these little pebbles all over the place. Then it was explained to me that several thousand tonnes of explosives had been used to totally destroy this church. It was explained to me that there were some 45 elderly people whose average age was 65 had been murdered in that village. They happened to be Croats. One or two were older Serbians who must have tried to protect the older Croatians.

I stood at a spot and the manacles were still there where an old man had been shot in the back of the head. His hands had been manacled. His body had been sawn in half and they had tried to burn his feet. His feet had just been stubbles.

There was madness, insanity and craziness. It is as though the hounds of hell had been let loose. It is as though we had serial killers on the loose enjoying the killing in their torture.

That madness now goes on and on. One hears stories of fundamentalist Islamics fighting-the Mujahedin-for the Bosnian cause. One hears stories where some of the worst of the secret police of Albania, Russia and the former East Germany are fighting on the Serb side.

Last week I had the opportunity of having lunch with quite a high official of the Croatian government. She was informing me

of a case of where a young Croat had come in and had seen the head of his best friend impaled on a post. He went out and committed all sorts of atrocities to this Muslim village.

The madness goes on and on. The way she described it was that it was the devil's banquet. What can we do? Why should our young Canadian men and women be out there at risk? There is no economic or strategic importance to us but there is a human moral interest to us.

At the end of the last war the world said that we would never again tolerate this type of holocaust. This type of holocaust is occurring today.

What I would propose is that the Canadian Armed Forces along with that of the UN and forces from other countries would militarily enforce a safe haven so that every man, woman and child in the affected areas who want to escape from the madness can go to the safe havens. We also propose to both the Croatians and the Serbians-

[Foreign Affairs, January 25th, 1994]

When we look at the history of the Croatian people I suspect we will find that the first ones were some of the earlier explorers of the St. Lawrence and other parts of this continent. The Croatian people have historically been known to be a great seafaring people. Descendants of the Croatian people can be found throughout the world. They have that in my common with my people from Holland. Holland was also a great seafaring nation and continues to be.

I am somewhat dismayed, however, at the suggestion and the conclusion of the hon. member. Understanding the frustrations that we all feel and that Canadians feel when we read about Canadian troops being mishandled and their lives being threatened while attempting to deliver humanitarian aid, the initial reaction is to get the heck out of there. We are trying to do good yet our lives are being threatened and we are being humiliated. In the end sober second thought has to decide what course we are going to take.

I hope before the government decides to act that it uses the intelligence network I am sure is operating in Bosnia-Hercegovina. As I understand it, it takes all the existing information and intelligence available to come to a basic conclusion or understanding.

If we remove Canadian troops and UN troops what will the results be? Will the result be a further and greater holocaust? What if our intelligence indicates that it will be? Even though that thin and inadequate UN line keeps some semblance of order and in its own way prevents a total holocaust from occurring, surely we have no other choice but to stay in there.

Can the hon. member tell us if he has any other information on which to base his opinion?

[Foreign Affairs, January 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the hon. member. I understand he is the first person born in Croatia to be a member of the Canadian Parliament. I sincerely congratulate him on that.

[Foreign Affairs, January 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the remarks by the member for Moose Jaw-Lake Centre. I appreciate the fact that his ancestry is Croatian.

Having been to Croatia and Bosnia several times and having helped organized the first group of members of Parliament who supervised the first free election both in Bosnia and in Croatia, what I am hearing from them is that even though the UN troops, both as peacekeepers in Croatia and as suppliers of humanitarian aid in Bosnia, even though the UN troops in many instances have been "ineffectual", they are a thin line which has prevented a total holocaust. To remove that thin line would mean the death of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children.

Are we really prepared and is the hon. member suggesting we should remove that thin line? Are we prepared to live with the consequences and the thought that we might have been responsible for the deaths of so many innocent people?