Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise this evening to participate in the second reading debate of Bill S-10, the prohibiting cluster munitions act. I am pleased to hear from some who have already spoken about why the Convention on Cluster Munitions is needed so urgently and why it is important that the House pass Bill S-10 quickly.
The need is obvious. As the Minister of Foreign Affairs has stated many times, and as was repeated just hours ago by the Minister of National Defence, our government is proud of the active role we played in the negotiation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions. I might add that this included Mr. Turcotte, who was at all three meetings of the cluster munitions convention negotiations and who negotiated specifically article 21, which the opposition does not want to talk about, to provide for the interoperability of Canadian Armed Forces with its allies.
We were committed to this cause at that time, and we remain just as committed today. However, there remains one outstanding issue, that of interoperability. As much as we would like to live in an ideal world, we do not. As much as we would like to live in a world where every country has signed on to the convention, we do not.
In the real world, the Canadian Armed Forces co-operates closely with our American allies and undertakes many joint missions. We actively second military personnel to each other's armed forces. These secondments strengthen the co-operation between our armed forces and improve the security and safety of all Canadians. These secondments are an opportunity for Canadians to gain significant experience abroad and to return that much stronger. Such co-operation between the Canadian and American militaries is both necessary and desirable. That is the reality of the world we live in.
In order for the members of the Canadian Armed Forces to be able to work closely and effectively with their American counterparts, a clause in the Convention on Cluster Munitions was needed to allow Canada and the other countries to sign the treaty while allowing them at the same time to continue co-operating with the armed forces of those countries that have not signed the convention. It is for this reason that Canada, joined by other states, negotiated to include article 21 in the convention to permit military co-operation and operations with states that have not signed the treaty.
In our view, article 21 strikes a balance in addressing the humanitarian impact of cluster munitions while allowing states parties to protect their own legitimate national security and defence interests.
The reality is that article 21 is part of the convention, a convention that to date 112 countries have signed and 83 countries have ratified.
From the beginning of the negotiations, Canada supported the need to ensure that countries could continue to collaborate militarily with those that have not signed the treaty. The Canadian delegation and others made this point strongly in every negotiating session since 2007, and we are satisfied that article 21 adequately meets this need. Authorizing members of the Canadian Armed Forces to carry out operations with the armed forces of countries that have not signed the convention will allow Canada to maintain our special co-operative relationship with the United States. Clause 11 of the bill would allow Canada to support the convention and at the same time meet our security needs in co-operation with our American allies.
Canada, as we know, has more interoperations with the American military than any other country in the world. Canada has a clear mandate in negotiations, and we have always been open and transparent in exactly what we wanted to accomplish. Others are free to have their point of view, but the treaty and this legislation represents the view of the Government of Canada.
The Minister of National Defence touched on this briefly a little earlier, but I think it is important to again emphasize that under Bill S-10, the Canadian Armed Forces members would still be prohibited from using cluster munitions during Canadian Armed Forces operations.
Members of the Canadian Armed Forces would also be prohibited from using cluster munitions and from training in the use of cluster munitions when they were on an exchange with another country's armed forces. The Canadian Armed Forces would also not be permitted to transport cluster munitions on Canadian vehicles belonging to the Canadian Armed Forces.
As I said at the outset, much of the debate on Bill S-10, and indeed on the convention itself, has concerned the issue of interoperability. Since under the convention this would be a criminal offence, it is necessary that Bill S-10 ensure that members of the Canadian Armed Forces who participate in operations with the U.S. armed forces not be held criminally responsible for anything that may violate the terms of the treaty.
Imagine if a Canadian commander were under intense fire from the enemy and called in close air support from our American ally, and that American ally chose to drop a cluster munition. Would our commander then be criminally responsible? I think under the legislation, the opposition is suggesting that he or she would be. Should the commander in that situation not call in that close air support and allow Canadian soldiers to die? That is what we are talking about here.
What they are proposing would put Canadian military personnel in a very difficult and potentially very dangerous situation. This is the reality of operating in the real world. We have to be sure to protect our men and women in uniform in these circumstances.
When the treaty was negotiated, it was accepted that not all countries would be able to sign the convention right away. The treaty's negotiators also recognized that multilateral operations would require states that have not yet signed onto the convention to work with those that already have. Here again, it was recognized that in the real world, things do not always work out the way we would like. Therefore, Canada and others insisted that ways be found to allow those countries that have signed on to the convention to work with those that have not.
That is article 21, subsection 3, of the convention. That is in the convention that all countries ratified. Our allies, such as the United Kingdom and Australia, have put provisions into their legislation that would allow article 21 to operate so that their militaries could interoperate with other countries that use cluster munitions. That was negotiated by all of our negotiators, including Mr. Turcotte.
While some of the specific details in Bill S-10 may be different from the terms of the convention, that is simply because of the need to turn some multilateral treaty language into Canadian legal terms. This has to be done to meet our charter and other Canadian legislative standards for clarity in Canadian courts.
As members of the House will know, when senators considered this bill, they proposed a number of amendments that were either already covered in the bill or would have undermined its position.
Let me now review some of the senators' suggestions and examine why the government was not able to accept them.
As an example, some senators suggested making it an offence for a person to knowingly invest in a company that makes cluster munitions. That is already covered by Bill S-10, since investing in a commercial organization that produces cluster munitions would fall under the prohibition against aiding and abetting. Under section 10, as it now stands, aiding and abetting or counselling from Canada would be a criminal offence, even if the activity took place in a country where it was legal.
Concerning the senators' suggested amendment to create reporting requirements, the convention already requires reports annually from countries. Even though Canada has not yet ratified the treaty, the government is already providing the required reports voluntarily. Similarly, senators proposed an amendment concerning the stockpiling of cluster munitions. Here too the bill already addresses the issue of stockpiling cluster munitions, so the proposed amendment was not necessary. Although Bill S-10 does not refer to stockpiling as such, because it is not a term used in Canadian criminal law, the idea in the bill is referred to as “possession”.
Some of the senators' amendments would have added the word “transfer” to the definition in the prohibition provisions. The meaning of the word “transfer” in the convention requires prohibiting the physical movement of cluster munitions from one state to another when it also involves a change of ownership and control. Using this definition would have raised some concerns, because the word “transfer” already appears in many Canadian laws. In Bill S-10, therefore, we used the word “move” instead of the word “transfer”. Moving prohibited cluster munitions from one country to another would be an offence if the intent was to change the control and ownership of the munitions, which would be consistent with criminal law in Canada, therefore making it easier to prosecute in a Canadian court.
Another amendment proposed by senators would have the Canadian Armed Forces tell a country that has not signed the treaty, and with which we are engaged in military co-operation, about our obligations under the convention. However, the House should remember that Bill S-10 is about criminal law, so it would not be a good idea to include such an obligation in this bill. Besides, this obligation falls on the Government of Canada and not on individual members of the Canadian Armed Forces.
Can we imagine if it was the obligation of every member of the Canadian military in battlefield situations to point out to their counterparts, whether they be from the American military or the military of another allied nation, such as the ones we participated with in Afghanistan, that perhaps they should think about not using cluster munitions and destroy their stockpiles? In the heat of battle, the Canadian military personnel need to focus on the job at hand.
In another suggestion, senators proposed an amendment that would add the offence of extraterritoriality to the bill. This is not a requirement under the convention, and aside from that extraterritoriality is covered under Canadian law.
As many others have already pointed out, the Convention on Cluster Munitions would prohibit the use, production and transfer of cluster munitions. Even before we introduced this legislation, our government took important steps to fulfill our obligations under the Convention on Cluster Munitions. Canada has never produced or used cluster munitions. We have begun to destroy all the cluster munitions that we have, and we are already submitting annual reports as required by the convention, even though we have not yet ratified it.
Bill S-10 would implement the purpose of the convention by prohibiting the use, development, possession and import and export of cluster munitions. As well, it would ban the stockpiling or possession of cluster munitions in Canada, as we said earlier. We can already apply many parts of the treaty, but for other parts to come into force the House needs to pass Bill S-10 quickly.
The convention applies a number of obligations on the Government of Canada. However, we also need to apply these same obligations on individuals as well. To do that, Bill S-10 sets out a series of offences and defines them in order to allow their prosecution in the future. The bill also sets out when exceptions would apply, such as when cluster munitions are being used for research and training or where they are being transferred to be destroyed. Bill S-10 would also prevent Canadians from helping someone else from carrying out any activities prohibited by the treaty.
As we have heard from other speakers during this debate, cluster munitions are a dangerous type of weapon, which disproportionately affects civilians long after the fighting has ended. Children are particularly sad victims of these weapons, since children can often mistake them for brightly coloured toys. They pick them up to play with them, with tragic results. If that is not sad enough, cluster munitions make it impossible to use the land to raise cattle or grow crops, so farmers and ranchers cannot earn a living for a long time after the fighting ends.
Our government is committed to protecting civilians in war-torn parts of the world from the indiscriminate suffering that cluster munitions cause. We have done this through our support for the ban on land mines, and we will continue to do this by our support for a ban on cluster munitions under the Convention on Cluster Munitions. This legislation is an important step toward meeting this commitment.
Canada's ratification of the convention will give a strong signal of Canada's continued commitment to reducing the suffering caused by war. Innocent civilians, including children, need our help and they need it now.
I am proud to support Bill S-10, which would enable us to ratify the convention and begin once and for all to end the scourge of cluster munitions. I urge all members of the House to join me in supporting the bill.
