Mr. Speaker, Canada has a history, one could call it a legacy, of providing sanctuary to those in the United States who, for reasons of principle, make that difficult decision to leave their homeland and come up north to Canada. We could go back to the era of the Loyalists, or the Underground Railroad which funnelled slaves to freedom in Canada.
In the modern era we have the example of the Vietnam war. Some 50,000 Vietnam war draft dodgers came up to Canada, found sanctuary and began new lives. We welcomed them. At the same time, approximately 5,000 active duty soldiers, many of them volunteers, after having done a tour of duty in Vietnam and having seen the reality of that war, also made the decision to come up to Canada. They did not come up as draft dodgers. They were active duty soldiers and Vietnam war resisters.
Currently there are approximately 200 Iraq war resisters in our country. On June 3, 2008, Parliament reaffirmed the Canadian legacy of providing sanctuary. We reaffirmed it by a majority vote. The motion reads in part:
[T]he government immediately implement a program to allow conscientious objectors and their immediate family members (partners and dependents), who have refused or left military service related to war not sanctioned by the United Nations and do not have a criminal record, to apply for permanent resident status and remain in Canada--
Throughout Canada's history, there has always been a minority within the country who do not agree with providing sanctuary. There was a minority who did not agree with allowing the Loyalists and slaves in. During the Vietnam war there was a minority who did not like the idea of allowing the draft dodgers to stay. We have always allowed them to remain and have provided them with the opportunity to stay in Canada. We reaffirmed it.
Polling has shown two-thirds of Canadians would like the Iraq war resisters to be given the opportunity to stay in Canada. Unfortunately, notwithstanding the will of the majority of Canadians, Parliament and the House of Commons, in this particular case the minority Conservative government has decided it will deport the resisters.
In fact, within a month of the House of Commons expressing its will to allow them to stay, the government provided the Bush administration with a present. On July 4, an American holiday, the government began proceedings against the first Iraq war resister to be deported, Mr. Robin Long. Mr. Long applied to the Federal Court to not be deported. When his case was heard, Federal Court justice Anne Mactavish decided that irreparable harm would not be caused should the young man be deported.
Based on all the statistics she would have had in front of her, that seemed to be a correct decision. Only 10% of soldiers who go AWOL end up charged in the United States. Of those 10%, the vast majority receive very minor sentences of six to eight months.
I will give an example of the type of justice the U.S. military metes out in military courts. First infantry division soldier Belmor Ramos was sentenced to seven months after being convicted of conspiracy to commit the murder of four Iraqi men. In 2007 he stood guard while others blindfolded and shot in the head four unidentified men, and afterwards dumped their bodies in a Baghdad canal. During his court martial, Ramos admitted his guilt, stating, “I wanted them dead. I had no legal justification to do this”. He got seven months.
Only 10% of those going AWOL end up charged. In that extremely serious case involving murder, there was a seven month sentence. Justice Mactavish quite reasonably deduced that irreparable harm would not be caused.
What happened? Mr. Long was deported. During his trial only one piece of evidence was presented. It was a CBC interview. The prosecution produced a CBC interview where he spoke out against the Iraq war. He received a 15 month sentence. That was 15 months for a young man of 25, a young father with a three-year-old Canadian born child. He should be with his son during the formative years. Quite clearly, the U.S. military justice system has caused irreparable harm to Mr. Robin Long.
What is even more disturbing is that in January of this year the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration publicly stated to the media that these people are not Iraq war resisters, that they are strictly deserters.
There are two problems with that statement. The first one is, the minister is supposed to have an arm's length relationship with the Immigration and Refugee Board. Decisions before the board should not be prejudged by the very minister who appoints and reappoints the board members. All those decisions of the board are now under a cloud. Even worse, before publicly making this proclamation, I question whether or not the minister actually sat down with these Iraq war resisters to hear their stories. The minister may not have, but in December I did.
I sat down with Iraq war resister Kimberly Rivera, a young mother of three, including a four-month-old Canadian born child. Kimberly was a volunteer, a patriotic American. She believed her president when he said there were weapons of mass destruction. However, upon arriving in Iraq, she became aware of a different reality. She told me that she saw the personal destruction of civilians' property and homes, the death of civilians, the shell-shocked small Iraqi children.
When she came back on leave, she made the difficult decision for a patriotic American, to uproot her family and come to Canada seeking sanctuary. She is quite clearly a conscientious objector. She is in jeopardy of being deported, and we know what kind of justice is being meted out by the U.S. military for those who speak out against the war in Iraq in Canada.
Why would we put this young mother of three children in a situation of jeopardy of this sort? Why would we separate her from her four-month-old Canadian born infant and put this young mother in prison for having made the principled decision not to be an agent in this particular war?
Let me also give the case of Phil McDowell. He was in Ottawa yesterday and I spoke with him briefly. He was in his senior year in university majoring in information technology. After 9/11 he volunteered. He served in Iraq from March 2004 to March 2005. He did his duty. He was disillusioned in the same way that Kimberly was disillusioned, but then he was called up again because of stop-loss, what many call forced deployment, a backdoor draft.
Parliament has expressed its will by majority. Let us not undermine the will of Parliament. Let us stop these deportations.