Mr. Speaker, first let me commend my colleague, the member for Ottawa Centre and the official opposition foreign affairs critic, on a clear and forceful speech this morning outlining the NDP's position on the motion before the House on the government's intention to expand the combat mission in Iraq to Syria and nominally add another year to the mission. I also want to commend my other colleagues who have spoken in the debate thus far.
I also want to acknowledge the appalling and abhorrent abuses and atrocities committed in Iraq and elsewhere by this vicious group known variously as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh. These include mass killings, sexual violence, slavery, forced displacement, and the destruction of holy and historic sites. In Iraq alone, the violence has led to the displacement of 2.5 million civilians and left 5.2 million in need of humanitarian assistance.
ISIL claims an old goal of parts of Islam, one that was even promoted in the Middle East by the west for its own purposes 100 years ago, which is the establishment of a caliphate. Its methods are brutal and are opposed by the rest of Islam. ISIL is fomenting and carrying out a most extreme battle between the Shiite and Shia branches of Islam, extreme intolerance to the point of death, and a radical ideology that in no way represents Islam.
The current crisis has been created by ISIL in the vacuum of governmental authority in Iraq after 10 years of military intervention by the United States and others. In response, the current international coalition of some 60 nations, led by the United States, is now working to deal with the threat of ISIL and the fallout of its actions. The coalition has undertaken the so-called “five lines of effort”, of which only one involves military combat. What is more, only a small minority of coalition partners are actually engaged in military combat. Canada is one of them.
The government started last September with a 30-day mission to advise and assist the Kurdish peshmerga in northern Iraq. Then it became a six-month air combat mission with the assurances of no ground combat, no painting targets, and no accompaniment of the Kurds into combat. Now the government is nominally adding another year to Canada's commitment and expanding into Syria without its consent, a condition set by the Prime Minister last fall.
I continue to say “nominally add another year” for a very good reason, which is that the Conservative government, through statements by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of National Defence, and the Prime Minister himself, has made it clear that it is headed toward a long-term military combat mission for Canada with no clear end. We will be faced with this decision as long as the Conservatives are in government.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of National Defence, and the Prime Minister have all stated that ISIL poses a direct threat to Canada. The Prime Minister said:
We will deal with it as long as it is there. We will not stop dealing with it before that.
Hearing that, we know we are in this for the long haul.
We have to look at how the government has defined the threat. The Minister of Foreign Affairs said in his speech this morning that Canadians are under siege. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of National Defence, and the Prime Minister have repeatedly said that ISIL has declared war on Canada. The Minister of National Defence actually invoked Canada's independent right of self-defence in international law as a justification for the actions being taken by Canada.
These overblown statements by the most senior leaders of the Canadian government risk the credibility of Canada in the international world and the credibility of the government at home. They are clearly designed to raise the level of fear among Canadian citizens. What kind of respect and reputation in foreign affairs can Canada expect with this kind of leadership on the most serious matter of state—going to war in foreign countries?
We do know, of course, that terrorists exist in Canada. That is not new, but neither the attacker on Parliament Hill nor the one in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu was sent here by any foreign entity.
As pointed out in one of Canada's foremost national newspapers, TheGlobe and Mail, despite attempts by the Prime Minister to closely tie ISIS to the terrorist threat in Canada, the actual connections are thin to non-existent.
Instead of dealing with the actual threat in Canada by engaging in robust and well-resourced anti-radicalization and counter-radicalization programs here at home, by working with the Muslim community instead of alienating them, by preventing the flow of funds to ISIL, by confronting the dire humanitarian situation in a significant and increased manner, and by doing all of those things that my colleague the member for Ottawa Centre emphasized in his speech this morning and that are contained in the NDP amendment, the current government is going down the road of war from mission creep to mission leap with no clear goals, no honesty with the House of Commons and the Canadian people, no clear end or exit strategy, dubious legal justification and no end gain.
In a television appearance the other day the Minister of National Defence stated that the strategy has gone from one of containing ISIl to defeating it. We just heard the same thing from the parliamentary secretary. The Minister of Foreign Affairs said something else today. However, when the Minister of National Defence was asked what happens in the event that Canada reaches the objective of defeating ISIL, he admitted that he would need to look for a crystal ball. That will give members some idea about where the government thinks this is going and how it would lead to the actual resolve it is proposing. The objectives keep changing depending on who is speaking, and without a clear objective the uncertainty about this mission and its length is obvious.
We cannot trust what the government will do in the course of this military action. We found that out over the last six months as the mission “evolved” without Canadians knowing about it at the time, and evolved contrary to the express promises of the Prime Minister.
This time he has given us a hint. On Tuesday in the House the Prime Minister said, “We have made important deployments...those deployments could easily be changed”. He also opened the door to further expansion, saying, “we must avoid, if we can, taking on ground combat responsibilities in this region. We seek to have the Iraqis do this themselves”. With the government's record, that is far from reassuring.
Have we learned nothing from our experience most recently in Afghanistan and Libya? Neither can be called a success. In Libya it was relatively easy to destroy the Government of Libya, although that was not the stated intention going in, which has changed from the “responsibility to protect” to “regime change”. The result was a disaster of instability, chaos and a vacuum into which numerous terrorist groups, including al Qaeda and ISIL are now free to operate. Now we are dealing with the fallout from a 10-year military intervention in Iraq. When will we acknowledge the limitations and significant potential for failure and disaster by taking this military approach again and again?
Let me be clear. The NDP supports the coalition, as do 60 other nations, with only a handful of our western allies engaged in air strikes, and none engaged as Canada is on the ground. This debate is about what role Canada should play as part of the coalition. Canada must act, but we must do so in the way we can best add value to the international coalition, and in a way that respects international law and our values as a country. We cannot support the long-term, ill-defined, military combat mission proposed in the motion. We have therefore amended it to conform to the important steps that Canada can and should take, both within Canada and in the region, to support those affected and to help build the long-term stability of Iraq and the entire region.
