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Crucial Fact

  • His favourite word was military.

Last in Parliament September 2021, as NDP MP for St. John's East (Newfoundland & Labrador)

Won his last election, in 2019, with 47% of the vote.

Statements in the House

Military Contribution Against ISIL October 7th, 2014

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the comments of the parliamentary secretary, particularly the first part about one of his constituents and the loss a mother was experiencing of her son who had become radicalized and gone to Iraq and lost his life. I am assuming it was Iraq—

Military Contribution Against ISIL October 7th, 2014

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the member for Winnipeg North and his predecessor, the member for Malpeque. Forgive me if I am confused about the position of the Liberal Party. I had understood that it gave unquestioned support for the initial mission of 30 days, even though questions were not answered. We did not support it because we did not really know what we were being asked to support. However, that is a different question altogether.

The Liberals, in both previous speeches, said that they are opposed to the air strikes but they want to find a military mission that they can get behind. I am wondering what that might be, because people are saying that the air strikes alone are not enough. The answer from the military perspective seems to be ground forces. Is that what the Liberal Party is now suggesting? Is it trying to show that it does want a military response but it has not figured out what that is, or is it just that it is not sure what it wants to propose?

Military Contribution Against ISIL October 7th, 2014

Mr. Speaker, we had an interesting debate yesterday. I do not know why, in the midst of that, the government House leader decided that they had to have a closure motion to bring it to an end.

On the government side mostly we have heard from ministers or parliamentary secretaries. I am sure there are a lot of backbenchers on the government side who would like to participate in this debate, and maybe a lot of other people over here.

Why insist on bringing the debate to a speedy close, when it is an important mission? Some of the speeches have been full of rhetoric, but this is an important debate. Questions need to be asked and answered.

I do not know why we are going through this process.

Military Contribution Against ISIL October 6th, 2014

Mr. Speaker, we were responding to the motion that was put forward and we wanted to make it clear that we did support that aspect of the mission that was already going on with military effort, the delivering of materiel and munitions. We do not make a general statement about that, but if we are to be actively involved in setting up refugee camps and those sorts of things, we may need a military component associated with that as well.

This is not about no military versus yes military. This is about the combat role. I think the Liberal Party now supports the fact that there ought not to be a combat role, at least with respect to air strikes. We have not discussed anything else, because there is nothing else on the table at this point and we were not consulted. It was not discussed with us. It was not discussed with our leader, which had always been done in the past, even with our current leader.

Also, we could not support a motion that did not have full disclosure from the beginning. I am afraid the member's party signed on to, essentially, a blank cheque without even hearing the details. All you asked at that time was if the government was to change it, to let you know. That was all I heard at the time. I did not hear anything about a vote. I did not hear anything about having a debate and full disclosure in the House. What I heard was “We support you and just keep us informed. We're going to monitor it. Keep us informed if there's any change.”

Military Contribution Against ISIL October 6th, 2014

Mr. Speaker, moral outrage is not a strategy. I do not know if he thinks someone bombing the places where these sex slaves are being held is going to solve the problem. I have a real problem with his solution. He should talk to the Minister of Foreign Affairs because he supports efforts to find a way to prosecute the people who are responsible. He spoke about it in his speech today and I would commend it to the member to read.

The people who are in need of help are the 1.8 million displaced who have fled from where the battle and the danger is. They are in humanitarian need now and they can be helped now, and should be. We know we can save many of their lives.

Military Contribution Against ISIL October 6th, 2014

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak to the motion of the government. I believe we have to put it clearly on the record what our concerns and views are with respect to the motion.

We are dealing with a motion that sometimes has been framed as air support and sometimes as air combat. Really, it not air combat, because we are not engaging fighter jet to fighter jet. This is clearly an air strike, a bombing mission, within Iraq.

We have clearly stated through our leader and elsewhere that we do not support this aspect of the mission. The motion calls for other things as does our amendment, but the question is whether we should join about a dozen other countries in bombing raids. We do not believe that is an effective Canadian solution to save lives now.

When we are talking about bombing and air strikes, there is a lot of controversy about whether it would even be effective in this situation. Even those who believe it is necessary are saying, and these are military strategists and other people who do not believe in military action, we will run out of targets very soon. Therefore, how effective will this be in the kind of contribution Canada could and should make?

The third thing is that air strikes of this nature, and in this case we are talking about air strikes in Iraq and Syria, are a bridge too far in the kind of mission we were told about on September 5.

I would like to make it clear that we did not support the first mission because we were not given the information to support it. We did not say that we would not support assisting, advising and helping the Kurdish Peshmerga to be strong enough to take on this threat. We did not get a chance to say it. We were not even getting the answers as to when the government was planning to go or what it was planning to do.

The member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie actually provided the answers for the government because the government was not providing them in committee. It was one of the more humorous things I have ever seen. Direct questions were being asked of the Minister of National Defence and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. We were not getting answers from them as they were stonewalling the questions. Rather the member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie was giving the answers for them.

We also do not support this action because it does not respond to the direct ask that Canada got from the Government of Iraq. My colleague for Ottawa Centre described this from the visit he had with the president of Iraq and the president of the Kurdish regional council. They spoke of the terrible tragedy they were facing with the immense crisis of the 1.8 million now internally displaced persons in need of help. We support the idea of doing something about that and we support the coalition.

This is a big coalition. There are some 60 nations involved and they are all playing different roles. As I mentioned, there are about a dozen now that are engaged in certain aspects of military support in terms of air strikes, including about five of the Arab nations in the region. That is what they have chosen to do.

A lot of nations are providing different military support, like Canada was doing up until now, in delivering munitions and ammunition from the Czech Republic and Albania. Italy has been doing things like that, as have other countries as well. However, we have a lot of other countries that are doing different things solely on the humanitarian side, for example, Norway, Italy and Germany, with a combination of military efforts and supplies as well as humanitarian aid.

Effectively, the amendment to the motion would be to put Canada in the same group as that. Saving lives now is a priority for Canadians.

I did a little research and it seems that the Libya mission and air strike mission cost about $350 million. Imagine that. If that was the level of commitment made then and if the government is prepared to make a similar level of commitment to an air campaign, imagine how many lives could be saved and what Canada could accomplish using its military, resources, expertise and history in helping some of those 1.8 million people get through what is to be a very harsh winter? There is a need for food, shelter, clothing, and those kinds of things. A significant effort could actually save lives.

We are dealing with a question of choice, and Canada has that choice. This is a legitimate disagreement, as my friend just pointed out, morally outrageous and not a strategy. It is all right to be morally outraged. We are all pretty outraged, frankly, with the kinds of atrocities that are being committed in Iraq. We are looking for a long-term solution. We have seen the Americans, Brits and others try to deal with the situation in Iraq for the past 10 years and what we are left with is this situation.

We want a long-term solution. We are outraged by the activities of this group as well, but we want to know what Canada can best do right now that will help save lives immediately and help the Peshmerga and the others get to the point where they can deal with this on the ground. As anybody in the military world says, air strikes are not going to solve the problem. Some even go so far as to say that they are counterproductive. Peggy Mason, who is a prominent former Canadian ambassador and adviser to a former prime minister, says that they are counterproductive, that they will not be effective and that we have to do something different because it has not worked in the past.

We want to do something that is going to be effective, in keeping with Canadian history, and save lives now. We believe that it will take a serious effort. I am not talking about sending another few million dollars; I am talking a serious commitment on behalf of Canada to address, to the best of its ability and resources, the humanitarian crisis as a result of the tragedy due to the atrocities going on there.

If members look at the amendment that the New Democrats have put forward, we have made it pretty clear that we want changes in the motion that would ensure that we first support the coalition. We want to ensure military support for the transportation of weapons. That is something we do support. We want a significant boost in humanitarian aid. We call on the government to provide assistance for the investigation and prosecution of war crimes, which I think there has been some nod toward today, especially dealing with sexual violence using rape as a weapon of war.

This requires significant investigation. It is not something we can simply forget about and hope that someone will bring them to justice. We have to get the evidence, provide the means to do that and put effort into getting the stories and collecting all of that. Many of these people who are victims of these atrocities and have that evidence are in these refugee camps or hope to be in refugee camps. Many of them do not want to leave the country and want to stay there, but they will need help until that country is safer.

We call on the government not to deploy Canadian Forces in combat operations and to report back on the cost of the mission on a monthly basis. We have made it clear. This is not supposed to be divisive. This is not about people who support the military and people who do not. We are calling for military support, but we also want to add that the government continue to offer its resolute and wholehearted support to the brave men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces who stand on guard for all of us.

It is a question of what choices we would make to contribute to this international mission. We believe the amendment to this motion contains them. They are serious, they are robust and they are part of the Canadian effort that will save lives now.

Military Contribution Against ISIL October 6th, 2014

Mr. Speaker, I know there is a fair bit of concern about what is happening in Iraq. The minister pointed out that there are over one million internally displaced persons. In fact it is about 1.8 million. Canada was asked directly in the personage of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the member for Ottawa Centre and the member for Westmount—Ville-Marie for support for this.

Comparing this with the Libya mission, which was an air bombing campaign as well, I just learned it cost $350 million with the deployment of maybe some 440 people. We are talking about a larger mission here in terms of numbers. Would the minister not think saving lives now, with the kind of commitment that could be made to do that as a result of the direct ask of the Iraqi government, would be an important thing for Canada to be doing? It is not simply the military mission or nothing.

Veterans Affairs October 6th, 2014

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Veterans Affairs' response to the all-party committee report on the veterans charter is being panned by leading veterans' groups.

For example, Veterans Canada describes the minister's response as a “...cryptically worded and evasive pseudo-commitment to make near imperceptible changes to the troubled benefits.” The minister and his department are described as “lackluster”.

Why did the minister give so paltry a reply, and will he reconsider his response to this important committee report?

Military Contribution Against ISIL October 6th, 2014

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend from Westmount—Ville-Marie for his intervention in this debate and for his remarks in the last number of weeks at both the foreign affairs committee and on numerous television programs. I just want to ask him this, because I was confused along the way. There was wholehearted support and unquestioning support for the initial mission, despite the lack of answers from the government. There were times when he was supporting a combat mission and air strikes, and other days when he was not. Some days he was supporting both positions. I think it was as late as last Sunday. Therefore, I am wondering what it is about this particular government proposal that led him and his party to all of a sudden say that they would not support a combat mission for the Canadian Forces in Iraq?

Military Contribution Against ISIL October 6th, 2014

Mr. Speaker, I want to raise one question about some of the remarks the minister made just now in answer to the parliamentary secretary's question and also, on the weekend, on CBC radio. He said that there was a unanimous resolution of the United Nations Security Council regarding the operation in Iraq. Again, the minister said that it has the authorization of the UN Security Council.

It is very clear, and I want to give the minister an opportunity to clarify it to the House and to the public, that UN Security Council resolution 2178 deals with the whole issue of foreign terrorist fighters travelling from their home countries to Iraq or elsewhere. It is a very general resolution. It deals specifically with asking countries to prevent people from within their borders, on a domestic basis, from engaging in foreign terrorism. That is the thrust of that motion. It was not a motion to authorize any campaign in Iraq involving military action such as is being suggested in the motion.

Would the minister please clarify those remarks? I think it is very misleading to suggest that the United Nations Security Council has authorized either the U.S. campaign or the campaign we are talking about here today.