Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak in favour of the government motion seeking support for its decision:
...to contribute Canadian military assets to the fight against ISIL, and terrorists allied with ISIL, including air strikes capability for a period of up to six months...
I will begin by reminding the House of the facts on the ground and the crimes committed by that organization, which is basically a death cult. It is a genocidal organization motivated by its hatred of innocent people. It continues to commit acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing, mass rape of women and girls, sexual slavery, daily torture and the beheading of innocent people, including children.
To some people, the barbarity of this organization may be hard to conceive of, and some may dismiss the reality of the evil of this organization. However, even the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the United Nations, in its report published in late September, said that the so-called Islamic State:
...attacks directly targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure, executions and other targeted killings of civilians, abductions, rape and other forms of sexual and physical violence perpetrated against women and children, forced recruitment of children, destruction or desecration of places of religious or cultural significance, wanton destruction and looting of property, and denial of fundamental freedoms.
The UN report went on to say:
[The Islamic State] has directly and systematically targeted Iraq's various diverse ethnic and religious communities, subjecting them to a range of gross human rights abuses, including murder, physical and sexual assault, robbery, wanton destruction of property, destruction of places of religious or cultural significance, forced conversions, denial of access to basic humanitarian services, and forced expulsion. The targeting of ethnic and religious communities by ISIL appears to be part of deliberate and systematic policy that aims to suppress, permanently cleanse or expel, or in some instances, destroy completely those communities within its area of control.
The report goes on to detail the most horrific and unthinkable acts, including, if members can imagine, the kidnapping and torture of a three-year-old girl. Images are in the public domain of children having been decapitated by this organization because of the religious convictions of their families and of their community.
When we last debated this humanitarian moral crisis two weeks ago, I mentioned my conversation with my friend, the patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic church, the largest Christian community in Iraq, a community that is indigenous to Iraq.
The Chaldean community speaks Aramaic, the language of Jesus Christ, which has been spoken in that region for over 20 centuries. These are the indigenous people of Mesopotamia.
He told me about how Daesh, the Islamic State jihadis, entered hospitals where infirm, handicapped, elderly Christians were unable to leave and were threatened with decapitation in their hospital beds if they did not immediately convert to Islam. I cannot think of an organization in my lifetime, or perhaps all of modern history, that represents such brazen evil, such depravity, and it cannot be overstated.
That is why Iraqis, particularly those of the minority communities, are asking us to do what we can to offer them protection.
For example, I noticed a report in today's National Post, in which Matthew Fisher interviewed local Kurds and Christians in the region, one of whom, Mr. Shoban Kunda, a Christian, speaking in Erbil, near the territories controlled by the Islamic state, said, “If the U.S. airplanes had not been here at the right moment, Erbil would have fallen and ISIL would be here”. He went on to say, “So we know that air power can help to stop [ISIL].”
Another Christian said, “someone has to stop Daesh...because they want to destroy everything and bring...the world back to the Middle Ages.”
Mr. Fisher also reports that those he interviewed were “astonished” when told that two of Canada's political parties have opposed the plan to send Canadian warplanes to assist them.
The day before, Matthew Fisher interviewed other local members of minority communities, including Behar Namiq, a Kurdish shop owner in Erbil, who said, “I know all about what Canada is doing”.... “it will be very good what the Canadians will soon do [here] in Iraq.”
The Iraqi government has requested Canada's assistance, as reflected in today's motion, but ordinary Iraqis have asked for this assistance. When I spoke to Patriarch Sako, he asked for Canada's military assistance. People understand that this country has some capacity to project our power in their defence, and so too do Canadians.
As the Minister for Multiculturalism, I have received dozens of letters from Canadians calling on our government to take serious action to support military action in Iraq in order to protect the innocent.
I have a letter from Father Sarmed Balious, on behalf of Canadian Chaldean Catholics, who said:
...we declare our strong support to Canada's decision to join the Allies in conducting air strikes against Islamic militants for up to six months in Iraq.
I have a letter from Muslims Facing Tomorrow, who wrote:
We support [the Prime Minister and his government] unconditionally in the stated mission to degrade and contain ISIL as put forth in the motion before the House.
I think we should heed these voices.
Let me address a canard that I believe was raised by the Leader of the Opposition, who suggested that ISIL is just another manifestation of the same forces that the United States has been encountering in Iraq for 10 years. The American forces have not been present in Iraq for the past two years, as President Obama has completed the American military mission in Iraq.
There is a complete and radical difference in the nature of this organization. It is true that some Baathist figures and some tribal Sunni figures have assisted Daesh in recent months. However, this is a fundamentally different organization, given the nature of its actions, its effort to create a caliphate and project state-like power through the entire region, indeed to explicitly target Canada.
If it can be said that the position of the Leader of the Opposition is that this is too great a challenge for us to address militarily, that could also be said of this arc of violence that is motivated by the doctrine of armed jihad that we see from West Africa, from Boko Haram in Nigeria to al Shabaab in East Africa, through the various Salafi-Jihadi forces, through Yemen, the Levant, Daesh itself, and al-Nusra, al Qaeda, the Deobandi, and Taliban militias in Pakistan, all the way to the southern Philippines. There is an arc of violence held together by a common perversion of theology. In the broadest sense it is a civilizational struggle for all civilized people, but in this motion, we are talking about one immediate action that we can take to help, we hope, save some lives. I believe doing so is in the truest Canadian tradition.
I call upon all members to support the motion.
