Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I rise in the House to support this positive motion brought forward by my colleague, the member for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast. We will also support the amendment proposed by the Bloc Quebecois.
I will be sharing my time with the member for Cumberland—Colchester.
Today's debate on having a vote in the House of Commons before any military intervention in Iraq is welcome. However, I find it sad that we had to wait for an opposition day to have an opportunity to debate this issue.
It should be clear that the motion does not call for a vote now on the involvement of Canada but rather a vote as soon as the government has taken a decision. No one is rushing the government. The issue is, will the government be allowed to push Parliament out of the way?
For weeks now, all opposition parties have been demanding a vote prior to any military action, but these reasonable requests have fallen on deaf ears. The relevant precedents support the practice of Parliament voting on questions of war. The government can hide behind exceptions, but those exceptions are clearly not the rule.
What is more to the point is that public attitudes have changed profoundly since 1911, since 1939 and since 1950. For any minister who missed the 1960s, the whole debate about Vietnam reflected a fundamental change in the determination of citizens in democracies to be heard on questions of war and peace.
Yesterday, in my office, I had a visit from a young student from the Outaouais who circulated a petition that was signed by 3,000 students from the region. The petition will be presented by the member for Gatineau later this session. This shows that young people are deeply committed to issues dealing with war and peace.
Citizens today are more educated. They are more exacting and more determined to shape the events that shape their lives. Just as ministers can no longer get away with slipping off to some wealthy contributor's chalet, governments cannot get away with slipping off to war.
Parliament took clear account of those new public attitudes during the gulf war, which is the one engagement that most precisely parallels what faces Canada and the world today. This whole Parliament, every party agreed to precisely the right to vote that is being proposed here today.
In 1993 the Liberal government broke that consensus and brought in a new practice that denied Parliament the right to vote on military engagements, a vote that Parliament had exercised as recently as 1991. I point out to Liberal members opposite that that reversal on democracy was not in the Liberal Party red book of 1993. When it sought the support of citizens in the 1993 election, the Liberal Party did not campaign on denying Parliament the right to vote on these matters. On the contrary, the position of record of the Liberal Party in the 1993 election was the position it took in Parliament on the gulf war when the Liberal Party asked for precisely what is proposed in the motion today.
My point is not simply that the motion reflects exactly the position the Liberal Party asked for in 1991. It represents the position the Liberal Party stood for in the 1993 election when it won its mandate. Liberal members who might be pressured to oppose the motion would break faith with both what the public wants today and with what the Liberal Party stood for when it won its mandate in 1993.
The precedent clearly exists, the government's commitment is clear, and all that is missing is the willingness of members opposite to ensure that this House has the opportunity to do something concrete by voting on this issue.
The debate today is not about the government indulging Parliament. The government needs the authority of a vote by Parliament. Deliberately putting Canadian lives at risk is not a trivial matter. By definition, it is a decision a thousand times more grave than the ordinary day to day decisions of governments.
If the educated, informed, engaged, modern citizens of Canada are going to support a military action which could cost lives and which could have literally untold consequences, then those citizens must be brought into the decision. Canadians are reasonable if they are treated reasonably. They are capable of judging a case if they are allowed to hear that case. They would be far more likely to support a decision by the government if that decision were openly arrived at with the votes in Parliament that Canadians expect on matters of life and of death.
The Canadian public is deeply divided on the issue of war in Iraq. Public instincts in Canada are against decisions which the government refuses to put to a vote.
If any war goes wrong, if there are Canadian casualties, if bad judgment precipitates the collapse of stable regimes in Jordan, Egypt, or elsewhere in the Middle East; or if it precipitates the outbreak of violence in Indonesia, Africa, south Asia, Europe, or in the former Soviet Union; if the coalition against terrorism is shattered, the Canadian government is going to need Canadian public opinion. It is going to need legitimacy. It is going to need authority. A free and honest vote on any dangerous course of action is the best way to assure that legitimacy. To proceed without it would put at grave risk the government's ability to govern should, God forbid, things go badly wrong.
That authority is essential also in the wider world. In the short term, in the excruciating but relatively easy days of preparing for war, our potential allies want other governments on side, but as the going gets tough, they will want other populations on side. They will want to know that the Prime Minister speaks for more than his family and his friends. If Parliament is shut out and if the people are shut out when the basic decision is taken, Canadians will have no sense that any decision taken by the government on war or peace is their decision.
As times get tougher, they will turn away from a government which turned away from them. In that sense, the issue is not about democracy now. The issue is about authority later. The motion provides the simplest way to begin to build that authority.
In conclusion, I want to tell the government members that this motion is not, in any way, a non-confidence vote against the government. On the contrary, it is a vote for strong parliamentary democracy.
There is no possible way this can be considered a vote of non-confidence in the government. Votes of non-confidence bring the government to a halt. The motion explicitly contemplates that the government will stay in office, will continue to govern and will be free to take, as I quote the language “a decision...to involve Canada in any military action to disarm Saddam Hussein”. All the motion asks is that the ministers take account of the votes of the members of the House of Commons.
The parliamentary democracy of Australia did take a different course this week. It voted on specific motions of non-confidence in the government. That could have been done here if we were interested simply in playing politics. It was not done here. A different course was taken. A vote against the motion is a vote against Parliament and a vote against the right of the people to have their elected representatives decide the most critical issue that a nation will face.
