Joe Comartin

[Restoring Mail Delivery for Canadians Act, June 24th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, I think everyone in the House knows that we are currently debating a hoist motion on Bill C-6. The hoist motion goes back to Westminster. It has been around for about 150 or 160 years. When the Leader of the Opposition moved the motion yesterday evening, it was done advisedly.

The hoist motion is specifically designed to deal with legislation that is either premature, irresponsible in its nature, or just plain bad legislation. It is a motion that should not take up the time of the House for any one of those three reasons. Bill C-6 meets all three requirements. It is premature, it is grossly irresponsible and it is plain bad legislation. Again, I say that advisedly.

Today is Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day. We and the members of the Bloc Québécois have tried on several occasions to convince the government to adjourn today so that the members, especially those from the province of Quebec, could return to their ridings to celebrate Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day. But the government refused.

It is irresponsible on the government's part to do that. It is a national holiday for the francophone community in Quebec and across the country. Bringing the bill forward at this period of time shows that the government does not know what it is doing. The government believed it could shove this down our throats. Because Saint-Jean-Baptiste is June 24, it thought we would buckle and give in to that intimidation. That is also a typical bullying tactic for which the government is well known.

This is a bad bill, so the hoist motion should proceed successfully, I would urge. It is a very clear interference by a government in the collective bargaining process.

The NDP has a long history of opposing this type of legislation. We recognize that there are times when this will come forward. Even by those standards, using the standards of the Conservative government or a Liberal government, this bill is premature.

It is also incredibly naive on the part of the government. It shows a serious lack of understanding of how the collective bargaining process works. It so clearly and blatantly takes one side, not only on this bill, but on the bill that was before us last week with regard to Air Canada. A very clear signal goes out to the management side. It should not worry about bargaining in good faith. It should not worry about performing its job on the management side, of engaging their employees in proper collective bargaining. All it has to do is create either the appearance of, which is usual in these two cases, a crisis or create an actual crisis by its conduct. If management does that, it knows the government will step in. Not only will it step in, it will step in and take management's side. There is no other message from the government that one could take, based on these two pieces of legislation in these last two weeks.

The government has made it very clear, both from the bill we saw last week with regard to Air Canada, and Bill C-6 this week with regard to Canada Post. There were clauses in the bill last week, and I say this as a lawyer who has looked at a lot of collective agreements over the years, that could very easily have been written by the management side. There are clauses in Bill C-6 that similarly could easily have been written by Canada Post, entirely in its interest and entirely against the interest of its employees.

We have heard repeatedly this evening of the clause. It gets back to the intimidation the government uses all the time. It is saying to the workers that since they did not take what was offered to them on June 9, they will get less now.

[Restoring Mail Delivery for Canadians Act, June 24th, 2011]

I'm shocked.

[Fair and Efficient Criminal Trials Act, June 16th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, obviously I cannot give absolute assurance, but I will just use this one example that the parliamentary secretary herself raised.

In a great deal of the megatrials, time is spent on preliminary objections such as, has full disclosure been given by the prosecution, should this electronic surveillance material be allowed or excluded, and have there been infringements of the accused's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

As it stands now, those motions generally are handled this way. Every single accused, or his or her counsel on his or her behalf, gets to argue. Oftentimes they are all arguing about the same evidence, has disclosure been given to accused A, B, C, D, E, F, G. They all get to make the argument and most of the time before different judges.

What this will do is consolidate all of them before the same judge, so there will not be the problem of conflicts in terms of decisions. As soon as there is a conflict wherein one judge says that there has been full disclosure and then judge D says that there has not been, it then becomes wide open for appeal and the Court of Appeal must resolve it. Therefore, by consolidating that it will certainly make the process more efficient and quite frankly, it will make it fair.

[Fair and Efficient Criminal Trials Act, June 16th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the parliamentary secretary for justice, for the question and congratulate him on his appointment.

Of course, he is new to the position, so the question I think ignores the reality of what has happened and the role that I personally have played and, more importantly, that my party has played on getting justice bills through the House in an efficient fashion as opposed to the politics that his party has historically played.

It is really quite offensive the number of times that party has trotted out victims of crime in this country to use them as photo ops, as props. It did not do it just once in a number of these bills. I can think of several bills where it was done three times. The reason it was done three times, or there was the opportunity to do it three times, was because the government would prorogue Parliament or call an election in contravention of legislation that the Prime Minister himself shoved through this House. Therefore, there were three times that victims were trotted out and used as props for the government.

I did not come to this late. I have already told the story about the Shoker. It took me two and a half months of recommendations to the government to get it to agree. We only got it because we were coming near the end of the year last year and we got that through. However, I had suggested that over a two and a half month period before we got that one through. That one took precedence. This one was the next one. If we would have had enough time without the election intervening, I would have pushed this one through earlier as well.

[Fair and Efficient Criminal Trials Act, June 16th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-2, which has become known as the megatrials bill.

The House and the Canadian public should be aware that this legislation has been a long time coming. The pressure for this has existed in the system for well over five years now. We began using megatrials in the criminal justice system maybe 12 to 13 years ago, and they have been far from successful. Several have literally collapsed completely, where 10 and 20 accused walked away without the trial ever being completed and with no subsequent charges.

I think, in particular, of the one case in Manitoba where a great deal of money was spent on building a whole new facility. A huge amount of hours of police time, prosecutor time, judicial time and the defence bar was involved. At the end of the day, the entire thing collapsed with no convictions. That probably is the most notorious failure of the megatrials, but they are necessary.

What has become obvious to a lot of people, and only recently to the government, is that there are some practical solutions to the problems we have confronted.

The bill was originally introduced by the government in November 2010. The reason the NDP has pressed the government to bring it back in now is because of a decision out of Quebec just two weeks ago in a megatrial involving organized crime in the form of the biker gangs. Something like 100-plus people were charged. Judge Brunton, who dealt with preliminary matters in the megatrial, concluded that 31 accused would have their charges dismissed because there was no way they would get to trial in less than 10 years. Therefore, we are faced with that reality. That is a clear finding of fact on his part.

Society is somewhat fortunate in that the charges that were dismissed were not the more serious ones. A murder charge, attempted murder, other violent assault type of crimes plus organized crime charges were involved in that megatrial, all against bikers in Quebec. The balance of the charges are still outstanding. Based on Judge Brunton's ruling, there are still some of those that may be at risk six months or a year from now. It is absolutely crucial that we get this legislation through as quickly as possible.

I am sure a number of people have heard that the leader of the Green Party in the House has some objection to the speedy passing of the bill. The Quebec minister of justice came here to discuss this with her, to encourage her to withdraw her objections to the speedy passage of the bill because the administration of justice in Quebec know how serious it would be if we did not get the bill into place as quickly as possible.

My party and I encourage the government to get this through. We were happy when it finally brought the motion forward today to speed it through. If we follow the motion, it will be done by Wednesday of next week. That will give the Senate time to look at it and get it through in the following few days. Even if our House is complete, the other House will still have time to finish it off before it breaks for the summer. Then the government will have the ability to get royal assent and we will see this in Canadian law by the end of this month. That is the plan.

I want to acknowledge that Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada was very quick to respond when I first spoke to him about this. I am critical of him because there were a whole bunch of other laws in the last Parliament that took precedence over this one.

I also want to acknowledge the co-operation from the Liberal Party critic. He was very quick to respond favourably to the quick passage of the bill.

The reason I am significantly critical of the government on this one is that if we go back and look at the history of the types of proposals in this bill, which will become the law of the country by the end of the month, almost all of them have been outstanding for several years.

We saw some of them come out of the Air India report by Justice Major. More extensively, we have had a number of these recommendations coming from the meetings of the attorneys general and solicitors general at the provincial and territorial level when they meet with the federal government, usually about every six months.

A number of them have been filtering through that. The government sat on them for this lengthy period of time. Those proposals go back for a number of years.

However, most important, I do not have any understanding or appreciation of why the government did not move immediately after the LeSage-Code report. Justice LeSage is the retired judge from Ontario. At the time Mr. Code was a professor and is now a justice in Ontario, as well.

In the period of 2007, and finally reporting in 2008, they were commissioned by the provincial Government of Ontario to conduct an analysis of how we could better handle, within the criminal justice system, megatrials, ensuring that they were fair, that due process was respected, those rights that we all have as Canadians under the Charter, but also that we had an efficient, speedy trial process, where due process was respected, but so were the rights of the accused and society as a whole.

Their report came out in 2008. It was very clear on almost everything that is in this bill. There were more recommendations than what is in the bill because other issues were dealt with in that report. We did not see a response, in the form of a bill, from the government until more than two years later. I do not have any understanding as to why that is, other than it had other bills it thought were more attractive politically for them to push than this one.

It is not the only time we have faced this. My proposal to speed a bill up occurred once before in 2010. It was known as the Shoker bill, which is the name of the case that went to the Supreme Court of Canada. It was a practical solution that we needed and it was strongly recommended by our police forces because it gave them an additional tool to deal with people who had breached their probation and parole.

It sat lingering on the order paper for almost two years, while we went through one of the prorogations and an election. Just before we broke for the end of the year, I made a similar proposal. It took me about two weeks to convince the government to do it. There was no explanation. It was a very simple bill. The proposal for the resolution of it had been outstanding for several years, but it needed to be pushed. It did not attract attention. It was not one of those photo op opportunities for the government.

Having that experience, and finally convincing the government to do it in that case, we felt we should do the same thing for this. Of course it was triggered in particular by that decision in Quebec of a couple of weeks ago.

I also want to be clear about the importance of getting this through. The Quebec case is not the only megatrial case going on in the country right now. There are at least several others and there are some others coming. We just had a major raid in Ontario, either yesterday or the day before, that is likely to end up in a megatrial.

Based on the ruling from Judge Brunton in the Quebec case, with absolute certainty, I am sure defence lawyers on behalf of the accused are looking at that decision and wondering whether they can apply it in some of these other megatrials, having additional accused persons discharged before we have the opportunity to actually prosecute them, presuming sufficient evidence to convict them.

There is a risk here, beyond the consequences of the Quebec case, as there are others outstanding where we may be faced with the same thing.

I have one more point and I want to be careful about this because the case is still before the court. However, I urge both the Government of Canada and the province of Quebec to consider an appeal in that case. The reason I feel comfortable in saying this is that Judge Brunton, in his decision, made reference to the fact that Bill C-53, which was the bill that preceded this in the last Parliament, was outstanding. Had we had that, his decision might have been different.

Based on the general rule against substantive laws being retroactive, the immediate reaction is that it would not make any difference if we appeal it. However, that is not correct. In law, if the issue of retroactivity is applicable, it is applicable when it is not substantive law. This bill is all procedural. It is process law rather than substantive law.

Therefore, I urge the government to take into account that principle of law and appeal the decision. I urge the province of Quebec to do the same thing and introduce before the court of appeal the fact that this bill is now law and could be applied to the megatrial that is going on in Quebec retroactively.

It is urgent that we get the bill through so we may be able to salvage those 31 charges in Quebec and forestall those types of dismissals in any number of other megatrials, either ones that are already started or ones that may be coming in the near future.

If we leave it to the normal process, the bill will not become law. It would go through committee and all the hearings that would take at least several more months, and we are going to have the summer break soon. If we do not get this through next week and have it in law by the end of the summer, it will probably be the end of the year, or more likely into 2012 before the bill becomes law. For the sake of the protection of our society right across the country, we cannot afford the luxury of waiting that long.

There has been criticism of pushing a bill like this through, as it is a fairly extensive bill, and whether we are going through the democratic process. I certainly have been critical of the government at times when it tried to force bills of a substantive nature through. Again, that is not what this bill is.

We have had a lot of time to analyze the bill. When I say “we”, I am speaking of the justice critics of the various parties in the House. Over the last five or six years, we have looked at the issue. The response we needed to make as a legislature was very clear, and we have understood that. There is nothing in this bill that I can see that calls for an extensive review of it.

I want to particularly emphasize the process of the LeSage-Code report. The end result of that report was one that was supported because prosecutors, other judicial members and the defence bar were all involved in the work that was done in preparing the report. When it came out, I did not hear anybody from the bar, prosecutors, the defence or the judiciary who were critical of the recommendations of LeSage-Code report. I did not hear any objections to it at all. Everybody has looked at this and thinks this is the way to keep the megatrial, but do it efficiently and in fairness to the accused.

I know we have allowed for very short hearings before the justice committee next week, but if we were to have extensive hearings, we would hear from the defence bar, the prosecution and judges that this would be the way to go.

I want to make one more point in this regard. When I first began looking at this, I had a sense of déjà vu. I went through this in my practice back in the mid-1980s to mid-1990s in Ontario in the civil court cases. We implemented the case management process, and not just for large trials, although that was where it was most effective, but for all civil cases.

It had a positive impact in Ontario and has been adopted, though I am not sure about Quebec, in all the other common law jurisdictions.

The idea behind it is simply to let the judiciary in this country take control of files, so that if one side or the other in the case wants to delay the matter unreasonably, the case management judge is there to control the process. It has been reasonably effective. It is not perfect on the civil side and it will not be perfect on the criminal law side, but it is a methodology that makes our system more efficient and, quite frankly, more fair.

One can imagine, in the Quebec case, a witness waiting 10 years to testify, an innocent bystander and witness from the general community having to come back after 10 years and testify against an accused. How well do members think a person's memory is going to last?

Witnesses also know they have this hanging over their heads, that they are witnesses and there is a need for them to be prepared on a repeated basis. There are any number of reasons why we should move on this with regard to protecting, not just the accused and the rights of the accused but the other parties involved, such as police, prosecutors, and society as a whole in terms of the witnesses who get called in these kinds of cases.

The parliamentary secretary has done an excellent job of summarizing the legislation. I am not going to go through it in any particular detail. I wanted to mention case management because that is sort of the key to this working.

The idea, for instance, is for two extra jurors to be empanelled. There have been several trials where they went all the way and in the last week or two ran below 10 jurors. In our system, 12 are empanelled but there have to be 10 to make the final decision.

We never want the accused, witnesses or the system as a whole being put through the process of a long criminal trial and then in the last week or two having to start over again because three jurors became ill in the process and could not continue. Having 14 jurors empanelled will probably eliminate that from ever happening again. I use that as one example.

The other big example is avoiding duplication in the process by having one judge responsible for all of the preliminary matters. That has been a major problem for megatrials in terms of stringing them out. It has also opened up the door many times for appeals because preliminary matters are dealt with by more than one judge and sometimes there will be conflicting decisions. Once there is a conflicting decision, it is almost an automatic appeal and the Court of Appeal must decide, of the conflicting decisions, which one is the right one.

It is a good bill. I do not want to take that away at all from the government. As I said, it flows out of both the major report in the Air India case and more particularly from the Lesage-Code report. Those recommendations were followed and it is time for Parliament to do its job.

As I said, when I asked my question of the minister, the police have done their job, the prosecutors have done theirs, and it is time for Parliament to do its job by getting this bill through.

[Libya, June 14th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, I have to say to my colleague from Mississauga—Erindale that he has abandoned the justice committee and will not be on it in this Parliament. I am not going to forgive him for that. We had some great battles there.

With regard to the question, and it certainly is a valid one, the reality is that if the fighting is still going on in three and a half months, it clearly is a complete civil war and we cannot do anything at that point to be of assistance. When I say “we”, I mean the international community. It is as simple as that.

The alternative, if we accept that we are going to continue on, would be to move troops on the ground and all the rest of it. That is not the way we should be building that system that I talked about in my opening comments.

[Libya, June 14th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, I disagree adamantly with his initial premise that somehow this motion would be supportive of a regime change agenda. I want to be absolutely clear, as I believe have all of the speakers from the NDP who have addressed this issue today, that we are not supportive of an agenda that leads to regime change. That is not our decision; that is not our role. We are simply dealing with military action because we need to protect civilian lives. Therefore, I reject that premise totally.

With regard to assessing whether this has an exit strategy for us, it is quite simple. Canada will not be there in three and a half months. It is as simple as that. Therefore, there is an exit strategy and there is a way of testing it. If we look at three and a half months from now, which I think is the middle of September, we will not be there.

[Libya, June 14th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, I would agree with my colleague and I thank him for the question.

As I said in my speech, the role that we played historically since the second world war probably does not have any other country in the world as a peer. We have possibly done more in providing that leadership than any other country in the world.

I have to say to my colleague that the work done in Afghanistan I think was an error. We went off on an angle that we should not have in that regard and that has hurt our reputation internationally. However, we certainly have every right to claim a role here.

Let me make this point. I believe we are also at the stage where we are moving forward from simply peacekeeping to peacemaking, but we can only do that under the auspices of the United Nations. Therefore, we have to be supportive of the United Nations and must work over the next decades to put in place a system that does not allow at any given time the major powers to dictate what type of intervention there will be in a sovereign nation's decisions. It would only be an international body that would do that based on international law. We should be very much a part of that movement.

[Libya, June 14th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, I would like to acknowledge that the national council that has been formed in the last few months in Canada has a good number of participants from Alberta, both Calgary and Edmonton, particularly from the medical community. Some of the same members have been going through the rotation, particularly in Benghazi, in providing services to their compatriots.

My colleague is correct about the absolute refusal to accept ground troops, but the acknowledgement that they needed the assistance to stop the killings, both the ones that had occurred and the ones that clearly would occur if the international community had not intervened. The council has been very strong on that. In fact, that council is now led, I believe, by two of the doctors from the Alberta community.

[Libya, June 14th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to make my first speech in the 41st Parliament.

I want to acknowledge the electors of Windsor—Tecumseh for having returned me to this office for the fifth time and to say a special thanks to all of the volunteers who worked on my election campaign, both in the May 2 election and any number of ones before that. It never ceases to amaze me, the willingness of volunteers to come forward and spend lots of hours and donate lots of money to support my candidacy. I accept that support with a great deal of humility.

Special acknowledgement to my wife of almost 42 years, my three children and their spouses for all the support they have given me since I have been here in the House, but a special note in this vein to the inspiration that my four grandchildren give me. That inspiration really leads into the role that we have to play here today and that is about building a better world, for them and for the children and grandchildren all across this globe.

I do not know if it has been enunciated as clearly as it could have been in the debate so far, so I want to address some comments to the reality of what we are engaged in here today in this debate and in this motion is quite historical. It is a minor step, but it is a reflection of a movement to change international law and international relations.

Canada has a great deal of reason to be proud for the work we have done, particularly since the second world war, in developing international standards for human rights. The Declaration of Human Rights was actually drafted by a Canadian. The work that we have done in developing peacekeeping as a methodology of reducing and in some cases eliminating war, and now the next step that we are taking, and again, in which Canada has played a major role at the United Nations, and that is to develop the principle of the responsibility to protect.

It is a basic principle and it is kind of interesting that it has taken us this long. I remember taking international law in law school. My professor at that time said that on average, it is at least 100 years, maybe 200 years before we evolve a new principle and actually enforce it in international law.

The reality is that since the second world war that timeframe has shrunk and we are moving, from a historical perspective, more rapidly to establish order where there is chaos, where there is violence, where there is war and where there are acts of inhumanity to our fellow citizens. The responsibility to protect is one of those next steps, much as establishing the International Criminal Court was.

Today when we are debating this, we really are debating when does the international community have a responsibility to step in and to say to a sovereign nation, because obviously the regime in Libya is at this point, that it does not have a right to put down peaceful protest, democratic rights of assembly or freedom of speech with the use of violence. The international community, the UN in particular, would say that a sovereign country does not have a right to kills its citizens; it does not have a right to commit war crimes; it does not have a right to commit crimes against humanity.

When we look at this motion today, we are recognizing that yes, we will be engaged along with a number of allies, in military action. What goes with that is again the responsibility to not just stop with the military action because we know it has limited usage.

We were forced to do this because of the intent expressed by Mr. Gadhafi to massacre those who opposed him, with the clear ability to do it, and the actions he had already begun to take to carry out that goal. However, it is not enough.

It is also not enough in these circumstances to say that we can do this indefinitely. The leadership of the insurgency in Libya, the people of Libya, ultimately have to resolve that themselves. The best we can do on an interim short-term basis is not allow Mr. Gadhafi to kill his people. That is as far as this motion takes it as the NDP see it.

The balance of the motion, though, is at least as important as that part of the motion that mandates military intervention on our part, and that is the need to see that the investigation that the International Criminal Court has initiated against members of that regime is properly resourced if, in fact, there is sufficient evidence to find there have been breaches of international law, with crimes against humanity being at the top of that list. As a country, and along with our allies, we need to see that the investigation is conducted properly and if there is sufficient evidence that prosecutions are forthcoming. That is part of the evolution of what we are going through.

From everything I know about criminal activity, we are only going to be able to stop genocides, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity if the perpetrators of that kind of violence know they are not going to get away with it, that they are going to be caught and with proper investigations and sufficient evidence, they will be prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to an appropriate justice. If we do not build that mentality right around the globe, then we will have more Rwandas.

The humanitarian aid that we have proposed to add to this, which thankfully the government and the Liberals have agreed to now, is absolutely necessary. So we are clear, we are talking short-term aid. Libya overall is quite a wealthy country. It is not like Egypt and Tunisia that are in much worse economic shape. As this evolves, if there is a stable government there, it will be quite capable of taking care of the needs of all of its people. However, in the interim, humanitarian aid is absolutely necessary.

With regard to the support that we have shown for this resolution, it is clear that the UN, under Resolution 1973, has not only called on members of the United Nations to take part in military action, but it is obviously requiring diplomatic endeavours to have a ceasefire to end the violence on both sides so that the killing stops.

Canada has to take a more active role in that. I draw the attention of the members to the work that Turkey and Norway are doing in terms of trying to resolve this in a peaceful way. We certainly should be assisting them by stepping up at the diplomatic level our activities in that regard.

I would be remiss if I did not speak about the role that communities in Windsor Essex County have played. The second weekend after the insurgency and the violence started in Libya, a significant rally was held with some fundraising. Just in those few days over $400,000 was raised, not just in the Windsor area but other parts of Canada as well. This was led mostly by the medical community. We have a large number of expatriate Libyans now Canadian citizens who practise medicine in this country. They were a big part of the fundraising.

I met with one of the doctors a couple of weeks ago, before the House started back. He had just come back from Libya. He was telling me that they had been rotating medical personnel from Canada, mostly expatriate Libyans, back through Libya on a two-week rotation, in a lot of cases providing expert medical attention. It is absolutely needed.

In addition to that, they have raised additional funds. He was estimating it at least several million dollars just from the community in Canada. They were moving food and medicine into Benghazi in particular and were about to move it through Misrata as well.

All that work was done within the community in Canada, by their efforts both in terms of providing the medical services and in terms of providing medicine and food. He was critical of the government for not doing more in terms of providing humanitarian aid.

I applaud the government for its announcement today on the increased amounts it is giving, but it is not enough. The needs in the eastern part of Libya are particularly great and we have to step that effort up with assistance through the NGOs across the globe.

I actually spoke to the group at one point. There was a fundraiser dinner one night. We were talking about whether there would be military intervention. When I got off the stage, I was surrounded by the members of the community. They were very clear and adamant that they would not have their country, in spite of the violence that was going on, occupied by anybody else.

It is one of the reasons why we in the NDP were adamant in amending this motion, so it would very clear that this mandate would not allow for any ground troops to be put into Libya. The euphemism of “no boots on the ground” is an absolute for the Libyan population.

There have been too many times in their history when they have been occupied, to their great detriment, and they are not prepared to tolerate that ever again.

I have listened to the debate, off and on, today. It has been interesting. With regard to the role that we should be playing, the absolute need is for Canada to be extremely careful of not dictating what the outcome is going to be in the sense of building democracy there. That has to be led by the Libyans themselves.

Again, we put very clear wording in the amendments that we proposed to this motion, and accepted by the government, that it has to be a Libyan-led transition. It cannot be dictated by Canada or by the international community.

We can be there to provide assistance, if they need assistance and if they ask for it. We should be there to assist them, whether it be in humanitarian aid or in building democracy. It may be a democracy that is not similar to ours and certainly not the same as ours. We have to be broadminded enough to still provide support if that is requested, so they can build their democracy as they see fit.

Again, I was bit concerned with some of the comments today about what our role should be in that regard. I think we have to be brave enough and courageous enough to step back. This is an independence movement in many ways in Libya, led by people, the young people in a lot of cases, who are very determined that they will do it their way.

We absolutely do not have a right to be dictating to them the type of government that will be established. We can only be there to provide support. This is true of any other number of countries that are looking for assistance. We do not dictate the outcome.

I want to make one final comment and then I have a couple of amendments I want to propose.

Going back to the point about military intervention and talking about all of the other countries that also need support, we cannot use that as an excuse. As I said earlier in my opening comments, this is a baby step that we are taking with regard to establishing the responsibility to protect. Our responsibility as members of the United Nations, when it passes a resolution like 1973, is to support it.

We do not have the resources to do it for every country in the world that needs help, but we can, as an example, say to other countries that we are doing it here and if we could afford to or were able to, we would do it elsewhere always under the auspices of the United Nations. We want the rest of the world to come onside. It would not be a baby step if we got the rest of the world onside, but we can provide some leadership in that regard. If we provide the leadership and get the rest of the world to follow suit, then perhaps our grandchildren and maybe our great grandchildren will never be faced with genocide in their lifetimes.

There are a couple of problems with the motion as it is. I think I have general consent and support for what I am about to propose. In the original motion, the government used the phraseology of “another extension”. We want to be very clear. The NDP position is there will only be this extension and we want that singularized. I will come back to the actual wording in a moment.

The Liberal subamendment referred to the transitional council as the Libyan National Council. It is occasionally called that, but its formal name is the National Transitional Council and is generally recognized around the globe as that. Therefore, I seek the unanimous consent of the House for the following. I move:

That the motion from the government be amended by replacing the phrase “another extension” with “an extension”, and also that the subamendment be changed by replacing “Libyan National Council (LNC)” with the “National Transitional Council (NTC)”.