Keith Martin

[Afghanistan, February 25th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's question on this extremely important issue is a very prescient one.

I want to deal with the first aspect. We have to be realistic in what we are trying to achieve in the type of environment we are in. This is an Islamic country riven by feudalism and corruption, a country that has seen decades of war, and it is a people that has been traumatized. Many Afghans have never seen peace in their lifetimes.

My hon. colleague mentioned the end date. We have to marry that end date up with targets for the four pillars of Afghanistan security. With our allies, we have to enable the Afghan people to have trained, equipped and paid for Afghan police, army, corrections and judiciary.

We know that the Afghan police at one time were being paid $40 a month. It has gone up to $70 and it may be up to $100. However, if people do not have enough money in their pockets to pay for food for their families and they have an AK-47 at their sides, what are they going to do? Their choices are stark and they do not have very many. It is staggering to me that the government and our allies have not dealt with this before.

In fact, I find it really shocking and a complete violation of the responsibility of the government that back in 2006 the Conservative government gave this House only two days upon which to determine whether or not there would be a two year extension to the mission. That was an utterly irresponsible political act.

The government did not give us a chance to put forth constructive solutions as we have done here today by talking about the targets, the four pillars of Afghanistan security, the political reconciliation that has to come within the confines of Afghanistan, and dealing with the external insurgency, which means bringing into the mix a regional working group that involves Pakistan, India, Iran and the CIS states to dampen down the insurgency that is destroying the very heart and soul of Afghanistan.

The government did not give us that opportunity. As a result, we have seen the errors of the last two years, which have done a huge disservice to our troops, to the Canadian people and, worse, to the Afghan people.

The government has to listen to these solutions and, by heavens, it has to work with us and take these solutions to Bucharest. Frankly, before Bucharest, the government should phone our allies and drive these ideas through with them. If we are able to drive them with our allies, we can get our allies on board before we get to Bucharest and go in with a united front and a very strong, effective plan to deal with the challenges ahead.

[Afghanistan, February 25th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, six long years ago our country entered into an international effort to go to Afghanistan. We moved in with a UN-backed, NATO-led mission. Our goal there was to remove al-Qaeda, which was using Afghanistan as a training base prior to 9/11 and at 9/11. We also went there to remove the Taliban.

We did not go there to make Afghanistan a safer place for Afghan people. We did not go there to save Afghan lives, as some of us wish we could have. Had we been there out of the goodness of our hearts, we would have entered into other countries, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where, every single month, month in and month out, 32,000 people are dying of preventable causes and where 5 million people died in the largest genocide that we have seen since the second world war.

We went to Afghanistan for our own self-interest. Our troops, as members have said today, are acting in a courageous manner and in a way that makes us all proud. I can say on behalf of all of us here that we are indebted to their sacrifice and their courage. We honour their bravery. We in the House of Commons say to them that they are our best and finest Canadians.

Our job here obviously is to have this debate to ensure that the conditions for success are there for this mission, to ensure that we are able to put forth those conditions. In doing so, we are truly supporting our troops.

What is our goal? Our goal is to enable the Afghan people to provide for their own security. Our goal is to enable them to deal with the four pillars of Afghan security: Afghan police, Afghan army, the correctional system and the judiciary. Those four pillars of paid, equipped and trained personnel are absolutely integral if the Afghan people are to have their own security, the same kind of security that we ourselves enjoy in our beloved country.

Unless we provide security, unless we enable them to build all of those four pillars, it will be like a chair without its four legs. The chair will usually fall down or be weak. Our job is to enable the Afghan people to have those four pillars of their own security.

I will be splitting my time, Mr. Speaker, with the member for Scarborough Centre.

We have spent a lot of time with the Afghan army but we have neglected the Afghan police, the correctional service and the judiciary. We do this at our peril.

What we are proposing is that the government take to Bucharest the demand on the part of NATO to fund, train and equip all four elements of Afghan security, those four pillars. If we do that, and if we set up targets, timelines and guidelines, then the Afghan people, the Canadian public, our forces and our allies will all know what our targets are. Importantly, the Afghan people will understand very clearly when we are leaving. As their numbers increase, our numbers can decrease and therefore the Afghan people will know that we are not there as occupiers but as those who are there to enable them to be the masters of their destiny.

Those four pillars have to be dealt with. The Prime Minister should take that to Bucharest. Our allies, I am sure, would find the wisdom in that solution. Unless we do that, we have a never-ending open-ended obligation and that would be irresponsible.

Second, we have to deal with the political implications. One thing did not happen early on. The dominant tribe in Afghanistan is the Pashtun, of which there are many tribes and sub-tribes. They have been the traditional rulers in the 300 year history of Afghanistan. The Pashtun have dominated. Although Mr. Karzai is a Pashtun, he is not considered to be a true member of the tribe, for many reasons. They are not going put up with the Tajik-dominated government that they had. As a result, they have taken up arms.

Our goal is to make sure that we are able to reconcile this in a country driven for decades by feudalism, tribalism and war. Our job is to give them a manner of tribal reconciliation between the Tajik, the Hazara, the Pashtun and others. If we do that, then there will be a chance for peace, but if we fail, then there will not be peace in Afghanistan.

Third, Mr. Karzai rejected Paddy Ashdown as the supra-representative. That was a mistake. Unless there is a supra-representative there who is able to coordinate the activities on the ground and, quite frankly, knock some heads together, the corruption that is a cancer within the government of Afghanistan will continue and this will erode the efforts of the international community in perpetuity.

We will never win, the Afghan people will never win and security will never come to Afghanistan unless external forces are able to work with Mr. Karzai and, quite frankly, take a very tough, hard line to rein in the corruption that is destroying the ability of any of us to work with that country and to enable the people to have the security for which they yearn.

Fourth, there is the issue of poppies. Maybe a limited narcotic substitution program can take place with the opium being redirected to the legal production of narcotics, but that would be very limited. A second option is the use of artemisinin, which is the drug of choice for treating malaria. Ironically, artemisinin grows in the same kind of soil that poppies grow in. In some areas, the poppy crops could be transplanted and transported, allowing artemisinin to be grown.

However, the reality on the ground is something very different. It is stark and brutal. What is a farmer going to do when the drug lords come to him, put a gun to his head and tell him that if he does not grow poppies his women will be raped, his house will be burned down and he will be shot? He is going to grow poppies. That is the stark reality on the ground because of the absence of security in large parts of the country.

What we need to do is something that is entirely in our court. Unless there is a demand strategy, unless we reduce demand in our country and in the west, there will always be production of illegal drugs. We have failed to adopt the very intelligent work being done by Dr. Julio Montaner and others at the Centre for Excellence in Vancouver and by others in our country who have intelligent, effective drug and harm reduction strategies.

Unless the government is able to work hard with the provinces to implement a national drug strategy, there will always be people in our country who are buying heroin and other drugs. Those who buy heroin actually are putting money into the hands of those insurgents who are killing our soldiers, so congratulations: buy heroin and it supports the murder of our soldiers.

Therefore, it is our responsibility to have a demand reduction strategy in our own house. Regardless of what the United States feels, we need to do it. It is our responsibility. It is our responsibility to our troops.

The other big issue, obviously, is international assistance. It is a dog's breakfast in Afghanistan. Groups are tumbling over each other to try to provide care, but in effect we have a very ineffective international development assistance regime. We know it. We have heard it.

What could we do to rectify the situation? Let us take a leaf out of the UNAIDS mandate, which decided to use a three ones approach: one implementing mechanism, one framework and one mechanism to oversee it. If we use that three ones approach, we will streamline the mechanism and we will be able to have an effective aid and international development strategy on the ground in Afghanistan.

We also need to take a leaf out of the books of groups such as the Peace Dividend Trust, which very effectively and intelligently is ensuring that moneys going into Afghanistan are not being deployed to international workers and contractors. Rather, those moneys are being used to build up capacity within Afghanistan, by Afghans, for Afghanistan. By doing so, this is able to provide the long term sustainable security and development the country needs. It is within our purview to do that.

I see that my time is up, so I will close with this. At the end of the day, our goal is to communicate to our troops, the public and the Afghan people some very realistic solutions. We also have to be realistic in terms of our expectations. Afghanistan is not the democratic republic of Afghanistan but the Islamic republic of Afghanistan, and while some may wish to change Afghanistan into a pale replica of us, that is not going to happen.

Whatever we do has to be within what the Afghan people want. It has to be what is wanted by the Afghan people. It has to be congruent with their goals and objectives for their future. It has to be sustainable. Unless we do that, there will be war without end.

Lastly, there is confusion among some about the differences among insurgents, the Taliban and al-Qaeda. They are very different groups. Also, the Taliban is not a monolithic structure.

We have a responsibility to provide an effective series of solutions for our troops and for the Afghan people. I hope the government listens to what our party and other parties are offering in the debate taking place tonight. We are offering effective solutions that the government can take to Bucharest, particularly the four pillars approach, which is essential to the long term success of Afghanistan by Afghanis for their nation.

[Afghanistan, February 25th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened to my hon. colleague's comments. Certainly, there is a need for political reconciliation. In fact, one of the big mistakes that I think NATO and the UN have made throughout this entire episode is the absence of bringing in those tribes that were not included in the Bonn agreement, those that were not adequately represented in the Afghan Compact. They should be brought into the political decision making of the country, especially the Pashtun tribes which represent 42% of the population.

Many of the sub-tribes, that have been the traditional rulers of the country of Afghanistan in most of its 300-year history, have been largely excluded from the decision making within the country.

I want to ask my colleague a question. We all know and he would agree, I am sure, that there is an absolute need for development on the ground to enable the Afghan people to provide for themselves. But what do we do in a situation where there is an insurgency coming into a country that is going to hospitals and clinics, going to the schools that have been created, and chopping the heads off the teachers, and assaults and terrorizes the population? How can there possibly be development if we do not have security?

We can wish and plead and negotiate all we want. In certain circumstances there is an absolute requirement for force to protect in the long term the sustainable development that is required on the ground. The absence of that security ensures that development will never take hold.

I ask my colleague, how does he propose, with his party's amendment, to ensure that the development work that is taking place will have the sustainability that is required unless there is going to be security on the ground?

[Government Policies, February 15th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, my constituents of Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca have a few questions for the Conservative government.

Why have the Conservatives not implemented a national plan to address our health care workforce crisis, implement a national head start day care program for children, or roll out a plan to protect Canadian jobs and our economy from the storm clouds ahead?

Why has the government massively overspent, bringing our country to the edge of a deficit? Why has it shafted our navy, robbed pensioners of their hard-earned savings through the income trust fiasco, which is causing a massive sell-off of Canadian firms to foreign buyers?

Where is its plan to address substance abuse, or tackle organized crime, or remove interprovincial trade barriers, or in my riding provide the resources for the E&N Railway to run effectively, or for Victoria to have a light rail transit system?

Why has the new Conservative dictatorship trampled on the pillars of our democracy in Canada?

My electors in Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, indeed all Canadians, want to know.

[Kenya, February 1st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, Kenya is in a meltdown with over 850 people dead and 200,000 people displaced. The UN Secretary General said it is critical that the killing stop and that security be established.

Over 20,000 Canadians are of Kenyan origin, but our government's pathetic response to the crisis is to simply shovel money at it without a plan. Canada can play a critical role to help resolve this crisis by supporting the deployment of an African Union stabilization force, by invoking targeted sanctions against Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga and their lead personnel if they do not act in good faith to stop the killings, and by offering the services of Elections Canada to aid in a potential re-vote.

Kenya is on the edge of an abyss. It demands nothing less than immediate action on this front by our government. If not, Kenya could well follow down the bloody path of Somalia.

[Kenya, January 31st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, Kenya is in meltdown and 850 people have died, including opposition member Mugabe Were. The violence is escalating. Canada can play a critical role to enable peace and security to return to the country.

Will the Prime Minister support an African Union stabilization force to be deployed to Kenya and will he also ask Elections Canada and offer Elections Canada services to run a free, open and transparent general election in Kenya?

[Committees of the House, January 31st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I commend the member for her interest in this critical human rights issue, not only within Canada but around the world.

A number of these young people, particularly women, come from countries in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. One challenge is the ability to negotiate and engage with some of these governments, within which, quite frankly, the judicial systems are corrupt.

I want to know from the member the initiatives she proposes the government will engage in other countries to strengthen their own judicial systems so when people are caught within those countries, they will receive the heavy penalties they should receive for the criminal acts in which they are engaged.

I also like to challenge the member to suggest to the Minister of Justice that the government propose a plan to deal with organized crime. When we were in government, we put forth a number of initiatives to deal with organized crime gangs in Canada. Gangs are quite clever. They are business people in suits that go beyond the law for their nefarious activities.

Will she approach the Minister of Justice to suggest the government should deal with some of the issues that were not there when we were in government, which would allow our police officers and correctional systems to go after organized crime gang members, who commit the very criminal acts she has talked about, the human slave trade? Will she propose solutions that would allow our police to go after the organized crime gangs, who are the real parasites in our society?

[Settlement of International Investment Disputes Act, January 29th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, again I ask the member to look at countries such as India. I ask her to look at them before trade liberalization occurred and afterward.

Before trade liberalization, many industries were state-owned and inefficient, with high levels of poverty and worse working conditions. After trade liberalization occurred, there was competition. Standards were set. There was an improvement in wages. Poverty was reduced. Wages increased. Grinding poverty for the poorest of the poor, those living on less than a dollar a day, has been reduced dramatically. Let us compare those before and after situations in India. It is an intriguing example of what trade liberalization can do and should be doing.

I agree with my colleague in that we ought to be ensuring that these elements of worker security and environmental protection are built into the agreements we have. Indeed, that is what we attempt to do. The alternative is not to do that at all. Hernando De Soto and Muhammad Yunus have spoken eloquently about how we can make free trade agreements work and how we can tap into the private sector to enable it to be the generator of improved worker conditions and wages. We know that the private sector is the major generator of jobs in countries. We know that small and medium-sized businesses are the major generators of wealth.

Does the member not see that there are ways to make this happen through effective free trade agreements and that Canada can take a leadership role in this given the fine standards we have in our own country?

[Settlement of International Investment Disputes Act, January 29th, 2008]

Intriguingly enough, Mr. Speaker, in many ways the goals of the member and the goals of most of us are the same: the improvement of working conditions and the alleviation of poverty for workers. I have a question for the member. Does she not think that engaging other countries, by removing the barriers and creating norms and standards so that workers in our country and in other countries can actually enjoy the same standards, is a fair, equitable and reasonable goal? Does she not think that the way to do that is through these free trade agreements?

In fact, the biggest culprits, the two biggest problems, and the reasons why in many ways poverty remains in developing countries, are corruption and the lack of capacity. These are the two biggest cancers. The lack of capacity in developing countries and the corruption within those countries are the two greatest obstacles to sustainable development within those countries.

International organizations such as the World Bank and the IMF continually give large tomes to developing countries, with all manner of plans and objectives, but unfortunately those countries have no hope whatsoever of operationalizing them, because they do not have the people to take on those ideas and implement them. It is a fool's game and we continue to play that game.

Does the member not think we can achieve the objective of better working standards for workers, higher pay for workers and better environmental standards in the countries in which we are working by engaging those countries and establishing those rules through free trade agreements for the mutual benefit of both countries?

[Settlement of International Investment Disputes Act, January 29th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very intently to my colleague's comments. She gave a fine dissertation on socialism. I would like to compare two countries, India and Zimbabwe.

India is a country that had very high levels of poverty. That country liberalized its markets, reduced restrictions, enabled the private sector to expand and improved trade among and between its neighbours. The outcome has been a dramatic decline in the poor in that country, with a burgeoning middle class.

While blanket free trade is not the answer and checks and balances have to occur and it must be fair trade, I would like to ask my hon. colleague for her comments. Hernando de Soto and Mohammed Unis and other people have spent their lives reducing poverty and they have spoken about the merits of free and fair trade. Does she not think that free trade agreements with countries enables those countries to raise their standards to the standards that our workers enjoy? In that way we are able to improve the lot in those countries, instead of erecting barriers to development, barriers to trade. Such barriers actually enable countries to maintain the restrictive covenants within their countries and hamstring the private sector and ultimately lead to a greater number of people living in poverty.