But there is no political will, as my colleague mentions. Despite umpteen numbers of studies, specific solutions are required for our fine men and women who work very hard to do a job but we do not see the political response.
It is really at the level of the Prime Minister's Office where we are not seeing that response. What a tragedy for our country when the Prime Minister's Office does not see that its lack of support for our military is eroding our ability to negotiate from a foreign policy standpoint. We suffer economically, not only in our north-south relations but also our east-west relations. This is not a fait accompli.
The other issue I want to talk about, and the government could have done this through Bill C-35, deals with a very important issue of quality of life of our men and women in uniform and their families. On one hand, the government gives our soldiers a wage. However it does not announce as colourfully to the public that it takes that money away with more in cuts to their PLD, which is their cost of living allowance, and it also raises their private married quarters rents. That, coupled with other cuts, makes our men and women in uniform worse off today than they were last year in terms of economics.
What kind of government sends troops abroad to fight for our country, to lay their lives on the line and then, while they set off abroad in their ships or planes, it guts the economic ability of soldiers to provide for themselves and their families at home? I have received many letters from families living in my constituency who wonder why the government is sending their husbands, fathers, wives and mothers abroad while it is taking money away from them. What kind of disingenuous government would on one hand give money to our soldiers, then take money away with both hands, leaving them all the poorer for it? The public does not understand that. What is more, what does that do to the morale of our armed forces? That cannot continue.
Many of us have said that the government must stop cutting the economics of our men and women in uniform. We should give more to them than they give to us. Our soldiers have given more to us over the years than we have given to them. It is not only a matter of economics; it is a matter of plain respect. We cannot disrespect our soldiers in this way.
Some have wondered why we do not become merely a peacekeeping nation. At the end of the day our military is there, at its most sharpest edge, to wage war. Our military must have the capability of waging war. Everything else falls from that. Peacekeeping and peacemaking is war by another name. We have to give our troops the capabilities to do that.
I ask the government, where do we go from here? First, right now our troop strength is about 56,000. Two decades ago it was 125,000. We were able to put people in the theatre. We need to increase our manpower to at least 80,000 to 85,000.
Second, we need the heavy lift capabilities to move our troops into the theatre. Without that we will see in the future what we have seen in the past, where we have to wait in line for our allies to give us the transportation mechanisms to get our troops in the field. What kind of nonsense is that?
Third, we have some critical issues. Everyone knows about the helicopters, but we also have problems with our CF-18s and indeed some of our ships, along with many of the basic tools and equipment for our army which are completely burnt out not only in combat materials but also in terms of personnel.
Those and a whole list of solutions that have been put forth by learned people in the military must be adhered to for the sake of our military and allies, and our place in the world. Some would argue that we should not have a military that kills people. At the end of the day we must always have that capability because that is what an army is all about.
The other thing we need to do is to consider having a nimble and lethal armed forces that can rapidly move around, like a rapid reaction force. That is what will be required in the future. Most wars now are not wars between countries. They are intra-country wars. They are not inter-country wars that took place early in the last century, like World War I and World War II.
Today we are seeing that most of the conflicts are within a nation state, whether it is Afghanistan, or indeed what we saw in Iraq, Somalia, et cetera. We must have the capabilities that will enable us to put our troops into that theatre to engage and integrate with our allies.
One of the other deficits we have is our ability to communicate with our allies. We are losing that capability rapidly and in fact we are behind the eight ball. Unless we meet those commitments to engage and communicate with our allies then we will not be part of the team. We will not be able to function in the multilateral objectives that we will have in the future.
Our other objective is to be relevant sitting next to the world's hegemony. There are things that the Americans do well military, but there are things that we do well military that they cannot do. Our objective will not only be to meet our domestic requirements, but to determine some niche areas where we can play an important role in having a multipurpose combat capable force which would engage and play roles with our allies in dealing with the many threats that we will see.
The terrorist threat that we have today will not be dealt with at the end of a gun. Part of it has to be that way but by and large terrorist threats that we see today would only be dealt with ultimately through issues that deal with the political and economic emancipation of countries that are ruled by despots and individuals that milk their countries dry at the expense of the people.
We have seen that happen in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and North Korea. Despots rule these countries and the resources of those countries go into the hands of the people at the top at the expense of the people at the bottom. That creates a toxic syndrome where the people see no hope and are subject to the prey of manipulative individuals who will use religion, for example, as a tool to manipulate the group to do their bidding.
That is how al-Qaeda works. It preys on the disaffected, dispossessed, and hopeless in an effort to sway them to do its violent bidding. It uses that to encourage people to be suicide bombers, to create instability, and to wage war against the west.
However, the war between al-Qaeda and western targets is not primarily a war against the west. It is a war against moderate Islam. Al-Qaeda's objective is not to fight the United States. Al-Qaeda's objective is to remove moderate influences in countries which are primarily Islamic and to move those moderates out of the way, get rid of western influence in those countries, and turn those countries into fundamentalist Islamic states. Osama bin Laden wants to turn Saudi Arabia into a fundamentalist state.
The danger that we are seeing now is that Iraq could swing that way unless there is the active engagement of a multilateral approach to ensure that democracy and the people of Iraq have the choice to decide who their leaders will be. Those choices will not come from outside. The United States and the west will not decide who will lead the people of Iraq. The people of Iraq will choose who will lead them.
Only by doing that and ensuring that the new leadership in Iraq will share the resources of that country with the people of Iraq will we see the political emancipation of the people of Iraq, and that in and of itself will act as a bulwark against fundamentalism.
The biggest challenge right now in the Middle East, though, is not Iraq at all. It is Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is ruled by a kingdom that was created as a result of political machinations that occurred between the origins of the Wahabi sect and the House of Al-Saud. Those two groups came together and developed a blood pact. That pact created a very unstable situation in a country that actually could be very rich. The creation of that pact has ultimately led to a group of 5,000 or so princelings and their hangers-on who are milking the country of the oil resources that it has. Where has the wealth gone? It has gone into the pockets of those 5,000 and their hangers-on. Have the people seen the results of that wealth? No, they have not.
What we see is the creation and the turmoil that is bubbling over from within. The lack of political and economic power by the people of Saudi Arabia will boil over into a cataclysmic event that will see the removal of the house of Al-Saud. What we will see is the potential introduction of a very fundamentalist leadership that could well pose a threat to the west.
Egypt is also another country that is boiling underneath the surface. We do not normally see that because we assume that wonderful Egypt, with its pyramids, is an island of stability in a very unstable area. The reality is not so pretty. Underneath that surface are a large number of people who are disaffected and without hope. Educated people who had hope but who are now without hope. What that creates in Egypt is a people who are ripe for the predations of groups like al-Qaeda that will stimulate them to engage in unstable actions that will affect us.
We have a role that the United States perhaps does not. We can work with other countries and deal with them politically and economically. The political and economic emancipation of countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt are critical to our own security as a country. As I said before, the threat of terrorism will not go away purely by the use of force. That threat will go underground and it will manifest itself in various ways, not the least of which is what we saw in 9/11.
We have seen something else that is very dangerous. I hope our government will deal with it because it is something that we fear. We fear weapons of mass destruction. But where is the greatest threat of weapons of mass destruction right now that has not been dealt with? Is it in North Korea? Iraq was a potential problem. Syria is a problem because it has weapons of mass destruction. But the biggest threat is actually in the loss of control of fissile materials in the former Soviet Union. That country had some 30,000 nukes. We know from the former Russian general Alexander Lebed that there were small suitcase nukes made. No one knows where they are. We know that there is an uncontrolled axis of evil that has been created due to the fissile materials. The ruthless Russian mafia and terrorist organizations want to get that fissile material.
Some believe that al-Qaeda already has them. The Russian mafia wants to get those fissile materials and sell them for huge profits. To their credit, the Russian police have blocked some of these efforts. More must be done. We must work with the United States, the Russian authorities, and with countries in the former USSR, including the CIS states, to deal with this problem and to actively hunt down, engage, and destroy the Russian mafia that is poisoning not only the former USSR but also countries in eastern European, including Bosnia where the Russian mafia is integrating itself and causing a huge problem.
I hope the government will listen to the constructive solutions that have come from members from all political parties and, for the sake of our military and country, employ them now.
