I am pleased to rise today to begin debate on Motion No. 410, a motion calling upon the Government of Canada to divest from the governments of Sudan and Iran.
Divestment is necessary in order to send a message to the regimes in both Sudan and Iran that there are consequences for their actions, consequences for denying fundamental rights and freedoms, consequences for killing hundreds of thousands of people, for crimes against humanity and for the incitement to genocide.
This motion represents one such consequence. Stopping the flow of money into a country limits the ability of a regime to finance its abuses. It also sends a message to other regimes which violate human rights that we, Canada, will continue to stand up for such rights and freedom everywhere.
To that end, money from the Canadian government should not be funding regimes in Sudan and Iran either directly or indirectly. Importantly, however, this motion does not include money for actions intended to relieve human suffering. Humanitarian efforts in these countries must continue to proceed. We will not hold vulnerable peoples hostage on account of their governments.
I was in Sudan and Darfur about a year ago. Anyone who makes such a trip returns with an obligation. It is an obligation not to forget. It is an obligation to keep seeking out answers no matter how hard and elusive they are.
Sudan is a harsh land, much of it desert. Historically, sudden dramatic needs, the result of drought or conflict, would drive its disparate tribes farther and wider afield in order to survive, sometimes bringing them into contact with others also seeking to survive. Conflict was normal.
For thousands of years, this was life in what is now present-day Sudan. Then, not many years ago, of these different, distant, often conflict-ridden peoples, a political state was created. But political boundaries alone cannot create a country that does not think, feel and act like a country.
In most places, a country's economy connects person to person, enterprise to enterprise, region to region, but not in Sudan. Eighty per cent of its resources come from oil, and it does not take a big workforce to get oil out of the ground and to market. Oil generates no dependencies on others, no loyalties to others. It makes people essentially irrelevant.
Most of Sudan's oil is in the south, but the oil is owned by the government, and the government is in Khartoum, so that is where the power lies. The reality is that for the economy of Sudan to succeed, the government of Sudan does not need Darfur or the south. It needs them, as the source of its oil, only to remain geographically within its boundaries. That can mean by peace or by war.
When we have historic divisions of custom, culture, language, geography and distance like these, when there are no contemporary loyalties, no dependencies, no incidental connections, when there is no concept of citizenship or equality of rights for individuals, or equality of treatment for different regions and groups, all that is left is power. For almost two decades, that has meant the absolute power of President al-Bashir.
Al-Bashir represents the perfect awful dilemma: what do we do when someone just will not do what we need him to do, no matter how hard we try, no matter what we do? How do we get through to him?
To solve the problem of al-Bashir, there is a fundamental difficulty. Let us imagine the best scenario for the world and for the great majority of Sudanese: a ceasefire; a peace agreement between the government and the opposition groups in Darfur; civil society starting to reappear; NGOs helping to reconstruct villages that had been torched and destroyed; more and more displaced people leaving the camps to return to their villages; with the peace agreement, authority no longer entirely centralized in Khartoum; with more powers, Darfur beginning to build its own future.
But this best scenario for the world and for most Sudanese may not be the best scenario for al-Bashir. Like any government, al-Bashir likes to be in power. If the conflict were to end in this way, he would have less power and less oil.
The situation in Darfur is tragic. The reality is that it may not be in al-Bashir's interest to do anything about it. It can be seen every day in his actions and inactions, through his resistance and opposition, his occasional apparent acceptances, his purposeful confusion and delay, through his divide and conquer strategy with rebel groups, his defiance of the UN and world powers who he knows may have other things to distract them. Through all of this he has been able to avoid a showdown.
For us to fulfill our obligation not to forget, and to seek out answers no matter how hard and elusive, what can Canada do? First and foremost, we need to believe that something can be done and that what we can do matters. Then we need to do what the current government has not done: we need to immerse ourselves diplomatically in Sudan. We can work with countries of similar mind: Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, with other African countries, countries in the Middle East, the African Union and Arab League as well.
We can because, as I heard again and again on my trip, Canada is respected. It has no colonial baggage. We have the right instincts, the right national history and experiences. As once a smaller country, we had to listen, negotiate, be patient, respectful, accept less dramatic steps in the directions we wanted to go. We have had to work with others. Now, perhaps the most ethnically diverse country in the world, we have learned to live with difference, accept difference and make difference matter less.
We are ready for our proper role in the world, but we need to make a start. There is perhaps only one country that has influence on Sudan in the short term and that is China. China is the market for over 90% of Sudan's oil, which represents over 70% of the total revenues generated by all of Sudan's resources.
In less than one year, Beijing will be hosting the 2008 Olympics. Billions of people will watch hundreds of hours of coverage on television. Beyond the events themselves, what China will they be shown? Its remarkable history? Its stunning economic present? Its environmental threat to the future? Its oil interests but humanitarian blind eye in Sudan and Darfur? What China will the world see?
For China, the 2008 Olympics represent an immense hope and an immense vulnerability. As a country, diplomatically Canada can work with this reality with China and Sudan, sometimes offering a carrot, sometimes a stick, but as is crucial for the foreign affairs of the future, always a bridge.
Until a Canadian government is--
