Mr. Speaker, I will begin my participation in this debate today by saying that I did not know whether to laugh or cry when I was listening to the hon. member for Renfrew--Nipissing--Pembroke from the Canadian Alliance who started the debate.
One would expect this sort of motion from the Canadian Alliance, but when I heard the member say this motion was about fresh thinking and when she talked about the nationally acclaimed defence policy of the Canadian Alliance, I really actually cracked up and started to laugh. It seems to me that the defence policy of the Canadian Alliance has been thoroughly discredited right across the country. This idea of fresh thinking in the motion before us today in that somehow we are going to kick-start Norad into star wars is not fresh thinking; it is being trapped in the cold war. That is the kind of mentality that was prevalent during the cold war. Apparently the Canadian Alliance is still back there several decades ago, so that sort of sent me off chuckling.
Then, when I heard the minister of defence make his remarks on behalf of the government, I was actually truly alarmed and shocked. On the one hand, this motion is clearly setting the stage for star wars. That is what this motion from the Alliance is about and its members have been very clear about that. Then we had the Liberals walking right in, taking centre stage and saying, “We want to be in that tent too. We want to be with the U.S. in that tent”. I truly was horrified to hear the minister of defence say that Canada is now going to enter into discussions with the U.S. government on the missile defence system, or what is commonly known as star wars. What a disastrous decision.
How was that decision made? What kind of input was there? In fact, what role has Parliament played? We have not played any kind of role in such a major policy change from the Canadian government, and certainly the Canadian people have not been involved in any way.
As other members have pointed out today, for months and months we have been quizzing the federal government, the Prime Minister, the provisional government in waiting and the former finance minister to find out where the Liberal government stands on this issue. Even as recently as last month we heard the Prime Minister saying that he really did not know, that the U.S. had not asked anything and we could not respond to anything. But all of a sudden here we are today with an announcement by the defence minister that we are now ready to enter into negotiations.
This is a very bad day for Canada historically, because in my own opinion and in the opinion of the NDP and I think that of many Canadians, this decision by the government today is nothing more than a repudiation of decades of policy in terms of the international community around arms control and around international treaties that have actually sought to keep us out of the militarization of space and out of weaponization. The government has given a clear signal today that it is willing to set all of that aside and now embark on a totally insane, disastrous course being charted by George W. Bush.
It is ironic to note that as the debate was taking place in the House today, at the very same time in the foreign affairs committee two witnesses, Dr. John Polyani and Lloyd Axworthy, the former foreign affairs minister and still, I hope, a very well respected member among Liberal colleagues, were at committee speaking on this very issue of national missile defence.
Our member for Halifax, the former leader of the NDP, who is our representative on that committee, said she was really outraged because at that committee this morning no Liberal members were present for a whole period of time. In fact, when one or two Liberal members did wander in, they were so disdainful and so arrogant in terms of what was being said that they went to the back of the room and had various little conversations. There were two superb witnesses who were spelling out and laying out the dangers of what it would mean if we engage in this course of action and there were no Liberal members present to hear that debate. I find that truly arrogant and completely unparliamentary in terms of what our committee system is meant to be about.
We should be very clear about what is taking place here with this motion from the Alliance, which is just a knee-jerk reaction to what George W. Bush wants. All the American government has to do is say jump and the Alliance says how high and how fast do you want us to do it? Let us be very clear. What the U.S. is really doing here is seeking the political legitimization of the national missile defence program. This has been very well spelled out by Senator Douglas Roche, who has done a lot of research and has been very outspoken on this issue.
This issue of political legitimization is something that we now can see the Liberal government has just walked right into. Any person in their right mind would know that this kind of expenditure on a national missile defence system, which will lead us to the militarization and the weaponization of space, is going to cost at least a trillion dollars.
Most of us, and in fact all of us, cannot even visualize what that expenditure means in terms of the resources it will take up. Most people understand the insanity of that kind of approach. I think probably Mr. Bush himself understands that, and his job has been to somehow provide the political rationale for engaging in this kind of absolutely idiotic restart of an arms race. People are seeking to do that by the political legitimization of star wars. We are seeing all the measures and the stage being set in terms of the whole stage that was set around the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, when really, at the end of the day, did they find any? They did not exist and then it became a regime change and on and on this story goes.
Now we are looking at this rationale of protecting ourselves. We hear the member for LaSalle—Émard, the former finance minister, talk about protecting Canadian sovereignty from these ballistic missiles. What ballistic missiles? What threat are we speaking of? Are we prepared to spend a trillion dollars for a threat that has never been identified? Are we prepared to allow our universe, our space, to be used for militarization and for weaponization? That is what is being suggested here.
I would say that the former finance minister, the person who hopes he will become prime minister of Canada, is really playing a very dangerous game. When we look at the interviews, the quotes and the comments that have been made, it seems to me that the concern, the issue that is really being expressed by the Canadian government, whether it is by the defence minister today or whether it is by the former finance minister, is really about appeasing the American government.
We heard the defence minister today saying that if we are not in the tent our influence will be nil. What does that actually mean? What does it mean to be in that tent? What kind of influence is he speaking about? Does he actually believe that Canada would have some kind of influence by just putting up our hands and saying, “Me too, me too, we are in your tent”? There is nobody else in that tent.
I really find it very disturbing that significant public policy, foreign policy, is being dictated by this rationale of political legitimization in terms of our relations with the U.S., as opposed to a critical analysis of whether or not the missile defence system and star wars and using Norad as the cover is actually a course of action that will send the globe into a very dangerous area. Those of us in the NDP are deeply concerned about the announcement by the defence minister today, and I know there are members of the Liberal caucus as well who are probably expressing a lot of concern about where the government is going.
I can say that within the NDP--where we have done our homework and looked at the issue--there is no other conclusion but to come to the fact that the missile defence system and the use of Norad to promote a missile defence system is an utter waste of important public resources that are badly needed in terms of developing stability for human security. It is a fundamental threat to multilateralism and a set of international laws that have been developed over decades, that have tried to move the world away from a new arms race.
We have seen the U.S. unilaterally abandon the anti-ballistic missile treaty that was adopted in 1972. President Bush did that in December 2001. We have seen the Americans with their ridiculous nuclear posture review. We have seen the statements and the plans they have made for a first strike policy.
All of these things that have been unfolding in the last couple of years should be of enormous concern to Canada. We should not get into the tent and say that is where we will have a bit of influence. We should be part of an international community that will stand up to that kind of insane public policy. We should be working within international law and strengthening these international treaties, and bringing back the anti-ballistic missile treaty. We should be seeking to implement the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and working with what is called the new agenda which is a number of smaller countries that have tried to play a progressive and critically independent role in promoting that kind of agenda.
Why is the Canadian government not putting its political capital and resources into legitimizing that agenda because it is the right kind of agenda that we should be moving toward?
The NDP is so concerned about star wars that it has actually been conducting campaigns with its members. We have a petition on our website, ndp.ca, and we are encouraging Canadians, even more so today given the news we heard from the defence minister, to sign our petition and to make it absolutely clear to the government that the policy that it is enunciating has had no debate in the House. It has been behind closed doors, presumably in the cabinet room. I do not even know if there has been a debate in the Liberal caucus about this or whether there was any resolution about this.
However, the issue is so important that we must call upon Canadians to stand up and make this very clear, just as they did in opposing the war on Iraq. We have to stand up and say to our federal government that this is really a completely mistaken path to take. It is a path that will lead us to the weaponization of space and greater inequalities in our world.
I was just speaking with one of our members earlier and thinking about the situation in Africa where millions of people every day die of AIDS or are living with AIDS, and probably will die because they cannot gain access to the kinds of medicines that are available to us in the west. They cannot gain access to that because of the restrictions around drug patent laws. That is a shocking contrast because on the one hand we see the U.S. developing its agenda with a possible expenditure of one trillion dollars and on the other hand we see a continent where millions of people are suffering needlessly because of a lack of political will. The resources that are needed there, often a few dollars a day on a per capita basis, would alleviate the great suffering that takes place on that continent but also in many other places around the world.
It is that sense of outrage from people, not just in Canada, but globally as well, that has made people feel cynical about the political process. When people read about the tragedies that take place, whether it is Congo, AIDS on the African continent, Rwanda, the sanctions in Iraq or what happened after the war, is it any wonder that they feel this horrible sense of cynicism about politicians and about the political process? They see what the real priorities are on our planet in terms of protecting the environment and meeting human security needs in a basic fundamental way through fresh water, housing and protection from diseases like AIDS.
Yet, our Canadian government has apparently made the decision to get in the tent. I cannot even imagine what that tent is like and what kind of discussions go on. However I do know that if the minister believes that by being in the tent he and the Canadian government have some kind of influence, I would say he is seriously fooling himself.
We must look at the reality of the political relations and dynamics that are taking place. I was reading an interesting report recently from the Polaris Institute written by Stephen Staples. In a chapter looking at the drivers of military spending, he states:
In a remarkable admission on September 4, 2002, the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, Paul Cellucci, revealed that when he was appointed ambassador his only instruction from the Bush Administration was to work on increasing Canada’s military spending.
