Mr. Speaker, I am not pleased to rise to debate this matter. I do not think any of us are pleased that this matter has come before the world and our Parliament.
I am particularly displeased with the form in which debate occurs in this place and the lack of seriousness with which the government treats it. I compare unfavourably the nature of the cabinet's regard for Parliament in this critical matter with that exemplified in the mother Parliament at Westminster where, over the past months, the senior members of the Queen's ministry have appeared repeatedly before a full and anxious House of Commons to report in detail on the progress, or lack thereof, of diplomacy as it relates to the situation in Iraq.
The right hon. Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the foreign secretary and the defence minister, week after week, appeared before a fully active and deeply interested House of Commons offering detailed statements on positions of the British government and opening the House to extended periods of question and debate where thoughtful and informed positions were being taken on all sides of that House. I compare that unfavourably with this place here tonight where--and I will not mention the absence or presence of members--senior members of the ministry have not even deigned to come before the House and explain in any detail the position of the government, why and how it arrived at that position, what it regards as the consequences of that position for Canada's standing in the world, for our bilateral relations with the United States and for the benighted people of Iraq. We have no opportunity to have an extended and meaningful discussion on any of those points.
Instead, today, after months of prevarication and constant efforts to sit firmly on the fence, the Prime Minister finally revealed a position on the part of his government in the form of a 35 second statement read out during question period.
Just at the outset, I am normally not preoccupied by matters of process but I want to place firmly on the record my great disappointment with the lack of gravity with which this matter has been treated by the government in Parliament.
I am further disappointed and I would say, frankly, ashamed, although I do not often say that, bit I am ashamed in some ways to be a Canadian today, to live in a country with a government, in one of the great moments of statecraft and on one of the great and most important questions of international security at the beginning of this century, that has decided to cop out, and has decided that indifference and inaction constitute an adequate response in the face of a gross, ongoing and dangerous violation of international law, a brooding threat to international security and a monstrous violation of international human rights standards, which is the fascist regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Let us briefly review, as I know others have, the history of this matter as it relates in particular to the United Nations, because it is on that and its authority that the Prime Minister apparently has finally established some sort of position.
In 1990 Iraq illegally and aggressively invaded its peaceful and neighbouring country of Kuwait. The United Nations responded with resolutions 678, 686, 687 and 688 in which it required immediate Iraqi removal from the sovereign state of Kuwait. Of course the Security Council in those resolutions authorized with virtual unanimity, Yemen being the sole no vote, a military action of that nature.
Iraq was removed by force, which is characteristic of the only means which Saddam Hussein seems to understand, and the United Nations gave him, in a ceasefire agreement which was ratified by UNSCR 687, a 15 day timeline to report and destroy all of his illegal weapons in his armament of mass destruction. At the time when this undertaking was given by him, not simply demanded by the international community but given by him as condition precedent for the cessation of hostile activities, which had been authorized by the Security Council, the international community in fact had no idea about the depth and breadth of the illegal Iraqi arsenal. In many respects, we still were innocent to the depth of the horror his regime had represented for his people for the two preceding decades.
So the UN placed this obligation on him and he accepted in an undertaking, in a ceasefire to illegal military action, which he had commenced through an act of aggression, 15 days to disarm. Today we are 4,300 days later. It is 12 years since that undertaking in a ceasefire agreement for a 15 day period of disarmament.
We are 4,300 days and 16 United Nations Security Council resolutions later, most of them unanimous, 4,300 days and countless efforts at diplomatic resolutions, 4,300 days during which time, as we know, UNSCOM inspectors generally were unsuccessful at finding illegal Iraqi arsenals unless and until there were defectors who left that fascist regime, such as Saddam Hussein's son-in-law in 1995, to report on the illegal weapons that were being hidden. We are 4,300 days later and during that time the IAEA declared in the mid-1990s that Iraq had no discernable nuclear weapons program until Saddam Hussein's son-in-law defected and reported that indeed there was one. He returned, of course, and was fed to wild and rabid dogs in an act of brutality typical of that dictator.
Then we returned with another set of UN weapons inspectors in UNSCOM in the late 1980s. The Iraqi regime again refused and failed to cooperate, so the civilized world again threatened force, which was manifested in Operation Desert Fox, supported by the Liberal government, I might add, without explicit UN authorization. Then the world went back to its holiday from history and wanted to believe that containment, an occasional military action, and a brutal sanctions regime which has caused the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were adequate policies to face a dangerous, hostile dictator in violation of countless UN resolutions, in violation of the express will of the international community. That has been the policy of this and other governments, roughly since Operation Desert Fox of 1998.
However, some of our allies, foremost among them, of course, the United States and the United Kingdom, realized that on September 11, 2001, our holiday from history ended. They realized that there are forces of evil, yes, a word which I know that in the politically correct lexicon of modern liberalism one is not permitted to utter, but evil nevertheless. People dedicated to destruction, dedicated to killing innocent civilians, indeed, dedicated to the downfall of all of western civilization and liberal democracy, unleashed untold violence against civilians simply because they were Americans or lived in the United States.
It dawned on the world's leaders clearly that the prospect of marrying that kind of Islamo-fascist terrorist violence with weapons of mass destruction created and fed by rogue regimes, weapons having no return address, for which deterrence and containment do not suffice as a policy of control, that such weapons falling into the hands of violent terrorists would inevitably be used in a mass way against civilian populations in the western world.
The United States learned that lesson clearly, understanding the implications of September 11. The United Kingdom, standing up to its historic tradition of responsibility in enforcing international law, understood that clearly. Australia came to understand the threat posed by the marriage of this new rabid form of terrorism with weapons of mass destruction when it lost 200 civilians at Bali months ago. But for some reason, Canada seems not yet to have learned this new lesson from the new history of the 21st century.
The Prime Minister will argue, and apparently has, that military action about to be undertaken by our traditional and historic allies lies somehow outside the ambit of international law. I say nonsense, and I refer to nothing less than himself as an authority.
Let me go through his record. In this place in 1990, when UN Security Council resolutions had overwhelmingly been adopted, authorizing the use of force to expel Saddam's army from Kuwait, the then leader of the opposition and current Prime Minister stood in this place and opposed the UN-sanctioned use of force to ensure international peace and security. He opposed the UN mandate at that time.
Eventually, when he saw that public opinion was running in favour of force rather than appeasement in the face of an aggressive dictator's invasion, he modified his position to say that while he was not opposed to the use of force, he did not want Canada to contribute to it. While he was not opposed to the placement of Canadian Forces in that region, he did not want them to actually be engaged in military activity. That was the respect he showed for the United Nations resolutions at that time.
Then let us fast forward to, as I mentioned earlier, Operation Desert Fox, where the United States and the United Kingdom realized that Saddam was not cooperating with the UNSCOM regime in the mid-1990s and threatened military action. The Prime Minister at the time stood in this place and categorically--