I remember the struggle to develop a treaty to combat drought and encroaching deserts. Canada was one of the few countries in the lead to negotiate the treaty. I was not intimately involved, but I knew people who were. When it was signed in 1994, I was elated. Along with the conventions on climate and biodiversity, the treaty to combat drought addressed a global and pressing concern. It was clearly related to climate change, but was more regionally specific. And, although desertification is not a current threat to Canada, certainly drought is.

There had been no inkling or rumour that Stephen Harper wanted to exit another global environmental law. Given that the only treaty from which Canada has ever withdrawn, since 1867, was Kyoto, the cavalier way in which this news leaked out—posted on a Foreign Affairs website and noticed by Canadian Press— added to the shock. That we gave no notice to the secretariat for the Convention was further evidence of our contempt for both the United Nations and the threat posed by climate induced drought and desertification.

In Question Period the next day, Ralph Goodale (former Liberal finance minister and now only the MP for Wascana) posed an excellent question in which he linked other recent Harper administration decisions reducing the Prairies’ preparedness for drought. He charged ‘Maniacal front-line cuts have killed PFRA (the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration), which had world-class Canadian brainpower on soil and water conservation. Conservatives vandalized community pastures, the prairie tree farm and Experimental Lakes Area. Now Canada is the only country in the world sneaking out the back door on the UN Convention Against Drought.’

I was grateful Goodale noted cuts to programmes put in place after the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, as I have been trying to draw attention to them. What Harper has against hedgerows and water conservation in the Prairies is certainly a mystery that has angered Prairie farmers. The Prime Minister’s response was spun to create the impression that the convention on drought and desertification was akin to a poorly run charity, in which aid dollars were poorly spent: ‘This organization spends less than 20% of the funds that we send are actually spent on programming. (sic) The rest goes to various bureaucratic measures. That is not an effective way to spend taxpayer money.’

‘This organization?’ The Prime Minister is speaking of a treaty, within which every other country on earth is making some level of contribution, financial and otherwise. How much were we spending? An astonishingly low pittance… $290,000/year. Admittedly that is a nice amount of money if you are collecting for a new school gymnasium, but it is chump change in the federal budget. We approve more than that routinely by unanimous consent for Parliamentary committee travel. Equated with those things the Prime Minister thinks are a good use of taxpayer funds, things like renting Pandas at $1 million/year, the drought treaty was a bargain.

Canada’s diplomatic corps is shocked. Former Ambassador to the United Nations, former Deputy Minister of National Defence and victim of a terrorist kidnapping in Mali, Robert Fowler, sent an email to the media. Calling our withdrawal from the treaty ‘a departure from global citizenship,’ here’s what he said:

‘It (the Harper administration) has taken climate-change denial, the abandonment of collective efforts to manage global crises and disregard the pain and suffering of the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa (among many others) to quite a different level.’

Responding to Foreign Minister John Baird’s defence that Canada won’t ‘go along to get along,’ Fowler continued:

‘No, by jingo, we’re not going to go along to get along! Such vainglorious nose-thumbing at the international community’s efforts to tame a very present threat to hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest and most desperate is nothing short of incomprehensible.’

Another former Ambassador to the United Nations, Paul Heinbecker, agreed that the move was both inexplicable and bound to confirm to the international community that Canada cared nothing for climate action, nor for the fate of Africa.

The UN itself was shocked. Noting that Canada will now be the only nation on earth not part of the convention, it, in typically understated diplomat-speak, called Canada’s decision ‘regrettable.’

It turns out our notice of intent was sent on January 14. The treaty requires only a 90-day period for full withdrawal so we exit the treaty on April 14, right in the middle of an important scientific review of the threat of desertification and drought, running April 9-19. ‘The next gathering of the scientific conference … is expected to deliver a major breakthrough by presenting the first ever cost-benefit analysis of desertification and sustainable land management,’ an UNCCD statement had commented, of the review and of Canada’s withdrawal.

‘Canada played crucial roles in both processes. Crucially, these processes have also moved the actions taken by parties to a result-based management approach where performance and impact are not only measured using indicators, but also assessed and monitored every two years.’

The rumours in Ottawa is that all our multilateral commitments are under review. I have heard well-connected folks express fear that we may withdraw from the United Nations Environment Programme and UNESCO. To block further erosion of our role in the world, we need to ensure that the reaction to this cutting and running from the problems of the world will not disappear as a one-day headline.

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We have been at great pains to try to find fault with each other and partisan difference. However, I think this is one of those rare discussions where we are debating something where the situation is fluid. We want to make sure that Canada does not get engaged in Mali in a way that deters from our fundamental values.

I would like to ask my friend, because I thought his comments about the nature of Islamists was fascinating, if he thinks on this one occasion in the House we might have more in common than in difference?

Hon. John McKay: Mr. Chair, I would dearly love to say yes to my hon. colleague. My problem is that the government has yet to state its goal, tell us what the plan is and recognize that whatever the plan is it has to involve AFISMA. Also, real money has to be put behind AFISMA. If we do not do that, we are almost setting it up as a failure.

As I said to my colleague, I would love to be agreeable and have some direct conversation with my colleagues as to why the government to this point has not supported AFISMA, but it has not and that is the critical question here.

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I want to ask my hon. colleague this. There is something in the history of how these rebel forces in Mali got hold of so many weapons, and the trail seems to lead to Libya, where some of the people whom we supported in the effort to get rid of Colonel Gadhafi opened up warehouses and shipped large amounts of weapons to al-Qaeda forces. Some of the people we supported in Libya were in fact themselves previous al-Qaeda fighters.

How do we learn from this? How do we ensure that in future when we enact, under the responsibility to protect, the need to go in to protect the civilian population, we do not inadvertently side with people who are prepared to turn warehouses full of weapons into a flow of arms to terrorists who will of course allow conflict to spill into areas that had previously been peaceful?

Lois Brown: Mr. Chair, what we have heard from officials is the suspicion that many of the weapons left long before the conflict in Libya even started or was finished.

I would like to quote the Leader of the Opposition, though, who actually said on January 15 on CBC Power and Politics:

I don’t see the link necessarily between our intervention in Libya, which was a UN mandate directly to NATO based on the UN charter, protection of civilians who were being attacked by their own government. It’s too indirect.

What he is trying to allege as a link to Mali would judge Mali on its merits and look at information put on table if need be, so we are not sure there is a link there.

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