Speaker: Ms. May
Time: 01/06/2022 21:46:18
Context: Motions\Debate

I am part of a global party. It does not come up very often in this place that I am a member of Parliament in Canada, within a family of global Greens. One of those global Greens is Pekka Haavisto, who is the minister of foreign affairs for Finland and a very germane part of the debate tonight. Up until December, a friend of mine, Per Bolund, co-leader of the Green Party of Sweden, was their deputy prime minister, but the Swedish Greens just left the Swedish coalition for reasons I need not get into here.

As Greens we have a profound commitment to peace and non-violence, which means, saying it just as clearly as I can, that I am no fan of NATO. Greens are not, generally, because it is a military. It is a defensive alliance, but it is not without issues for those of us who are committed to non-violence. It has been an issue for us to know that we absolutely, unequivocally, believe that Russia’s attack on Ukraine is the sole responsibility of Vladimir Putin and that we are on the side of Ukraine and Ukrainians. We are supportive of every action our government has taken, but it is not without difficulty for us.

How do Greens feel about Canada being in NATO? In an ideal world, when the Warsaw Pact ended, NATO would have ended too. That is how we see it. There is a big “if”. It is one of the main things I want to talk about tonight. NATO’s continued involvement in the world does create tensions that we probably did not need if we had had the former Soviet Union and the United States pursue nuclear disarmament. When Mikhail Gorbachev was championing perestroika and glasnost, he also picked up the phone and called former U.S. president Ronald Reagan. He asked, “Do you want to end nuclear weapons, because I do” and Ronald Reagan said, “I do too”. By the way, the reason I know that is because Mikhail Gorbachev told that story to a small group of people in a room in Rio de Janeiro at Rio+5. I was there because I was a part of a committee that Mikhail Gorbachev co-chaired.

In the years that followed, the efforts toward nuclear disarmament faltered. I believe that Donald Trump was a puppet of Vladimir Putin and the two of them decided, or at least Putin decided, “Let’s not get rid of nuclear weapons. Let’s slow down the talks. Let’s not have nuclear non-proliferation discussions any more. Let’s not have nuclear disarmament discussions any more.” It has made the world less safe.

In the context of Vladimir Putin and Russia, wars are generally illegal. It is hard to know when a war is exactly legal because many of them are founded on lies: the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. We can make up a story and say we need to attack this other country just because, but there are some wars that we know were morally justified, such as the Allied Forces confronting fascism in the Second World War. Many of our parents, my parents and many people in this room had family members engaged in a war that, as the member for Scarborough—Guildwood just said, it is the young people who suffer. In wars it is the young people who die, but with some wars we can see the moral justification.

In this case, supporting Ukraine really matters, but I question what Canada should be doing in NATO. I want to share that with all of my colleagues as I conclude my remarks. I will, spoiler alert, agree with a motion that Finland and Sweden should be supported in joining NATO because that is what they asked for right now. As I said, my colleagues, who are in the global Green Party, global Green parliamentarians, asked for that. We respect the decisions made within countries by our colleagues in the Green Party, so no question from Greens. We support that Finland and Sweden should be supported in joining NATO.
Let me ask the question. The budget of 2022 said clearly that we are going to have a foreign policy review. In that foreign policy review, I hope we will ask the question: Should Canada stay in NATO?

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It should be clear that, since the Second World War, we have seen millions of lives lost in the Cold War through the proxy conflicts of the large super powers. Since 9/11, and the despicable attack on innocents at the World Trade Centre, we have, in the absence of the Cold War, faced security threats that are largely diffuse. Acts of terrorists are often met with a “war on terrorism,” but that is not a helpful term.

As former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, Paul Heinbecker, has pointed out, you cannot declare war on a noun. Security threats posed by terrorists are serious, but the approach of preparedness is more closely akin to a policing action than a full military response.

The largest likelihood is that Canada will no longer face another nation to nation conventional war. The security threats of the 21st century will be different from those of the last century.

In this new reality, Canada’s traditional strategy of a 3-D approach defence, diplomacy and development has the key elements. What we have lacked is a national conversation about the relative importance of each. Sadly, under Stephen Harper, the role of our diplomatic corps has been de-emphasized with embassies closing, diplomats treated as irrelevant, and Canada’s respect for multilateralism itself called into question. Our role as peacemakers, a role invented by former prime minister, Lester Pearson, has also fallen. While we continue to make financial donations to peacekeeping missions, we are no longer making significant contributions in terms of personnel.

Meanwhile, other military establishments around the world, from the U.S. Pentagon to the U.K. military, have identified the climate crisis as a serious security threat. Anthropogenic global warming is a clear and present danger. Global political instabilities will be exacerbated by crop losses, rising sea levels and millions of environmental refugees.

The capacity of our military to effectively respond may be more meaningfully employed through our emergency disaster response than through stealth fighter jets. Responsible preventative steps against this man-made security threat comes through reducing greenhouse gas emissions in an aggressive time-bound fashion.

Canada’s Green Party calls for the following urgent priorities for a realistic 21st century defence strategy:

• Realign our defence spending to increase our capacity and speed in delivering disaster assistance (e.g. through the DART Disaster Assistance Rapid Response Team) and our contributions to UN peacekeeping forces and missions, and decrease our contributions to NATO war efforts.
• Rebuild the broken linkages among Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada (DFAIT), National Defence and the Canadian Forces (DND/CF), and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), to effectively and efficiently plan, organize, and execute our missions abroad.
• Play a lead role in establishing a standing UN Rapid Response Force with a mandate for peacekeeping and environmental restoration in both international crisis situations and domestic catastrophes like floods, earthquakes, storms and fires.
• Instruct Canadian embassies and consulates around the world to develop effective early disaster reconnaissance and assessment capabilities in order to speed up Canadian response times.
• Oppose the use of the United Nations Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine as a military solution to force aid relief on countries that are rejecting it.
• Focus Canada’s development aid efforts and economic investment in the specific key areas that:
• Foster alternative fuels and energy sources that dramatically reduce the need to import oil and natural gas and further allow the growth of recipient nation independent and/or majority ownership of these sectors and/or businesses as they develop.
• Focus on agriculture sectors that provide for food sovereignty through both subsistence farming and domestic commercial farming methods that are in keeping with green environmentally sound and gender equality principles.
• Increase bilateral trade, where possible, to facilitate the export of value added products from small island economies.
• Support and strengthen cooperation with regional organizations to further the goal of regional independence and sovereignty.
• Advance the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and ensure its principles are at the core of Canadian foreign policy.
• Support the creation of a Department of Peace and Security.
• Review Canada’s membership in military alliances including NATO and NORAD to ensure they are meeting Canada’s priorities of diplomacy, development and defence.
• Press urgently for global nuclear disarmament and the conversion of military industries in Canada and worldwide into peaceful and restorative industries.
• Meet the urgent needs for aerial and nautical search and rescue with fixed wing planes and Coast Guard vessels and icebreakers.
• Ensure that Canadian veterans are treated with respect and that those requiring ongoing treatment and/or disability payments are ensured compensation at least as generous as that provided for civilian work place injuries.

These and other steps will assist in achieving true global peace and security.

Originally published in the Hill Times.

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The meeting on Tuesday October 23, 2012 was held in camera. The committee resumed its study on Maintaining the Readiness of the Canadian Forces. The Minutes can be found here.

The goal of the meeting on October 25, 2012 was to discuss NATO’s strategic concept and Canada’s role in international defence cooperation.  Paul Meyer from the Simons Foundation (http://www.thesimonsfoundation.ca/) was present, as was Peggy Mason. According to Mason, there are key distinctions between a NATO-led mission, a UN-led mission, and a UN-mandated mission with NATO as a lead. A key issue with NATO missions is the current division between political and military control.  Mason advocates for having effective political frameworks alongside the use of force during NATO missions. Meyer emphasized the need for nuclear disarmament, and an effort placed on increasing cyber security.

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The Green Party is the only truly global party, with Greens in 70 countries and elected Members of Parliament in Europe, Latin America, Australia, and New Zealand. Together we work to press the nuclear super-powers to meet their obligations for disarmament, to reduce and eliminate the nuclear threat. We work to shift military budgets to peacekeeping and peace-building. We work to ensure the education, health protection and economic autonomy of women and girls around the world to address poverty and over-population.

Greens see the world as a planetary whole. We believe the essence of a strong security policy starts with addressing the single largest security threat to modern civilizations the climate crisis. As Gwynne Dyer pointed out in his book, Climate Wars, military establishments around the world are aware that the threat of increased political destabilization due to increased severity and frequency of severe climatic events warrants treating climate as a security threat. The spectre of millions of environmental refugees is a real and near-term reality, if we do not move aggressively to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Honouring binding multilateral treaties, such as the Kyoto Protocol, is a measure of a nation’s reliability and integrity in the world. As the only nation to have ratified and then repudiated Kyoto, we have blotted our copy book in the community of nations. Our domestic fossil-fuel expansionist policies put us at odds with the International Energy Agency, the European Union, and more.

Meanwhile, addressing global disparities, working together as nation-states to improve the standard of living for all, is more than a free market issue. It requires equity, the rule of law, and enhanced global governance.

Defence policy needs to be nested in the context of how we see our role in the world. Increasingly, Prime Minister Stephen Harper appears to defining our role in two ways trade and military hardware.

We are entering into cookie-cutter trade agreements with small (and in some cases corrupt) economies. Jordan, Panama, Colombia, with China yet to come. Our international posture is one of unquestioning support for Israel (I support the existence of the state of Israel, but think unquestioning cheer-leading is a disservice to peace in the region), and joining NATO missions with zeal.

Meanwhile, we are sending the signal that diplomacy is a dwindling concern. For some time, the Harper Conservatives have been shrinking our embassy presence so that a Canadian in trouble in Nicaragua, for example, is told the closest Canadian presence is in Guatemala and in any event, your phone call is directed to a 1-800 emergency line in Ottawa. With the 2012 budget, we are selling off diplomatic residences a decision surely to be rated penny wise and pound foolish by successor governments.

The most high-profile domestic defence question is clearly the botched procurement process for the F-35s. In many ways the F-35 fighter jet is the perfect object lesson from former U.S. President and former General Dwight Eisenhower’s warning to beware of the “military-industrial complex.” Canada’s rationale for joining in the process in 1997 had little, if anything, to do with domestic security and everything to do with hoped-for aerospace contracts.

Under Liberal prime ministers Chrétien and Martin, Canada put up initial funds to participate (first $10-million in 1997 and then a further $150-million in 2001). Up until this point, the auditor general found no fault with the process and accountability of decision-making. It was beyond the scope of the auditor general’s report to investigate whether Canada needed the F35s. Just as it was beyond the auditor general’s responsibility to find out which of the political masters were aware of the various and repeated acts of incompetence and failures of due diligence he went on to report.

The auditor general recounted such a trail of violations in the fundamentals of normal procurement process that even seasoned Ottawa-watchers are stunned. The decisions were generally taken in reverse order. First came the decision, followed by inventing criteria to justify the decisions, and then, lastly the rationale. Not one, but two, departments were found to have failed in the exercise of basic due diligence. Both the Department of National Defence (DND) and the Department of Public Works and Government Services Canada (Public Works) were found to have fallen below the standard of due diligence. 

The essence of the AG report is not, as Defence Minister Peter MacKay now claims, that the AG found a novel way to add up the costs of the jets. The essence of the report is that Canadians were lied tofor years. Parliament was misled for years. And the whole F-35 project, from 2006 onwards, was typified by a litany of rogue decision-making. What we need to know is how it happened that two departments suspended judgment, cut corners, and violated process. One theory is that Public Works and DND were independently willing to abandon normal procurement rules. More likely, the orders came from the one in control of all departments the Prime Minister who wants to remake us as a warrior nation.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May represents Saanich-Gulf Islands, B.C.
Originally printed in the Hill Times.

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Canada should not be surprised by China and Russia choosing to veto a UN Security Council resolution calling for Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down.  “We predicted that Russia and China would be very reluctant to approve a future UN Responsibility To Protect (R2P) mission in Syria after the mission creep in Libya turned it into an active regime change exercise,” said Green Leader Elizabeth May (Saanich-Gulf Islands).  “The needed Security Council trust around the use of R2P was imprudently damaged.”

NATO’s mission creep in Libya eventually resulted in heavy continuous bombing of Tripoli to effect regime change, though the original R2P Security Council resolution was only to take limited military action in Libya to protect civilians in imminent danger.

“Russia and China must surely recognize that their own interests are not served by the growing internal violence in Syria and need to quickly re-engage in crafting a new Security Council Resolution that prevents R2P mission creep,” added Eric Walton, Green International Affairs Critic. “Time is quickly running out for diplomacy – even for direct Russian efforts”   added Mr Walton.

Pro-democracy protests in Syria have been underway since early last year, with massive civilian casualties. President Bashar al-Assad has responded to the protests with lethal military force.

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