Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Foreign Affairs
Issue 38 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Wednesday, May 26, 1999
The Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs met this day at 1:09 p.m. to: 1) examine the ramifications to Canada of the changed mandate of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Canada's role in NATO since the demise of the Warsaw Pact, the end of the Cold War and the recent addition to membership in NATO of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic; and of peacekeeping, with particular reference to Canada's ability to participate in it under the auspices of any international body of which Canada is a member; and 2) examine the consequences for Canada of the Emerging European Monetary Union and other related trade and investment matters.
Senator John B. Stewart (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Honourable senators, as you know, this committee has two mandates. The first is our continuing study of Canada's role in NATO, and the second deals with the emerging European monetary union and other related trade and investment matters.
That second mandate is a kind of watching brief which follows on from the report prepared by this committee and presented to the Senate in 1996 on the developments in the European Union and the implications thereof for Canada.
Both mandates will be on the table this afternoon.
I see from our agenda that we are starting off with what I will call the "NATO mandate." Then we will have as our guest Her Excellency Danièle Smadja who is the European Commission ambassador. Following her, we will revert to the NATO mandate, with Professor Irwin Cotler of the Faculty of Law of McGill University; we will conclude with Mr. Earl Wiseman, from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
Those members of the committee who recall the work that was done when we were preparing our report on the developments in the European Commission and their implications for Canada will remember how important the whole question of straddling fish stocks became in our economic relations with Europe. Recently, the Senate passed a bill relative to that matter. I thought it would be highly desirable, in view of the past importance of that straddling stocks question, that the committee be brought up to date on that situation. It is possible also that Her Excellency will refer to fisheries questions.
We will begin with Colonel Jim Calvin. Colonel, we await your opening words.
Col. Jim Calvin, Chief of Staff, Canadian Forces Joint Headquarters, NATO: Thank you very much for having us here today. I am an infantry officer of about 30 years experience. In 1993, I had the good fortune of commanding a battalion of men and women during the UNPROFOR mission, during which we conducted a peace enforcement operation called the Medak pocket operation, which is unique in the annals of both the United Nations and within Canada.
Today, I will be joined by two non-commissioned members of the Canadian Forces: Sergeant Tom Hoppe, who was not a member of my battalion but has a particular story to tell; and Sergeant Jake McIndoe, who was a section commander of my battalion during the actual six-month UN tour that we conducted. I bring them with me today so that you will have the opportunity, through questions, to gain a balanced perspective on the roles of the Canadian Forces. Hence, you will hear not only the perspective of myself, as an officer, but also the perspective of men who actually must conduct the operation, be fired upon and return fire.
Today, I have been asked to come here to give you a presentation. I have been asked by one of your researchers to shed light on some of the more intense situations in which Canadian men and women could find themselves, either in future peacekeeping and peace enforcement operations, whether under a NATO mandate, or under a future United Nations mandate.
I will be showing some slides as well as a video during the course of my presentation. After that, we will be pleased to answer any questions that you might have on any aspects of military operations with which we have experience.
I wish to tell you a great story today. It is with a great deal of pride that I tell this particular story. It is the story of courage and valour that was displayed by young Canadian men and women over the 14-day period from September 9 to 23, 1993. It is truly one that is still spoken about in United Nations circles and certainly within Canadian army circles as being rather unique.
Medak pocket operation was a peace enforcement operation that was conducted in the middle of what was supposed to be a stable peacekeeping operation under the UNPROFOR mandate in 1993.
I certainly do not need to tell this forum that the nature of peacekeeping operations has evolved considerably since the 1970s, when we were primarily in the Golan Heights and in Cyprus, where there were peace accords to be monitored. By and large, this operation took place in the middle of a war where there was no peace to be monitored. In UNPROFOR, in 1993, there was very much an open war in Croatia between the Croatians and the Serbs.
My particular unit and all those other international battalions that were part of the UNPROFOR mandate were monitoring an open war between two sides.
Before we actually begin telling you about the operation, I think you would be interested to know the composition of the battalion that I took over. The battalion that I was commanding in Winnipeg at the time, the 2nd battalion, Princess Patricia`s Canadian Light Infantry, was told to give up certain numbers, to join those who were already deployed overseas. My regular force soldiers, within the battalion cadre, only numbered 325, or 37 per cent of the force that I eventually commanded.
I was joined by regular forces numbering 165 -- that is, the extra maintainers and medical people. They joined me approximately 90 days before we deployed. The reserve force augmentation that we were required to take over measured almost 400 of a total unit of 875. Approximately 44 per cent of the entire battalion were reserve force personnel.
As you know, reserve force personnel average 40 days training per year. They arrived on the ground on approximately January 1, 1993, for what is known as the intensive work-up training period For just short of 90 days we trained them, before we deployed on March 26 and began our six months of UN operations.
This is the highest percentage of reservists that has been deployed on a Canadian contingent to date. I do not believe you will see this level of reserve participation on any future operations. We can discuss that in the question period.
I always like to situate people with the terrain before we actually begin. This is a schematic slide of the terrain over which the Medak pocket operation took place. If you look to the extreme bottom of the picture, that area in green is a large mountain range called the Velebit Mountains, a high stony mountain range impassable by vehicles but passable by soldiers on foot.
To the north of the top part of that slide was another lower hill feature, and in between was largely a flood plain with arable land, farmland. Many farmers and agricultural people lived in that area. There was a mix of Serbs and Croatians.
The thing to note on this schematic is that on the far left top of the slide there is a town called Gospic, which was a Croatian military headquarters. To the right side, at the bottom, there is town called Medak. That was a Serbian brigade headquarters. In between there was a line where the Serb and the Croat forces met. That territory was in dispute.
This next slide depicts a photograph of the Velebit Mountains, to give you an idea of the terrain.
The next slide depicts a perspective of a similar type of terrain over which the operation was conducted for the 14 days of the Medak pocket operation. The operation was begun, as is the case in most operations, by one of the warring factions with a huge artillery barrage. Artillery was a favourite weapon of both sides. It allowed them to shell military and civilian installations from a great distance.
Throughout my sector, of which only a small portion is shown in this schematic, a heavy artillery barrage was received in the first 24 hours between September 9 and 10, 1993. We received shelling back in my particular battalion headquarters, as well as further south in all of my company locations. The particularly intense artillery barrage that happened was centred on the village of Medak.
Medak was not a huge village. It was a village of perhaps some 400 metres in length and 50 metres in width. In fact, the entire village of Medak would fit inside the Parliament buildings where we sit today.
Within 24 hours, 525 rounds fell within that village. We know that because, 24 hours earlier, I had just moved one of my platoons up to the village of Medak to monitor the situation, and they had just moved into a new building at that particular stage. When the shelling started with such intensity -- and we are talking about small calibre shells and huge rockets dropping within 25 metres of their building -- they began recording every shell in a small cahier, like one would use at a public school, as the shells dropped around their ears. At the end of 24 hours, they had recorded 525 shells which dropped within 200 metres of their building.
Every time there would be a pause in the shelling, my soldiers would leave their building, jump into the armoured personnel carriers, find the houses which had been hit, pull the local Serbian residents from the house, take them to the Serbian bunkers, and then return to our own building to receive the next bout of shells.
During the first 24 hours, Canadian soldiers suffered four casualties due to artillery bombardments. Two were hit near the Medak house while they were outside servicing their generators or vehicles and the shells fell around them. Two others were 20 kilometres behind the lines in a re-supply truck which just happened to be moving in the area of a mortar barrage which bracketed their vehicles and shredded the front cabs of their vehicles. All were taken to our surgical unit and, within an hour of being hit, were having pieces of metal removed from various parts of their bodies. None died but, within the first 24 hours, we had suffered four artillery casualties.
The next slide shows a shot of the surgical facility. It was not a Canadian facility because at this time -- and it is still true today -- we have extremely limited surgical capability within the Canadian army. This was a French surgical facility that had been left in that particular location. In the first 24 hours of the Medak operation, French doctors were taking metal out of Canadian soldiers.
I must tell you that there is, in my mind, no justifiable reason why we cannot take care of our own soldiers when they are wounded in conducting the nation's business. I do not know how we solve the problem, but we must ensure there is good care when we put our soldiers in harm's way.
As soon as the artillery barrage lifted, the Croatians launched their attack. It was basically a pincer movement. On this slide I draw to your attention the red line that goes from the top of the slide, forms a deep pocket and then moves off to the bottom of the slide. As I told you, the Serbs, with their headquarters in Medak, owned all of that pocket that thrust into Croatian territory. It was a sore point with the Croatian military. This attack was aimed at taking back that pocket, hence the name, "the Medak pocket."
The Croatians launched their attack from the two shoulders of the pocket with their mechanized tanks and their infantry coming down from the north. They had infiltrated their dismounted Croatian special forces through the Velebit mountains and they attacked from the heights from the south in a pincer movement to secure the pocket.
For a period of 24 to 48 hours, there was an intensive battle ranging between the Serbs and the Croats in the Medak pocket. We had no soldiers further forward than the town of Medak proper. In the end, we had to establish an observation post, which is shown with a French national flag on the top of that particular slide, some two kilometres distant from the actual pocket. We equipped the Canadian soldiers up there with long-range binoculars. For a short period of time, 48 hours, the Canadian sergeant manning that observation post and viewing the terrain through those binoculars was the sole source of information for the UN Secretary-General as to what was happening inside the actual pocket.
I always like to say that a Canadian sergeant was advising Koffi Annan at that stage of the game as to what was going on in the United Nations.
The next slide depicts some of the equipment used by the Croatians to launch their attack. This is a T-72 tank.
The next slide shows a view of a tank that you do not want to see if you are a soldier.
After 24 hours, the Serbians were very thinly spread throughout the entire region of the Krajina. They held the reserves back. Once the Serbs determined that this was the major thrust of the Croat attack, they moved in their reinforcements. They reinforced with extra artillery, extra tanks and extra infantry. They moved those into the region to try to stabilize, and to stop the Croatian attack.
The next slide was taken by my driver as we drove past this particular off-loading point. It is not terribly clear but it shows the front end of a train which the Serbs had modified to move around their tanks. It is a tank transporter. They had a rudimentary rail line still operating within the Krajina. They dismounted a tank hull and mounted it permanently on that front car. Behind that first car there were about 10 or 11 flat beds which moved the tanks up within 5 kilometres of the front line. Then they could dismount and move the tanks into the action. They saved on tank mileage and unnecessary travel to the actual operation itself.
In the next three slides you will see some Serb rocket launchers which moved into the area; a Serb armoured personnel carrier; and some Serbian tanks.
After a period of 48 hours, and particularly after the Serbs brought in their reinforcements, the two front lines stabilized. Everyone dug in trench lines. There was no more movement back and forth. The Croatians consolidated their hold on the pocket.
For about two days, the United Nations kicked in with a high diplomatic effort trying to ease the tensions that this Croatian attack caused throughout the entirety of Croatia and the entirety of Bosnia. It was all one UNPROFOR mission at this stage and what happened in one country impacted on all of the other areas of ex-Yugoslavia.
Negotiations were going nowhere until the Serbian forces, in retaliation for this Croatian attack, launched two FROG missiles from 200 kilometres away and dropped them into the suburbs of Zagreb, Croatia's capital city.
When the Croatian political forces realized that the Serbians could reach out and touch their capital city, that brought them to the bargaining table, and a peace accord of sorts was established.
The accord that was established on the political level stated that the Serbian forces would have to stay at the point to which they had been pushed back. The Croatian forces would have to back up to the line from which they attacked on September 9. The United Nations would take over the intervening buffer zone and take over the entirety of the Medak pocket and create more separation between the two sides.
On a political level, that was agreed. Unfortunately, on the military level, people did not exactly buy into that particular operation. I will speak to that in a moment.
On September 13, I received warning that I had to go to the capital city of the Krajina and receive orders from my United Nations boss, General Cot, who sent his representative back to give me orders to create this buffer zone.
At those orders, I was told several pieces of information. I was told that I was to establish a buffer zone between the two sides. I was to commence the operation within 24 hours. I had a sector that was some 2,400 square kilometres in area, and the area in question was only about 40 square kilometres in the extreme north of my sector. I could not move all my soldiers out of the rest of the sector.
I was to be given two French army companies under my operational command, making it a combined multinational operation for the purposes of establishing this buffer zone. That would swell my battalion from approximately 900 to about 1,500 personnel, multinational, for the duration of the Medak pocket operation.
On the evening of September 13, I received those orders. I gave my own orders, which you see in front of you now, for a four-phase operation. Initially, I had to move in between the two sides and stop the fighting.
You must remember that just because they are not moving forward and backward does not mean that they are not shooting at each other. We still had open warfare involving the two front lines of the Serbs and Croats over ground between 400 metres and 1,200 metres. Artillery is still being fired, and tank fire is still being fired.
I had to stop the fighting. Then I had to establish a crossing site. My entire battalion was on the Serb side, behind the Serb lines. I was able to discuss things with the Serb forces, but I had no mechanism for telling the Croatian forces on the other side that had just launched this attack what I was going to do. I had to establish a crossing site and get some soldiers over to the other side. Then I had to move my companies across that crossing site, get the Croatian army to move back to their original lines on the far side of the pocket, and then sweep the area thoroughly and make a report to the United Nations as to what had transpired during the Croatian occupation of the Medak pocket.
I told you that I was to receive two French army companies. First, I will tell you what we had. In 1993, the vehicle that my battalion was equipped with was the good old reliable M-113, primary date of manufacture being 1965. Most of the drivers of that vehicle were younger than the vehicles they were actually driving. They were equipped with a .50-calibre machine gun on a pinto mount.
The largest calibre weapon I had was a TOW weapon system, a very good anti-armour weapon system. I had eight of them, which I moved into the pocket to help deal with the Croatian armour. They could fire at and kill any tank up to 3,700 metres away. We did not need to use the armament in that, but that was the biggest piece of machinery I had.
The French army came with the vehicles depicted in this slide. They had several of them in each of their companies. I would like you to note that this particular vehicle had a 20-millimetre cannon. At one time, a 20-millimetre cannon was a very heavy piece of weaponry on the international stage. It is now average size. Any theatre, whether it be the Balkans or Africa or any of the other places in the world, will have cannons of that or higher calibre, whether they are mounted on the back of farm trucks or mounted on military vehicles. You need those if you are to defend yourself these days. It is no longer an offensive weapon.
The next slide shows the other vehicle they brought. This is their infantry-carrying vehicle. I show it because I want you to see the ground clearance. Mines are an ever-increasing threat for all our peacekeeping missions. That was the case during our particular mission, and I will show you the results of some of our mine strikes. The advantage to that vehicle is that, when it hits a mine, by and large it blows a wheel off but the hull is not penetrated, protecting the soldiers inside by the large clearance. That is not the case with the M-113 vehicles that I had. When we hit a mine, in most cases the hull is penetrated. The result of that is injury to the soldiers inside, particularly since the driver sits right over the first road wheel, with about six inches of ground clearance, where the mine normally hits. I just offer that up to you in terms of equipment issues.
You will recall that I was told when I received orders that I had to commence the operation in 24 hours. We received one company of the French army from sector north. That was at the far northern tip. The Medak position is denoted by the Canadian flag. The distance between that French company and the area around Medak is approximately 250 kilometres. We received a second French army company from the Bihac pocket a little farther north, which is about 200 kilometres from where they had to move. I also had to move my anti-armour platoon and one of my companies from the extreme south of my area up across the Velebit Mountains, a distance of about 100 kilometres, all within 24 hours. Within a 24-hour period, this peace enforcement operation had to be ready to receive orders and commence operations.
I speak to that because, in preparations for peacekeeping missions around the world, there is a great discourse as to whether you need to have good warfare training before you can go into peacekeeping operations. You do not train for large-scale movements over 200 kilometres in a short period of time, in preparing for peacekeeping operations. What is needed is logistical training for all of the munitions and supplies that are required to conduct what is a major combat situation in normal peacekeeping operations. Therefore, normal warfare training is essential within the Canadian forces, and in fact for our NATO allies, if we are to engage in peace enforcement operations in the future.
The morning of the September 15 saw my headquarters moved up into the town of Medak. Remember the size of the town. I had four sub-units, each varying between 135 soldiers and 250 soldiers for the French companies, all tucked away in small hides around the village. I had my own anti-armour platoon with the eight TWO missiles. I had all of my engineers and all of my reconnaissance platoon. Around the village of Medac, I had moved approximately 1,100 personnel and probably close to 120 vehicles, all poised to launch into the Medak operation proper.
At this time, General Cot, the force commander for UNPROFOR, arrived in a helicopter to have a personal chat with me. I sensed that he wanted to see whether I was ready to do the operation, poised to commence at noon; the second thing I sensed is that he wanted to have a personal chat about some of the problems that we might encounter before we went into it.
For almost two hours, Lieutenant General Cot, the French army commander, and myself walked through the village of Medak. He checked out our soldiers and chatted with me. By and large, we sorted out the rules of engagement on the ground. I asked for and received permission to change the rules of engagement for my TOW weapon system. To this point, my TOW weapon system had been under strict rules that, unless I ordered it to fire, it could not open fire. Because I had known there were a lot of tanks on the far side, we had that relaxed so it could fire in self-defence. If a tank fired at one of my weapons systems, in order to protect itself the TOW weapon system could respond fire without asking for permission from me.
He offered me two important pieces of information. First, he said that the credibility of UNPROFOR was, by and large, on the line for this. Up until this point, in 1993, UNPROFOR had failed to ever enforce its will upon any of the warring factions. Whenever it attempted to enforce a peace agreement in a region, it had been forced to back down from the warring factions when they resisted. He said that it was important for the credibility of UNPROFOR that we be successful in this operation.
The second piece of information was far more critical from my perspective, which was that he believed the Croatian Army command had not communicated to the soldiers on the Croatian side that they needed to withdraw back to the September 9 line.
You must understand my perspective. When I am about to move across from behind the Serbian forces, who we have informed of our plan and have been assured that they understood this agreement was in place, and we were to advance on the Croatian forces, who have not been told that they must withdraw, it places my soldiers at an extreme measure of risk. There was no mechanism to communicate that to the other side because there was no crossing site. Therefore, we needed to hurriedly communicate that to our soldiers and ensure that they were prepared to take adequate steps when they passed in front of the Serb tanks and the Serb infantry that were dug in.
In any case, General Cot was satisfied with our discussion and with what he viewed, and told me to commence the operation at noon on September 15. In accordance with our plan, I ordered Charlie Company, the Canadian company, and the first company of the French army to move forward north of the one road into the no-man's land commencing at noon. At noon the soldiers, in their vehicles, spread out. This was not in a column formation, this was in a tactical formation, by platoons. They spread out in normal military fashion and went across country, passing in front of the Serb tanks and infantry.
As soon as they moved any appreciable distance in front of the Serb tanks and the Serb infantry, shots started ringing out from the Croatian forces. Initially, as we moved forward, individual rounds started bouncing off the sides of our APCs, armoured personnel carriers. At that time my troops seriously thought that it was a mistake and that the Croats just did not realize this was the UN in their white vehicles moving forward. We gave orders to release our antennas to their fully upright position, in order to put the flags up higher, and move some of the white vehicles up so that the Croats could see that. When we did that they opened fire with their machine guns and their heavier equipment. It then became obvious that this was not a matter of mistaken identity, and my soldiers started taking better positions and returning fire.
For the next 15 hours we engaged in what can only be described as close combat with the Croatian forces. From approximately 1300 hours until 0800 hours the next morning, there were a series of close combat battles fought between my soldiers, the French soldiers, and the Croatians, as they would open up fire at my soldiers and my soldiers would return fire.
You must understand that, at the closest, the two warring factions, the Serbs and Croats, were 400 metres apart, and at the farthest to the north, in the French sector, they were some 1,200 metres apart. They took up those battle lines because they were on the main tactical ground that was best to defend from. The ground in between those two lines are what we determine in the military as being the killing zone. That is where my soldiers were taking up positions, the ground that is not the best tactical ground, because we needed to move and stop the fighting.
Charlie Company, in three different platoon locations with their armoured personnel carriers, were within 200 metres of the Croatian forces who were opening up on them with machine guns, small arms fire, grenade fire, 20-millimetre cannon fire, shooting artillery at them and, for 15 hours, those platoons were returning fire. One fire fight would die down then, as soon as the Croatian forces would open up on another platoon, they would respond in kind. We expended many boxes of small arms ammunition. My soldiers dug in while being fired upon. We had some soldiers lying down and returning machine gun fire at 200 metres. While machine gun fire was being directed at them, other soldiers were digging in to give them protective trenches. That went on for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening until eight o'clock.
The next slide shows bullet holes in one particular house. This was Captain Dave McKillop's platoon location and, in particular, Sergeant Rod Dearing. He commanded this section location. At one point they had an observation post up in the top of that particular building trying to get a better view of the Croatian forces, when 20-millimetre cannon fire ripped through both sides of that building. Two or three soldiers were peering out of a window when, suddenly, holes were blasted through both sides of the building. That is because a 20-millimetre cannon will go through both sides of a building like that, and keep going for another 1,000 metres. Daylight was opening up all around them through this building and they decided they better get down into the basement quick.
You can see where a rocket-propelled grenade, or an anti-armour weapon, blasted into the side of that building while they were returning fire. That was the scene of approximately five separate fire fights for that particular section.
I like showing the next slide because it demonstrates the contrast between what a soldier must look like for a peace enforcement operation these days, and what we traditionally expected our soldiers to look like back in the mid-1970s in Cyprus. In those days, if a soldier's boots were not shone and his uniform not pressed he was put on charges. Now every bandolier a soldier wears around his waist is filled with two magazines for his machine gun. He probably has already put 500 rounds through the rifle he is carrying. This photograph was taken the morning after. He has probably dug in a trench or two and is more worried about how to shoot his weapon than he is about looking neat. You need people with that particular quality if you are going into some of these operations.
The next slide is a photo that was taken at 0900 hours after the last fire fight and it shows one of the trenches they dug in. The man without the helmet is Sergeant Rod Dearing. He and Bombardier Scott Leblanc, an artillery reservist, is also in that picture. He is now a young officer cadet in his second year at the royal military college and he will become a Patricia when he graduates and join our ranks.
In that photograph there are two regular force soldiers, Sergeant Dearing, who received the Mention in Dispatches citation, and one other. The others are all reservists in that particular section. As I said, they endured five separate fire fights, one which lasted one and one-half hours, where they were shooting back and forth at 200 metres with the Croatian forces across open fields.
Officer Cadet Scott Leblanc also received the Mention in Dispatches for manning the machine gun and covering his section as they dug in while under fire when he was in an exposed position.
At approximately 1800 hours that evening, after five hours of fighting back and forth between the Canadians and the Croatians, I received an odd request through one of our UNMO networks which indicated that the Croatian general in Gospic, on the other side, wanted to meet with me. He wanted to have a meeting to discuss the situation at the front line. We hurriedly arranged for my safe passage across the front lines.
Just after dark, at 1900 hours, I commenced a walk, with three of my men, across the 1,400-metre buffer zone between the Town of Medak and the Croatian forces that were still firing into the darkness on both sides of this particular road. We walked across the one paved road and, since it was such a quickly arranged meeting, our signal would be to flash three red flashes of our flashlight towards the Croats and they would flash three back. As long as those red flashes were going we were safe to keep proceeding towards this machine gun fire taking place on our flank. It was a comforting feeling to know it was red flashlight flashes that were keeping us safe as we walked towards the Croatian side.
We got across in darkness to the other side, where we were met by Croatian forces and were whisked away to Gospic for a rather intense meeting with all the command staff of the Croatian army.
We were immediately accused of aggressive tendencies toward the Croatians. They confirmed General Cot's suspicions that they had allegedly not been told to withdraw.
Through good fortune, I had in my combat pocket a photocopy of the agreement that I had been given when I attended orders two days earlier. When I showed them the signature of their general on the paper that said they had to withdraw to the September 9 line, we began to move from the accusation stage to negotiations for their withdrawal.
We agreed that at noon the next day they would communicate to their frontline soldiers that they would have to withdraw. We would then be able to begin moving them back.
We also agreed that we would be able to establish that night the second phase of our operation, which was the crossing between the Serb and the Croatian line on the one major paved route -- which is shown on the slide.
By 2 a.m., we established a crossing site between the Serb and Croat lines. For the most part, the fighting died down, except for sporadic firefights at first light the next morning.
At first light the next morning, we realized that we had made a tragic mistake in giving the Croatians until noon to withdraw. In looking across to the far side, when you looked over the terrain and correlated that with the map, in each place where there was a Serb village on the map we saw huge smoke plumes. There were explosions coming out of every one of those villages, and small arms fire was cracking in the distance.
It was evident that the Croatian army was systematically ethnically cleansing the entire pocket before they gave it up to the UN forces.
For about four hours, until noon, we sat there. Regardless of our communicating up to headquarters what we believed was going on, because we did not have someone in the villages, we had to endure the fact that they were killing everything in the pocket and were burning and blowing up buildings.
The explosions we heard were anti-tank mines, chain-linked together with electric detonators to blow out the cinder block foundations of the buildings, allowing the second stories to crumble in. They burned buildings and barns. They shot livestock and personnel within the actual pockets.
At noon sharp, we rolled our first company across the hard stand. My Delta company was commanded by Major Drew. They arrived on the far side only to find that, in the night, the Croatian army had put in a new defensive position behind our soldiers. They had dug in trenches. They had moved up anti-armour weapons and missiles. They moved up a tank. They had seeded the entire area with mines, surrounding the paved road. They put in large anti-armour devices, the dragon's teeth that you see in the movies, on the road. When we moved up to the far side, we were told, "You will not pass."
We were in a very tenuous situation, with all of these weapons systems aimed at my soldiers. We were flanked by mines on both sides. We had no room to manoeuvre. Basically, we were told by the Croatian brigadier at the site, "You cannot move."
This was an untenable and extremely volatile situation for us. As soon as we saw that the Croats had manned their missile systems, all of my soldiers trained their anti-tank systems on the Croat's weapons systems. All my soldiers dismounted and cocked their weapons and machine guns. For about an hour and a quarter, we were in an extremely delicate situation. Had one person fired a round, we would have had almost 150 of my soldiers and 200 Croatian soldiers at less than 50 metres apart firing huge armaments back and forth.
Clearly, we could not just say, "charge" and try to get through the situation. At the same time, we could not allow General Cot's operation to fail. We could not use force in this situation or we would have lost tens of tens of soldiers in a matter of minutes.
It was fortunate at this stage that, because most people thought the operation was over, a great deal of news reporters had gathered and were actually accompanying my soldiers across to view the first sightings of what had happened in the Medak pocket. There were about five television networks and perhaps 20 paper-based media reporters following my group of armoured personnel carriers and supply vehicles.
I quickly gathered the reporters together, behind one of the vehicles, and said to them, "I want to convene a press conference in front of their minefield." I told them that I wanted to use the leverage of the international media to force a crossing, by attacking the Croatians' normally moral high ground in the international stage and forcing them, by threatening them on what we call the indirect approach, to let us through.
We staged what turned out to be a real media conference. I had my back to the Croatian brigadier who was standing on the other side of the dragon's teeth and the mines on the road. The press conference was held in front of these mines and barriers. The Croats were accused of ethnically cleansing the Medak pocket and of violating their agreement with me of the night before and, on a higher plain, with General Cot days previous.
When the Croatian brigadier heard what I was telling the media, he then quickly reversed his position. They cleared the mines and barriers off the road and allowed us to pass.
An hour and a half later, we began to pass through the lines and force the hand of the people in the Medak pocket who were still engaged in cleansing the actual pocket.
At about 1330 hours, my first company moved through. It was comprised of approximately 140 soldiers and 20 vehicles. At 1430, my reconnaissance platoon, including myself, and a company of the French army moved through into the depths of the pocket.
We moved through in two columns. When we arrived in the pocket, it was about 1800 hours and it was just before dark. The scene was horrendous, one that will stay with me for a long time. The buildings were still burning. All of the buildings were either razed to the ground through explosions or buildings were still burning. Croatian soldiers were still mounting buses and getting out of there, most of them carrying bags full of loot or suitcases they had picked up. There were livestock littering the ground everywhere. There were surgical gloves all over the ground in each one of the villages we passed through, giving witness to the fact that a huge clean-up of bodies probably took place. Approximately 200 to 300 bodies remained unrecovered when the UNHCR calculated who had been living there, who escaped, and who was eventually found.
At this time, we began to find bodies.
At this time, I would like to show you a videotape which will demonstrate some of the stresses our soldiers are put through. You will see a RCMP inspector, a member of CIVPOL. I singled out people with specialist skills. He had forensic training and he prepared formal reports as to approximate time of death and method of death to be included in our report for eventual war crimes tribunal action.
The video will also show you some of the clean-up. Infantry soldiers were attempting to treat these bodies with a measure of respect and dignity as they put them into body bags and transported them to the temporary Serb morgue for identification by next of kin. You will see the stresses they would have been under.
Video presentation.
Col. Calvin: I do not have to tell you that soldiers are not trained to deal with that that kind of task in their normal course of duties. When deployed on a peacekeeping operation, they do not expect this to be part of their duties. A number of our soldiers were severely affected by that.
The next slide shows that all buildings were razed to the ground.
As I said, we arrived there at last light. It was very dangerous to move around at night because there were mines throughout the entire area. We stabilized our positions at that time.
The word spreads quickly amongst the troops when you start finding civilians slaughtered by the military. The troops were quite incensed. I can say candidly that starting first thing in the morning. The Croatians were hurriedly moved back toward the September 9 line by the Canadian and French army soldiers.
On September 17, we made sure there were no laggards, and we moved the Croatians back outside the September 9 line by 1800 hours. We secured our objective of creating the buffer zone between the two sides.
Mines were an ever-present threat. During the course of the Medak operation, we had four mine strikes on vehicles, and two individuals walked into mines.
This slide shows a Canadian vehicle. It is for representative purposes only to show you the nature of the destruction when a vehicle hits a mine. I took this photograph of one of the vehicles that was hit in another contingent a year or so later. Four French vehicles were struck by mines and several injuries to the French soldiers resulted. This gives you an indication of the blast power of a mine.
The next slide depicts the sweep team that I established to ensure that we committed to paper a full and complete report of the atrocities. It was commanded by one of my majors and included my two doctors. It also included one or two RCMP inspectors with forensic experience as well as my engineers who were capable of utilizing heavy equipment and digging up graves. It also included 30 or so of my infantry soldiers. They would take care of the bodies and transport them back to the Serb morgue.
When we found a body during our sweep, these people would move to the scene and do the investigation at that time.
The next slide depicts our last days. We divided into four sectors. We swept every inch of that ground to record all of the damage to the personal buildings and all of the wells that had been poisoned by oil or had bodies thrown into them to contaminate them. We recorded everything that had been done to ensure that no Serbian family who had been living there for 300 or so years could ever move back to that particular piece of ground.
The next slide is another picture of the sweep team.
In conclusion, what did we achieve? Overall, four Canadians were wounded by artillery. Seven French soldiers were wounded by mines, including two who tripped an anti-personnel mine, as a result of which each one had over 600 pieces of metal enter his legs. Neither of them will ever walk properly again. One Canadian officer died during the course of the operation, and two Canadians were wounded at the conclusion of the operation in a head-on collision with a Serb truck.
The Croatians reported in their media that 27 Croatians were wounded or killed by the Canadians in the course of the firefights we had with them over the 15-hour period. I have no way of knowing whether that is high or low.
Three French armoured personnel carriers and one front-end loader hit mines on the French side.
With respect to ethnic cleansing, we found 16 bodies. I believe many more people were killed and their bodies taken elsewhere. That is because of the number of surgical gloves we found littering the landscape in the villages.
Every single building, as recorded, was burned or razed to the ground. All livestock was destroyed.
As a result of our report, the Croatian general was removed from command, but no further action has yet been taken against him. I have given testimony, in Canada, as have several of my officers and NCOs, to the war crimes tribunal out of The Hague, which is now investigating this matter for potential litigation against Croatian authorities.
Our unit was awarded the first ever Force Commander's Unit Commendation by the UNPROFOR commander for valour under fire as a result of our involvement in the Medak pocket. In the entire history of the 140-plus units that went through all of the UNPROFOR experience from all of the nations of the world, only three such commendations were awarded. This one was created as a result of the Medak operation to honour units that performed well in difficult circumstances.
As outlined in the next slide, several individuals were decorated by Canada.
I will comment on the quality of soldiers we encountered, and I think this is true in most theatres. I describe them as "thugs with guns." They are extremely valorous and courageous when up against unarmed civilians; women, children, and farmers, but they are not so courageous when they come up against professional soldiers who are equally well-armed and are able to look them in the eyes and say with conviction, "I am here to do right and will stop you from doing wrong. If you carry on, I will kill you."
"Thugs with guns" is how I would describe most the people in the Balkans. I do not think that has changed appreciably in the years between 1993 and the present.
I have one more video clip to which I would like you to listen. This clip was filmed at the end of the Medak pocket. A group of soldiers was interviewed about what happened to them. They make several comments about training, to which I should like you to listen since it is always better to hear it from soldiers than from officers.
Video presentation.
Col. Calvin: Our tour ended on October 10. The operation occurred between September 9 and 23, so this was at the end of our operation.
Had this happened in the first months we were there, before we were seasoned and had undergone a certain amount of in-theatre experience, I believe it would have turned out entirely differently. It was as though we were in the Stanley Cup finals of our tour. We had been through a lot of shooting, shelling and seasoning before we got to this operation.
This slide is of the headstone that was erected over UNPROFOR to remember all those who died during this mission. Two of them were my soldiers. Corporal John Béchard died in August of 1993. To illustrate the human cost of these types of operations, John Béchard was about 22 years of age and was married to Amy. John had been home for two weeks of leave around August 1, during which time Amy delivered their first daughter, Janessa. John congratulated himself on timing his leave such that he could be home for the birth of his daughter. He came back full of piss and vinegar for the last half of his tour. When he got back into theatre, he learned that his company had deployed south in preparation for the Medak operation. In the morning, he joined the convoy that had been formed to take him back to his sub-unit. The convoy was formed on a small incline. John walked behind the trailer to throw his kit bag into it. At that moment, the truck rolled back and crushed him against the vehicle behind it. He died in two minutes.
Within 36 hours of saying goodbye to John, Amy received the news that her husband was dead.
I should also like to introduce you to Captain Jim Decoste. Jim died in a vehicle accident on September 18, I believe, two weeks before we were due to go home. His wife Jan received notice just before we went home that he would not be coming home.
These are only the visible casualties in operations abroad. I estimate that, during my six-month tour, we suffered over 20 injuries. In addition to the four artillery shrapnel injuries, we had mine strikes and booby-trapped grenades. There are also the unseen casualties of stress and depression which result in such things as family breakups. Operations such as this are not without their price, and we must be prepared for that.
Before we proceed with questions, I should like to reintroduce the two people that I have on my flanks, because I would like you to direct some of your questions to them as well as to myself. First, there is Sergeant Jake McIndoe who was a section commander during my six months tour in Croatia. Before the start of the Medak operation, Sergeant McIndoe was a section commander in the village of Medak. His platoon house was brought under attack by Serb forces. We have been talking about fighting the Croatians, but there were no good guys over there. A Serb platoon attacked his platoon house. He was assaulted with small arms, machine guns as well as grenades inside his platoon house, and he had to command his section while under fire.
I will take a somewhat unique approach to my introduction of Sergeant Hoppe. I will introduce him to you in the same way he was introduced to me when we were at Government House where he was decorated.
Sergeant Hoppe was the commander of a key observation post located between Serb and Muslim forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina. On several occasions, the post came under direct-aimed small arms and anti-armour fire in July of 1994. Conscious of the need to maintain his position of observation of the opposing forces, he moved his armoured vehicle while preparing to return fire to safeguard his men and carry out his task. On one occasion, he had to return fire and manoeuvre his patrol out of danger. Throughout, he remained calm and controlled, displayed outstanding leadership and assured the safety of his patrol and his mission. For that action, Sergeant Hoppe was awarded the Meritorious Service Cross.
On August 30, 1994, Sergeant Hoppe rescued three children who were under direct small arms fire near Vrbovsko, Bosnia-Herzegovina. From the observation post where he was on duty, he noticed children hiding behind gates in a cemetery. He immediately called for a driver to move an armoured personnel carrier down the road while he ran alongside, protected from the direction of the firing. Sergeant Hoppe broke cover and, under intensified fire, hurried the children safely up the ramp into the vehicle and they all returned to the observation post. For this, Sergeant Hoppe was awarded the Medal of Bravery.
You are being introduced to a true Canadian military hero. Strangely enough, I did not bring him here because he is a hero, I brought him here to speak on behalf of all those people who are injured, because Sergeant Hoppe himself still struggles with his own demons that he gained during his tour. He has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and he is here today to answer your questions on the care of the injured.
With that, we would be more than happy to answer any questions you might have about military operations.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. Colonel, have you participated in other peacekeeping operations?
Col. Calvin: I was in a Cyprus mission in 1981. I have been involved in two missions: one in Cyprus, and this particular one in Yugoslavia.
The Chairman: Am I correct in thinking that the problems with which you had to deal were very different?
Col. Calvin: There was not one shot fired in six months in Cyprus. Ammunition was only issued on order of a higher commander. In Yugoslavia, we had rounds fired at us in our particular unit, which was considered a safe and secure sector, on an average of once a week, sometimes more. We probably responded to fire, even outside of the bounds of the Medak pocket operation, at least every three weeks if not every two weeks. We were shelled from the time we hit sector south in the middle of August. Virtually every day, some of my soldiers were under direct shelling.
The Chairman: I ask you the question because, as I read about peacekeeping, I get the impression that there are some circumstances in which peacekeeping is feasible undertaking, whereas there are other circumstances in which it is impractical.
My other question is directly related to the one with which you have just dealt.
This committee is familiar with the concept of weak states. A weak state very often engages in a dramatic act of violence. For example, the Tiananmen Square episode is sometimes interpreted as something that no genuinely strong and confident government would have ever dreamed of undertaking. I mention that in passing to explain my term "weak state."
You spoke earlier of poor communication or alleged poor communication between the Croat general and his government. I do not think you said this, but there was also the possibility that there was insubordination and that the communication may not have been as bad as the people with whom you were dealing alleged it was.
Col. Calvin: My opinion is that the entire thing was choreographed. The expressed lack of knowledge was not a lack of knowledge but an attempt to further delay the movement forward of the UN forces and the establishment of the buffer zone because, if you delay long enough, the entire accord will collapse. It was a known strategy by all sides -- not to act very fast when you have to give up ground. I believe that they knew exactly what they were doing. The ethnic cleansing at the end, which involved civilian police forces as well as the special forces and the soldiers of the Croatian army was a systemic and well-organized plan. They were all operating in concert. Huge stores of mines and wood were brought in from outside to feed the fires in the buildings so that they continued to burn until they were burnt to the ground.
Senator Corbin: I should like to follow up on a statement made by the colonel in which he referred to factors which make it practical to bring in these troops, and other factors which make it impractical. Could the witness respond to that, please?
Col. Calvin: I believe that you would be on dangerous ground to believe that the circumstances that are in place at the moment you decide to put in a force will be the same circumstances that will be in place when the force arrives and throughout the duration of the tour. When we received orders to go on this mission, we were going into one sector, namely, sector west. It was a stable sector where disarmament was in progress and there was no open warfare. Mid point through our tour, we were moved to sector south, because we were the force commander's reserve, and we ended up in the middle of the a war. We had not been apprised that that was a possibility when we trained. It was only because of the solid training of our non-commissioned officers, our sergeants, warrant officers and junior officers that we were able to elevate all our reservists and be able to go in there.
When you make a decision, the situation can progress very rapidly downhill. Once you have made the decision, it is difficult to adjust the force. I do not know if that answers your questions fully.
Senator Forrestall: My first question touches on a somewhat sensitive area. A number of Members of Parliament and members of the Senate had occasion to travel to Bosnia-Herzegovina, and specifically to the same general area you have mentioned. Certainly while we were there, but more specifically on our return, I was struck by the virtual absence of counselling, particularly for reservists. There was initial counselling. There was counselling at the site. There was the usual inter-relationships that exist within a platoon, within the groupings. However, I question the adequacy of counselling. I remain concerned that it is less than desirable. Do you have any suggestions in that regard?
As members of the permanent force, you have a slightly different mindset. It must be very traumatic for people who leave an office, a warehouse, or a trucking company and enter the centre of operations. It was bad enough then when you could suppose that they might lightly arm themselves in order to defend themselves while on a peacekeeping mission. Those days are gone. It is much easier to act as a Chapter 6 group, having prepared for Chapter 7, than it is to have prepared for Chapter 6 and move up to Chapter 7 duties in the field of operations. In that general context, could you comment on the counselling that is available?
Sergeant Tom Hoppe, Canadian Forces Joint Headquarters: Regardless of whether you are a reservist or a regular force, as the colonel has mentioned, it is difficult to prepare yourself to face something like that.
Other countries, such as New Zealand and the Israelis who are ahead in this field, have pre-counselling and post-counselling for those who will be sent on these tours of duty. That is set up in an organized way. At this time, in the Canadian forces, we do not have structured pre-tour and post-tour counselling sessions.
In divisional headquarters, we set up post-counselling for the group that was deployed to Honduras. Through those efforts, we found it is up to the units to conduct their own counselling. However, that can create its own problems.
To answer your question, counselling at this point for post- and pre-tours is lacking.
Senator Forrestall: I ask that we keep this point in mind and pursue it at other levels later on. It is critical.
I have jokingly referred to the Coyote as super jeep with a big-shot gun loaded on its back. How mine-proof is the Coyote? We had the bad experience of witnessing what happened to some other vehicles in the Canadian arsenal. How adequate is the Coyote? Can it run over a landmine?
Sgt. Hoppe: I do not know, sir. I have not been in a Coyote. That is outside my expertise. I have not used that vehicle. I was in the M113 Tow when I was on tour, so that is all I can speak of, sir.
Col. Calvin: It is a hypothetical question. When a Coyote hits a mine, we will find out how well it will take the strike.
Senator Forrestall: Do you mean to say that we have not blown one up yet?
Col. Calvin: I was not on the project team that conducted the trials. I do not believe it is in the specifications that they actually must blow one up before they put it out for use.
Senator Forrestall: I would hope the manufacturer would do that to meet the specs as required.
Col. Calvin: You could probably summon an expert who could analyze the shape of the hull and assess the ground clearance. Clearly, it has more ground clearance than the APC that we had over there. I would expect it gives more protection from a mine strike than the equipment I was using.
Senator Forrestall: How different is the Kosovo situation from the Croatian situation?
Col. Calvin: Senator, you are asking us an unfair question. We have had the same filtered media reports that you have had. Even the media cannot penetrate very far into Kosovo. I would really be on shaky ground if I were to try to respond to your question.
Senator Forrestall: Climatically and geographically, is it quite similar? Are you dealing with the same groupings of people?
The Chairman: Senator Forrestall, the witness already has told us that this is not a question on which he is prepared to give expert guidance.
Senator Forrestall: I did not realize he was being that blunt with me.
The Chairman: Senators, I would remind you that we are dealing with the peacekeeping reference. We should use ex-Yugoslavia as a test case, but we should not allow that test case to define the outer limits of our focus. That is why I started off by asking about other peacekeeping missions.
NATO has now taken peacekeeping as its major role, outside security for its members. I wonder if we are not misleading ourselves as to our ability to deal with certain cultural, religious and political situations through diplomacy or perhaps by a military force. Do we think we can solve this and make peace where there is no peace? I should like to have any enlightenment that you gentlemen can provide to the committee on that point.
Senator Forrestall: Mr. Chairman, that was all I was trying to get at in a roundabout way. My question was on a topic which you had already introduced yourself. I thank the witnesses very much.
Col. Calvin: Senators, it is important that everyone understand that the conflict that is happening over there is not just about leaders making a wrong decision and the people following a wrong decision by a leader. Those people, every man, woman and child, to the extent that they are willing to sacrifice their own children in a war cause, believe in their right to have certain portions of that territory. This is very much a grassroots feeling. It certainly existed when I was there. I do not believe that the Serbs who are operating in Kosovo are any different from the Serbs that I met. The Croatians and the Muslims -- although I never dealt with them -- will be no different.
The attitudes of the people will not change if the leadership changes. By way of illustration, at a negotiation session I sat across the table from a Serb captain who wore a black star on his uniform above his heart. At the end of the negotiations, in the polite sort of chatter that you have after these, I asked him what it meant. He told me that if more than 10 people of your immediate family have been killed by the enemy, you are allowed to wear this star. Twenty-two people in his family had been killed by the Croatians and he listed them off -- his grandparents, his mother, his father, his brothers, his children. He looked me right in the eye and he said: "It is for that reason that what you do here does not matter. I will personally kill Croatians until they kill me, and it does not matter what else happens."
That is the depth of the emotion of many of these people. There may be some slight change of view in some regards. However, hatred and emotions are not worn on the surface. They are deep. They are all aware of their history, going back 500 years. From the perspective of each of them, they are in the right, and they are willing to sit there and fight for it.
When we commit ourselves to these things, it is not a matter of a short term to change people's beliefs. You cannot go in for three years and say, "We will occupy this place for three years, in which time the people will suddenly change their beliefs." They have a much larger perspective of history than we do here in Canada and a much more solid view of what is at stake for the future generations of their ethnic group. It is a long-term project to change people's beliefs over there, not just a matter of two years or three years, as I think NATO has found in Bosnia right now. In the end, they have partitioned Bosnia, as much as we hate to think that.
Senator Bolduc: Am I right that, logically, you are saying that the solution might lie in dividing the whole territory into smaller areas for each ethnic group? We would have Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Macedonia. In the end, you will have only Serbs in Serbia. Is that the logical conclusion of what you are saying?
Col. Calvin: International diplomacy is not my strong point, sir. I am a soldier. I am saying that, if we pursue the cause of multi-ethnic groups, a cause that we embrace here in Canada, it will mean a long commitment by the international community before that concept is embraced over there.
[Translation]
Senator Losier-Cool: Your visual presentation certainly helps committee members like me understand the risks involved in these peacekeeping missions, as well as the complexity of the operations they entail. My question has to do with health care during this type of military operation. I understand the Canadian Forces did not have proper surgical facilities. Did other forces have such facilities?
Col. Calvin: Most of the major armies of the world -- the United States, France, Germany -- have a good surgical capacity in relation to Canada. Within the Canadian Armed Forces, we need doctors, and particularly surgeons.
Senator Losier-Cool: Is there any reason why the Canadian Army does not have that capability?
Col. Calvin: Well, as I see it, it is because of a lack of surgeons. Previously we had only nine surgeons in the Canadian Armed Forces. Every time there was a mission, the same surgeons would be sent. After a certain amount of time, it simply was not possible to keep these surgeons constantly away from their families. As a result, surgeons would quit the Armed Forces to pursue a civilian career. I see no way of solving that problem, because in my view, the working conditions of surgeons and doctors are extremely difficult.
[English]
The pressure, the stress of constant deployments of the same people.
[Translation]
Senator Losier-Cool: I know we are not supposed to refer to the current situation, but I will take a chance. Are medical conditions better now? Do the Canadian Armed Forces have more surgeons now, and is the current situation in Kosovo different from the one that prevailed in 1993?
Col. Calvin: For Canada, the current medical situation now is worse than during the period you referred to.
[English]
Senator Grafstein: Welcome. I have a geographical affinity to the Princess Pats. They were headquartered in London, Ontario, my hometown, and my own cadet brigade was affiliated with the Princess Pats at the beginning of the Korean War in 1951-52. I remember very well being on parade, if you will, in front of General Rockingham, who I think led the first peacemaking police action of the Princess Pats after the war in Korea. You come from a very distinguished line of great soldiers. On my behalf, I welcome you here, and I am delighted to hear how well you did in this particular action.
One of the problems we are having in trying to decipher some coherent advice to ourselves and to our public is the definition of "peacekeeping" versus "peacemaking." It struck me while listening to our witnesses that this was a peacemaking operation as opposed to a peacekeeping operation. Cyprus was peacekeeping. This was certainly peacemaking. I would like to focus on the peacemaking aspect as opposed to peacekeeping because I think they are materially and significantly different in terms of resources and needs.
Having made that distinction, let me go back and use this as a case study. Do you feel that you had sufficient forces on the ground -- I am not talking about firepower, but sufficient personnel on the ground -- to deal with this particular difficult situation? Did you have at the time sufficient forces on the ground?
Col. Calvin: Once we were augmented with the two French army companies, yes, I certainly had sufficient numbers of personnel and vehicles to handle the operation.
Senator Grafstein: We have heard your testimony about some of the less-than-perfect vehicles and less-than-satisfactory logistical support when it came to medical services on the ground, and we will take note of all of that.
Was there availability of air cover for this particular action? This was a pretty crucial model, but there was no air cover. Why is that?
Col. Calvin: You must take yourself back in time. When we conducted this operation, there was no NATO air cover in theatre. NATO air cover did not come into play until six months after we finished this operation and left the theatre. It was six months to a year after we left the theatre when NATO set up the air cover for the later stages of the Bosnia operation.
Senator Grafstein: Is it fair to say that this might have been a deficiency in tactical planning?
Col. Calvin: If are you under a UN mandate, there are certain things that cannot be done. In the UN, with all of its good offices for peacekeeping, the very multinational nature of the staff at headquarters leads to a variety of levels of staff capability. They are largely non-deployable, non-tactical headquarters. To employ air cover, you need a level of headquarters that is extremely proficient in mid-intensity operations. Air cover is not something to be handed off to a less-than-adequate structure on the ground. If you do not have the correct methods of controlling where it goes, identification of targets, and you just hand masses of aircraft to a UN organization, that would be a recipe for disaster, in my opinion. The level of training of the soldiers on the ground to coordinate targets and the level of coordination of the higher headquarters to use air power is absolutely essential. None of that was put in place until after our operation.
Would we have liked to have had it? Absolutely. Would I have liked to have had tanks? Absolutely. They were not available to me. Therefore, we used other methods to gain success. Certainly, that introduced our soldiers to many more elements of risk than there would have been had there been more capacity to use an indirect approach against the Croatians.
Senator Grafstein: I wish now to discuss the topic of training. I did not realize the relationship between regular and supplemental personnel in the Canadian forces. It seems to me from your recounting that it was a seamless web, that there was integrated training and the regulars and the supplemental forces on the Canadian side worked very well. Was it the same situation with the French unit you commanded as well? Did they have a high component of professional versus supplemental forces?
Col. Calvin: The French companies that I received had a large number of conscripts. However, their conscripts are fully trained personnel. This meant that every soldier there went through intensive training to become fully professional and then were kept for a period of time. I do not want you to get the wrong idea of the reserve situation. The reserves clearly have their place.
The reserves have a definite role to play in augmenting peacekeeping operations. After the intensive work-up training of 90 days, the private soldiers and junior officers have a definite role to play. However, there is a level at which the reserves struggle. We have to be very cognizant about jeopardizing Canadian soldiers.
At the senior NCO level of Sergeant McIndoe, Sergeant Hoppe and beyond, as an NCO beyond the rank of captain in the reserves, they do not have enough experience to allow them to operate under tense, life-threatening circumstances, in my experience, with rare exception. There are always exceptions.
As a generality, they are soldiers. Their junior officers are good. As far as senior officers are concerned, you cannot gain 20 years or 30 years of experience coming out a couple of times a week on a parade square or in an armoury. You have to do it in the field.
Sgt. Jake McIndoe, Canadian Forces Joint Headquarters: First, I should like to tell you about the structure of my section. It was a very unusual tour for me. It was unusual in the sense that in our 10-man section there were seven reservists. One of the slides showed that that number was 44 per cent. I point out that 7 out of 10 makes 70 per cent. Therefore, I had quite the task to perform. This was a first-time situation for me, too, as well as for the reserve forces.
In order to put a regular force battalion into a tour such as this, we took all levels of training one step higher and very seriously from day one. We had a little bit of attrition, which was good. If we were given exact numbers, I do not think that our tour would have been as successful as it was. By that I mean that, if we had to augment our battalion with 300 reserves with no room to cut, I do not think we would have had the level of professionalism that we had.
Our training was intense. Three months' training is mandatory. You must have some sort of workup, especially for the reserves. A regular force infantryman private from whichever regiment in Canada should have the same level of expertise. In that way you are assured of a certain level of training. That is not the same for the reserves.
Unfortunately, you do not know what you will get. However, I must say that I was very proud to serve with the ones we did get. They impressed the heck out of me. I brought them over there. I was not sure about this tour. I was not sure how it would go, with seven of my soldiers being what they call weekend or summer soldiers. They integrated into our battalion because of the type of training that was set out for them by the commanding officer. For the time of the tour, they were brought up to the appropriate level. However, it required an extreme amount of training.
Col. Calvin: At the start of our 90-day training period, we had 550 reserves in a pool. We selected the best 385 to go over with us. It was not that we were handed the exact number and we took them over. There was a severe competition as to who would make the bar and come over with us.
In terms of reserve participation, Sergeant McIndoe told you that 7 out of 10 men in his section were reservists. I cannot overemphasize the stress put on a regular force NCO when he has to carry a section of that composition for six months. He personally signs up and makes sure that everyone does their job, knowing that some of them do not have all the training they need to get through.
At least 20 people in our tour were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. When we came back and people scattered, some never sought help. There may be twice that number from my tour alone. There were family breakups when people came back because of the stress that is on you when you are there.
There is a severe price for raising the percentage of reserves within a unit, which is why the Canadian forces has placed a limit of 20 per cent of contingents on future missions as opposed to the high level that we took over with us.
Senator Grafstein: Would you comment on the French forces and the comparison between their ratio of conscripts to regular forces?
Col. Calvin: I am reluctant to comment on the French forces because I had them for only 14 days. I had my battalion for nine months. I had a lot of time to make judgment calls. I only assessed the results on the ground as to what happened. I am loath to comment on the value of individual soldiers and different types of soldiers. It really would not be a fair assessment of their composition, sir.
Senator Grafstein: Mr. Chairman, I will understanding should the officers not wish to answer my next question.
In 1993, you did a very thorough job of putting together a forensic dossier on a unit that you said systematically carried out a form of genocide. You went on to say -- and your testimony was very interesting -- that, based on your analysis, your conclusion and your opinion, this was a plan, and one not carried out by an episodic, errant officer.
Six years later, no charges have been laid. Is there any explanation that you can give us as to the delay between completing those dossiers and charges not having been brought against those Croatian officers?
Col. Calvin: No.
Senator Lynch-Staunton: You mentioned the colonel with the black star that you ran up against. Was that Agim Ceku?
Col. Calvin: I cannot remember his name, but I know he was a captain.
Senator Lynch-Staunton: The Kosovo Liberation Army is now being directed by a Croatian general. I was wondering whether it was the same person.
Col. Calvin: That was a Serb captain, sir.
Senator Lynch-Staunton: Very well, I misunderstood.
My main question is a statement, the conclusion of which I hope you will be able to refute. I see a difference between peacekeeping and peacemaking, however, I do not see much difference between peacemaking and a war zone. I find that peacemaking can only be successful after the war is over. I have the impression from what I have heard from you gentlemen, and from what I have seen on the screen and on the television, that Canada is still equipping and training for peacekeeping when, in effect, it should be training and equipping for peacemaking and have the troops on a war footing with the proper equipment to support that philosophy.
Col. Calvin: I believe that at this point equipment purchases are still made in light of our white paper commitments. That new equipment must fit in and fulfil those commitments to our NATO allies, or our other alliances around the globe. I do not believe that there is a conscientious degradation of standards of equipment in our equipment procurement statistics because we have been involved in peacekeeping. In fact, if anything, because of operations like this Medak operation, it has reversed a potential lessening of equipment quality and it has brought home the fact that we must keep a high quality of equipment when we replace some of our equipment.
In terms of equipment in general, the Canadian kit is older at this time and less capable than that of many of our major NATO allies. That is a statement of fact. The Germans, the Americans, and the British are all able to maintain a much larger force and to do more than is specified in our white paper. However, I still must say that our equipment is better than many of the other nations that we are partnered with in peacekeeping, or even, in some cases, peace enforcement operations. Certainly my equipment was the envy of a great many of the Third World nations people when I was there in 1993. They arrived far less equipped than we did.
In general, my opinion is that we cannot compromise, in any future equipment purchases, on the standards for personal kit, personal weapons and safety. We must buy the very best that the market has to offer, regardless of where we must go to find that equipment. We must demand that, with all the money we spend, there should be Canadian content in our equipment purchases. That is a fundamental truism which we should embrace. I believe what we cannot lower the standards just to get Canadian content. We must ensure that our Canadian companies rise to meet the standard before we insist on the Canadian content.
That is all I wish to say about equipment.
Senator Lynch-Staunton: I appreciate that. I will not ask you any more questions because I do not wish to draw you into a political argument. I believe you have stated it as clearly as your office allows.
Senator Stollery: Mr. Chairman, I did not expect to, however, I found the presentation extremely interesting. Something which the colonel said struck home with me. It had to do with the so-called Croatian army, when faced with a professional army, not being up to the job. I wrote quite a long piece for an American publication on this subject. I called it the "peasant disposal unit"; that is, the PDU.
I was in Algeria during the civil war, and I agree with your comments about professional soldiers versus conscripts. I want professional soldiers around and I cannot understand, in this question of peacekeeping in Somalia, for example, how the rabble could have run out professional soldiers. That is mystery to me.
People who go around murdering as you mentioned, and as we have all heard is happening in the Balkans, are normally of a peasant background. Very often they butcher their neighbours. They may be Catholics who are murdering their Orthodox neighbours. I should like to hear what you have to say about these characters walking around dressed in uniforms, basically a rabble, who are not up to standing up to professional soldiers. How is it that we have not been able to deal with them more effectively?
Col. Calvin: Senator, I must differentiate between the former Serbian J and A army units and some of the ones we met in Croatia. You will remember that, as late as 1992, Croatia had no army whatsoever. From the grassroots up, they needed to put in place an army, which eventually went on in Operation Storm and ethnically cleansed the Krajina Serbs. In three years they became much more professional than they had been. In 1993, they still had very rudimentary discipline. They were thugs with guns.
I believe that the Serb army is a professional army, and their recruits are much different from some of the people I met. They have professional artillery, they have an air force, they have anti-aircraft radar, locating mechanisms and a very good communications network.
We must be very clear: Many of the people who my sergeants met on the ground in the middle of the night, who were wandering around with rifles in their hands, were thugs with guns. There is another level of military in that region, primarily in the Serb army, that are very professional and can conduct campaigns. I do not believe they can conduct a campaign at the same level of intensity as NATO forces. I do believe that they are less capable than NATO forces at all levels. They are a different breed of cat.
In answer to your question about why were not we more successful, I would say that a peacekeeping force only reacts to transgressions at the moment and until they finish. We had no unilateral authority to go and wage war on any of the warring factions. We were there to monitor, report, and to stop transgressions as we saw them. As soon as that finished, then anyone who was 500 metres away from the transgression was still wandering around with all of his weapons and getting ready for the next one.
There is a difference between being proactive, which an enforcement mission, like IFOR in Bosnia, can do and being reactive, which describes the peacekeeping mission I was involved in, where I was under a constant reactive situation. We could only react to a transgression at the time and place that it occurred.
Senator Stollery: Increasingly, we are talking about PDUs, peasant disposal units. That is what they do; they do it all over South America. As a person who spent his youth in areas where professional armies operated very efficiently and effectively, I find these units difficult to understand. Somalia always sticks out in my mind as an example of where a rabble can make armies run away.
We are trying to come up with some recommendations as to how NATO should be transforming itself. I realize that we are not dealing with the regular Serb army most of the time. I understand where there are the two levels. There is the Serbian army and then there are all these people going around murdering their neighbours. We seem to have been totally ineffective at stopping them murdering their neighbours, who happen to practise a different religion. What should we be doing about that? It is happening more and more often.
Col. Calvin: First, senator, I would like to say that I disagree that the Somalis made us all run out of Somalia.
Senator Stollery: I was not talking about you.
Col. Calvin: The unit we sent over to Somalia took over the worst city in Somalia, Mogadishu. In very short order, law and order was established in that city.
What ended the Somalia situation was political, not military lack of will. When you have whole armies being told to evacuate and go home, it is not the army commander but the nation that sent them there that has suddenly changed its mind.
I do not believe that any warlord caused any American, Canadian or any other force to run away. It was the thought behind the mission that was suddenly changed and those people were ordered away.
To go to the thrust of your question -- why we cannot stop all the murdering -- peacekeeping forces are very lightly spread no matter where you go. I told you I had roughly 2,400 square kilometres to control. Out of all of my force, half of them are on-duty at the time, the other half are off-duty. Nine hundred are not on-duty all the time or pretty soon you would just die of exhaustion.
You have 400 to deploy at any given time. Given that, you can imagine, with 2,400 square kilometres, how many I have in every kilometre.
Is there room to manoeuvre, if they are cunning and if they really want to go out and shoot their neighbour? You bet there is. Do we have methods through active paroling and rigorous observation posts to ensure that we control large areas? Yes, we do. However, we cannot under-man the units that we send there. We cannot try to get by with the bare minimum commitment all the time because, in the end, we will always be given a bigger sector than what we think we should militarily take on, because we never get enough soldiers. It will be people like our sergeants who must be very creative and out-think the people on the ground if we are going to do the job.
Do not short shrift the commitment if you are going to send them in.
The Chairman: Honourable senators, we now are moving from the NATO file question to our European Commission file. Therefore, I should like to terminate this section by thanking the colonel and his non-commissioned officers for a most interesting and enlightening presentation.
Thank you very much.
Honourable senators, we now move to our study of the consequences for Canada of the emerging European Monetary Union. Representing the delegation of the European Commission in Canada is Her Excellency, Danièle Smadja, Ambassador and Head of the delegation. With her is Mr. G. Frederick Kingston, senior adviser on economic and commercial affairs with the delegation here in Ottawa.
Her Excellency, who started at a young age has had a very intensive career in the work of the European Union, both at headquarters and abroad. We had a bit of a chat this morning, and I was surprised at the number of topics on which Her Excellency is prepared to say something, either in her initial statement or in response to questions.
We would be very pleased, Your Excellency, if you would make your opening statement and then hear our questions.
Her Excellency Danièle Smadja, Ambassador and Head of the Delegation of the European Commission in Canada: Mr. Chairman, I am pleased and honoured to have been asked to help you prepare for your trip to Europe. I will attempt to give you a general picture of what is currently happening in Europe. Following our session, I hope you will have even more questions than before, an indication that I have managed to raise the level of your interest.
Presently in Europe there a number a number of remarkable achievements and promising developments. They are definitely a source of pleasure and contentment on the part of Europeans. I have identified four of these remarkable achievements and promising developments. The first is the launch of a single currency, the euro, within the framework of what we call the Economic and Monetary Union.
In 1969, we began to talk about the possibility of an economic and monetary union. A number of reports were drafted at the time, but, unfortunately, there were a number of problems on the economic world stage, particularly the oil crisis. Hence, this project was buried for a number of years. In fact, we had to wait another 20 years, until 1989, before we could again begin to talk about an economic and monetary union.
We were very pleased with the launch of the euro. For a single currency, which is very much comparable to a baby being born, the success has been quite impressive, both technically and legally. From the beginning, the credibility of the euro has been established. The reason for that is the very good preparation that went into launching the euro.
On January 1 of this year, we launched the single currency. For the moment, the euro is only being used by the financial markets, but bank notes and coins will be available and put into circulation on January 1, 2002.
Some euphoria accompanied the launch of the euro. It is basically a sound currency that arose out of a number of sound monetary and budgetary policies on the part of our member states. It is monitored by an independent European central bank. That was also carefully prepared.
The euro has brought to Europe a culture of monetary stability and price stability. That is important for the European Union and the world at large. This new currency has already had and will have a real impact on the international monetary scene. There is no mystery in that sense because, after all, the launching of this currency is a major historic event. Eleven countries are part of what we call Euroland. Each one qualified to become a member of the group. They did not merely decide to opt in. They had to qualify through a number of serious and important convergence criteria. They had to commit themselves to a number of monetary and budgetary policies, especially concerning public finances. It is quite revolutionary to see 11 countries give up their sovereignty in currency.
The euro is now the currency of 270 million people, and it will become a major currency for trade. Specialists are saying that, in the medium term, 35 per cent of international trade will be done using the euro.
It is also reserve currency. Of course, a number of countries that have or had in the past reserves in Deutschmarks, French francs, Italian lira or whatever since January 1 automatically have euros in their reserves. It is interesting that a number of countries, China, for example, have said that they envisage converting a large amount of their current reserve into euros. Another important aspect of the euro is that it will help a number of investors to diversify their portfolios.
Therefore, you will understand that the euro is having an impact on the international monetary scene. Also, the euro and Euroland will contribute constructively and positively to the current discussion on the new structure of the international monetary system.
The launch of the euro and the achievement of the European economic and monetary union is definitely an impressive achievement. I am sure that you will have the opportunity to have discussions in Brussels, in particular, to better understand the single currency.
The second achievement to which I wish to draw your attention is the process the European Union is currently embarked upon, which is an enlargement process. It is remarkable to see that the European Union, composed at present of 15 member states, is attracting many countries. In a way, it is also logical because the European integration process has brought about in Europe security and peace. We have not had war between ourselves for the last 50 years. This is quite impressive considering past experience. Membership to the European Union is also a way to anchor democracy. Therefore, it is no wonder that the European Union is attracting attention.
At the moment, we are negotiating with six countries their membership to the European Union. These six countries are Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia and Cyprus. Six other countries have applied for membership, but we have not yet started negotiations with them because we are still screening their applications. These countries are Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Turkey.
Therefore, we are embarked upon a very impressive process. On these last six countries, our heads of state and governments will take a position, probably at the end of this year, on whether to start accession negotiations with them immediately.
I wanted to draw your attention to enlargement because it is a phenomenon that will also have an impact. It is very important for us within the union, but it will certainly have an impact as well on our main trading partners and our main allies, such as Canada.
The third achievement I want to outline briefly is a very recent agreement reached among our member states. We call it Agenda 2000. Agenda 2000 is an impressive package from the European Commission submitted to our member states on how to strengthen the union and how to prepare the union for enlargement. The idea was to provide, first, for a pre-accession strategy, especially in terms of financial support, for the candidate countries. It also contains a financial framework for the European Union between the year 2000 and the year 2006. As well, its goal is to strengthen the union by, in particular, reviewing and improving two main policies. Those policies are first, the common agricultural policy and, second, what we call the structural policy, which make up the regional policy, the cohesion policy, et cetera, which are supposed to help bridge the gap between some of our member states that have a more advanced social and economic fabric and the others.
Agenda 2000 was a very controversial and ambitious package, which gave rise to a number of very difficult debates. I am sure you can understand how difficult debates on money and agriculture can be. The mixture is very explosive. However, I think the European Union has proven its maturity. We reached an agreement quite early; in fact, much earlier than we expected. This agreement was achieved in March. Therefore, we believe that we are now more equipped to enter the new millennium and to face the multilateral round of trade negotiations that will start at the end of this year, especially with regard to reform of our common agricultural policy. We also feel more prepared to face the challenge of our enlargement.
Last but not least in terms of achievements to which I wish to draw your attention is the new treaty. The Treaty of Amsterdam came into force on May 1. This new treaty amends our founding treaty. I will very briefly outline a couple of interesting improvements that this treaty has brought about.
First, there is now a greater role for the president of the commission. In March, we witnessed a very historical event, that being the resignation en masse of the commission. That led to a major political and administrative crisis, but the maturity of the European integration process was proved there again by the speed with which our heads of state decided upon the new president of the commission. They nominated Mr. Romano Prodi, the former prime minister of Italy, who is now in charge of conducting negotiations with the governments of the member states in order to form the new commission.
Under this treaty, more powers will be given to the European Parliament. That is quite important in the process of democracy at the European level. As you may see during your trip, a new Parliament will be elected mid-June.
Improvements have been introduced into the decision-making process of the union through this new treaty. For example, more decisions will be taken by a qualified majority whereas in the past they were taken by unanimity.
This treaty also contains a number of reinforcements in our common foreign and security policy, that being an attempt to achieve a common security and foreign affairs policy at the legal of the member states.
A new element is introduced by this treaty. We will have a high representative of this common foreign and security policy who will be the spokesperson and the representative of the entire union when it comes to foreign affairs, security and defence policy. This high representative is to be nominated by the heads of state and government at their next summit, which will be held next week.
According to the last rumours, one of the front runners for this position is Mr. Solana, the current secretary general of NATO. Next week, we will find out the name of our high representative. A lot of confidence is being placed in this new position.
We have a new treaty, a remarkable achievement, but there are also a number of impressive challenges ahead of us in the European Union. We have a new commission which will start in September, with Mr. Prodi playing an important role. That will be both interesting and challenging because the resignation of this commission was triggered by a report that pointed out a number of dysfunctional areas within our institution. The level of criticism in the report, which was written by some independent experts, was quite high. Although not all of the commissioners were criticized in the same way, there was criticism about the functioning of the institution. Mr. Prodi will have to embark on some reforms of the way the commission is managed and administered.
There will be a new European Parliament. I am sure that you will be eager to find out more about that during your trip. The resignation of the commission was also the result of a new and interesting relationship between the European Parliament and the European Commission. In the future, we may see more and more of these crises between the European Commission and the European Parliament. That will be proof of the maturity of democratic control in Europe.
In terms of challenges ahead of us, there will probably be a reform of our institutions and the way the European Union functions in general, especially the decision-making process. A number of our member states have been quite clear about the fact that, before enlarging ourselves, we must reassess how we function internally. A couple of days ago, it was decided -- and, this will probably be confirmed next week at the summit of our heads of state and government -- that we will soon embark on what we call an "intergovernmental conference." Most of the member states and the commission would like to see that conference ending by the year 2000. That will help prepare the union to become more steady on the enlargement of its duties.
Last but not least, one of the challenges ahead of us is more integration at the political level within the union. Although the euro looks like an economic project, beyond the creation of a single currency, it is also an impressive political project that will probably have a spillover effect on more integration at the political level. I think that the war in Kosovo is also prompting a number of our member states, if not all, to realize how much a European security and defence initiative is needed and how important it is for the union to be able to increase its capability to mobilize itself when it comes to political and security issues.
I am sure that when you are conducting a number of discussions at NATO you will be looking at these issues.
I wish to put some light on the relationship between the European Union and Canada. I will make a few general comments about this relationship and then I hope you will ask me questions so that I may elaborate.
What is happening in the union in terms of more integration -- whether on the economic front or on the political front -- is good news for the bilateral relationship between the union and Canada. In fact, when we started our common foreign security policy, which was a revision of our founding treaty back in 1993, we managed to improve our bilateral relations. Since then, we have started an impressive and constructive political dialogue which covers not only the human security agenda, as it is known in your country, but also a number of interesting and important discussions concerning what is happening in the political scene in a number of countries.
My reading of our bilateral relations is that, every time the union makes some internal progress, that progress makes a corresponding step in bilateral relations. We saw that when we started in 1976 with our framework agreement. In 1990, we took it a step further with the transatlantic declaration and then, in 1996, we went a step further with a joint action plan.
Since last December, the EU and Canada have launched the European-Canada Trade Initiative, ECTI. This initiative touches upon a number of areas and was endorsed by our heads of state, including Mr. Chrétien. Last year, at their biannual summit, this trade initiative was signed with the Austrian chancellor. It focuses on enhanced cooperation in a number of areas. For example, the multilateral cooperation area and, notably, the framework of the new round of the WTO. It focuses on the mutual recognition agreement as well as on equivalence and regulatory cooperation in order to enhance cooperation in the fields of services, government procurement, intellectual property and competition. In fact, in June we hope to sign a competition agreement between the European Union and Canada. We also hope to have an agreement in the areas of cultural cooperation and business development. The day before our next summit, which will be held on June 16, Minister Marchi will be in Brussels where he will be launching a business dialogue between the business communities on both sides of the Atlantic.
We are making progress on bilateral relations, although we have a number of irritants. Normally, however, we manage to deal with them quite efficiently.
I apologise for taking so long, but this subject is very broad.
The Chairman: I have several questions which, if I do not ask now, will not get asked by me.
I have circulated to members of the committee a letter from Professor Donald Barry of the University of Calgary. Professor Barry appeared before the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries on May 11 of this year. Under discussion at that meeting was Bill C-27, to amend the Coastal Fisheries Protection Act and the Canada Shipping Act to enable Canada to implement the Agreement for the Implementation of the Provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982 relating to the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks.
That letter came to me from Dr. Barry after he had appeared. He volunteered a brief summary of the developments between Canada and the European Union after the so-called turbot war. Consequently, the memories of the members of this committee have been refreshed concerning the turbot war.
Bill C-27 passed the House of Commons and was given third reading in the Senate on May 13. If this bill receives Royal Assent, as of course it will, and becomes law, can it then be said that the problem of the straddling stocks, or more generally the fisheries question, will have disappeared as an irritant between Canada and the European Union?
Ms Smadja: I wish I could say "yes," but unfortunately we remain quite concerned with this bill. In fact, all the way through the legislative process we were quite worried about some of the extraterritorial aspects of the bill, and especially because of some language the bill was incorporating. Even though it is a bill to implement the UN straddling stocks convention, we thought the bill used a number of words and expressions that were not similar to the ones in the UN law. We had the impression that the Canadian legislature was taking a too liberal interpretation of these words. Because it is an implementing bill, we were a bit concerned about the way the Canadian authorities would implement the UN straddling stock convention. However, we must respect that.
Unfortunately, we still have the impression that our concerns have not been totally heard. We have followed very carefully the legislative process. In particular, we have been taking very careful note of the interpretative statement delivered by Minister Anderson when the bill passed the House of Commons. However, I must admit that we are still concerned.
You are referring to a very difficult and sensitive event in our bilateral relationship. Fisheries is a very sensitive issue. There is still some concern that we could have the same sort of problems again, even though the atmosphere is definitely better and there is a lot of goodwill on both sides. The fact of the matter is that we remain concerned and, therefore, will remain very vigilant at the way this bill will be applied once it receives Royal Assent.
The Chairman: That answer begs me to ask another question. It refers to the state of irritation that the so-called turbot war created. Has that state passed away so that we can now look at our other economic relationships without the complication of the straddling stocks problem?
Ms Smadja: For this question, it is easier for me to say "yes." On both sides, we consider that what happened with the turbot war belongs to the past, even though as I said fisheries remains a very sensitive issue. We are also, within the fisheries sector, trying to see how we can build the relationship, not just on these sorts of aspects but also on other more cooperative aspects.
For example, in April, I was in Brussels when several representatives from Canada, especially from the fish processing industry, came to meet with their counterparts in Europe. Some European representatives from the fishing industry and especially the processing industry will come here in September to meet again with their Canadian counterparts. We are trying to get away from the aspect of fishing only, to look at the fishing industry in a more general sense. So, yes, definitely there is this trend.
As far as the other aspects of the trade and cooperative relationship are concerned, the initiative that I just mentioned, ECTI, the EU-Canada Trade Initiative, and the number of new sectors we want to look at are proof that we are trying to get away from the sticky points. Even though we remain vigilant on this issue, we are trying to get away from that and to look at other promising avenues.
[Translation]
Senator Bolduc: I listened carefully to your comments and you seem to be quite positive as far as trade relations between Canada and the European Union are concerned. I must admit I have some doubts in that area.
During World War II, we provided soldiers, arms, ships and supplies. We fed England and were happy to do so. We then sent men to Italy, France, Belgium and Holland. Europe began rebuilding in the post-war period starting in around 1950 or 1955, and has continued to do so up to the present time. As Europe grew economically and domestic trade within Europe increased, Canadian trade with Europe declined. It did not decline in absolute terms, but it declined in a way that prompted us to entertain certain doubts about the possibility of having trade links with Europe. A number of our companies set up operations here and there, particularly in Ireland.
Other than providing men and arms for regional wars in Europe, it seems to me we do not actively work at strengthening relations between Canada and Europe. We had an opportunity to discuss that with Mr. Brittan when we went to Belgium. He gave us a number of good reasons why the Americans always come before us, and we understand, but this is starting to be a concern. I have been observing the situation for forty years now and I clearly see a decline. We have to be realistic. We reach agreements, but most of the time, they are international in scope rather than being agreements with Europe. What attitude should we take here in Canada? You say things are progressing, but I have serious doubts about that. As you expand in Europe, you are doing so with neighbouring agricultural countries, so that we are constantly being hit with all kinds of quotas and protectionist measures, such as agricultural tariffs, which are very high over there. Here in Canada, they are high in some areas, but not across the board.
Can you give me any reason to be hopeful? I honestly have to admit that I am not terribly optimistic.
Ms Smadja: I did not want to leave the impression that everything about our relationship was perfect. What is working well, however, is the fact that we have a partnership with a solid historical basis -- as you have just reminded us -- something that is always uppermost in our mind. Beyond those historical roots which bind us, there are also the moral values we share. So, our relationship is one with deep, well-established roots.
Furthermore, we have the instruments we need to support that relationship. I listed a couple of them. I must say that having spent six months in Canada, I completely agree with what you have said. I am the first to be unhappy about the very low volumes of trade between Canada and Europe.
I tend to say that this is your fault rather than ours. You mentioned that Sir Leon Brittan explained that the United States came before you. But I am tempted to say the same thing here: it is my feeling that as far as Canada is concerned, the United States comes before Europe.
Certainly, the United States is a neighbouring country with which you have signed a number of agreements, including NAFTA, which is a significant agreement. It is perfectly normal for your volume of trade with the U.S. to be as high as it is. Yet that relationship with the United States should not necessarily mean such weak trade relations with Europe, in my view.
In some of the provinces that I visited -- I must say that I can be rather provocative at times since I tend to tell officials that they should go to Europe and do business there.
I do not really think it is a matter of signing agreements. I believe we have all the agreements that we require legally. Perhaps what is needed is for Canadian business people to make a greater effort to penetrate markets in Europe, because they are there. Our view is that tariffs are not really an obstacle. For example, as far as our industries are concerned, thanks to the GATT multilateral system and now the WTO, we have significantly lowered our tariffs. However, as far as non-tariff barriers, and particularly regulatory cooperation and trade facilitation in the area of equivalencies and standards are concerned, there is quite a bit of work still to be done.
That is why we are taking this path. In this context, I would like to think that we have more highly developed relations with Canada than with the U.S. Quietly but steadily, without it necessarily making the headlines, we have managed to go further in that area with our Canadian partner than with the United States. For example, in the area of customs cooperation, mutual recognition agreements, equivalencies or veterinary standards, in December, we signed quite an important agreement which is currently being implemented. I realize that these items are not sexy enough to make the headlines, but they are in fact areas where technically, behind the scenes, we can make it much easier for businesses to trade and have commercial dealings.
So, I am relying on this whole web of ongoing contacts as regards regulations and equivalencies to help us make progress. But that progress will only be possible, in my view, if Canadian businesses are more dynamic and look more and more to Europe to trade, rather than being interested only in their neighbour to the South.
Senator Bolduc: As you know, tariffs may go down sometimes, but non-tariff barriers go up: it is the whole regulatory thing. We are always getting caught up in regulations, and the provinces do the same thing. For a long time, I lived in a province whose area of expertise was regulations, and we have to remember that it can be terribly difficult to deregulate. This is what we are seeing in Canada. Every year, we have a thick file from the federal government filled with plans to deregulate, following requests made by various industries, and so forth. At the end of the year, two regulations out of a total of 1,800 were withdrawn. I wonder whether the U.S. is not just as protectionist now as it was before. Rather than focussing on tariffs, they are hitting us with technical standards and regulations.
And in Europe, you are experts in that area, let us face it. I am really not trying to be nasty. But let us take agriculture. In Canada, we have fantastic resources in terms of our commodities, but they do not make it into Europe very easily. Why is that? We produce goods at a lower cost here in Canada. There really is no reason why they should not be able to be marketed in Europe. There are the Poles, from whom we take potatoes, and somewhere else, we take something else. The reason we have turned to the U.S. is, first of all, because it is our neighbour, but also because arrangements are less rigid and less difficult. Europeans are experts when it comes to bargaining, and you certainly are tough negotiators. But at one point, it is important to consider the interests of consumers all over the world. I understand the feelings of French, English, German or other European farmers, but it seems to me there should be a way to do this. I am a little pessimistic about the potential results of the next round of negotiations at the World Trade Organization. I said to our American friends in Quebec last weekend that in agriculture, if we manage to bring tariffs down by 1.5 per cent per year, it will take them 300 years, and us another 150; we will be long dead and tariffs will still be in place. In that area, Europe just is not being reasonable; you are too tough. We have dealt with others before and you definitely are the toughest in that area. What is your reaction?
Ms. Smadja: Your comments have clearly brought out the importance of agriculture not only in Europe but in Canada, where the situation is just the same. In every country of the world, the agricultural constituency is important, either because there is too little production or too much, or because economically or politically, they are stronger or not as strong.
Culturally, as well, the common agricultural policy represents a huge step forward. You say that we are always tough, but again, as friends, since you have been frank in making certain criticisms, you must also admit that Europe has come a long way. We are the first to admit that our common agricultural policy needed reform. Our problem is that we cannot proceed with radical reforms overnight. Our policies provide for that reform to occur in several stages. A number of important steps have already been taken towards reforming the common agricultural policy. Some reforms were introduced in 1992. In my view, Europe has not been given enough credit for those reforms.
There has been a tendency to dismiss them and to say: they do not go far enough; go back to the drawing board. But these were very significant reforms for us and they have left deep scars. Despite that, we are proceeding with new reforms and they are also part of Agenda 2000 that I referred to. This package we will gradually be implementing, and that we will also be putting on the table at the next round of negotiations, includes some proposed reforms, such as reduced support in areas such as grains, beef and dairy products. Our partners will again say that it is not enough. But that is fair game. In our view, however, these reforms represent a significant sacrifice.
You yourselves are not beyond reproach when it comes to agriculture. I am perfectly prepared to accept some of the criticisms you made with respect to the common agricultural policy. We are the first to admit, as you were saying, that it needs reform. Since I was appointed to my position here in Canada, I have started to see Canadians' criticisms of the common agricultural policy from a different perspective, because I realize that we, too, could throw a few stones.
I want to point out one important thing: whatever else one may say about the common agricultural policy, I am struck by the fact that the European Union is still the world's largest importer of agricultural commodities. So, that agricultural policy cannot be all that bad. It does not prevent you from exporting your goods, and once again, we are the world's largest importer of agricultural commodities.
Senator Bolduc: Why is England not part of the euro zone? So far, we have heard mainly economic reasons for this. I think the British economy would fare very well within it. I have the feeling that for cultural reasons, the British feel as though there are a minority in Europe. I do not mean a linguistic minority, but a minority in terms of their conception of the respective roles of business and the state. They are far less interventionist and less favourable to state control than the labour parties and the average Western European country, like Germany, France and Italy. Their reservations about the euro and the rest of Europe's reservations with respect to Great Britain pretty well reflect our attitude towards Europe. Given your comments about Canada, could that be one of the reasons why our economic relations with Europe are not that satisfactory? Although our cultural concerns are accepted by everyone, there are other cultural reasons why we are less interventionist than the United States. We may be more interventionist here in Canada, but to a lesser extent than you, in my view.
Ms. Smadja: Although, as the Chairman mentioned, I have had a long career with the Commission, I still retain my French nationality and my cultural values. Indeed, one of the great successes of Europe has been its ability to maintain tremendous cultural diversity while still achieving a high level of integration.
To come back to the United Kingdom, you are right that the U.K. is not part of the euro zone for the time being, because when the treaty was signed establishing the economic and monetary union, the United Kingdom decided not to be a party to it. It is interesting to note that even though the U.K. is outside the euro zone -- London being one of the most important financial markets in Europe -- the "City" has in fact adopted the euro. So, the euro is indeed part of the British financial culture for the time being.
Politically, Mr. Blair's government announced that there would be a transition to the euro. The Commission is obviously following that progress with great interest. We do hope that when the time comes, the British will also be part of the euro zone, as well as the Danes, the Swedes and the Greeks.
To be perfectly frank with you and perhaps even somewhat naive, since I have only been here for six months, I am not certain that I really agree with your conclusion. I see Canada and the European Union sharing common values, with common views on most of the current economic and political issues. Very often I have been a player, at different times during my career, on the multilateral scene at the United Nations or the WTO. Each time -- and that is where I first got to know Canada, through the multilateral channel, rather than the bilateral one -- I was struck by the tremendous commonality of views between Canada and Europe on major multilateral issues.
Probably what is still lacking is that one small step that will allow us to capitalize on those cultural and moral values and that convergence of views with respect to the major issues that are part of the international policy or trade agenda. I realize that there are still certain weaknesses or gaps to be filled. But I have not yet managed to analyze the reasons for those gaps. I have come to the conclusion that there may be something there we have not been able to capitalize on. If we succeed in capitalizing on these common values, on our common heritage and on this tremendous commonality of views, I believe we can make a significant qualitative leap forward as far as our bilateral relations are concerned.
[English]
Senator Grafstein: Mr. Chairman, I should like to go over the ground covered by Senator Bolduc. He and I recently returned from meeting with our American colleagues in the House of Representatives. This was a topic of discussion. If I can sum it up fairly, there is frustration on both the Canadian and the American sides about the slowness of the interest in the EU to move forward, either in conjunction with one another or on parallel tracks.
First of all, Madam Ambassador, I hope you will not take it as amiss if we are candid with you, because this committee has had a long and positive feeling about entering into a trade relationship with the EU to counterbalance the overwhelming and strong relationship in trade that we have with the United States. We are attempting, strategically, to put ourselves into a trade balance that is of strategic importance for us, the United States and for the EU, however, we are frustrated.
You commented, in response to Senator Bolduc, that we need greater efforts from Canadian operators. Let me lay down some facts to you and indicate to you that our conclusion, which I believe to be a fair conclusion, is that we are at the lowest level of the tracks in the North American or South American continents. For instance, the EU has entered into plans to conclude a free trade agreement with Mexico. The EU has given priority to its relationship with Brazil and with the other MERCOSUR nations.
The EU has entered into discussions with Chile to accelerate its trade relations with Chile, as we have done. We have a free trade agreement with Chile.
When we look at the pyramid, we see that the slowest element of it is Canada. The United States is moving a little faster. South America is moving much faster, and Mexico is moving very quickly.
When we look at the facts on the ground, as opposed to our shared values, we get the feeling that we are being marginalized somehow by our traditional relationship in Europe.
I conclude from this that the EU is in a very dangerous strategic position, not only with us about but also with the United States. If the United States with its robust economy decides to look north-south, as it is actively doing, as opposed to east-west, then there could be strong repercussions for the EU. That is the pessimism Senator Bolduc mentioned. It is a view I share.
Senator Grassley of Iowa, who is chairman of the subcommittee on international trade, and I are a committee of two, if you will. We are trying to see if we can foster more political will with the EU to strengthen our relationships, but we have been rebuffed. Roy MacLaren went forward with the free trade agreement of the Americas, and we were rebuffed. Minister Marchi has gone forward with an active portfolio, and we have been rebuffed. We feel that there are deep strategic issues here.
The good news is that, hopefully, with the shakeup at the EU, the institutional bias that we felt at the commissioner level might be changed with the appointment of new officers. That is the small candle in the window. We are delighted that you are here so that, perhaps, you can directly take our message back to the bureaucracy and the leadership at the EU about this.
I say this because all the facts on the ground say to us in Canada that we should be looking elsewhere as opposed to expending political capital with the EU. There are other places for us to look. We can look to China, Asia and South America, where we are actively engaged. To my mind, that would be a shame.
Ambassador, how can we move from shared values to concrete energy from the bureaucracy of the EU, to move forward on a more comprehensive basis? What specific advice do you have for this committee that we could recommend to our government as opposed to saying to our economic officers, "Get off your seats and do something"?
Ms Smadja: The EU-Canada trade initiative, which I mentioned and which was agreed upon at the last EU-Canada summit, last December 17 in Ottawa, was exactly the answer that both the EU and Canada decided to give to quell the frustration you just underlined. That was the answer that the EU proposed to Canada and which Canada has accepted.
After having agreed on this initiative last December, obviously, we are not in a position today to deliver all the goodies of this initiative. However, since December, we have been working quite hard on making this initiative more concrete. There have been many discussions between Canadian officials and European officials.
The next summit in Germany, in June, will witness some sort of endorsement by the Canadian and the European sides on the progress that is being made. At the same time, of course, it will give more direction to the experts to continue in this field.
The answer to the Canadian concern is on the table. It is being implemented and it is active.
You mentioned relations that the EU has with Mexico, Chile and Brazil. You are saying that we are moving much faster with these countries. You may be partly right. However, at the same time, I am afraid to say that you are not entirely right. You have to look at where we are starting from with these countries. We are starting from nothing. Of course, if your baseline is zero and you go to two, it is a huge leap.
When you look at where we are with Canada, and when you look at what we have been doing with EUCTI, it might be a small additional step. However, it is quite important.
The baseline of our relationship with these countries that you are talking about has to be looked at in order to have a real assessment of what we are doing.
In saying that, I am not saying that what we are doing is not important. However, it is a question of perception. We are not giving these countries things that we are refusing to give you. The opposite is true.
I understand your frustration. I appreciate very much this debate because it helps me to understand what is going on in this country and what people are expecting from us. It helps me to relay this information to my authorities.
At the same time, I believe that there may be a problem of perception. Perhaps we have to work on that.
[Translation]
Senator Corbin: I would like you to clarify your comments with respect to the qualified majority, as opposed to unanimity. What are the advantages of that? I am a democrat, so in principle I am not opposed to that way of doing things. Does unanimity not have the effect of strengthening the Union, as opposed to a qualified majority process that could sow seeds of dissent in certain areas?
In what areas will this new assembly be making decisions? Will it be with respect to broader, universal powers or will its decision-making power be limited to certain areas?
Ms. Smadja: The issue of the qualified majority as opposed to the unanimous vote is very much like the example of the glass being half full or half empty. There is no doubt that as the Union expands and increases its membership, the need to make unanimous decisions intrinsically results in a slower decision-making process. On the one hand, the process takes more time because there are more of us. And if everyone has to be in agreement every time, it takes a great deal of time to achieve a compromise acceptable to all and that everyone is willing to approve.
The second major flaw associated with a requirement for unanimity in an expanding Union has to do with something we call the lowest common denominator.
In order to achieve unanimity in difficult areas, you have no choice but to compromise. So, you gradually have to lower your ambitions. It is true that not having unanimity could lead to disunity, since those who do not support the measure could distance themselves from it. It is also quite true that if, in order to achieve unanimity, you have to agree on a decision that is not very substantive and on a result that doesn't really help the EU to progress, because it is at a very low level and really represents nothing more than a consolidation of what is already in place, then you also have a problem.
For those two reasons, in order not to block or weigh down the decision-making process and avoid compromising the quality of our decisions, there is a certain determination within the Union -- shared by member states, the Parliament and the Commission -- to increasingly broaden those areas where decisions can be made based on a qualified majority, thereby facilitating the decision-making process without compromising the substantive nature of our discussions. Of course, one of the fundamental elements of the decision-making process within the European Union is that even if you vote against, the decision applies to everyone equally. That is very important.
Initially, the powers of the European Parliament were mainly budgetary. In 1993, when an amendment to our treaties came into effect, notably the Maastricht Treaty, we introduced a process of joint decision-making. In a certain number of areas which has been limited thus far -- for example, the environment -- Parliament was on an equal footing with the responsible Council of Ministers and involved in the legislative process. Thus a Commission proposal had to be concurred in by both the Parliament and the Council of Ministers, rather than just by the Council of Ministers with an opinion from the European Parliament. This is truly a joint decision-making process, with both institutions approving proposals that come forward.
The Treaty of Amsterdam broadens the number of areas. The areas where the Parliament will have joint decision-making powers are no longer limited to the environment and the domestic market. As I recall, transportation and social policy, particularly employment issues, are now also subject to joint decision-making. The European Parliament will be entering the legislative process on almost an equal footing with member states.
Senator Corbin: How does your delegation operate here in Canada? Is everything centered here in Ottawa or do you also have representatives in the provinces?
Ms. Smadja: No, we only have an office here in Ottawa. The major challenge, as far as I'm concerned, is the size of your country. We try to travel as much as our budget will allow, although travel is costly. We are not alone. We represent the European Commission, but we work hand in hand with our member state colleagues represented here -- not only the embassies, but also consuls general and chambers of commerce. In other words, even though our office is located in Ottawa, we work as a family, if you will, with our member states and their representatives here, trying to provide as much assistance as we can.
Senator Losier-Cool: There has been quite a bit of lobbying to have the debts of poor countries eliminated. I have been very much involved with the poor countries, particularly in Africa. Could you comment on the introduction of the euro? Will it have an impact on that lobbying effort with respect to poor countries?
Secondly, I would like to know what the position of the CFA franc is in relation to the euro? Do Africans feel they have their own currency, in a way, and what impact could that have on the informal sector?
Ms. Smadja: The European Union has a long tradition of relations with African countries, as well as with the Caribbean and the Pacific Rim and we have a whole series of policies that go back as far as colonial times. We very much want to maintain those special ties to developing countries and preserve our development assistance policy.
When we launched the euro, we paid close attention to the potential repercussions of the euro on developing countries. We don't have all the answers yet, but we are working on it. It is clear that the countries that may be most directly affected are African countries that currently use the CFA franc.
As for the relationship between the euro and the CFA franc, if you're interested, I could send you a paper we released several months ago. I won't give you all the details here, but I can certainly send it to you. We have indeed given that relationship some thought. At this stage, it is probably premature to say that those countries will adopt the euro, because in order to be eligible to use the euro, some fairly stringent criteria with respect to fiscal consolidation must be met. We are considering mechanisms that would ensure that countries using the CFA franc will not be prejudicially affected if the value of the euro fluctuates on international foreign exchange markets.
The euro per se has no impact on debt elimination. The euro was not designed to eliminate a debt or to contribute to its elimination. Those are two completely separate problems. Indeed, the euro is a newborn child, if you will; we are still in the lab monitoring its reactions. However, one thing for sure: through the diversification that it brings to capital markets, the euro is definitely helping some countries, particularly developing countries, to improve their debt servicing, and because the euro is a fairly stable currency, debt service is subject to fewer fluctuations. At this stage, that is all I can say about the euro and debt elimination.
In the long run, the euro will allow indebted countries to better service their debts. If we take that argument a little further with respect to the complex problem of debt elimination, the euro, and particularly Euroland -- in other words, the eleven countries -- now have common external representation to speak on behalf of the euro zone. That may have a little more impact in international discussions, particularly at the Paris Club, relating to debt elimination. There you have eleven countries that could take the same position and that would therefore weigh more heavily in the balance when it comes time to make decisions about debt.
Senator Losier-Cool: Is it now possible to obtain coins or bills in that currency?
Ms. Smadja: In terms of both bills and coins in euro dollars, legally they will only be put into circulation in January of 2002. In the meantime, those bills and coins are being produced by the eleven countries' national mints in the utmost secrecy and very tight security to avoid the appearance of false currency on January 1, 2002.
For the time being, the currency does not exist, but we know what it will look like. An agreement has already been reached by all the countries, one sanctioned by regulations, whereby the various bills and coins will all have to be approved, including the colour, size and designs.
[English]
The Chairman: You have succeeded in whetting our curiosity. Thank you for appearing before this committee.
Honourable senators, we will now revert to our NATO reference.
Our next witness is Professor Irwin Cotler from McGill University. He is competent in many fields of law, but has been very active as an international human rights lawyer.
Professor Cotler was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1992. At that time, where he was cited for what was called his "extraordinary contribution to the cause of human rights." He is the only Canadian elected to the Paris-based Académie universelle des cultures. He is the first recipient of the Justice Walter Tarnopolsky Memorial Medal, awarded jointly by the Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Judges Association, the Canadian Association of Law Teachers, and the International Commission of Jurists.
Several legal questions arise as a result of our NATO peacekeeping reference. There is the question of the status of the present NATO peacekeeping operation in Yugoslavia/Kosovo, and the United Nations Charter. There is the question of the Canadian Parliament's role in the authorization of an operation such as the one now going on in Yugoslavia/Kosovo. There is also the question of the involvement of NATO in its peacekeeping undertaking, insofar as human rights are concerned.
Professor Cotler, I invite you to address the committee on the field or fields that interest you most. Then I know that members of the committee will have questions.
Professor Irwin Cotler, Faculty of Law, McGill University: Mr. Chairman, I did bring some copies of my submission, but I do not intend to read it or to burden you with either its length or substance in any detail. Instead, I will summarize its essence and be open to questions, particularly on the human rights issues.
We meet today to discuss human rights questions against this backdrop of the war in Kosovo which has developed a certain ritualistic rhetoric or feel about it.
Indeed, after two months of NATO bombing, the daily rhetoric evokes the feeling that, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Every day, we see Mr. Shea, the NATO spokesman, mount the podium in Brussels, accompanied usually by a military spokesperson, and catalogue the daily successes of NATO aerial sorties, together with the ritualistic disclaimer or apology for what has come to be called "collateral damage," that is, attacks on civilian targets. Equally, every day, NATO officials seek to document and detail the ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity of Slobodan Milosevic and his associates as a kind of justification for these attacks. Every day, Yugoslav officials denounce, in turn, the "barbarity," as they put it, of the NATO aggression. Every day, CNN shows pictures of refugee hordes moving across the border or crammed into refugee camps. Every day, the media report new diplomatic progress that turns out to be very little progress at all. So it goes.
I mention this, Mr. Chairman, because this daily ritual, which now has a certain sense of déjà vu or "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose," runs the risk of inuring us to the daily human tragedy, to the faces behind the statistics, to the reality behind the images. It runs a risk for NATO forces involved -- and that includes us -- of being involved in a war on automatic pilot. For us as parliamentarians or citizens of a NATO country engaged in this war, it runs the risk of a kind of psychic closure, a compassion fatigue or disconnect, where this horrific war tends to develop the semblance of a high-tech Nintendo game, where, after watching the same game over and over, we turn away, having learned little and having done less.
Today is no exception, perhaps a little more of the same: more reports of Serbian atrocities; more reports of NATO bombings of civilian targets, almost ritualistic now; more reports of fleeing refugees.
With this ritualistic, almost immobilizing backdrop in mind, I would like to deal briefly with the following themes and try to organize my remarks around them seriatim. Given the knowledge of the people here, and given the time constraints, I purport to speak telegraphically and I am prepared to respond to any questions you may have on any of these themes. They are all anchored in a human rights perspective or sensibility, or what might be called international human rights law, broadly speaking, and international humanitarian law in particular.
The themes are: 1) Kosovo: From systemic discrimination to ethnic cleansing -- anatomy of a tragedy foretold; 2) Kosovo: The Holocaust as metaphor; 3) Was intervention by NATO in Kosovo valid? An inquiry into NATO, humanitarian intervention and international law; 4) Kosovo, NATO bombing and international humanitarian law; 5) The rights of Kosovar Albanian refugees; and, finally, what have we learned and what must we do?
I shall first address Kosovo from system discrimination to ethnic cleansing -- anatomy of a tragedy foretold. A proper appreciation of where we are in the Kosovo crisis and what we must do should begin with an understanding of how we got here.
Regrettably, most of the analysis focuses on Kosovo in 1998-99, on the ethnic cleansing and NATO's intervention, and even more on the daily ritual. What is happening in Kosovo in 1999 can only be understood in terms of appreciating what was happening in Kosovo in 1989 and since.
In a word, what we have had in Kosovo since 1989 has been the politics of exclusion: systemic discrimination against the Albanian minority, quiet deportations of Kosovar Albanians began in the early 1990s, and a full-scale, ethnicically-based apartheid.
On pages 2 and 3 of my submission, I describe the character of that ethnicically-based apartheid. Parenthetically, I submitted that as an appendix to my submission today. I wrote to Minister Lloyd Axworthy on April 16, 1996, setting forth the particulars of the ethnicically-based apartheid. At that time, I asked the government, as I have been doing since 1989, to take the necessary initiatives in order to foreclose the kind of situation in which we now find ourselves, and in which we are making judgments based on the time frame of 1999. We are seeing atrocities by the Serbians, on the one hand, and by NATO intervention, on the other, without learning the lessons of what might have been the case had we moved since 1989 and not only belatedly in 1999.
In my paper from pages 4 to 6, I set forth specific recommendations that were made to the Canadian government, to the United Nations, to NATO and the contract group, related to economic initiatives, diplomatic initiatives, and political initiatives that ought to have been and could have been taken to foreclose and pre-empt the kind of situation in which we now find ourselves.
Regrettably, these actions for the most part, as set forth in my paper from pages 4 to 6, were not taken. Slobodan Milosevic has yet to be indicted as a war criminal, though responsible for the genocide in Bosnia, even leaving aside the war crimes and crimes against humanity in Kosovo. It is not surprising that Milosevic should consider that he could wage the policy and practice of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and criminal violence in Kosovo with impunity.
That brings me to my second theme: Kosovo: The Holocaust as metaphor. One of the more disturbing and misleading narratives of the Kosovo tragedy, is the invocation of holocaust imaging as a kind of emblem by protagonists and perpetrators, victims and bystanders, commentators and critics, the whole replete with a kind of manipulative symbolism, false equivalencies, and a failure of memory. That is dealt with on pages 7 to 9 of my submission.
The problem with this use of the Holocaust as metaphor is that, while Kosovo is a compelling humanitarian tragedy, replete with serious criminal violations of human rights, it is not a holocaust. Kosovo refugees suffer terribly as refugees, but in the Holocaust to be a refugee was to have a privileged status, to be a step ahead of death. In Kosovo, expulsions are to Albania or Macedonia. In the Holocaust, deportations were to planet Auschwitz.
Indeed, to suggest, as leaders in NATO have done to justify its bombing, that Kosovo is another holocaust, runs the risk of trivializing the Holocaust, while at the same time minimizing the evil of Kosovo. For if Kosovo is a holocaust, then the Holocaust is like Kosovo, which means that, in the Holocaust, there were no gas chambers, no death camps, no final solution to kill every Jew everywhere simply because they were Jews.
Similarly, to require of Kosovo that it be a holocaust in order to characterize it as radical evil, is to deny its essential evil, even if it is not a holocaust. For while it may not be that radical evil of the Holocaust, what is happening there -- forced detentions, disappearances, expulsions, deportations, rape and murder -- is evil enough.
To conclude on this point, invoking the Holocaust to justify humanitarian intervention in Kosovo today by NATO tends to result more from a failure of memory than from a parallel analogy. Bosnia and not the Holocaust is the metaphor and message for Kosovo. For it was the criminal indifference and silence by NATO in Bosnia from 1991 to 1995, and in Kosovo for a decade now, that allowed Milosevic to develop, refine and perfect the policy and practice of murderous ethnic cleansing.
I will provide two of many examples that could be given. Serbian troops under Milosevic's command succeeded in cleansing more than 70 per cent of Bosnian territory in six weeks in the spring of 1992. There was no intervention by NATO. While Serbian General Ratko Mladic, who continues to be interviewed regularly by CNN, expelled some 25,000 women, children and old people from Serbia, and murdered some 7,000 fighting-age men in less than a week in July 1995, in Bosnia, as NATO and the world regrettably watched and did nothing.
Remembrance and reality of the Holocaust need not be diminished and distorted to justify interventions in Kosovo today. The remembrance and reality of Bosnia and Milosevic's non-indictment as a war criminal for those war crimes and crimes against humanity in Bosnia as well as in Kosovo is lesson enough.
My third theme is: Was intervention by NATO in Kosovo valid? Here, in my inquiry into NATO humanitarian intervention and international law, I have provided some conceptual backdrop that goes directly to these specific and express legal issues.
In a recent CBC special that some of you may have seen on "Canada at War," and in the ongoing debate about the wisdom of the NATO bombing campaign in Canada, one underlying question continues to assert itself and it is of particular relevance to this body here. It is: Is the NATO action legal?
In a country like Canada where international law has emerged as an organizing idiom of Canadian foreign policy, to our country's credit, and inhabits Canadians' psyche, the debate about the legality of the bombing may well influence the debate about its wisdom, and policy.
Critics of NATO's bombing campaign anchor their indictment in the UN charter, the fulcrum of international law, and which our country has held out as being the lynchpin of our foreign policy. In a word, critics argue that the bombing is a violation of the UN's charter, prohibition against the use of force against a member state of the United Nations, particularly as that member state has not attacked any other; that any exception to this fundamental principle would require express authorization by the UN Security Council which was neither sought nor secured; and that the bombing sought to coerce Yugoslavia to sign the Rambouillet peace agreement, is in violation of the Vienna Treaty Convention prohibiting the use of force for this purpose.
The NATO argument is anchored in what might be called the old/new "doctrine of humanitarian intervention," which historically mandated intervention whenever there existed a pattern of gross violations of human rights that shocked the conscience of mankind. Today, the now refined doctrine authorizes -- and some would argue even requires -- intervention if the following conditions are met. I am at page 12 of my submission where I set forth the conditions that would presumably authorize intervention by NATO and which NATO has relied upon for that intervention.
First, there must be evidence of widespread and systematic war crimes and crimes against humanity such as ethnic cleansing involving mass expulsions, murders, rape and forced detentions. Second, the UN Security Council has determined that this international criminality does indeed constitute a threat to international peace and security. Third, all appeals to the human rights violator state to cease and desist from its criminal conduct have been unavailing. Fourth, all other remedies -- economic, political and diplomatic -- have been tried and found wanting. Finally, the use of force is "proportionate" to the objectives sought to be secured.
NATO has argued that not only does its humanitarian intervention meet all of these conditions, but that the UN Charter and the doctrine of state sovereignty cannot be used as a cover for the killing of one's own citizens; that the Security Council and recent international jurisprudence from the International Criminal Tribunal regarding the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda have determined that the doctrine of humanitarian intervention applies to internal as well as to international conflict; that the cases of intervention in Haiti, Somalia, Rwanda and Iraq only reinforce this view; and, most important, that the UN Security Council has determined under its Chapter VII authority that the Kosovo situation constitutes a threat to international peace and security and, by a 12-3 vote, overwhelmingly rejected a resolution that the bombing was illegal. Indeed, only the threat of a Russian veto prevented the specific authorization for the bombing. One proceeds on this basis with respect to the authorization regarding the bombing.
What, then, are we now to do in a situation in which, first, the ethnic cleansing continues apace -- and some even suggest that the ethnic cleansing was in consequence of the bombing -- and, second, the bombing is being intensified by NATO's own acknowledgement, including what might be called the targeting of the civilian infrastructure in Kosovo and the former Yugoslavia itself?
I would like to repeat a recommendation made on the eve of the NATO's 50th anniversary meeting one month ago, on April 23 -- that is, that NATO suspend bombing in a reverse-calibrated strategy designed to secure compliance with the objectives of the bombing strategy itself. In other words, rather than continue to intensify bombing to secure Milosevic's compliance with NATO's five conditions -- conditions that I share -- NATO should suspend bombing for 48 hours and continue with serial 48-hour suspensions, so long as Milosevic undertakes and gives evidence of serial compliance with those five conditions I set forth at page 14 of my brief and which I am sure are well known to you.
This reverse-calibrated strategy is intended to secure NATO's five objectives not by intensifying the bombing but by suspending it; not by having the bombing antagonize Russia to support Milosevic's defiance of NATO but by allowing Russia to use the suspension to secure Milosevic's compliance; not by further alienating Serbian civil society in the direction of Milosevic but by heeding this civil society's call for a bombing halt in its support.
I might add that all the human rights, non-governmental and civil society constituents in Serbia have themselves called for a suspension of the bombing. I am referring to those who are otherwise opposed politically to Milosevic and to its regime.
As well, the aforementioned strategy is intended to secure NATO's five objectives not by enduring further inevitable collateral damage but by ending the collateral fallout itself; and, finally, not by further confusing and dividing the Canadian psyche -- and its "comfort zone" with international law -- but by offering a good-faith initiative that Canadians and NATO can test.
Let me move to the fourth theme: Kosovo, NATO bombing and international humanitarian law.
Assuming that NATO's intervention under international law is valid, what about the laws of war once war is engaged? It is clear that the systematic and widespread policy and practice of Serbian ethnic cleansing constitutes not only standing violations of the laws of war, but rather paradigmatic crimes against humanity, against the civilian Kosovar population. The important point here -- and it is sometimes missed -- is that the laws of war or international humanitarian law apply to all states and belligerents, not just to the Serbs.
Therefore, even if the NATO bombing campaign can be justified under the doctrine of humanitarian intervention -- that is to say, the use of force to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe -- NATO is nonetheless subject to fundamental principles of customary international law. First, weapons and means of warfare must not cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering, nor cause severe damage to the environment. Second, attacks against civilians or civilian objects are expressly prohibited under the principle of civilian immunity. Third, the prohibition against indiscriminate attacks, particularly where area bombing, as NATO has now acknowledged it is engaged in, is taking place in densely populated areas, such as Belgrade or Pristina.
Nor can NATO argue, as it has sometimes sought to do, including through NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana, that Milosevic is fully responsible for everything that follows from these attacks, this being a kind of exculpatory defence against such violations, which are not permissible under international humanitarian law. Indeed, there has been a series of recent NATO bombing attacks that arguably violate the basic principles of international humanitarian law. These attacks are not validated by the horrific crimes of Milosevic or the legality of humanitarian intervention to stop them. In fact, Mary Robinson, the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, recently characterized it as follows:
In the NATO bombing... large numbers of civilians have been incontestably killed, and civilian installations targeted on the basis that they are or could be of military application.
I summarize in my brief six categories of impermissible forms of aerial bombing by NATO. I sought to use those six categories to relate to the almost daily incidence of collateral damage resulting from a NATO bombing attack on one civilian target or another.
None of those six areas is intended to suggest any false moral equivalent between Milosevic and NATO. None of them is intended to ignore or obscure the horrific crimes against humanity committed by Milosevic and his fellow war criminals. They are only meant to underscore the essential point that Canadians, as primary adherents of international law, and international law, as an organizing idiom of our Canadian foreign policy, must always adhere to; that is, that international humanitarian law applies to all parties. It is something that NATO leaders must bear in mind as they continue their intensified bombing campaign, including area bombing.
Admittedly, NATO may comfort itself that few seem to have noticed its communiqué, at the end of April, that spoke of intensified bombing even if it may involve collateral damage to civilians.
Few may have read the weekend interview in the Washington Post with General Wesley Clark, where he acknowledges that in fact NATO is now targeting the civilian infrastructure of former Yugoslavia. NATO may seek solace that they are the forces of light against the forces of darkness, but even the forces of light cannot violate fundamental norms of international humanitarian law.
I shall now turn to theme five: the rights of Kosovar Albanian refugees.
We have witnessed problems of neighbouring countries seeking to exclude Kosovar Albanians expelled from Kosovo. We have seen situations whereby a lack of fundamental humanitarian assistance in refugee camps exists, where there has been a denial of specific rights to identity papers, travel documents and so on. Later on in my summary of lessons learned, I set forth some of the main concerns with regard to refugees.
Let me close with the lessons to be learned from all this. I am trying to take a perspective, not only with regard to Kosovo, Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia, but all situations that have called out for humanitarian intervention. We must ask ourselves: What are the lessons to be learned when we look at the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda?
The first lesson to be learned is the danger of assaultive speech. In other words, hate speech has been proliferating in Kosovo and in the Balkans as a whole, as it did in terms of state-orchestrated incitement to genocide in Rwanda for over a decade. Balkans refugees told me in interviews in the early 1990s, "They are killing us with words." Electronic peacekeeping, both the monitoring and interception of assaultive hate speech inciting to hatred, contempt and violence, is a necessity. To repeat the dictum of the Supreme Court of Canada in upholding the constitutionality of anti-hate legislation in Canada: "The Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers, it began with words."
We have a role here, in integrating both our expertise in technology and our jurisprudence in the matter of anti-hate legislation and the like, to offer recommendations to the international community on how to combat this assaultive speech which eventually takes you down the road to ethnic cleansing and genocide.
The second lesson is the problem of what I would call "crimes of indifference" and "conspiracies of silence." We did not move when we should have in Bosnia or Rwanda, and now in Kosovo. Therefore, we pay the price of too little too late with regard to Rwanda, and of a massive aerial campaign bombing in Kosovo.
I have spoken of lesson three which is the misuse or abuse or analogies of the Holocaust by all sides.
Let me move to lesson four which, simply put, takes the position that, while there can be no justice without peace, there can be no peace without justice. Here as well, the failure to indict Slobodan Milosevic and other major war criminals during and after Bosnia opened the door for criminality in Kosovo.
Lesson five is that we need a set of principles or criteria respecting the legality of humanitarian intervention in internal armed conflicts such as Kosovo. There is a need for democracies like the United States and organizations like NATO to be held accountable to specific criteria with regard to the authorization of intervention under international humanitarian law.
Lesson six is that, once you enter a conflict under a justifiable basis pursuant to principles of humanitarian intervention, you still have to engage in that conflict pursuant to international principles of humanitarian law, and those are set forth under lesson number seven.
Lesson number eight deals with the importance of the "exhaustion of remedies" principle. That is to say, prior to forcible intervention, imposition of comprehensive and targeted economic sanctions, broadcast jamming, war crimes arrests and the like, are, in my view, a basis for being able to subsequently argue that those remedies have indeed been tried and exhausted.
Lesson nine deals with what is now an emerging evidentiary datum, one that we saw in Rwanda, that we saw in Bosnia, and that we are seeing now again in Kosovo, and that is that sexual violence has emerged not only as a consequence of war but as an instrument for the waging of ethnic cleansing itself. Here, too, a number of principles have developed in international humanitarian law to hold accountable those who have engaged in sexual violence.
Finally, in lesson ten I set forth some of the concerns regarding refugees that we must bear in mind when addressing the refugee process.
In closing, I have indicated what we must do. I will give you some one-liners and, with this, close my analysis.
First, we should call upon NATO to suspend bombing in a reverse-calibrated strategy to which I referred earlier.
Second, we should cease and desist from area bombing in densely populated areas such as Belgrade and Pri$tina.
Third, we should cease and desist from the use of cluster bombs which have the same effect as anti-personnel landmines. We took the lead on an international landmines treaty. We should not be part of an exercise that is engaged in cluster bombing in densely populated urban areas with all the collateral damage that it causes.
Fourth, we should cease the bombing of civilian infrastructure, including civilian electrical transformers, power stations, and the like, where severe consequences to civilian life outweigh any marginal military benefit.
Fifth, we should refrain from sustained bombing attacks on oil, chemical and pharmaceutical targets that experts are advising are causing serious damage to the environment, and which, again, outweigh any military value.
Sixth, we should refrain from repeated bombing of television and broadcasting facilities which NATO itself has acknowledged have not had any real military value, and which has been condemned by every single international human rights organization and international press association as being the ultimate in censorship violence.
Seventh, we should refrain from all attacks that cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering, to use the language of international humanitarian law, and whose only objective appears to be to demoralize the civilian population of Serbia rather than to degrade its military capacity.
Eighth, we must take all necessary precautions and safeguards to diminish collateral damage from attacks on legitimate military objectives.
Ninth, we must take all necessary steps to bring indicted war criminals to justice.
Finally, we must take all necessary steps to provide protection and humanitarian assistance to refugees fleeing the conflict.
Mr. Chairman, these comprise the submissions I would make on the themes set forth before you, the whole having regard to principles of international human rights law in general and international humanitarian law in particular, as they apply, among other things, specifically to the question: Is NATO's humanitarian intervention valid under international law and, if valid, what are the principles of international humanitarian law that apply to the sustained aerial bombing in which NATO and we as a member of NATO are engaged?
Senator Stollery: Professor Cotler, we heard from a very interesting witness earlier today, Colonel Calvin. He gave us a very interesting description of the difficulties in dealing with people who are murdering each other at close quarters. He has had a great deal of experience in that area.
My question to you is in the context of your profession as a professor of law and comes out of what Colonel Calvin told us. Our mandate here is to examine the ramifications to Canada of the changed mandate of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
My impression from Colonel Calvin is that, in many cases, we are dealing with soldiers who are not part of the regular army but are, in fact, irregulars. They are people who murder their neighbours because they are Catholics and their neighbours are Orthodox or Muslims, for example. That is at the origin of this Balkan affair and I guess it was at the origin of the Tutsi-Hutu problem in Rwanda about which, of course, we did nothing.
There are two issues here. First, there is the issue of political will. Is there a political will to do something when one of these outrageous events take place? Given an organization with this many members, I wonder how that will be resolved.
The second issue is the issue of military techniques. Once the political decision has been made, then certain military techniques are required. The difficulty that always presents itself when you must kill 10 people in order to save 1,000 is: "Which 10 will we kill?" That is the decision the commander must make.
When I listened to our earlier witness, I made a note that reads: "Are atrocities necessary?" For example, if you say, "We will shoot on sight the first 20 people we find armed without authority to carry those arms," is that an atrocity or is it an attempt to cause other people not to go around with arms shooting people?
We seem to be in an era of great sentimentality in terms of military techniques, which is on a collision course with what we are calling international human rights law. I am not clear about what that is, but Telford Taylor, the last surviving prosecutor of the Nuremberg trials, said that, at that time, the British decided that they would just shoot them all. In other words, there would not be any trials. There was quite a discussion as to whether or not to have a trial. In his view, several people were hanged who were not guilty of the crimes of which they were convicted.
Can you assist me in trying to come up with some rules for our soldiers and for the international force to deal with the issue, namely, that we must shoot the first 20 people we find carrying guns, otherwise, 1,000 people will be murdered? In this world of CNN, how do you do that?
Mr. Cotler: Let me try to respond in part chronologically to the points you made and, at the same time, subsequently.
First, we should not overdo the characterizations of these conflicts as being wholly tribal with an inevitable explosion of tribal conflict between warring Hutus and Tutsis, with regard to Burundi and Rwanda, or with regard to the Serbs and Albanians, and so on.
Senator Stollery: They are religious, not tribal.
Mr. Cotler: I am using the word "tribal" as a metaphor for the way it has been described. It integrates the sectarian in terms of religious cultures, et cetera.
Senator Stollery: But they are all the same people. They cannot be tribes.
Mr. Cotler: No. I am using the term "tribal" as a metaphor. You can use any term you wish. You may call it religious where religion exists, or ethnic, et cetera. It relates more to the issue of political will. That is, I do not come here solely as some sort of academic who seeks to invoke international humanitarian principles from on high, as some sort of Delphic pronouncement of what must be done.
I have been involved on the ground with representing Hutus and Tutsis for about 15 years now, both within and without the courts, and it is the same thing with regard to the former Yugoslavia. I come here more in terms of what I have learned from the victims of these tragedies than what I have learned in terms of international humanitarian law.
From the mid-1980s onward, on behalf of both Hutus and Tutsis, with respect to the impending explosion, as they predicted in Burundi in 1988 and again in Rwanda in 1994, we visited with the Canadian government on several occasions to suggest the necessary steps to take to foreclose that explosion, because of the manipulation of hatred through state-orchestrated incitement to ethnic cleansing and genocide. This has been reported. It does not need my representations here.
We have had our own cases here in Canada. In one particular case -- Leon Mugesera -- the witness testimony and documented evidence showed that it was a state-orchestrated incitement through the broadcasting facilities in Rwanda that took us down the road to genocide and that it could have been stopped.
In a book I recently read, the author quotes some victims as saying, "Tomorrow they are coming to kill us and the rest of our families," as evidence of the complicity of the international community. The French were arming the killers. The United States refused to characterize what was happening in Rwanda as a genocide. I can go on. These things are well known here.
There was an absence of political will to do what had to be done to pre-empt and prevent the tragedy in Rwanda and in Bosnia that is being repeated in Kosovo.
To put it aside and say that these are neighbours who are killing each other is not acceptable. They did not always kill each other. There has been an involvement, if not a prejudicial one, by the superpowers, and so on, that has caused this slide down to ethnic cleansing and genocide. When you look at it, we are talking about the invocation and application of principles of international and humanitarian law because of a failure of political will. Once that failure of political will took us down the road to ethnic cleansing and genocide, then we now have to deal, regrettably and tragically, with the rules of international humanitarian law.
Let me give you one graphic instance. I accompanied a Rwandan woman, a Tutsi married to a Hutu, to the United Nations in the mid-1980s. She sought to warn member delegations in the United Nations of the impending explosion both in Burundi and in Rwanda, and it happened in both. Killing fields exploded in Burundi, where 50,000 were killed in a short time in 1988; and then there was the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. When we went to the UN, as a result of a complaint made by the Burundi ambassador to the United Nations, she was detained for "disseminating hate propaganda" . However, she sought to warn about the impending explosion but the member states did not do anything about that impending explosion.
The problem here has been -- and I can use your words because I think that is the clue to it all -- a failure of political will across the board, culminating in us being involved in, perhaps, a necessary humanitarian intervention. At that point, we had no other point than to intervene in Kosovo.
The Chairman: I want to intervene with a supplementary question.
You talk about a failure of political will. With multinational organizations, it is difficult to pinpoint responsibility. How do you get the political will, within the United Nations, that was necessary to deal with the crisis that your client anticipated? Is that organization it competent to develop the political will? Or will the situation be that nothing will be done until a crisis has been thrust upon the UN and, perhaps, not even then?
Mr. Cotler: Part of the problem in international relations today is that it is too much an exercise in ad hocery, and too much an exercise in crisis management and very often dictated by the daily horrific images in the media.
In the present situation, I indicated that I wrote to our own Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy in 1996 about Kosovo. I met with him at that time and tried to stress what I felt was the developing and, again, impending explosive situation because of apartheid. I must say that our own foreign minister, in my view, was responsive. However, the general view in the Canadian foreign policy establishment was almost like, "Where is Kosovo?" In other words, no one was responsive or sensitive to Kosovo and what was happening there until it almost exploded on the CNN screen.
We must find an early warning system whereby we identify those areas which may explode, and take the necessary steps to intervene through electronic peacekeeping, the jamming of hate-filled broadcasting facilities, the use of economic and diplomatic sanctions and the like prior to finding ourselves in a situation where we have no choice but military intervention.
In Kosovo, I regret, first, that it had to come to that, and second, that once we intervened, we did so at times without sufficient regard to the international humanitarian principles proscribing civilian international damage.
Senator Stollery: I agree with your comment on the political will. I followed situation in Kosovo for years.
I was in the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi in the 1950s. I cannot imagine Belgian soldiers being killed. Why did they not withdraw? I asked myself; What kind of technique is going on here? There were other massacres of Hutus by Tutsis after independence.
Mr. Cotler: There was selective genocide in 1972.
Senator Stollery: There is nothing new about any of this. Again, I question what has happened to the military techniques to deal with these situations. I rest my case.
We heard from an interesting witness earlier, who raised the Rwanda Burundi question when the Belgian soldiers were basically forced to flee. I cannot image under what circumstances it happened, but that is what happened.
Mr. Cotler: It would be presumptive if not pretentious of me to deal with military techniques.
Senator Stollery: Except that they verge on human rights.
Mr. Cotler: In the Rwanda situation, we have what has come to be known the infamous "genocide fax" that was sent by General Dallaire to the UN headquarters asking for the necessary assistance. Some believe that, had it been granted and authorized, it might have, in that instance, prevented the Rwandan genocide. There is now a commission of inquiry looking into this matter. Stephen Lewis is a Canadian member of the commission. Perhaps we will find out more with all the witness testimony and documentary evidence, and whether, indeed, as I believe, it could have been prevented. Even before that genocide fax, there were sufficient representations made by commissions of inquiry and the like as to what would happen.
On the convergence of military techniques and human rights, let me address it both in terms of humanitarian intervention and rules of engagement once intervention takes place. We need to identify some five or six fundamental principles which must be adhered to before an intervention can be deemed lawful.
First, do we have a threshold situation of what has been called, to use United Nations language, a "consistent pattern of gross violation of human rights"? In other words, are there paradigmatic war crimes and crimes against humanity? In the case of Bosnia and Rwanda, that principle indeed would have been fulfilled.
Second, has there been an appeal made to the perpetrators of these crimes to cease and desist, and has this appeal been unavailing? In this situation again, representations were made and they were unavailing.
Third, were all other remedies exhausted prior to the use of military force? On this, I am not sure, to be honest. I am not sure we did not exhaust all the possibilities at our disposal from the point of view of economic sanctions and the like, so it is still an open question for me as to whether the exhaustion of remedies principle was conformed with, in fact.
Fourth, did the United Nations Security Council, under its Chapter 7 authority, determine that this was a situation that constituted a threat to international peace and security? Yes, this did occur in the case of Bosnia, and it would include Kosovo.
Fifth, did the United Nations Security Council specifically authorize the use of force in this matter? The answer here is no. Then the question arises: What does NATO rely on if it did not have that expressed authorization? It relies on an implied authorization. It is inferring from the fact that the United Nations Security Council determined that Kosovo represented a threat to international peace and security that it had the authority to use the necessary force to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe.
It is interesting to examine the history of this, because we tend to forget things. In June of 1998, Canada took the view that it was not sufficient to have an implied authorization, that it needed the express authorization of a Security Council resolution to expressly authorize military force. At the time, that was the position of France, Italy, Germany and Denmark, but not the position of the United States, which always took the position that the implied authorization was there by reason of the general determination that this was a situation that threatened international peace and security. It was only in March that Canada went along with the position that what it, itself, has stated last June was inappropriate and took the view that there was an implied authorization.
Finally, the question is: Is the force that is then used proportionate to the threat that must be combatted?
I would say that two issues here raise questions. One, were all the remedies exhausted, and I think that is an open question; and, two, did Canada and NATO have to seek the express authorization of the Security Council to use military force or could they have inferred an implied authorization from a Chapter 7 determination by the United Nations Security Council? You will find lawyers arguing both sides of the issue. Rather than me burden you with perhaps the less-than-best testimony on this, I would suggest to you that there is an article in the January 1999 American Journal of International Law that deals with this issue and puts forth the respective legal arguments on this issue. It does so in the context of Iraq, but it reviews six case studies of humanitarian intervention going back to 1962 with India seizing GoaAngola from Portugal to the more recent case of Iraq.
The Chairman: Let us assume that it was concluded that implied authorization was not sufficient. Does that mean that, because the United Nations was not competent to come up with a direct authorization, it would not have done anything and, consequently, that NATO would not have been legally competent to take any action?
Mr. Cotler: When you look at the situation, to say that you require an express and specific authorization from the UN Security Council for purposes of humanitarian intervention, when it is also clear that that intervention or that authorization may be blocked by reason of a veto, as it was in this case, then one finds oneself in a Catch-22 situation. That is to say, if one wants to comply with what is the conventional view of international law requiring that expressed authorization, then NATO is arguably in violation of those principles of international law without the expressed authorization.
On the other hand, if one says that there is not only a right but a duty to intervene, because the compelling obligation to protect civilians from a human catastrophe in an international conflict overrides the formalities of an express authorization by the Security Council, particularly when the Security Council has already stated that this situation is a threat to international peace and security, and by a 12 to 3 vote has, if you will, impliedly authorized the bombing, then NATO could plausibly argue that it had the necessary authorization, albeit it was in breach of a more formal textual approach to the United Nations Charter.
Senator Grafstein: Mr. Chairman, first, I wish to welcome the witness. When I read his letter to Minister Axworthy I could not help but recall that the witness, Mr. Axworthy and I shared an office together for some time dealing with precisely some of these issues. It was a privilege to have served with Mr. Cotler. I was responsible for bringing him to Ottawa, as I was with Mr. Axworthy. Thus, seeing him writing to Mr. Axworthy some 30 years later brought fond memories to mind.
I am curious about this very narrow point which has been bedevilling me. I refer to the difference between the supremacy of the United Nations, in terms of giving legal legitimacy to NATO action, and as you put it quite nicely, and the duty to intervene. A nation has a right to intervene in its own self-defence, obviously, notwithstanding the United Nations.
Where, beyond the United Nations, is there a field of legitimacy where the United Nations, for whatever reason, refuses or is paralyzed from enforcing its own international resolutions? That was clearly the case in Kosovo.
We have three foundations for legitimacy. We have the United Nations, by an express resolution of the Security Council. We have conventional international law that would come under that particular pillar. We have implied authorization which is the ice upon which you would like us to skate. Is there not a fourth ground which makes the case a little stronger, that is, customary international law?
In my view, customary international law is where a group of nations, 19 in this case, come to the conclusion that an international legal norm has been breached. Therefore, they take it upon themselves to exercise their sovereign responsibilities or, as you put it, their duty to intervene. Is that not a more sound piece of ice upon which to skate than the implied authority?
Mr. Cotler: That would not be customary international law. That would be more the appreciation of an emergent normative system which seeks to say, "We cannot abide by what has been the historical approach because that historical approach would consign people to a human catastrophe." In other words, article 2.4 of the United Nations Charter prohibits the non-defensive use of force. That article must be taken in conjunction with articles 33, 41 and 42, which basically state that armed force should only be used as a last resort and that it is for the Security Council to determine that non-military actions have been exhausted and only military action is necessary.
A counterweight to that from an international law point of view is that the United Nations Charter cannot be a suicide pact. You cannot have a situation in which article 2.4 becomes a kind of independent ethical imperative of pacifism in the face of humanitarian catastrophe.
I would argue that the duty is to intervene where you have a situation of atrocities that shock the conscience of humankind. It then becomes necessary at least to adhere to a number of principles, lest you have everyone running off and determining for themselves that this is a threshold situation of war crimes and crimes against humanity. You would have to have, at least, the following principles, and then the duty to intervene would kick in.
The first is the threshold principle of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The second is a determination that all other remedies have been exhausted.
Senator Grafstein: We have your five points.
Mr. Cotler: In the end, I would come down to the fact that, yes, there is a duty to intervene, and Canada should be amongst those who work out an international humanitarian doctrine of human security that would refine international law in this respect.
Senator Grafstein: I believe I understand what Professor Cotler is saying. Article 12.1 appears to preclude the General Assembly from making recommendations on a dispute or a situation while the Security Council is exercising some functions assigned to it by the charter. If I recall correctly, the police action in Korea was approved by the General Assembly as opposed to the Security Council. I may be wrong on that.
From a narrow legal position, does the General Assembly, even though it goes beyond article 12.1 on its face, grant legitimacy to international action of this kind, or would it?
Mr. Cotler: I believe the United Nations General Assembly in uniting to seek peace resolutions of an emergency character, could provide a moral support system if there were a preponderant vote in that regard. However, I would not consider that the United Nations General Assembly alone could provide sufficient authorization. It would be another piece of data that you could factor into the overall framework to determine legitimization.
If I am not mistaken, I believe Korea was a Security Council determination.
Senator Grafstein: I wish to sum up to get a more clear understanding. One can read through the various resolutions of both the assembly and the Security Council dealing with Kosovo. Not only were those resolutions unequivocally passed identifying this as a threat to international humanity and so on but, beyond that, the Yugoslav republic concurred in some of these resolutions.
Does that not place the legitimacy of the NATO action on a higher plain when the subject nation, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, not only listens to these resolutions but, in fact, consents or assents to them? Is that not a stronger plain on which to establish international legitimacy for NATO's actions?
Mr. Cotler: My sense is that the legitimacy was there for purposes of authorizing the intervention. Had we acted differently, though, we may not have arrived at the position where there was not only a right but a duty to intervene for reasons that I mentioned.
Having stated my belief that the intervention was valid, the real issue now is whether there is a disproportionate use of force in the manner in which the civilian infrastructure of Yugoslavia has been targeted. That is a different issue. The issue is whether we are conforming to the principles of international humanitarian law regarding the use of force, even if the decision to use that force is valid at the start.
Senator Grafstein: Chairman, is the witness telling us that he prefers ground forces as opposed to air strikes?
Mr. Cotler: If you want an answer, I think it was mistaken for NATO leadership to have ruled out ground forces to begin with. That gave a kind of green light to Milosevic to intensify his ethnic cleansing without any fear of engagement. I would have first stated that ground forces would be considered. Then I would have mobilized the existing NATO ground forces in neighbouring countries and put them on alert. That would have sent the message that the forces might be used. The convergence of ground forces and aerial bombing might have had a more effective result than the high-tech bombing in the absence of ground forces.
Senator Bolduc: You say there was no political will. I believe there was political will in Europe, but that there was no political will in the United States. They sent Holbrook to discuss the situation in Bosnia from at least 1988 to 1992. He negotiated and mediated for years and then he finally went to Kosovo. There was perhaps a weak political will to intervene. They made, perhaps, "half a decision." They said they would send no troops, but they would send planes. That was the American decision. The rest is just talk.
Mr. Cotler: If you look at it historically, the United States took the view that Bosnia was a European issue and Rwanda was an African issue. At the same time, the Security Council was saying that Bosnia and Rwanda were international issues.
The United States bears a fair amount of responsibility for its absence of political will to do what needed to be done in Bosnia, before Kosovo, and in Rwanda, before Kosovo.
The Chairman: Honourable senators, before we start yet another chapter in this story, I must intervene. I thank Professor Cotler for engaging our attention fully late in a long day. We have enjoyed your presentation and we have learned a great deal from it.
Honourable senators, we revert again to our second reference, concerning Canada's relations with the European Union. I call as our witness Mr. Earl Wiseman.
Earlier this afternoon, senators, we had heard from Her Excellency Danièle Smadja, the European Commission's ambassador to Canada. While she was here, I mentioned the difficulties that arose in the mid-1990s concerning straddling stocks and the impact that that controversy had, for a time, on Canada's relations with the European Union.
To give some guidance as to the chronology, I also circulated a letter that Dr. Donald Barry wrote to me personally tying in the turbot war and subsequent relations with the European Union.
I asked Her Excellency if she was familiar with Bill C-27, the act to amend the Coastal Fisheries Protection Act and the Canada Shipping Act so as to enable Canada to bring into effect the agreement for the implementation of the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. She indicated she was familiar with it.
I then asked her if the European Union felt that this particular act, assuming adequate ratification, would have the effect of terminating the problem of straddling stocks. I was surprised to hear from her that the European Union still has difficulties. The difficulties seem to concern the interpretation of Bill C-27.
Given that this matter of fisheries has bothered our relationship with the European Union in the past, I thought it would be useful to hear a witness from D.F.O. Mr. Wiseman, given your admirable understanding of the bill, can you tell us what the bill does in the opinion of the Government of Canada, this bill deals with the problem of straddling stocks.
Mr. Earl Wiseman, Director General, International Affairs Directorate, Department of Fisheries and Oceans: Honourable senators, today I hope to provide you with a brief overview of Canada-EU bilateral fisheries relations.
I will do this by discussing the fisheries priorities that currently exist between Canada and the European Union, and by discussing some of the current issues that are on the table. Ratification of the UN agreement and Bill C-27 are issues that are dealt with in this particular deck. I will also discuss some of the European Union's interests, in terms of what they would like to get out the bilateral fisheries relationship with Canada. I will point to some of the cooperative steps that have been under way over the last few years. In addition, if you wish, we can talk a bit about the fishing sector in the European Union and common fisheries policy in the European Union, issues which may be of interest to you when you meet counterparts in Europe.
This presentation focuses on current issues. I will not delve into problems of the past. Problems have existed with some fleets from the European Union since before 1977. If you wish, we can deal with those issues during questions.
We had a unique occurrence in 1995 with the turbot dispute between Canada and the European Union. The way we acted in the face of certain circumstances was a significant change in the behaviour of Canada, in our relations with the European Union, and in our relations with many countries.
I believe we have made significant changes since that incident in 1995. We are currently in a process of holding annual meetings at senior levels, between the deputy minister of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the head of the directorate responsible for fisheries in the European Union. The director general, Mr. Cavaco, will be here at the end of June for the third annual meeting.
The EU has raised concerns about Bill C-27, and I will get to some of them later. In my view, they are based largely on misunderstandings, although there may also be some other motives. I will leave it to you in your discussions to determine, perhaps, what some of those motives may be.
The European Union has long had the objective of finding opportunities for their fishing fleets in the Northwest Atlantic. They have had a history of fishing there. With the establishment of the 200-mile limit, they were concerned that their fishing opportunities would be significantly diminished. Those concerns were valid. Canada took over the 200-mile zone and, over a period of time, gradually excluded non-Canadian fleets. The European Union was excluded from Canadian waters in 1987 as a result of the termination of annexes to a bilateral agreement we had negotiated in 1981. The EU's objective has been to regain access to Canadian fisheries waters, if there were any fishing opportunities available.
From Canada's point of view, the difficulty in the fisheries relationship has been a lack of transparency in the European Union's enforcement of fisheries measures on the high seas. To the European Union, this is a multilateral issue, something to be dealt with in a regional fisheries management organization, the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization. From Canada's point of view, it is also an important bilateral issue because, without a satisfactory fisheries relationship, with cooperation and transparency, we will not be prepared to even consider allowing vessels from other countries to have access to fish in our zone or to have vessels even participating in developmental programs with Canadian fishing vessels.
Our current priorities are the ratification and implementation of the United Nations agreement on straddling stocks and highly migratory fish stocks. This agreement is important because it will clarify the international framework for how one deals with these particular stocks. It was a straddling stock, Greenland halibut or turbot, that led to the dispute we had in 1995. Our longer-term and continuing objective has always been that we wish to build greater trust and confidence with the European Union in our bilateral fisheries relationship. We wish to see that relationship grow, and we have taken some steps in that regard.
Allow me to give you a brief overview of the UN agreement. The agreement, basically, is to implement provisions of the United Nations agreement on the Law of the Sea, to deal with the management and conservation of straddling stocks and highly migratory fish stocks. In Canada, for short, we refer to it as the United Nations Fish Agreement, or UNFA.
UNFA provides states that are party to the agreement with guiding principles for conservation and management of fish stocks, such as the precautionary approach and the compatibility rule, meaning that management measures outside 200 miles must be compatible with those inside 200 miles. There must be the use of best scientific evidence available, minimization of pollution, waste, discards and by-catches.
It also provides -- and this is what Bill C-27 deals with -- enforcement powers. Parties to this United Nations agreement have authority to take actions on the high seas against fishing vessels of other flags respecting fishing measures that have been established by a regional fisheries management organization such as the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization.
If there is a dispute between parties over the interpretation of the UN agreement or the actions taken by one party, there is a binding, compulsory, dispute-settlement mechanism in the UN agreement as well. That is why this agreement is so important for Canada. I believe that, if this agreement had been in place, the problems we had in the past would not have raised themselves to the level where such extreme actions had to be taken. There would have been greater obligations on the part of flag states' vessels to take action, and should those actions not have been taken, the boarding state could have taken action, and if there were a disagreement between the parties, it would have gone to binding dispute settlement. We would have had a mechanism to deal with the kinds of problems we had to face.
Bill C-27 enables Canada to implement the enforcement provisions of the UN agreement.
Canada intends to ratify this agreement as soon as we can after requisite regulations are in place and the bill receives Royal Assent.
The EU has criticized the bill for a number of reasons. Some of these reasons are misunderstandings. Some of these reasons, in my opinion, are the mixing of concerns that EU member states, in particular Spain, had concerning the incidents that occurred in 1995. I can understand that the Spanish government and the Spanish fishing industry were very embarrassed, to say the least, about the attention that was directed towards them in 1995, by their perhaps perceived failure to have Canada repeal its legislation in 1995 which enabled us to take the actions that we did take at that time, and by the difficulty that they had in gaining international support for their position versus the Canadian position at that time.
The concern of the European Union and Spain in 1995 was about the extraterritorial application of Canadian law beyond 200 miles. That issue was of concern and was a major part of a negotiation that took place in 1995 when we were resolving the turbot dispute with the European Union. The position of the European Union was that Canada must repeal its extraterritorial legislation. Canada's view was that this legislation was perfectly legitimate and was not on the table for negotiation to be repealed. However, we did agree, as part of a package agreement which gave Canada what it needed, which was greater enforcement and control measures beyond 200 miles, and which gave the EU what the EU wanted, which was more fish to fish, that the regulations to that legislation would be amended.
By doing so, the names of Spain and Portugal would be removed from those regulations and, therefore, the legislation would no longer apply to them unless there was a time when the behaviour of Spain and Portugal was such that we deemed it necessary to put them back in the regulations. However, there was a clear understanding that we would not repeal our legislation.
There is still an attempt by the European Union, and particularly Spain, to have us repeal the predecessor legislation, the 1994 legislation, referred to as Bill C-29. That issue is off the table. I believe that it is understood by the European Commission that this issue is not one that Canada is prepared to consider at this time.
Bill C-27 is really a very simple bill. It was intended to provide the enforcement authorities necessary for Canada to fulfil its obligations under the UN agreement. We thought it was pretty simple. We thought it was describing, within a Canadian judicial system, how one achieves the objectives of an international agreement.
The European Union, for various reasons, sought to dissect our legislation in a way that I had not seen any other country or state or group of states address domestic legislation in the past. They were concerned that we would use a certain word that was not the exact word in the UN agreement or they were concerned about extraterritorial application of the law.
They had fears that we might be intending to assert rights that we did not have. I believe this bill has now gone through Parliament. It was carefully studied and many of the questions that the EU raised were raised in Parliament by standing committees. I believe we were able to answer those questions to the satisfaction of the Members of Parliament, including senators.
The issue now is: Can we satisfy the European Union? We have attempted on over six occasions, with meetings with the European Union at very senior legal official levels, to explain in great detail the legislation, the rationale for the drafting terms and the interpretation that we see of the United Nations agreement.
Most often, when these meetings end, my sense has been that the people we have talked to understood our position. Unfortunately, we have not had many opportunities for any significant discussions with Spanish officials and with the Spanish government. Their view is, generally, that these matters should be discussed with the European Commission, the interlocutory on international fisheries matters.
Under the common fisheries policy, the European Commission is responsible for the European Union's position in international relations. That is why we deal with the European Commission on international fisheries issues.
There is some "disconnect" between the messages that go to the European Commission and those that go to Spain and without, perhaps, Spain fully understanding or still having some misunderstandings of the Canadian position, they will come back and put pressure on the European Commission and the matter is still not resolved. We see this going round and round.
We are concerned about this. We have had discussions about how to break this circle. It is something that will be dealing with within the next few weeks.
Our view is that Bill C-27 is extraterritorial and we should not be upset about that. Not only should not we not be upset about that, when the European Union and its member states ratify, if their legislation is not extraterritorial, they cannot fulfil their obligations under the UN agreement. The agreement provides powers to states to take action on the high seas beyond their 200-mile zones, therefore, it must be extraterritorial.
What is the problem of the European Union, unless they are going back to another piece of legislation, is part of the Coastal Fisheries Protection Act, and that is not on the table. That is not in Bill C-27. This is where confusions arise.
Canada has assured the European Union that it is our intention to implement Bill C-27 and ratify the UN agreement in a manner that is fully consistent with our rights and obligations under the agreement. If there are any differences in the interpretation of the agreement, there is the dispute-settlement mechanism.
I shall briefly address some of the other issues. On the question of access to Canadian waters, under the Law of the Sea, coastal states have an obligation to make available fish that may be surplus to their harvesting capacity if such stocks exist.
Canada makes those surpluses available or has traditionally made them available to countries with whom we have fisheries arrangements. We have one with the European Union, signed in 1918. Canada has allowed many states to fish. We allowed even the European Union to fish until 1987. The reciprocal part to these bilateral agreements is that these partners must cooperate with Canada on conservation. The European Union has not been transparent enough, from Canada's perspective, to be seen as fully cooperating.
We are not at a point where we can say that the European Union is not enforcing the rules. We do not know whether they are enforcing the rules because there is no transparency. There are certain obligations under the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization to provide reports and data. When we ask for those kinds of reports, we do not get them. Without the information, we do not know whether they are fully complying with their obligations. Therefore, we are not prepared to say that they are.
Further, there are no obligations to any countries in Canadian waters now because there are no fish that are surplus to our needs. We have moratoria on far too many stocks, and Canadian vessels have much greater capacity to catch fish than there are fish available for them to fish at this point.
There have been some areas of improvement, as I mentioned earlier. These have arisen out of the high-level bilateral meetings between the deputy minister and the director general for fisheries in the European Union. There have been a series of workshops to try to exchange information with the hopes that this may lead to greater transparency and a greater sharing of information.
There was a workshop in November of last year on monitoring surveillance and control of fishing activities. A group of industry officials travelled to Brussels in April to attend the Brussels seafood show and, at the same time, participate in seminars and have meetings with industry representatives of the European Union.
It is a high priority for the European Commission to have industry-to-industry dialogues. Our industry went over to start it, and a delegation of the European industry has been invited to participate in the Fisheries Council of Canada meeting in Prince Edward Island in September of this year.
The last few slides refer to some of the issues about the fishing industry in the European Union. Perhaps I have gone on too long with my introductory comments, because I have also tried to deal with the questions raised by the chairman. There is no need to go through those at this time. You can go through those at your leisure.
The Chairman: I understand that the 15 members of the European Union will ratify the United Nations fisheries agreement in block. What does that mean? Does that mean that they must all agree, or does it mean that they will make a decision by a majority? Perhaps, to put it plainly, could a country that is uneasy about its past fishing record with Canada veto the decision of the European Union?
Mr. Wiseman: In June of last year there was a council of fisheries ministers meeting of the European Union whereby all of the ministers agreed that the European Union will ratify the UN agreement.
They also agreed that, because there is a shared competency over the obligations in the UN agreement, they must ratify as member states, and the European Commission would need to ratify as well as the European Commission. They all agreed that they would do that and take the steps necessary to put in place whatever measures were required under their individual systems so that they could ratify. They agreed to ratify at the same time, and it was left to member states to develop whatever administrative, legislative or regulatory instruments were required to do that. The commission would develop whatever regulations it required to ratify. When they were ready, they would go to New York and ratify as a group.
The Chairman: What worries me is that Her Excellency, Madam Smadja indicated that, within the European Union, there was uneasiness about the content of the Canadian bill, Bill C-27. That being accepted as true, does the United Nations Fisheries Agreement that they would all ratify stand, even though there may be uneasiness about what Canada is doing?
Mr. Wiseman: As I understand it, the decision of the ministers stands. However, if one party drags its feet, that could slow down the process for everyone, unless they make an additional decision that they will not wait for one party.
Spain is clearly leading the opposition to Bill C-27. A delegation from the European Parliament was here last year with a very vocal Spanish member of Parliament putting forward the concerns of the Spanish fishing industry. Spain has attempted to pressure Canada to make changes to Bill C-27. They made it clear that they want Canada to give assurances that we would never take action against a Spanish boat, but we cannot do that because the actions of the Spanish government would determine whether we would take action. They want assurances that what happened will never happen again, and that is something we cannot give them.
I think the little pieces of legislation they want to hold out as problems are not really problems. Their bottom line is that they wish to be exempted, and that is not possible.
The rest of the European Union will have to deal with that. They must determine whether Canada has been sincere in its efforts to put in place legislation that accurately reflects the UN agreement. As the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans said in the House of Commons during third reading debate, we are committed to living up to our obligations and remaining within our rights and obligations of the UN agreement. We are not considering going any further than that. We have said that many times to the European Union and representatives from the European Union. If they are not prepared to accept that, I am not sure what else we can say.
Senator Bolduc: There is a fleet of 97,000 ships in the European Union, which is a lot of ships, and 260,000 fishermen. Could you give me the distribution of those people and those vessels?
Mr. Wiseman: The Spanish fleet and Spanish fishermen are probably equal to the number in the rest of the European Union.
Senator Bolduc: Therefore, 50 per cent of the fleet is Spanish.
Mr. Wiseman: That is pretty close. Portugal would be up there as well, perhaps higher than 20 per cent. The remainder would be distributed amongst the other countries.
Senator Bolduc: A big ship may be the equivalent of two small ships. Are the ships approximately the same size and have the same type of technology, or is there is a huge difference?
Mr. Wiseman: There is a huge difference. We are talking about the difference from a dory to a large factory freezer trawler. They would be all counted as one, and most are dories and small boats. Most of the fisheries of the European Union are conducted from small vessels, particularly in the southern part of the European Union.
The vessels Canada should be concerned about are vessels that fish on the high seas in distant waters. From that perspective, particularly distant water fleets that come to North America, the fleets have been significantly reduced. There is no question that the imposition of greater control by the European Union over their vessels, the stricter limits on their fishing capabilities in the northwest Atlantic, and the fact there are not that many fish left in the Northwest Atlantic has significantly reduced the fleet that traditionally came here. In the past we would have had well over 100 Spanish vessels and 40 to 50 Portuguese vessels. Today, we may find that, in total, there are less than 30 Spanish vessels and approximately 15 Portuguese vessels, and not at one time.
Senator Bolduc: You are talking about the big factory ships.
Mr. Wiseman: Yes. They are the only ones that would come to the North Atlantic.
Senator Bolduc: What about the Russians?
Mr. Wiseman: They have gone through significant economic changes and some great difficulties. They have gone from a very large feet to, in the past few years, having five vessels a year come to the Northwest Atlantic, which is a very small fleet.
Senator Bolduc: My second question relates to the policing issue. Does the European Union have police to carry out surveillance of the seas?
Mr. Wiseman: Under the common fisheries policy, there is a shared jurisdiction. The European Union makes decisions through the Council of Ministers with respect to rules. The enforcement of the rules is done by the member flag states. The waters around Spain are enforced by the Spanish government; the waters around Ireland are enforced by the Irish government; the waters around Britain are enforced by the Government of the United Kingdom. Each government is responsible for enforcing the rules in the waters around its territory plus -- and this is the key point -- their flag vessels. A Spanish vessel fishing in U.K. waters can be caught by the U.K. and charged, or it could be caught when it returns to Spain. The Spanish would then have the responsibility to fine and charge the vessel.
Technically, the flag state is responsible for the activities outside of 200 miles. Hence, European vessels that fish in the Northwest Atlantic are under the control of their flag. That is standard in international law, and that is one area slightly modified under the UN agreement in terms of giving greater authority to non-flag states.
Senator Bolduc: Of course. Otherwise it cannot work. Why should the Spanish take care of their vessels on the high seas? There must be some kind of international police or otherwise the high seas would become a jungle.
I was against the move we made in 1995, but I do not know enough about the situation. Perhaps we should have done otherwise. At any rate, the impact is that they have cut their expeditions by 50 per cent.
Mr. Wiseman: More than that.
Senator Bolduc: And they are mad at us.
Mr. Wiseman: Yes.
Senator Bolduc: Have our ambassadors in Portugal and Spain tried to assist in this situation?
Mr. Wiseman: The Department of Foreign Affairs and our posts abroad are very much involved and lead the relations with other countries, but linking a fish matter to another matter is something we try not to do. However, the European Union will look towards linkages. They have made that threat, and they have done it in the past. There were delays in broader relation issues with Canada and the European Union because of Spanish concerns about fisheries issues. Those have generally led only to delays. They have not necessarily stopped things from happening, only complicated matters. We try to avoid and discourage linkages and do not seek linkages ourselves.
Senator Bolduc: Investment may be something they might understand.
Mr. Wiseman: That is why the European Union is keen to develop relations between European and Canadian businessmen, which is one reason we supported that, and the Fisheries Council of Canada has picked up on that.
The difficulty lies in the interest of Canadian industry to have tariff concessions, which will allow us to move Canadian products into the European market, where they are needed. The Europeans import a lot of fish. Their own fleets cannot and never could supply their needs.
The interest of the vessel operators in Europe is to find a place to put their boats. They have nowhere to go. In northern Spain, there are hundreds of vessels tied up in port, rusting, with nowhere to go. The owners of those vessels put great pressure on their governments to find places to fish. Their investment in a joint venture would be the boat. We would provide the fish in the water, and they would land it at our plant.
We have the capability in Canada to catch all the fish in Canadian waters. We do not need an investment of boats. Some fish plants may benefit from a partnership with a European partner who could help develop and market products in Europe. That kind of investment might be welcome in Canada, but it does not represent the type of investment that the Europeans have been looking for.
Senator Bolduc: Do the Spanish and Portuguese play the same game with South America that they play here?
Mr. Wiseman: Absolutely.
Senator Bolduc: On the eastern side of South America?
Mr. Wiseman: I would not like to be working in the administration of the Spanish fleet because I have a lot of empathy for their problems. They have major problems with excess capacity. They have tremendous local pressures from very strong constituencies to push for finding fishing opportunities. As well, the places they have traditionally fished are being closed out to them. The northwest Atlantic has been significantly reduced because it has been fished out. Many of the places they fished off Africa have been closed off to them. Morocco has formally indicated that they will not renew their fishing agreement with the European Union. This involves over 600 Spanish and Portuguese vessels. The Argentinean government has indicated that they will not renew their fisheries agreement with the European Union. All of these were very important outlets for Spanish vessels. They are finding themselves being closed off from areas where they had sought to fish. That does create more pressures on their government. When the fishing industry puts pressure on the government, the government will try to put pressures on other governments where they can find opportunity.
Senator Corbin: I am glad of this discussion on the action of Spaniards abroad. I was in West Africa and North Africa earlier this year where I heard many complaints about the practices of Spaniards and others. I am glad the question was raised and the response put in those terms.
There is a lot of politics involved behind the scenes. We know how fishermen from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia can agitate their local member of Parliament, who will take the complaints all the way up to the minister and the prime minister.
Can you tell us more about local politics in Spain? You talked about the rusting vessels, but these are the smaller operators, not the high seas operators. I have not studied the matter closely. Who in Spain is pressuring the government -- the big companies, cooperatives or consortia? Where does the problem originate? What is the chain of agitation up to the European Union level?
Mr. Wiseman: That is a complicated series of questions because different groups are involved. For example, the group that fished off Morocco came largely from the southern part of Spain, whereas the group that fishes off Argentina and in the northwest Atlantic and the North Sea comes from northern Spain.
A very powerful and influential group is the large vessel owners from northern Spain, where there are large factory freezer trawlers there that are rusting out. Today, the traditional Spanish fleet in the northwest Atlantic comes mostly from Gallica and Vigo. In the past, they came mostly from the Basque country.
The politics are that the long-serving governor of Gallica has been a very senior official in President Aznar's party, the current president of Spain. In fact, the governor may be the godfather to Mr. Aznar. The daughter of the governor is also a member of the European Parliament and chairman of the European Parliament fisheries committee.
Therefore, the views of Vigo and Gallica are strongly heard in countries such as Madrid, Brussels, Strasbourg. The views of the large vessel owners are communicated very clearly through those channels, in terms of issues in the northwest Atlantic. However, the Spanish have fishing interests around the world and different sectors of their industry will use those and other channels to put forward their concerns.
Senator Stollery: I did not realize that Peru had such a large fishing industry. I suppose that Peruvian sea bass is now $20 a pound, because it is being decimated.
Will the fact that Commissioner Bonino has gone out under a cloud have any effect on the fisheries policy of the European Union? I do not think they pinned anything on her in that report, but she certainly has gone under a cloud. The whole commission has had to resign. It is evident that the European Commission has lost the confidence of the European Parliament, which is a sea change in European politics. What will be the effect of this on the fisheries policy?
Mr. Wiseman: There may be some effect. You may be surprised to hear me say this, but I believe that Commissioner Bonino was perhaps the best fisheries commissioner that the European Commission has had. She was first appointed in 1995 and had been in the job only a few weeks when the turbot crisis began. In my view, she was badly briefed about the issues and responded to those briefs rather than fully understanding the facts. However, I think she demonstrated her commitment to fight for the industry and support the concerns of the fishing sector in the European Union. Since then, she has learned much more and has been a driving force in improving the management regime of fish within the European Union and the enforcement of it. The commission's role is to impose regulations rather than to make decisions.
In the past, most commissioners were quick to back away from proposals that were not seen to be favourable. Commissioner Bonino pushed some difficult decisions forward and kept the council of ministers from reducing the effectiveness of many of these things that may have been significantly modified in previous commissions. I believe it is unfortunate that she is leaving.
Senator Stollery: She was no longer commissioner of fisheries in any event. Her parlance had to do with development.
Mr. Wiseman: She has held three portfolios at the same time. When the new commission was set up, it was expected that Norway would join the European Union. This is an example, perhaps, of Spanish pressure. The Spanish delayed the accession agreement for over six months because of a demand for more fish off the coast of Norway. They came up with demands for 100,000 tonnes of fish. In the end, however, the agreement would have given them about 12,000 tonnes. That demonstrates the type of pressure that was being applied. The Spanish held out and delayed the accession agreement for six months.
When they held a referendum in Norway, the Norwegians voted against the accession agreement for fisheries reasons. Norway did not join.
Originally, the Norwegian was to be the fisheries commissioner, Madam Bonino was to be the commissioner for humanitarian assistance and atomic energy, and consumer affairs was there as well. There was no Norwegian when they put together the commission, and no one seemed to want fisheries, so they gave it to Madam Bonino along with humanitarian affairs and other things. As I understand it, she always carried three or four portfolios, and she is still acting in that capacity.
From what I understand, there was not a real cloud over Madam Bonino for her activities. However, she will not return to the commission because, if Mr. Prodi, who is an Italian, becomes president, Madam Bonino would be the third Italian. There cannot be more than two Italian commissioners.
Senator Stollery: I do not know how they will reappoint the commissioners who have all resigned. The head of the commission has now run for the European Parliament. He made a terrible head of the commission, and now he is running for the European Parliament. He will probably get elected from Luxembourg to the European Parliament. What will be the effect of that on the fisheries?
Mr. Wiseman: The Spanish minister of fisheries has also resigned. She, too, is running for the European Parliament.
The Chairman: I have one question of my own that relates to the term "straddling stocks," which I used earlier. That term would be very meaningful to members of the Fisheries Committee. Let me try a definition and you can tell me where I go wrong.
When we use the term "straddling stocks," in the East-Coast Canadian context, we are referring to stocks of fish that are sometimes within the 200-mile Canadian economic zone and sometimes outside that zone. This occurs particularly on the nose and tail of the Grand Banks. Is that reasonably accurate?
Mr. Wiseman: That is correct, but I might add one factor. That definition implies that the fish are moving inside and outside. There are stocks of fish that are stable as a pool and they straddling the line. That is a straddling stock, too. Some of those fish are constantly inside and outside.
The Chairman: What about the Flemish Cap?
Mr. Wiseman: The Flemish Cap is a discrete area on the continental shelf. There is a deep water trough between the edges of the nose and tail of the Grand Banks and the Flemish Cap. The groundfish that are usually fished -- that is, the cod, the red fish, the flounder, and so on -- live in the shallower waters on the bottom of the banks. Not many groundfish live in deeper waters. The stocks that are on the nose and tail do not swim across the deepwater channel to go to the Flemish Cap.
There are stocks on the Flemish Cap that are discrete stocks. Those stocks reproduce and live only on the Flemish Cap and do not swim across and integrate with the ones on the nose and tail, and vice versa. There is one stock that does live in deep waters and does go down from the nose and tail and up a bit on to the other side of the Flemish Cap, namely, Greenland halibut. That is the only straddling stock that goes to the Flemish Cap as well.
Senator Stollery: Where are the Greenlanders in all of this? They have a fishery, I believe.
Mr. Wiseman: Through Denmark, Greenland is a member of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization. Denmark represents Greenland and the Faroe Islands. Canada has bilateral relations with Greenland in the management of fish stocks that are transboundary, which is another word for "straddling," except they are shared between two states, namely, Baffin Island and Greenland. We are also involved with Greenland and Denmark and a number of other international regional fisheries organizations, for example, the North Atlantic Salmon Organization.
Senator Bolduc: And there is no major problem with them?
Mr. Wiseman: The Greenlanders are working at developing their fisheries and they are developing some fisheries very rapidly. We have some concerns about the extent of the development of these fisheries, because the total of the Greenland catch and Canadian catch may be exceeding the levels scientists are recommending. We have do have bilateral consultations on an annual basis and, as such, are trying to come up with common ways to ensure conservation of these stocks for both parties.
The Chairman: Honourable senators, I believe you will all agree that Mr. Wiseman has contributed greatly to our work. It is wonderful to have a witness who knows his or her subject and who speaks economically and clearly. Thank you very much. It has been very edifying.
The committee adjourned.