Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Foreign Affairs
Issue 41 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Tuesday, June 8, 1999
The Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs met this day at 3:35 p.m. to 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.
Senator John B. Stewart (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Honourable senators, we have three witnesses this afternoon. We will be interrupted for a vote. The bells in the chamber will ring at 4:15, and the vote will be taken at 4:30. The members of the committee must withdraw but return at the end of the vote. That means that our meeting may go on longer than we would normally expect.
Mr. LaRose-Edwards has worked as a legal and political advisor on international issues such as human rights, democracy, peacebuilding and peacekeeping. He is the Executive Director of an organization called the Canadian Resource Bank for Democracy and Human Rights, also known as CANADEM.
Mr. LaRose-Edwards returned to Canada in 1993 from London, where he had served as the head of the Human Rights Unit of the Commonwealth Secretariat. Prior to that diplomatic post, he worked in Ottawa with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Mr. Morrison is a graduate of Mount Allison University, of the Royal Military College of Canada, and of the Canadian Land Forces Command and Staff College. He has taught at the Royal Military College. He has taught at Columbia University in the City of New York, at York University, and at Glendon College. He was Minister-Counsellor at the Canadian Mission to the United Nations from 1983 to 1989, with special responsibility for matters concerning international security, arms control and disarmament, and peacekeeping. In particular, he negotiated with United Nations headquarters officials and representatives of the countries concerned with regard to Canadian participation in new and existing peacekeeping operations.
In the last few years, he has served as president of the Lester B. Pearson International Peacekeeping Training Centre located at Cornwallis, Nova Scotia. In 1989 he retired from the Canadian army after 34 years of service.
Colonel Morrison, please proceed.
Mr. Alex Morrison, President, Lester B. Pearson Canadian International Peacekeeping Training Centre: Honourable senators, thank you for the opportunity to be here today to present my views to the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs as part of its examination of Canada's relations with NATO. My words this afternoon will cover NATO, the United Nations, Canada's past, present and future contributions to peacekeeping at large, and will offer a short conclusion.
The deliberations of this committee come at a particularly appropriate time. Actions taken by NATO in the past few months, and soon to be taken by the United Nations, may well influence international conflict resolution undertakings of the future. As all attentive Canadians are aware, our country is now established as one that is firmly internationalist in nature. We believe that a more peaceful, secure and stable world means a more peaceful, secure and stable Canada. We believe that it is better for Canada to be a member of international organizations, and thus have a voice in determining action, than it is to remain on the outside. We believe we must share our resources, our experience and our expertise in areas where the spreading of those resources will do the most good. We believe that to be a true member of the international community, it is necessary to commit our military forces in times of preparation and in times of crisis.
Canada is of course a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Indeed, there are many who attribute to former Prime Minister St. Laurent the genesis of the ideas that led to the establishment of NATO. At the end of the Second World War, Canada withdrew its troops from Europe only to send them back a few years later to deal with the growing challenges of the Cold War. Although now greatly reduced in number, the Canadian Armed Forces are still in Europe. Our sailors, soldiers and air force personnel serve in NATO's varied headquarters as part of the Airborne Early Warning Facility in Germany, with the stabilization force and associated endeavours in Bosnia, and with those who stand ready to deal with the ever evolving crisis in Kosovo. A Canadian officer commands NATO's standing Naval Force Atlantic, which is now on duty in the Adriatic.
Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has been evolving as it considers how best to use its accumulated knowledge to meet present and future challenges. The recent Fiftieth Anniversary Summit of NATO in Washington devoted time to the alliance's new strategic concept, which outlined the general future directions of NATO.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Canada should remain a member of NATO and that we should work together with the other 18 members to determine the future shape of the alliance. We must share our wealth of knowledge and experience with all our colleagues. NATO's future must be built on the firm foundation of shared democratic ideals and goals, and on the understanding in interoperability features of its past performance. It is clear that the future will be wider and deeper than the past.
It is essential that the transatlantic link of NATO be preserved and that the form and substance of that crossed-ocean link not be based on one country alone.
At a time when NATO has grown from 16 to 19 members, at a time when there appears to be a firm desire in the foreseeable future to add more members, and at a time when NATO is engaged in Serbia and Kosovo, it is necessary for Canada to continue to stand firm with its allies. It is also necessary for Canada to contribute its fair share in many areas to the accomplishment of NATO's goals.
Let me now turn to a few words on peacekeeping. In the autumn of 1956 at the time of the Suez crisis, our Secretary of State, Lester B. Pearson, suggested that the UN send a force to the Middle East that would interpose itself between the warring parties. The force would provide a certain degree of security and stability, which it was hoped would enable politicians, diplomats and the parties to the dispute to address the underlying causes of the conflict. Thus, international peacekeeping, as we know it today, came into existence. For his invention of peacekeeping, Mr. Pearson was awarded the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize. From that day until this, the words "Canada" and "peacekeeping" have become virtually synonymous. At that time, he said that: "Unless the world builds on the new peacekeeping platform, it will have missed an opportunity to create a better international community."
Over the past four-plus decades, we have built on Mr. Pearson's legacy. Peacekeeping practices have adapted to changing circumstances and requirements. Peacekeepers have learned and have applied new multidisciplinary skills and talents.
The record of Canada in international peacekeeping is one of honourable service. As one who has been a peacekeeper and as one who consults widely in all aspects of peacekeeping and is responsible for teaching peacekeeping to countries all around the world, I can say unequivocally that Canada is regarded worldwide as belonging in the highest levels of peacekeepers.
Canada's ability to participate in peacekeeping missions of varying natures has improved since those early days in the autumn of 1956. We have constantly explored and expanded its boundaries. The training of peacekeepers has become much more thorough and far-reaching. Through programs offered for example at the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre, Canada is sharing widely its peacekeeping experience and expertise. We must continue to do so.
Our peacekeepers are able to participate in, and have participated in, missions undertaken by the United Nations, NATO, and other multinational organizations, and have enhanced the overall performance of those bodies. However, it is my opinion that such participation, where practicable, should be governed by an overarching United Nations framework. It is the UN, through its Security Council, that has responsibility for international peace and security. It is the UN, with its virtually universal membership, that is best placed to guide a response with wide international contributions.
There are occasions, and the current activity in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is a case in point, when the Security Council is unable or unwilling to deal with a crisis. Usually, the Council then undertakes what we at the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre call peacekeeping by proxy; that is, it hands over or contracts out to an organization, country or group of countries to conduct the operation. In the case of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the Council could not even agree to do that. Perhaps it is now time to take a serious look at how the Security Council conducts its affairs. Perhaps now is the time for the UN and NATO to establish a closer, more co-operative working relationship.
It is clear to me that a new international security paradigm is emerging to deal with conflict resolution; the UN and NATO each have major roles to play in its development and implementation. The situation in Kosovo illustrates the debate within NATO as to whether it should participate in non-Article 5, that is non-general war, operations out of area without a UN Security Council resolution. In my opinion, unless there are overwhelming reasons to the contrary, NATO should always act in non-Article 5 situations under the umbrella of a Security Council mandate.
Earlier, I indicated that Canada had increased and enhanced its ability to participate in and contribute to international peacekeeping in all its aspects. There is an ever increasing demand for Canada's military skills and talents. Knowledgeable and informed Canadians are aware of this demand and are of the opinion that our national investment in the military needs to be safeguarded and increased.
Let me now turn to how the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre is serving Canada, the United Nations, NATO and the world in the cause of peacekeeping. The centre was established in 1994 by the Government of Canada to enhance the Canadian contribution to international peace, security and stability through the conduct of research, education and training in all aspects of peacekeeping. We have a very wide and deep definition of peacekeeping. We define peacekeeping as: Actions designed to enhance international peace, security and stability, which are authorized by competent national and international organizations, and which are undertaken co-operatively and individually by military, humanitarian, good governance, civilian police and other interested agencies and groups.
What makes the centre unique is our self-developed concept of the new peacekeeping partnership, and that is the term we apply to those organizations and individuals that work together to improve the effectiveness of modern peacekeeping operations. It includes the military, civil police, government and non-government agencies dealing with human rights and humanitarian assistance, diplomats, the media, and organizations sponsoring development and democratization programs. All of our activities are international and multidisciplinary in nature and scope. All of our activities are attended by civilians and military, all members of the new peacekeeping partnership.
Since the beginning of our operations in the spring of 1995, well over 1,500 individuals from 120 countries have come to Nova Scotia to participate in our activities. Each of our courses is academically recognized by universities in Canada and the United States. In addition to a vast array of courses conducted each year, we have been involved heavily in scripting, conducting and assessing NATO and other peacekeeping exercises. Indeed, three members of the staff have just recently returned from the Czech Republic where they took part in a two-week exercise, the first held on the territory of a new NATO country.
We played a significant role in a distributed-learning peacekeeping exercise that was a part of the recently concluded Fiftieth Anniversary Summit of NATO in Washington, D.C. We conduct courses to specific requirements by the Department of Foreign Affairs and by the Department of National Defence.
In the spring of this year, we hosted officers from each of the factions in Bosnia, the three groups that are at war with one another, and we discussed subjects such as civilian control of the military in a democratic society. We have conducted reintegration of former combatant work in Sarajevo, in Bosnia, in Guatemala and in another country soon to be selected in the autumn. We also developed and participated in a neighbourhood facilitators program in Bosnia.
Those are but a few of the activities in which the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre is engaged that enhance not only Canada's contribution to peacekeeping, but that of the world.
It can be said of the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre that we are an extension of Canada's foreign and defence policy, because of our ability to react quickly to specific requests for research, education and training as part of Canada's commitment to enhance peace, security and stability.
In conclusion, I should like to offer the following observations:
Canada is a country with a long and honourable tradition of membership in international organizations concerned inter alia with security matters. Canadians agree that our country ought to continue to be internationalist in outlook, and that we should continue to contribute to international peace, security and stability in a meaningful, practical way.
Canada should continue its search for ways in which it can enhance its civilian and military participation, and the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre, by its multifaceted national and international programs, is enhancing to a significant degree Canada's reputation in the world.
Mr. Paul LaRose-Edwards, Executive Director, CANADEM: Honourable senators, I am delighted to be here and speaking at this critical time in the evolution of peacekeeping, bearing in mind the events that are taking place in Kosovo.
I should like to speak to you on your second avenue of inquiry, the changing mandate of peacekeeping and Canada's capacity to participate in peacekeeping under the auspices of the UN, the OSCE and others. However, my comments might have some relevance to evolving NATO policy. NATO was envisaged as a competent civilian military body, but has effectively remained a military animal like DND and the Canadian Armed Forces. So my suggestions for a retooled Canadian Armed Forces peacekeeping capacity might have some application to NATO.
My argument today will be that Canada is well-placed to evolve a coherent and cohesive multidimensional peacekeeping capacity and mechanism that better meets international peacekeeping needs than do the traditional vertical systems of relatively isolated peacekeeping functional centres such as Canadian military, Canadian CivPol, Canadian foreign affairs, Canadian official aid, Canadian NGOs and Canadian academics.
I would also argue that Canadian strategies and resources for responding to conflict situations have been overly focused on military solutions. While I would agree with and support Canada and NATO's role in Kosovo over the past several months, this is a relatively rare situation that is not often repeated. Haiti and Rwanda for a period of time were broadly similar, and for a very short period of time required an almost purely military solution.
Today I will suggest that Canadian military peacekeeping capacity needs to be maintained and broadened, but also that Canadian government resources need to be slightly refocused to enhance the civilian peacekeeping capacity. This can be partly achieved by the Canadian Armed Forces voluntarily piggybacking substantial civilian and CivPol training and civilian and CivPol field support. If they cannot or will not do so in a way that does impair the capacity of Canadian CivPol and civilian peacekeepers, then I would suggest that the DND budget should be reduced commensurately to fund directly those other faces of peacekeeping, the civilians and CivPol.
Let me state what is an obvious international lesson being learned that very few would disagree with. In these days of multidimensional peacekeeping operations, being purely classical military, or civilian, or CivPol is to reduce one's effectiveness both in one's traditional roles and in working with other field partners.
Let me expand a little on the need for interdisciplinary co-operation and merging of modern peacekeeping -- or peacemaking, peace-enforcement, peacebuilding, peace-support, training operations, and the many other terms that are floating around out there.
By the way, it was suggested that I come up today with a definition of peacekeeping; however, not only do I not have my own definition, but I felt that coming up with another competing definition would not move things forward very much. What I do suggest is that you consider peacekeeping as a broadly defined function or role out there in missions which can be carried out by a number of different actors, including the military. I tend to talk about military peacekeepers or civilian peacekeepers, OSCE peacekeepers or CivPol peacekeepers.
In almost every field operation, the concept of multidimensional efforts -- be it military, civilian, diplomatic, CivPol and so on -- is stated as a given, but then is not very effectively carried out. That is largely because the different entities arrive as pre-formed units, so to speak: the military, the CivPol, the aid folks, the refugee folks, the human rights folks. Few of these field partners really know each other; fewer have trained together, and even fewer have truly started to merge.
The civilian-military divide is particularly wide. Today you have before you two organizations, PPC and CANADEM, that have taken this merging forward in some concrete ways. Mr. Morrison has already expanded on PPC's concept of having joint training for military and civilians; this was a rather unique concept when it was broached and it still remains largely unique.
CANADEM is less unique. There are other civilian standby mechanisms out there -- the Norwegians, the Danes, the Swiss, the South Africans -- and there are also thematic mechanisms for disaster relief and development aid. However, I like to think that CANADEM has moved things a little bit forward in the area of involving CivPol and military in our resource bank.
You should all have a copy of our brochure; if you do not, I have some copies here. CANADEM is totally funded by Foreign Affairs. It is a mechanism for matching up skilled Canadians with international demand. For example, if the UN needed a human rights observer for Rwanda, they would contact us and give us a profile of the kind of person they were looking for. We would go through our data base and pull out the candidates that we thought fitted the bill. If they wanted their names put forward, we would send their resumes to the United Nations. We would then step out of the equation. We are largely matchmakers. To meet the demand out there for a wide variety of skills, we have a number of CivPol and military people to draw on; so we style ourselves as a multidimensional civilian standby mechanism.
I would now like to go through just a handful of the lessons to be learned from the peace-support and peacekeeping operations out there. I will be more than happy to expand on them later. Note that the theme of my comments on civilians in missions comes from the fact that some conflict situations are truly in a war setting. Others are just one step removed from war, with all the attendant difficulties of war: physical danger, rapidly changing situations on the ground, substantial confusion, difficulties with continuity because individuals and units are at a constant ebb and flow.
Let me start with one example, the human rights field operation in Rwanda. In that case civilians were thrown into the situation with insufficient logistical support, such as food, vehicles and radios, and their effectiveness was consequently reduced to nearly zero for a period of almost a year. The lesson to be learned is that civilians need the same level of administration and logistical support as that which is expected by and given to military peacekeepers.
Using Rwanda as an example again, the mission moved to identify the right individuals to staff that mission until there was actually a UN General Assembly resolution, but by then it was too late. The time delay to find required personnel for the human rights field operation was a particular disaster. The lesson to be learned there is that there must be civilian standby mechanisms like CANADEM to enable the rapid identification and deployment of civilians into field operations.
El Salvador is another example. The UN civilians went in in advance of the military in order to smooth the way for the military peacekeepers. The lesson to be learned is that we need to have groups of civilians who have the training and equipment to move into a situation where they can be almost totally self-sufficient.
Kosovo is still another example. The lack of developed civilian deployment mechanisms substantially delayed that mission. The Canadian military were there in roughly mid-November. Over 100 qualified Canadian civilians were prepared to deploy as of October 22. It took until after Christmas to have the first five onto the ground. The lesson to be learned there is that, as with the Canadian military, there needs to be a civilian deployment mechanism in Canada in which a multiplicity of tasks can be carried out concurrently so as to rapidly execute the various tasks that must be completed to get individuals onto the ground.
Somalia. Canadian military long refused to properly prepare for peacekeeping or to work really closely with non-military peacekeepers; that reduced their impact on missions and made the mistakes that occurred in Somalia inevitable. The lesson to be learned there is that failure by Canadian military and other military peacekeepers to draw on civilian expertise and approaches can result in a narrow military peacekeeping perspective that is not appropriate for particular missions and can result in some major failures.
Haiti. There was a stand alone UN-OAS civilian mission that was forced out by the Haitian military twice. The case you may remember was when the U.S.S. Harlan County with the military peacekeepers came into Port-au-Prince and was effectively scared off when faced with about 20 Tonton Makouts, or attachés, waving pistols on the docks. The Americans steamed out, and that emboldened General Cédras to boot out the civilian mission. The lesson to be learned is that failure to mesh the necessary military and civilian peacekeeping components can result in substantial civilian setbacks.
Kosovo. I was in Kosovo just before Christmas and it was quite obvious that the KVM, the Kosovo verification mission, was overtly staffed with military. They were easily put onto the ground; the national mechanisms for Canada and elsewhere were able to get their military onto the ground quickly. However, the situation was that they were only able to monitor and attempt to maintain the status quo. They really did not have many of the skills required to attempt to make some of the human rights democratization changes that might have prevented what occurred. I realize that that is a bit of a leap, and I am not suggesting that there necessarily would have been a different result, but we will never know. The lesson to be learned is that you should not confuse the ability to deploy quickly with the ability to act and make a difference on the ground.
So that I am not accused of minimizing the importance of military peacekeepers, let me remind you of Operation Turquoise in Rwanda, where the French forces went in for a two-month period and effectively halted the genocide occurring in the south-west portion of Rwanda. That was highly effective. In Rwanda and in Yugoslavia, where determined and protracted international pressure and a substantial civilian mission on the ground obviously did not deter human rights violations, the lesson to be learned is that, at certain points, a military option to protect human rights can be both required and possible. It will be effective, if substantial.
A final lesson is being learned: Canadian civilians are increasingly examining the field expertise of the Canadian Armed Forces and are working to emulate their procedures and levels of preparedness. CANADEM is being funded by CIDA to undertake a civilian deployment project that will, among other things, create deployment mechanisms and guidelines based on Canadian Armed Forces procedures.
In moving to my conclusion, let me return to my initial argument. On the face of it, the Canadian organization that is best set up to deploy individuals and groups to peacekeeping operations is the Canadian military. The reasons are obvious. Relative to the other Canadian peacekeeping partners, the Canadian military are very well-funded and they are focused on field operations. They have large numbers of personnel. They do not have a daytime job, so to speak, so they are totally geared to prepare for and to deploy into a field operation, be it war, peacekeeping, disaster relief, or aid to the civil power. They are extensively trained to go into the field, or, very important in this context and my subsequent comments, they are geared to support those who will go into the field. They are well-equipped to transport themselves and to support themselves in the field and to undertake combat.
However, Canadian military lack many of the skill sets required for multidimensional peacekeeping, such as international human rights expertise, democratization expertise, development expertise, diplomatic expertise, mediation expertise, and so on. One obvious and partial solution is for the Canadian Armed Forces to learn many of these skills. They are starting to do that, but they need to be encouraged to do more, particularly where they are best placed to carry out such ancillary tasks as, for example, the sensitization and training of other militaries to properly observe human rights law, including the law of armed conflict, and to understand the role of militaries in a democratic society.
A less obvious but partial solution is for the Canadian Armed Forces to help enhance the deployment capacity of the other Canadian peacekeepers -- the civilian peacekeepers and the CivPol peacekeepers.
I have always felt that the Canadian military peacekeeping capacity needs to be maintained and broadened, but I also feel that Canadian government resources need to be slightly refocused to enhance civilian peacekeeping capacity. That can be achieved by the Canadian Armed Forces voluntarily piggybacking substantial civilian and CivPol training, and civilian and CivPol field support, such as admin-logistics, transport, communications and so on.
I suggest that the Canadian military, in conjunction with civilians, create a peacekeeping support capacity that services both the Canadian military and Canadian civilians. With sufficient give and take on the side of Canadian military, civilians and CivPol, it is possible to develop some multidisciplinary mechanisms and procedures that truly maximize overall Canadian peacekeeping skills and capacity and save tax dollars.
PPC and CANADEM are modest efforts in this regard, and both operate with the same philosophy, that much of what works for military peacekeepers will largely work for civilian peacekeepers and CivPol peacekeepers and vice versa. The preferred way forward is for DND to voluntarily adapt various parts of its peacekeeping support mechanism, such as admin-logistics, training, transportation, communications and so on, so as to service Canadian civilians and CivPol who are deploying on peacekeeping operations.
DND will need a bit of encouragement, but the bottom line is that they operate on federal funds and the Canadian taxpayer should not be expected to pay for separate civilian and military mechanisms that would duplicate almost identical services and outputs.
If DND, the Canadian Armed Forces, cannot or will not do so in a way that does not impair the capacity of the Canadian CivPol and civilian peacekeepers, then the DND budget should be reduced commensurately to fund directly those other phases of peacekeeping, the civilians and CivPol. However, if properly conceptualized and packaged, I do not think that it will not come to this. However, the idea needs to come from a number of legitimate and respected sources. The Senate, through your committee, is obviously a leading candidate.
In conclusion, honourable senators, I hope that this committee will elaborate its own version of this concept and then strongly lobby the other parts of government to have DND adapt part of its military peacekeeping support capacity to service jointly the Canadian military peacekeepers, the Canadian civilian peacekeepers, and the Canadian CivPol peacekeepers.
Thank you for asking me to appear. If you have any questions, I would be delighted to field them.
The Chairman: I have a couple of questions that I will ask initially, and then I will turn to other senators.
Both of you have had extensive experience with peacekeeping cases. When is peacekeeping likely to succeed? Somalia is a case, I suppose, that you would not adduce in support of an argument for success. In what circumstances is the effort worthwhile? Are there circumstances in which peacekeepers, regardless of how well-organized they are, how well trained or how well-financed, are likely to have little or no effect or will perhaps even worsen the situation?
Mr. LaRose-Edwards: My feeling has always been on these kinds of operations, following the traditions of triage, that those that succeed are the ones that identify an opportunity and move fast to address it and thus have a chance of success. There are cases, however, where you just cannot resolve a situation. I feel that at times Canada and the international community need to step back from an unresolvable situation and put their scarce resources into a situation that can be resolved.
There are all sorts of examples. Rwanda is a perfect-case scenario. I honestly believe that, had Canada and others sent in 3,000 lightly armoured troops very quickly, within days of the plane's being shot down, they could have brought the genocide to a halt. Because they waited several months, it became an impossible mission. At that point in time, I tend to agree, it is too late. Sending in large numbers of troops will not resolve it. The Rwanda Patriotic Front were coming in at that time and so the game was over.
There are times when you can succeed and there are times when you cannot succeed. Success comes when you move fast.
Mr. Morrison: Peacekeeping will succeed, not so much through the actual use of the military resources that have been allocated, but it will succeed when national governments and international organizations, through their national members, display the practical political will, determination, lasting support and application of the resources necessary to do the job.
There are occasions when of course the military is willing, but governments do not deploy the military or civilian peacekeepers or United Nations civilian police in time to do the job. That specifically happens from time to time in the case of the United Nations, and it happened in the case of Rwanda, with which we are all too familiar. I would suggest that the success of peacekeeping lies with the civilian political apparatus much more than with the military itself.
The Chairman: Colonel Morrison, would you describe the Yugoslavia-Kosovo exercise as a peacekeeping exercise?
Mr. Morrison: It is a military exercise undertaken by political authorities who have said that not only must the military go there and try to solve a problem, but it must go, not just with one arm tied behind its back but with, more practically, one arm cut off. I would like to think that the international community has learned a lot from the Kosovo exercise: first, to establish firmly your aim; second, to allocate the resources necessary to do the job; and, third, not to tell your antagonist what it is you are not going to do.
The Chairman: Staying with the Yugoslavia-Kosovo situation for a moment, I have heard it said within the last couple of days that, now that an agreement seems to be coming up over the horizon, the hard work really begins. Would that be your assessment of the situation?
Mr. Morrison: Absolutely. The use of military force does not solve any problem. The use of military force is an admission that the parties to the dispute, the politicians and diplomats, have failed to find a solution and have tried to use military force. All military force does is to create a certain degree of stability to create conditions where politicians and diplomats can then move in, as they have now, to try to solve the underlying root causes of the conflict.
I would think that the discussions now ongoing in Bonn, in New York, and in other locations are far more important to the success of what happens in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia than has been all of the bombing, because we are now faced with the situation where Mr. Milosevic appears to have accepted the desirability of listening more closely to the international community than he has done before. I think that what has resulted in Kosovo is that the international community in military and civilian forms will be involved there for many years to come.
Mr. LaRose-Edwards: I do not want to diminish the difficulty of what has gone before, but the really difficult part has not started yet. I would suggest that the difficult parts always come when the CNN factor, the world's attention, moves somewhere else. It is a tough slog to turn around a situation that will take years and years of sustained effort and help from the outside and work from the people, the Kosovars, on the ground. The difficult time is when people are no longer paying attention to it anymore; then it becomes difficult to keep slogging away at it.
Senator Andreychuk: Having known both witnesses in some of their prior capacities, I am pleased to have this opportunity to welcome them here in their present capacities.
It seems to me that our present discussion is revolving around "peacekeeping" as a broad concept. The traditional notion of peacekeeping is that, when two parties, not in the same state, have a willingness to end their disputes, we go in to help them keep that peace, which they have agreed to. However, in many of the more recent situations -- Rwanda and Kosovo, for example -- it has not really been peacekeeping in that sense, because there is very little will on the part of the KLA or the Serbs to keep the peace; there was no will in the past and there is not likely to be in the future. Are you differentiating between the roles we have assigned to the military and civilians in peacebuilding, peacemaking and peacekeeping, or are we rolling them all into one now?
Mr. Morrison: At the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre we use the term "peacekeeping" as an umbrella concept that encompasses peacekeeping, peacemaking, peace establishment, peace-support operations, preventive diplomacy, and so on. "Peacekeeping" is the term most familiar to the public; it is the one that is used in the popular press and in popular literature. One must tailor the civilian and military forces to do the job that is required under the peacekeeping umbrella; so we use it in a very general sense to encompass all of the activities that you mentioned.
Senator Andreychuk: Does that flow into what the military defines as "peacekeeping," with its mandate under all of these various arms, or do they have to move with the flow in defining it?
Mr. Morrison: They must do both. There are as many definitions of "peacekeeping" probably as there are militaries and governments in the world. The important thing for military and civilian peacekeepers is to be told exactly what it is they are required to do, and then to have the resources necessary to do that. The particular appellation that you give to the operation is not as important as being specific and being well-equipped.
Senator Andreychuk: Your institute does a very valuable job and certainly is receiving good credit and reviews on the training that you provide. However, from the military perspective, I am told that they have their internal rules and that part of the ability to be a good peacekeeper is to work together within the military. Apparently, though, when we downsized the military, we let go virtually all of the people who had experience in peacekeeping. As a result, we are pretty thin now in the complement of people who can actually work together very quickly out on the field.
In other words, one of the gaps caused by this downsizing of the military is that they have not had time to work together, to train together, to build a consensus together in any unit within the military. Because of that weakness, because all of that peacekeeping experience and capacity within is gone, when they are deployed they cannot work together efficiently as a military. While your institute helps them, it is not a substitute for what is necessary.
Mr. Morrison: I believe that the size of the Canadian Armed Forces is much less than it should be. Having said that, however, every man and woman in the Canadian forces, regular and reserves, is a professional. No member of the Canadian Armed Forces is deployed on any operational mission at home or abroad unless that person is specifically trained and, in the opinion of the commanding officer, is able to do the job.
I thank you for your kind words about the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre. What we do is try to have the military and the civilians working well together with the same kind of esprit de corps and coherence as you ascribed to the military.
Mr. LaRose-Edwards: I do not know of any ministry, organization, or individual in Canada that would admit of having enough money. I think the Canadian Armed Forces have more than enough individuals and more than enough resources to do their peacekeeping tasks. If they want to spend money on submarines, you must wonder where their priorities are.
I believe that the Canadian peacekeeping capacity is actually larger. It is the younger military, both officers and other ranks, who have more peacekeeping experience and bring more to the job. As the senior military move on, who have trained for war in Europe, in fact our peacekeeping critical mass increases. Therefore, I believe that Canadian military capacity to do peacekeeping is growing bigger all the time.
Senator Andreychuk: Mr. Morrison, you indicated that the Canadian forces would not put personnel on the ground if they were not ready. However, with the kind of command structure that we have created in Canada, where we have the head of the military reporting to the deputy minister, in essence, who then has his own agenda, and so on, and reports to the minister, does that not create a difficult situation for the head of the military? With all of the foreign policy issues and other issues that the deputy minister has to take into account, he -- or she -- may have a mindset about what must be done; if that is the case, is it not difficult for the head of the military command to indicate that his troops might not quite be ready? Is he not put in the position that he must do the best he can?
Mr. Morrison: My understanding of the relationship of the Deputy Minister of the Department of National Defence and the Chief of Defence Staff to the Minister of National defence is somewhat different from that which you have just posited. My understanding is that both of them in their specific areas of responsibility are accountable to the minister.
My words of course on the Office of the Chief of Defence Staff are of those who never got anywhere near being Chief of Defence Staff in the military, so they are spoken probably with great objectivity. The job of the Chief of Defence Staff is to implement government policy to the best of the ability of the armed forces. All of the Chiefs of Defence Staff I have known -- and that is quite a few now -- have not been at all hesitant about pointing out to the government what might happen if a particular government-recommended or government-dictated course of action were followed.
Before any member of the Canadian Armed Forces is sent into a theatre of operations, the appropriate people at National Defence Headquarters, it is my understanding, conduct a risk assessment. I believe that all of our professional military men and women have confidence that their military commanders and political leaders will not put them needlessly at risk. Of course, they will be put at risk; that is the job, and that is why they sign up and swear allegiance to serve.
However, the main point that I take from your question is that, yes, the Chief of Defence Staff does have a very difficult job. That is why the government chooses the best people to occupy that office.
Senator Andreychuk: My understanding is slightly different from yours on the aspect of practicality, because the chart may say certain things but, when you get down to day-to-day matters, how does one put forward one's point of view when a deputy minister may be putting forward a different view? However, I will take that up, I hope, with the minister when we call him.
I think I understood the points Mr. LaRose-Edwards was making, but I have three further questions for you, Mr. Morrison. You said we should stay in NATO, but you did not really give your reasons why. I should like to hear a bit more on that.
In our report in 1996, when we were studying European integration and the implications for Canada from our foreign policy point of view, we commented on NATO, firmly supporting Canada's continued involvement in NATO and giving some of our own reasons for that. We also talked about the fact that NATO had been expanded, our concern being that there had not been perhaps a sufficient analysis of the ramifications for Canada's foreign policy by some of the NATO expansion, although we did not disagree with NATO expansion.
What preconditions or conditions would you put on at this point for expanding NATO beyond the three countries that have already been added to NATO, or would you put on any conditions at all? Would you leave it to the ebbs and flows of the politics of the time?
Those are the first two questions. My third question is this: I had always understood from the discussions that took place after the fall of the East-West, and the peace discussions at the time, that there was a confirmation of NATO's continuing, but with great emphasis on non-Article 5 issues. Now we have Kosovo, where you have said we are using military means to back up non-Article 5 initiatives. Do you think that is an appropriate use of the military? Should we take time to define more clearly the non-Article 5 initiatives that should be sanctioned? If so, in what way?
Certainly, at that time, when we were talking about peacebuilding and peacemaking and joint operations with OSCE, we were really talking about building a security environment within which Europe would foster. I do not think there were any discussions about using NATO bomb attacks outside Article 5.
Mr. Morrison: Canada should stay in NATO because first of all, it is an organization that is composed of 19 countries that can get along and act united within generally accepted boundaries. We ought to be very careful before we advocate the disbandment of an organization with those assets.
Secondly, NATO is an alliance that has worked, not just militarily, but also economically, politically and in terms of research. Some of that is due to the Canadian Article in the Atlantic Charter.
Thirdly, it is still necessary, in order to ensure relative peace, security and stability in Europe, to have a transatlantic alliance. That alliance ought not to be composed of a very large number in Europe and only one country from the North American continent. Canadian membership serves a great purpose.
Thirdly, NATO is an organization that has worked for 50 years, has great inter-operability assets, is able to deploy its political resources and its military resources relatively quickly to deal with a crisis when NATO political leaders -- that includes the heads of government of the NATO countries -- decide that military forces ought to be deployed.
With regard to the criteria for NATO enlargement, I would emphasize that democracy, economic development and a military that has the potential to become of the standard possessed by the current 19 members be the factors. I would also list in fourth place, but still important, a very good knowledge of the English language.
With regard to the third question and Article 5, NATO has now proven that it can act. It has done so without objections from any of the European countries gathered together in any one of the many organizations into which they have assembled themselves, for various national reasons in Europe. NATO intervened in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in a very good international cause. I would like to have seen NATO intervene even more forcibly than it did, but I understand that there were very good political reasons for not doing so.
Senator Andreychuk: Do you think that the charter then needs to be changed or do you think that NATO is well within its mandate to do what it is doing now? Some people have argued that if it was going to use military attacks, dropping bombs, that that was not really contemplated outside of declaring a war, and that we would have used all other means but that. Do we need to redefine our articles? Do we need to go back to the drawing board?
Mr. Morrison: As for amending the Charter of the United Nations, I am very wary of trying to amend the Washington Treaty because of the little item that would then be brought in. I remember in the early days after the Cold War, some were saying that NATO was seeking a rationale, and non-Article 5 operations became the buzzword of the month. Then there is the concept of the combined joint task force, which would be deployed by NATO in Article 5 and non-Article 5 operations and with which we at the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre have played a rather substantial, although not overly large, role, in developing and helping to exercise. I believe that an organization with the ability and capability of NATO should use it whenever its political leaders determine that it should be used. I trust their judgment.
Senator Bolduc: NATO has deployed for the last two and a half months a war machine of which we are participants. After that, will we be viewed by many countries as peacekeepers?
Mr. Morrison: That is a question that is always asked of Canadians when the Canadian military are used in a way in which the speaker does not agree.
It is my understanding, and it has been my understanding now for a number of years, that the Canadian armed forces are regarded worldwide as possessing general purpose combat capabilities. As Dag Hammarskjöld said, "Peacekeeping is no job for a soldier, but only a soldier can do it." Our military men and women, our professional Canadians in uniform, possess these general purpose combat skills, and that is why they make such good peacekeepers.
The reputation of the Canadian military and of Canada itself as a loyal member of the organization that is involved in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia can only be enhanced by Canadian performance. I do not think that the Canadian participation in the events of the last 10 or 11 weeks will prejudice its ability or the ability of our military to serve as peacekeepers.
Senator Bolduc: Most of the peacekeeping missions are for the United Nations, so do you see any criteria that should be used by the federal government when deciding to move into a peacemaking mission? Must we answer yes every time, even in India, Indonesia or in Central Africa? Should we use some criteria, such as national interest, for Canada? What is your feeling about those criteria?
Mr. Morrison: There was a time of course when Canada could say that it had participated in every United Nations peacekeeping operation and in a large number of non-UN missions. There were those who said that there was a certain automatic, knee-jerk response on the part of Canada to invitations from the United Nations and other organizations to participate. I spent six years at our mission to the United Nations in New York dealing with the UN on matters of peacekeeping, and I know that at times when they were asked for things the government decided not to grant the UN request. Of course, since that time, there have been specific missions to which we were not invited, and if we were invited, we declined to participate.
The Canadian government has always had a long list of criteria that it examines in the light of each request from the United Nations or other competent international organizations. I am not sure that there has ever been a time when all of the criteria were satisfied. There probably were times when a fair number of the criteria were not satisfied, but the government of the day decided for other very good, understandable reasons to send Canadians to participate. Are there criteria? Yes. Is Canada's potential military participation judged by those criteria? Yes, however at the end of the day, it is a political decision by the government to deploy or not to deploy.
Mr. LaRose-Edwards: Canada by and large has tried to be in every mission and we have spread ourselves really thin. Our decisions as to when to go and not to go have not been very strategic. There needs to be more thought as to what impact the Canadian military will have in peacekeeping operations. What is the value-added? We made a real mistake by not running the military operation in Haiti. America managed to carry it off, but they carried a lot of political baggage with it. Canada should have stepped up and said, "We will lead this mission. We will do to this mission what the Americans ended up doing," because we had the value-added; we had the French capacity; we had the neutrality; we are in the same hemisphere but we ducked the responsibility.
Similarly in Rwanda, we had the value-added; we are a French-speaking country; and we came in with no political baggage. Why Canada did not stand up and very quickly move to support General Dallaire is beyond me. We have a large number of troops in Bosnia where our value-added is pretty minimal. There are lots of troops that can do the same things that Canadian troops do in Bosnia. It beats me as to why we are in Bosnia and not in Haiti or Rwanda.
Senator Forrestall: I would like to join the others in welcoming the two witnesses. Colonel Morrison is a long-time friend. We have shared common interests for quite awhile. In most recent years, Mr. Chair, he is a caretaker of my birthplace, which is Cornwallis. He does a good job. He keeps the lawns mowed and what not.
Mr. LaRose-Edwards, how do you think the navy, which remains Canada's only rapid reaction element, would manage with ancient helicopters but no submarines? What kind of a job would they do? The question is rhetorical.
The Chairman: Please direct your questions to Mr. Morrison so that he may leave on time.
Senator Forrestall: Many people believe that Canada has been on pretty shaky legal and moral grounds the last several months with respect to what is happening in Kosovo. If we look at the new peacekeeping partnership that is developing, you have described it briefly and very succinctly. As to the humanitarian agencies, official policemen and a variety of other very much-needed interests, how do these two things go along hand in hand? If we are trying to expand into this new partnership and to offer the world a new capacity, were you implying, when you were discussing this, that we may perhaps lessen our role in NATO? I know that you want us to remain in it, but to suggest that simply because nobody complains is all right but not quite good enough. There must be a little stronger base to it than simply that. Should we be looking at the Atlantic Charter? Are there amendments that we should be proposing to the Atlantic Charter itself? Could you elaborate a little further?
Mr. Morrison: With regard to the Washington Treaty, certainly it is always good to review the terms of reference of an organization to determine whether improvements can be made. Very often, there are, and they can be made without necessarily having to amend the formal terms of reference, in this case the Washington Treaty. That has been done in a way with the re-orientation of NATO after the end of the Cold War. There has been a general recognition that it is a useful organization. There are tasks it can carry out which are of a non-Article 5 nature, and there has been tacit agreement among and between the 16 and now the 19 members that the organization would proceed in that direction.
With regard to the new peacekeeping partnership and the bringing together of civilian and military peacekeepers to accomplish an aim, we are well on the way to the realization of that concept. Also, internationally, we are well on the way toward considering, as a matter of course and of no little import, a new type of operations founded on the basis of humanitarian law and human rights. As conflicts continue to arise, and they surely shall, NATO and the international community will move in ways that perhaps we would not have agreed to move in even five or ten years ago.
Senator Forrestall: You would find then that modern peacekeeping to a certain degree already reflects the subordination of national sovereignty to the far broader universal human rights and values. Does that make it right? We are changing; there is no doubt about that. There is no doubt about the terror and the horror there, but does it make it right? If it does not make it right, how do we move Canada back to a moral, legal and ethical role in peacekeeping?
Mr. Morrison: We at the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre find that it is hard to determine absolute right and absolute wrong.
Senator Forrestall: We agree with that.
Mr. Morrison: We conduct a course on human rights in peacekeeping. At the beginning of the course everyone agrees that human rights ought to be respected. There is no question about that. When we begin to discuss what human rights are and how they should be implemented, we very quickly learn that there are differing opinions and that there always will be. The task is to determine what is acceptable and judged to be correct by the majority of governments or the majority of citizens. We have a lot of work to do in that area.
Senator Forrestall: It should be the rule of law.
Mr. LaRose-Edwards: As I put together and run that course on human rights and field operations, I find that we are on very strong moral and legal grounds in Kosovo at this time. There are clear standards out there now on the law of armed conflict and human rights law. We are clearly covered by this. If we were not doing what we were doing, we would be breaching the law. We are clearly within the law in this instance.
Senator Grafstein: Colonel Morrison, I want to return to a topic that you have addressed on the future role of Canada in NATO. I am keeping in mind that you said earlier that NATO should be expanded if in fact the new members meet certain democratic standards of participation.
Now, is it not fair to say that the expansion of NATO would then put Canada in an even weaker position vis-à-vis its participation in NATO? Canada would then run dangerously close to having only an artificial membership in NATO, would it not? For instance, there seems to be a dichotomy between the entrance requirements for new members of NATO -- Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic -- in terms of the status of their military, their investment in their military, the state of readiness in their military, all the normal requirements for new membership. At the same time, Canada, perhaps along with other member states, is reducing almost its minimum obligations to NATO as a stand-ready defence force. How are we to advise the Canadian public about that in real terms? What are our real interests, our vital interests, as Senator Bolduc says?
Mr. Morrison: One of the advantages of being a Canadian of course is that to a great extent, Canada's national interests coincide with international interests. A quality of Canadians that is much admired throughout the world is how outward looking we are, how internationalist we are, and how quickly we share our resources.
You are absolutely right that with more members in NATO, some may attach less value or importance to each individual member. The question that I answered was the one dealing with the criteria that I thought new members should have. I was not asked when I thought NATO might next enlarge. If I were asked that question, I would say quite some years into the future, at a time when we have digested and assessed the experience of the three new members.
Senator Grafstein: You would then caution the Canadian government about not raising expectations for new states to join NATO in the short run?
Mr. Morrison: In the short run, yes, I would. With regard to Canadian participation in NATO, as I have said a number of times elsewhere, the Canadian military personnel are valued for their professionalism. Unfortunately, there are not enough of them. Canada is offered on a regular basis high-ranking positions in various NATO headquarters, which we are unable to accept because we do not have the people to fill those positions. I do believe that that is one area that the Department of National Defence and the Government of Canada should reconsider. That is, as the size of the armed forces decreases, the number of people we have in organizations abroad in important positions should increase, because it provides us with a voice at the table and also, in our military at home, it gives us that experience of people who have worked in large headquarters. That will stand us in good stead when Canadians are asked to assume positions of command in international peacekeeping and other operations.
Senator Grafstein: You mentioned in your earlier testimony that, internal to the government, there is a set of rules for engagement in various peacekeeping missions. Are those publicly available and publicly debated? This is news to me. I did not know that in effect we have a set of internal guidelines, which are not part of the public arena.
Mr. Morrison: It is my understanding that they are public. I remember a great number of years ago I think the Chief of the Defence Staff at that time, General Paul Manson, wrote an article in the Canadian Defence Quarterly where he set them out. In 1989, I wrote an article in the Canadian Defence Quarterly with regard to criteria and I have seen them in the public domain.
Senator Grafstein: They are therefore available and we can take a look at them.
Mr. Morrison: Yes.
Senator Robertson: I would like you to clarify a point for me in terms of Canada's relationship or participation in NATO. For instance, do you believe that we are contributing our fair share to NATO's resources? Perhaps you might explain how you arrive at your answer. For instance, how would you define a fair share? Relative to our fair share, are other members contributing their fair share?
Mr. Morrison: I believe, first of all, that the range of the Canadian contribution is within the boundaries of acceptability. It is probably at the lower edge, but it is within the boundaries of acceptability. I believe that we are contributing our fair share in a financial sense. I believe that all the other countries in NATO would appreciate a greater military share. However, we must be careful that we do not take up the slack left by them when they reduce.
We ought to do everything that we can to ensure that our allies realize that NATO begins in Vancouver and goes all the way across this country of ours and across the Atlantic Ocean. The Pearson Peacekeeping Centre stages a number of activities which bring fairly large numbers of NATO military officers to Nova Scotia for us to educate and exercise in various areas of peacekeeping.
Virtually every other NATO country would welcome a greater Canadian participation for two reasons: first, to take up the slack, and secondly and more importantly, because of the intrinsic value of the contribution.
Senator Robertson: It seems that the British and the Americans are making major contributions, but maybe that is a simplistic interpretation. Are the other countries, not counting those new countries, honestly carrying their share?
Mr. Morrison: Without making comparisons, which sometimes are rather odious, it is my opinion that the strength of the Canadian contribution, not particularly its quantity but its strength, is greater than that of a large number of other NATO countries.
The Chairman: We made these arrangements before we knew what was to happen in the chamber this afternoon. Honourable senators, I must thank the colonel for his attendance here.His testimony has been very useful to us, and the fact that we are reluctant to see him go means that it was extraordinarily valuable. We feel that there is still gold in that mine. We may have to speak with you again, Colonel Morrison. Thank you for coming.
We have been reserving our questions for Mr. LaRose-Edwards. Please proceed.
Senator Grafstein: I am interested in the work of your organization because it seems to parallel and echo the work that is occurring in Norway, Sweden and other of the smaller nations, particularly centred now around the OSCE. You are no doubt familiar with the Kosovo Verification Mission, which was intended to not only verify the concordance with UN resolutions and agreements, but also to act as non-military peacekeepers, in effect. That exercise was a very detailed one in terms of covering election, police and media experts. It covered almost every element of democracy and democracy building. Is your organization coordinating your training sessions with the work being done now in places like Sweden and Norway in conjunction with the OSCE?
Mr. LaRose-Edwards: I know the mission very well. I was brought into the OSCE to the KVM just before Christmas to set up the human rights democratization side of the operation. The training side of civilians for these missions is a very important issue that the OSCE is trying to come to grips with right now. The OSCE ambassador, Suni Danielsson, who is based in Vienna, is trying to create a larger training mechanism, not only for specific missions, but in a general sense for individuals who have not yet been assigned, but who are waiting to go. However, that is not moving forward very quickly. Part of the problem is a lack of resources. Norway, for example, undertakes some training with an organization that is similar to ours, NORDEM. I have actually been brought in to help them in their training. They are a narrowly focused organization. We are much broader. We have gone beyond what they do.
We have a similar problem here in Canada on the training side. The PPC picks up some of the slack, but there are a lot more training requirements. Not only the PPC, but a number of academic institutions and NGOs can do this. The ongoing problem is a lack of resources.
One partial solution lies in piggybacking civilians on certain training that has been designed for the Canadian military, such as mine awareness and driving military vehicles. This training could have a secondary purpose in training civilians. That would be one of the ways of solving these training gaps, by allowing Canadian civilians to use the skills and the mechanisms of the Canadian Armed Forces.
Senator Grafstein: I am not too clear then what your proposal to us is. Is it to establish full-time, non-military, skilled peace merchants supported logistically by the military? Or is it to develop a pool of volunteers from across Canada with particular skills, trained almost like the militia or reserve on a partial basis, which is therefore ready to respond to a particular regionally sanctioned or United Nations-sanctioned mission? I am still not clear on how you envisage the work of your particular group.
Mr. LaRose-Edwards: I would envisage more the first aspect. It is not as if we will have a standing force of civilians ready to go out there. It is too expensive. We already have a roster of 700 experts. It is still early days right now. We are about a year and a half into creating that roster. By Christmas we anticipate that we will have a thousand, and that will keep on rising. It will perhaps start to flatten out at 2,000 or 3,000 individuals. There is an amazing number of civilian Canadians out there with field experience. As we start to register more retired military, then those numbers will grow even further.
I am proposing that Canadian civilians should be prepared in advance, before they are deployed, and that this should be done by having them piggyback on the training of the Canadian military. If the military is running a mine awareness program in Edmonton, and 20 people are taking the course, maybe they can take two civilians. Civilians should regularly take this training, so that when they move out on field operations, they are not at greater risk than the military. In Kosovo, Canadian military personnel and civilians were doing identical jobs in identical situations, facing the same risks. The Canadian military was far better prepared, paid and better supported in the field, and they were better supported when they came back home. The civilians are on their own. When the mission is over they are given their ticket, and it is good-bye.
Where there is a capacity for the Canadian military to carry some civilians in terms of preparing, deploying and bringing back their people, they should do that, rather than slowly create a brand-new civilian vehicle to do that. Let us use the military for a dual purpose.
The Chairman: I feel guilty on behalf of the committee that we have two witnesses waiting. I am anxious to get to them. My own suggestion is that we examine the evidence taken from Colonel Morrison and Mr. LaRose-Edwards and follow up where it is desirable in writing. On behalf of the committee I do not think we are doing justice to the two other witnesses who have been waiting since 3:30.
[Translation]
Senator Losier-Cool: Who requests your services? Is it only the international organizations? For instance, is the UN using your database?
[English]
Mr. LaRose-Edwards: We were initially set up to respond to a major gap in the UN where they did not have rosters of individuals and did not know how to access them. Rwanda was a good example of where they were scrambling around trying to find individuals. However, once we are set up and running, we respond to almost any non-profit organization that might be looking for candidates, and that includes the Canadian government.
For Kosovo, for example, those 120 names that we came up with went to Foreign Affairs. They selected the ones they wanted to put forward and sent those over to the OSCE. It was a little bit of a circular route. At other times we get direct requests from the UN. The OSCE also comes directly to us for candidates, as do Canadian NGOs, international NGOs and the Canadian Armed Forces. You name it, if anybody is looking for a qualified Canadian civilian, we respond.
Senator Whelan: Listening to you and to Colonel Morrison, I feel that you are not very optimistic about peaceful living in the world. You are preparing thousands more people to look after peacekeeping, so you are sure there will be more disturbances in the world and human rights being destroyed, are you not?
Mr. LaRose-Edwards: In fact, in the long term I am quite optimistic. In the short term I am pessimistic about how we respond to things. It is definitely a growth market, not because there are more violations out there, but because now we are paying more attention to them. Forty years ago, Rwanda would not have been a blip on anybody's horizon. Nothing would have happened. We would have thought that it was just those Africans doing what they do in Africa. If the Cold War had still been on, we would have again washed our hands over what was happening in Kosovo, and we would not have gone there. Things are not becoming worse. We are just getting better at responding to them. To be better at responding to them, we must have a greater capacity to do so on both the military and the civilian sides.
Senator Whelan: Do you not think that with our modern communications, satellites and everything, we should have gone into Rwanda quicker than we did? To me the UN failed miserably. It did not pay attention to the Canadian commander's requests and so on because it was a weekend. If a dairy farmer did that, his cows would die. I cannot understand why you are saying that Rwanda was just a blip. To me, it was one of the worst catastrophes we ever saw. I was just a civilian, but I was appalled at the government's lack of action.
Mr. LaRose-Edwards: You are right, but we did eventually go in with billions of dollars' worth of humanitarian assistance for probably 800,000 people. We should have responded faster, but we finally did. The CNN factor finally kicked in and forced our hand. That is becoming more prevalent and we are reacting a bit faster.
Senator Whelan: I was so happy when the Cold War began to disappear, when the Iron Curtain started to coming down. We felt that we would all live in peaceful coexistence. Since 1991 we have killed 10 million people in this great peaceful world. Would it have been better to have kept the Cold War in existence and the Iron Curtain up?
Mr. LaRose-Edwards: They were probably two giant carpets that we were able to sweep a lot under. Guatemala is a good example.
Senator Whelan: Guatemala was infantile when compared to what we have seen in Africa and other parts of the world. In Kosovo live a people who all speak the same language. I have been to that country many times as a civilian and as an old member of the defence committee, but do you think that I was asked once for my opinion on what they should do in there? I think that some of our Foreign Affairs people and our UN people are ignorant about what is occurring. When you talk about human rights, that country could never have democracy as we know it. It must have the iron fist of a person like Tito.
We never should have recognized Croatia as an independent nation. We should have said, "You will be a confederation, you will live in peaceful coexistence, even if we have to put a police force in there." Foolishly, I think Canada was the second country to recognize Croatia as an independent nation. When you study the history of that country you realize the hatred that is being taught. When you study Kosovo, too, you realize that there are a lot of things that are not being said that should be said about that part of the country; about how it was created and how miserable they can be to other minority groups in that area. I am not very optimistic about peaceful coexistence. I do not think that you are either when you talk about the thousands of people you will have. With all due respect to us civilians, to me, the United Nations is one of the most inefficient, inadequate organizations that there is, and we waste billions of dollars on it.
The Russians want the UN to go in and be in charge of the peacekeeping in Kosovo. Lord help us against that.
Mr. LaRose-Edwards: You have exposed a number of massive slippery slopes, and I know that the Chair would like to bring this to an end. I am more than happy to discuss that with you at a separate time. If any of you have questions on CANADEM, please e-mail or call me. I am delighted to have been asked to appear before you and I hope that I have been of some help.
The Chairman: You have been of great help. You have given us a viewpoint from a different hill.
Now, honourable senators, we have the two other witnesses: Professor Kim Richard Nossal, who is a member of the Department of Political Science at McMaster University and Colonel Douglas Fraser, who is retired. He is the Executive Director of the Canadian Council for International Peace and Security.
Mr. Kim Richard Nossal, Department of Political Science, McMaster University: Thank you for inviting me here. I understand that I was to be paired with Professor Stephen Scott of McGill University because Professor Scott and I are focusing on the same issue, really. That is, as I understand it, legislative involvement, the involvement of Canada's Parliament in the deployment of Canadian forces for missions overseas.
As you will see from my brief, when I consider this important issue, I begin by reflecting on what the historical practice in Canada has been. One of the most deeply rooted traditions in Canadian foreign policy is the idea that only Parliament should decide to commit Canadian forces to active service overseas.
This "Parliament-will-decide" formula made its first appearance in 1910 when Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier declared that while Canadians might have automatically been at war when Britain was at war, there was no assurance at all that Canada would automatically take part in all the wars of England, and Laurier put it quite nicely. "That is a matter that must be decided by circumstances, upon which the Canadian parliament will have to pronounce and will have to decide."
Many of Laurier's successors over the years would use exactly the same formula. Mackenzie King would employ it over Chanak in 1922; Lester Pearson would use it in Cyprus in 1964; and Jean Chrétien would use it over the former Yugoslavia in both 1994 and 1995.
While prime ministers have often used this formula, it has also been embraced by a number of members of Parliament because for some parliamentarians, the involvement of the legislature in foreign policy decision-making is the most appropriate benchmark of a democratic foreign policy. Unless Parliament decides such important matters as war and peace, the line of argument goes, the resulting decision is undemocratic. Decisions made by the executive, using the royal prerogative, smack of old-fashioned, elitist privilege.
Certainly this has been the consistent argument of our current foreign minister, Mr. Axworthy, both as a minister, and of course while he was in opposition. It certainly is a reminder. We have had the latest reminder by the Prime Minister himself during the parliamentary debate on the use of force against Yugoslavia on March 24.
It is useful to keep in mind that parliamentarians not in cabinet might find the Parliament-will-decide formula very attractive. It should be noted that when Canadian prime ministers use that formula, they do not really mean it, for all the reasons that Professor Scott outlined in terms of the formal and legal prerogative of the Crown to decide on matters of war and peace. So my brief, which is before you, really focuses on the political practice rather than the legalities. I want to reflect on what Canadians have done in the past.
History lessons can be important, primarily because political memories tend to be notoriously short and quite partisan. It is useful to reflect on some of the gaps between memory and historical reality. Secondly, and I think more importantly, how political leaders in earlier eras have dealt with these problems provide important lessons for future practice. My brief looks at two different issues. First of all, at the issue of war in the use of force, and in particular it focuses on those eight occasions in the last 100 years when the Canadian government has gone to war against other peoples, notably, during the Boer War in 1899; the Great War in 1914; the involvement in the intervention in the Russian civil war in 1918 and 1919; the Second World War in 1939; against Japan in 1941, the Korean War in 1950, our involvement in Desert Storm or the Gulf War in 1991; the Canadian government's decision to use force against the Somalis in December 1992; and of course the war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which is currently ongoing.
My brief also looks at parliamentary involvement in a number of peacekeeping missions. Like Colonel Morrison, I use peacekeeping in a relatively broad sense, to include the importance of truce supervisions, because although everyone in Canada normally refers to the Suez as being the birthplace of Canadian peacekeeping, actually, that is utterly wrong. Peacekeeping operations started much earlier. The first time that we were really involved in a large-scale devotion of troops to a peacekeeping truce supervisory operation was of course with the Indochina Commissions in 1954.
I look at Canada's parliamentary involvement in the decision to involve ourselves in Indochina, in Suez in 1956, in Cyprus in 1964, and in the Desert Shield portion of the Gulf conflict in 1990, and in the implementation force after the Dayton Accords, or IFOR, in December 1995. I discover essentially that the Parliament of Canada has a very mixed record of involvement. For the vast majority of these cases, the Canadian Parliament was only involved ex post facto, well after the executive -- in other words, the cabinet -- had involved Canada, committed Canadian forces to the use of force or to peacekeeping operations.
In my brief, I dip into history essentially to suggest that there is a certain timelessness about the problems that Canadian governments have in involving ordinary members of Parliament, who are not members of cabinet, in decisions to commit Canadian forces abroad for service.
Basically, Canadian governments, and indeed the Canadian Parliament, finds themselves invariably in the position of having to react to events or crises, often in tightly compressed time frames. This is of course an obvious observation, but it seems to me that it bears directly on the capacity of the Canadian Parliament to involve itself in decision-making of this importance.
Part of the problem is simply the parliamentary timetable. On many of the occasions that I survey in my brief, Parliament was not even sitting. As you are quite aware, the Canadian Parliament has an exceedingly leisurely calendar relative to other parliament's legislatures in the international system. Compare the Canadian Parliament to the German Bundestag, which is constantly in session.
Much of the leisureliness of the Canadian parliamentary calendar has to do with the size of the country, the difficulty of moving from constituencies to the national capital. It has a powerful impact on the capacity of the Canadian Parliament to be engaged in any meaningful sense in the making of important policy issues, such as the commitment of Canadian forces for service abroad.
Instead, because of the pattern of the Canadian Parliament's calendar, the folks who are on duty 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year -- in other words ministers in cabinet or more properly their officials -- are perfectly placed to deal with the highly unpredictable rhythms of world politics. They will find in those rhythms the reasons for the executive to act; they are not willing to wait until the members of Parliament can be reassembled and organized for debate.
Part of the problem is that much of Canada's foreign policy is reactive and in a sense it reacts to what is decided elsewhere. A nice example is the Gulf debate, which you may remember occurred in January 1991. Right in the middle of the Canadian parliamentary debate, the United States government decided to begin the war against Iraq. It was typical that the Canadian Parliament was engaged in a process that was overtaken by international events.
Likewise, frequently Canadian policy will be set and made in very distant forums, thus making parliamentary input completely impossible. Consider the dynamic, for example, facing the Canadian government in 1954 at the Geneva Accords when Canada's representatives were told that Canada's name was in play to participate in the Indochina Commissions. To respond at that point, "Sorry, but we must have Canada's Parliament decide" was impossible in the circumstances.
Moreover, every other government in the international system knows how fundamentally disingenuous the Parliament- will-decide formula is in the context of the Westminster system. They know the power of the royal prerogative in matters of war and peace, and they know too that when countries with a Westminster system invoke that formula, it is usually for domestic, political reasons.
What implications does this line of argument have for parliamentary involvement? I want to suggest two conclusions. First, it strikes me that some of the concerns for a greater involvement of ordinary parliamentarians in such foreign policy matters are essentially driven by what we see from politicians in our neighbour to the south. It has been said that trapped inside the body of every Westminster parliamentarian is a member of Congress dying to get out. Certainly the proposals for beefing up parliamentary involvement in the making of foreign policy seem to reflect that. We are stuck with the system that we are stuck with. Trying to graft American congressional practices on to the Westminster system is a recipe for disingenuousness, if nothing else. That suggests to me at least that members of Parliament should reconcile themselves to the essentially ex post facto role that Canadian parliaments have historically played in this respect. In other words, their role is to assess, discuss and debate executive decisions already taken. That element of discussion is crucial, for I would argue that the voicing of different views and the subjection of different perspectives to critical analysis all combine to make much better policy, even if it is ex post facto.
Senator Bolduc: If I understand you, sir, the best thing we can do here is to look at the situation after the decisions are already taken, after we are at war. Thus, we look at the situation and say that maybe in the future the foreign policy of Canada should be otherwise. Is that the essence of what you told us?
Mr. Nossal: You can try and decide on the basis of past experience what we should do in the future. My reading of Canadian foreign policy is that when governments have tried to do that, they find themselves invariably trapped by the simple element of power. Consider, for example, the government of Pierre Trudeau. It tried to draw lessons from our long membership on the Indochina Commissions. That government vowed up and down that it would learn those lessons and apply them the next time around because they had some sense that Canada's name might be invoked in the current peace negotiations that were occurring in Paris, just as our name had come into play in 1954.
The reality was that for all the careful planning of the Canadian government to draw lessons and to say that things would be different in the future, it was exactly the same as 1954. Our name was used largely without our even knowing it and Canadians were faced with a fait accompli. We were going to join the new commission. How could we say no? You can try to engage in that kind of planning, but inevitably the rhythms, the broader waves will wash over you and make that planning largely ineffective over the long-term.
Senator Bolduc: The executives of the NATO countries met and decided to change our mandate. Suddenly, we have the new NATO strategic concept. I suppose that that leads to the decisions that were taken in Yugoslavia.
We are managing the situation without the United Nations. What do you think that we should say about that? Do you think really that parliamentarians, outside of the executive and the military, should look more carefully, not only here but in France, England and elsewhere at a new NATO concept?
The Chairman: Such as the peacekeeping concept?
Mr. Nossal: You could look at a new NATO concept.
Senator Bolduc: Or should we go back home and just relax and play golf and other things and forget Parliament?
Mr. Nossal: I do not think that one should forget Parliament. There is indeed a role for Parliament, a role for the Senate and the House of Commons to involve themselves in these important matters. If you will look over the record of the last five or six years, one will note that there has not been, for example, a parliamentary debate on the extension of Article 5 guarantees to millions of people in Central and Eastern Europe.
Here we have now a formal commitment of Canadian blood and treasure in the case of an attack on our new allies in Europe, and the Canadian Parliament has not in any formal sense provided its input and its contribution, and I would say its explicit approval. As Professor Scott so nicely says, the approval is of course implicit.
However, when the government embraces a set of new allies, by issuing an order in council on a Friday afternoon, this it seems to me is where Parliament can properly be involved. I am suggesting, though, that there are particular circumstances where Parliament cannot be involved.
Senator Bolduc: My problem is that in international affairs, generally speaking, it seems that the British parliamentary system is not the system that we should have if you want to have some type of democratic process. It seems that only the executive, although they too are elected, are involved. For example, we had the situation of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. We had the situation of various needs for international banking operations in Southeast Asia. The Minister of Finance has extensive discretionary powers over all those international financial organizations. He can make any decision that he wishes with the cabinet. They do the same in foreign policy; they do the same for NATO.
My God, what are we doing here? Increasingly, local and domestic politics are international. Most of the things are now becoming international. I wonder sometimes if our system is really appropriate for the situation, in comparison, for example, to the American system.
Mr. Nossal: Indeed, if you wanted to recreate Canada with a republican system of government, fair enough, then we would have a very different political process.
I will begin by disagreeing with your fundamental assumption that when a decision is taken by the executive on a particular matter, when Parliament is not explicitly involved, that somehow that decision is undemocratic. My understanding of democracy is slightly less American in a sense and less direct than that.
Keep in mind, senator, that parliamentarians could, if they wished, insert themselves much more into the practice, and insert themselves more vigorously into the parliamentary debate, than they have. For a variety of quite understandable reasons, members of Parliament in the House of Commons, and to a lesser extent senators, have not been that interested, except on particular occasions.
The best example in recent history is the debate that the government of the Brian Mulroney began over the Canadian involvement in the Gulf War in January 1991. In that debate, quite literally, well over half of the members of the House of Commons engaged themselves in this important debate. Although their deliberations, as I note, were made moot by the American decision, nonetheless that was the best example of the desire of parliamentarians to pronounce on important questions of war and peace.
Indeed, if you look at the parliamentary debates held in the last few months, the one in February in the House of Commons was not a debate on using force. No one stated, "Here is a resolution, be it resolved that we approve going to war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia." Even the debate on March 24, as a prelude to the first bombing runs, was not phrased in those terms. Nonetheless, parliamentary interests during those days revealed to all of us how important this particular issue is to parliamentarians.
I would just end by saying that this is a difference between debating what has in a sense already been committed to, because of the necessities of world politics and wanting to have an input into making that decision.
Senator Di Nino: I am a little mixed up about a few comments you made. There seems to be some conflict and perhaps you can clarify it for me.
You are really saying, in effect, that the system we have does not truly allow the opportunity to engage in a decision-making process prior to the decision being made by Parliament. Is this what you are saying?
Mr. Nossal: Absolutely.
Senator Di Nino: This is where the dilemma in my understanding is. You are saying, in effect, that the executive has the authority to make the decision and the only role that Parliament then has, other than the executive, is to inform itself through debate and dialogue as to the details of that decision, and that is all?
Mr. Nossal: Absolutely not, sir. No. It is important to inform yourselves, to have a sense that what the executive has done is right and good. If you do not like it then you must basically hold the executive accountable in ways that, as we well know in the Westminster system, are almost impossible to do, but are not entirely impossible. You only have to go back to 1963 to see an example of where members of Parliament, who were not at all in agreement with the defence policy of the front bench, decided to do what is available to every back bench in the parliamentary system, and that is to withhold crucial support for their own front bench. That, sir, is where the role of Parliament is at its most important.
When you hold a debate, ex post facto, if in fact you find the executive to have made the right decision, then there is an implicit approval. If, on the other hand, you decide that the executive has made an illegal decision, or a wrong decision or a politically unsound decision, then by all means, bring the government down. That, after all, is the very essence of our system. The royal prerogative that provides the executive with the power to decide matters of war and peace depends upon the critical element of ordinary members of Parliament to ensure that the executive is making good decisions on behalf of the community as a whole.
Otherwise, we might as well have a sort of a presidential system without the American elements there. The Westminster system demands that members of Parliament focus in that way.
Senator Di Nino: One can hold the accountability of the executive through the withholding of either moneys, resources or support.
Mr. Nossal: How about confidence?
Senator Di Nino: It is a very rare and unusual situation.
Senator Grafstein: First of all, I appreciate your wonderful exposition. We have been trying to piece this together ourselves. You helped us with a very interesting and important piece of history to affirm, from your analysis, the very deep malaise about Parliament when it comes to international affairs.
This is a small P political statement. In Parliament, when there is an alert, interested opposition, issues will come up much more quickly than a three-, four- or five-month delay between the decision of cabinet, which is a public decision ultimately, and a resort to force. For instance, in the Kuwait example, six months passed between the time of the initial decision to engage and the ultimate decision to enter into hostilities. Here we have the same run-up in terms of time -- maybe not exactly the same time in terms of Kosovo -- and there again appears to be a malaise in Parliament about addressing these matters. Is that a fair analysis of your conclusion, that somehow the issue is not a defect in Parliament, but a malaise or an inertia within Parliament to address these particular matters?
Mr. Nossal: The notion of an opposition that has its ears up and one that disagrees substantially with the government on a particular issue will have a profound impact on the course of parliamentary debate.
If you read the brief and the various little vignettes from history, one of the interesting things you will see is the large degree of -- we do not use the word "bipartisanship" in Canadian politics -- all-party agreement on so many of those instances where the Canadian executive committed Canadian forces to combat service overseas. There were, of course, some critical exceptions to that. One certainly was the Boer War. If you look back at the public debate, it was not a parliamentary debate immediately because this decision was taken by the executive, but there was surely a general public debate.
The conflict within the Canadian Parliament over approaches to the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq was another example of a deep division within the House of Commons, in particular.
For the rest, we have seen a general agreement on the broad outlines of the Canadian government's willingness to commit Canadian forces to war against others in the international system. It is true that an alert opposition, as you say, can make life difficult for the government, although that power is fairly limited in a majority situation?
Generally speaking, that has not been the case. Over the course of Canadian history, major opposition parties of both varieties have essentially been in fundamental accord on the appropriate approach of Canada to world politics.
Senator Andreychuk: You made the point that Westminster parliamentarians often wish to be a member of Congress. Is it not a fact in Kosovo, for example, that the executive, because it had to move in a certain way or because it wanted to move in a certain way, really circumvented Congress by not declaring war and utilized NATO fuzziness to get into that situation? Congress ended up in a situation similar to Westminster parliamentarians. That has been true in some of the previous history of Congress. We have overstated the role of Congress.
Mr. Nossal: It is hard to overstate the War Powers Act of 1973. That act is quite unambiguous and unequivocal in requiring the president, after the passage of 90 days, to require congressional consent for the deployment of American armed forces in combat roles abroad.
That act was written with President Nixon in mind, but it was also written with a desire to give the American president the flexibility to use American forces for emergencies that inevitably arise, but ensuring always that at the end of the day the United States Congress would have an appropriate role to play. In fact, no other administration could do what the Johnson administration did in 1964, and that is basically slide by members of Congress an escalation of the use of force.
I do not like American-Canadian comparisons simply because we tend to get waylaid by the fact that we are not Americans and we do not have an American system. We can look south and be jealous of the openness of the American system and the degree of open discussion that must go on under the American Constitution. What good it does us I do not know, simply because our inheritance is from another direction.
The Chairman: This has been an especially useful discussion. I do not think that I know of any document that pulls together the material on the preliminaries of Canadian participation in military action the way the document you put before the committee today does.
Mr. Nossal: Thank very much. The taxpayers of Ontario and Canada pay me to be pedantic.
The Chairman: Honourable senators, we have another very interesting presentation. I have been looking over the brief of Mr. Douglas Fraser. Please proceed.
Mr. Douglas Fraser, Executive Director, Canadian Council for International Peace and Security: Mr. Chairman, I have done some slashing and burning of my text in the full understanding that all of you will read it thoroughly at your leisure.
I should like to make two points to the committee. One has to do with decision-making processes in multinational organizations, and the second has to do with the raison d'être for the Canadian Armed Forces.
I did not realize until I listened Professor Nossal and the ensuing discussion that I have a third, underlying theme, which is a plea for an informed and proactive Parliament.
Before I get into my remarks, I know that our membership would like me to make a few brief points in point form: the desire for a UN Security Council mandate in any enforcement action; the need for Canada to live up to its values, even when its interests are not threatened; a deep regret for what has happened in Kosovo and the broader Balkan region; the need for NATO now to prevail, even though many regret that NATO resorted to force; the need for full debate in the country, especially in Parliament; and, finally, the need for adequate information upon which to develop a good understanding of the issues and the processes.
To hearken back to the comment from Senator Whelan, there will be future Kosovos. There will be future hard choices between the rule of international law and the call for humanitarian intervention, and we must be ready for that.
Turning first to NATO, the mandate of NATO has not changed. Other speakers have reminded you of that. What has changed is the role that NATO has de facto taken on to itself, a role largely in the context of Article 4 of the Washington Treaty.
I do not think the Canadian public, nor enough parliamentarians, are aware of the consequences of these roles and what they are. They are really options for Canada.
You had earlier witnesses from the Departments of Defence and Foreign Affairs who described the process wherein national representatives -- I am talking about NATO here -- act on the basis of instructions they receive from their governments. Those governments each follow their own national decision-making processes.
Those witnesses clarified, with respect to non-Article 5 actions, that individual states of NATO will make decisions in accordance with national, constitutional, legal and political imperatives, which may not coincide with those of other NATO nations.
Thus, they may be excused from participation in certain activities. The public needs to know this because we have seen too much confusion in the media. For example, Italy does not want to do this and Germany does not want to do that. So why is Canada doing this? We must be doing it just because we are following the Americans.
This is clearly not the case. We have choices. We have options in those types of operations. We have input.
I disagree with an earlier witness, Professor Bliss, that our foreign policy is being made in Washington. Washington is a major player, however, so is Luxembourg in the context of consensus decision making in NATO.
Consensus does not mean participation, unless it is participation in collective defence under Article 5.
Turning to decision making in the Security Council, anyone seeking a decision there is faced with reconciling four groups: the P-5, with their power of veto; the western P-3 (France, the United Kingdom and the United States), which usually has a joint interest of their own; the non-aligned members of the council who try to work as a group; and then there are others in today's Security Council, like the Netherlands and Canada, who are not carrying a particular torch at all times.
The need to reconcile these groups and their often differing agendas is the reason we so often see lowest-common- denominator resolutions, tortured language and, most dangerous, vague and confusing mandates. Canada is working hard to try to break out of that box with more openness in the council, more transparency, more inclusiveness and so on. It will be an uphill battle but they must persevere.
There is no need in the Security Council to maintain solidarity amongst all 15 nations. There is a vote; one side wins. You can then explain why you did or did not take a particular position.
This is in contrast to NATO where you want to come out with a consensus, a one-story vision. It is also in contrast to the way the Canadian cabinet makes decisions. I will skip over my comment on the G-7 or G-8.
On Canada's role in NATO, we should look at options that Canada might have in non-Article 5 activity because NATO, at its core, is a collective defence arrangement.
In order to understand the range of roles that Canada could take on in the NATO context, it is first necessary to understand the roles of the Canadian forces. It is clear there is a need for a new generation of Canadians to be educated on war or near-war and how Canada fits into alliances. This includes some members of the Canadian Armed Forces, in fact.
The raison d'être for the Canadian Armed Forces needs to be clarified by the government. There is no doubt in the minds of most servicemen and women, in the words of the Canadian army's basic manual, that the army's primary purpose is to defend the nation and, when called upon, to fight and win in war. That, of course, applies by extension to the navy and the airforce.
It is tremendously important to Canadian servicemen and women to have the knowledge that their country and their leadership understand their role and are solidly behind them as they go into harm's way, as the navy would say. It is extremely important. I am not sure that they have that assurance now.
Turning to peacekeeping, your mandate there is to look into Canada's ability to participate in it under the auspices of any international body of which Canada is a member.
Chapter 8 of the UN Charter lays out the authority for regional organizations. That Charter reference has been reinforced by Security Council statements and actions, by at least two secretary generals.
This is nothing new for Canada. We have participated in a number of non-UN peacekeeping missions. Professor Nossal has mentioned Indochina, Zimbabwe/Rhodesia, Nigeria/Biafra, as we do today in Egypt in the multinational forces and as observers. There is nothing particularly new about that.
We are well aware of the Canadian role under NATO in the peace enforcement action in Bosnia, which has a Security Council authorization, and in Kosovo now without a mandate from the Security Council.
In all of this, there are some nuances about the definition of peacekeeping and peace enforcement. This was mentioned earlier.
In practical terms, it is necessary to bear in mind the traditional distinction between what is agreed upon by all parties and what is forced on the parties. Now, of course, we have a third category where the peace is enforced or threatened to be enforced and then agreed to in arrears, something like the Canadian Parliament agreeing in arrears to deployment. Bosnia and the Dayton Accord are good examples of the latter. We will wait and see in Kosovo.
I should like to add my voice to those who have not accepted the view that Canada's recent actions have somehow betrayed our reputation as a peacekeeper. This needs to be understood by all Canadians because a lot of people feel bad about that and they should not.
The experience and the aftermath of the war in the Persian Gulf proves the point. I give the example there. As soon as the ceasefire was called, we were one of only five, and the only one participating in the coalition, that was asked to provide blue-helmeted peacekeepers, and we did.
This issue of peacekeeping and war comes back again to the confusion on the role of the Canadian forces. That term "peacekeeping" is thrown around too loosely and too often. There are no peacekeepers in the Canadian Armed Forces. We have servicemen and women who will, from time to time, when they are not preparing for or executing their primary purpose, do peacekeeping.
Why should public discussion and understanding be promoted? I hope that in my paper I have given an indication of the need for that, but to sum up, it is necessary so that elected and appointed public officials can make informed decisions; that these decision-making processes are understood by all; that the roles of the Canadian forces are clear; that servicemen and women can feel understood and appreciated; that civil society, the public at large, including non-governmental organizations like my own, can be better informed and identify with issues of the day; and, indeed, so that the media can play a critical but constructive role.
How shall we promote that discussion and understanding? First, it is the responsibility of the government and Parliament to take the lead. This can be done in a number of ways. When the government is thinking of sending troops in harm's way, there should be a full debate in Parliament, as early in the process as possible.
This must be an informed debate. Therefore, the government needs, with due regard to security, to lay out all the factors affecting the upcoming decision, the circumstances in the operational area, the risk assessment, the applicable, available resources of the Canadian forces and so on.
Part of this process could be classified briefings to ministers, appropriate committees, et cetera.
There need not be a vote -- the regular force has been on active service since the Korean War -- but there needs to be a real debate.
In dangerous circumstances, as they often are these days, the Prime Minister, representing the executive branch of government, needs to make a type of speech to the nation, clearly laying out the reasons for the action taken by Canada. This statement needs to be supported by prior discussion in Parliament where, hopefully, non-partisan support can be mobilized. Credible spokespersons should be selected to interact with the public and the media. Those spokespersons should be open and given the flexibility to be credible, including admitting that they do not have all the answers to all the questions.
The government must produce a comprehensive but straightforward briefing paper for its servants so that all ministers, spokespersons, et cetera, are singing from the same sheet of music.
A direct approach should be made to special interest groups as required -- for example, the Serb and Albanian communities in Canada, with respect to the current crisis.
Responsible ministers and other parliamentarians should regularly provide op-ed pieces to newspapers and appear on radio and television in order to update the government's position on the issue.
Canada has a deep responsibility to know where it stands on the types of issues we have been discussing, to explain their stance and to back it up with the necessary resources. I suggest in the paper here that, when you go to Brussels, ask the permanent representative and the military representative the following questions: Were they involved in the decision making? Did they feel they were part of the process? Did they feel that they contributed and were listened to? I hope the answer will be "yes," but you will have that prerogative.
You can read about this in the paper, but I would like to say that the council is about to launch into a project. We have a proposal before the Canadian government and two large international foundations to do a two-year study on the legal, political and military links between the United Nations and NATO and what the implications are for Canadian foreign policy. We hope to be able to start that soon. We will keep this committee informed of our progress, and we would welcome participation of committee members.
The Chairman: I know that you are speaking on your own behalf and not on behalf of the council because, I gather, you have not been authorized to make statements before this committee on behalf of the council.
What is your view as to the propriety of the NATO operation in former Yugoslavia/Kosovo? It is a non-Article 5 operation, but it is being undertaken without UN sanction. Colonel Morrison said earlier that he thought that such an action could be undertaken in the most exceptional circumstances, but I did not have a chance to ask him what he meant by "exceptional circumstances." Are you content that the NATO operation in Yugoslavia/Kosovo is one in which we ought to be involved?
Mr. Fraser: Senator, I had written down when you started to speak that I have a very broad mandate from the council, and I have never been caught out yet. Perhaps I am about to be.
I believe that the action is correct. I agree that it has to be in the extreme, but I also agreed with Paul LaRose-Edwards when he made the case for humanitarian intervention overriding all other factors in this particular instance.
Yes, I think the intervention is okay. I wish we had got to the point where we started a bombing campaign. I said that in my opening remarks. There could have been other ways around this, I believe, but, now that we are committed, we must persevere. I do not have any problem with that.
The Chairman: There seems to be a kind of selectivity. We turn away from crises in places like Indonesia. Senator Di Nino will probably raise the problem of Tibet. Yet we are prepared to make a major effort in Europe. We have taken one step. I gather that the President of the United States contemplates an early second step. Are we in fact increasing the obligations for NATO to take action, non-Article 5 operations, with or without United Nations sanction?
Mr. Fraser: With regard to the particular operation in Kosovo, and the one in Bosnia, NATO has undertaken them because they are "out of area," if I may use that term, but not very far out of area. They are on the periphery of NATO. NATO has taken on to itself the position that threats to security in its "near abroad" are threats to NATO. Every time you expand the boundary of NATO, you have the possibility of more periphery, more "near abroad."
In theory, that means that you are opening yourself to the potential for feeling that you have to make more interventions. That is why I agree with Mr. Morrison, who said that NATO should proceed cautiously about further extension. I strongly agree with what Professor Nossal said about the horrible lack of debate in the country prior to the extension of membership to the three new members. I am not saying that that was wrong, but I am saying that it was done by a nation that was uninformed or, at best, poorly informed. There are large consequences, potentially, to that.
Senator Stollery: My first question is a technical one and comes from the fact that I am a little confused by your reference to Article 4 of the Washington Declaration. I have Article 4, and I do not think it is what you were referring to. It speaks of affirming our faith in the North Atlantic Treaty, in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and reiterates our desire to live in peace with all nations and to settle any international dispute by peaceful means.
Were you referring to that Article 4, which is Article 4 of the Washington Declaration, or to paragraph 4 of the alliance's strategic concept?
Mr. Fraser: Senator, I am referring to Article 4 of the Washington Treaty, which is the treaty that created NATO. I am sure you have that treaty available to you.
Senator Stollery: You were referring to the original Article 4, which talks about the parties consulting together whenever, in any party is of the opinion that the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened, were you not?
Mr. Fraser: That is correct. That is what I was talking about when I said that NATO is now interpreting this. It says "of any of the parties." I do not want to put words in their mouth, but they are saying that the spirit of Article 4 covers the periphery and, therefore, that they should take action.
Senator Stollery: My next question comes from my confusion between Article 4 of the Washington Declaration and Article 4 of the Washington Treaty.
It seems to me that the Washington Declaration, which was signed on April 23 and 24, 1999, was an after-the-fact justification of the Kosovo adventure, because the Kosovo adventure had already started.
Mr. Fraser: I do not know the answer to that question. I would only say, from having been involved in the drafting of those sorts of documents, that the drafting starts well ahead of the date of the declaration. It can be amended right up to the last moment. It is not impossible that that was done early in the piece, but I clearly do not know.
Senator Stollery: Yes, but something that happened in April referring to something that had already started leads me to question it. It leads me to a larger issue of confusion. I, as a layman, find the broad and vague interpretations of treaties and declarations quite amazing.
The Chairman: You have very little to do with the law courts, I gather.
Senator Stollery: Obviously. I have not had that much to do with courts, but I find these interpretations to be fairly broad. It seems to me that it is a dangerous precedent that men are sent into action with dubious legality, because the legality is contrived afterwards. I find that very troubling.
That leads me to two points to which the whole business boils down: the business of intervening under non-Article 5 and the question of political will. I have said before in this committee that there are two issues involved in these things. The first is political will and the second is military technique.
Several witnesses have referred to political will in Kosovo. Earlier today, Colonel Morrison said that you should not signal what it is you are not going to do. This seems to me to reflect on the coalition within NATO. Only yesterday, the Greeks refused to allow British troops to go into Macedonia, and they are a member of NATO. They refused to allow British troops to land. If anything emphasizes disunity in NATO, that action surely did.
What would you say about that? There is a question about the political will of some countries in NATO. Because of a lack of unified political will, the military techniques are questioned. The original signal from the president of the United States was that we will not use ground troops, for example.
I do not mean to get on the Kosovo case excessively, but it is a particularly good example to use in formulating guidelines for how these things should be done in the future.
Mr. Fraser: You raise three very relevant issues: first, how valid are treaties and declarations; second, political decisions to do something vis-à-vis the militarily desired way to do it; and third, the issue of Greece and the British troops. That is an example of the options I mentioned. This is an Article 4 operation. Greece has many sensitivities with the situation in Macedonia. I do not know what their problem with the British is in this particular case, but this is a case where Greece can opt out of doing a particular thing, can still be a member of NATO, and can still join consensus in the broad NATO policy.
The military in democratic societies will always have to operate under their parliaments. Those parliaments will have reasons for taking decisions; some good, some bad. Whether they are good or bad, the military will still have to get on with the job. If the chief of the defence staff, or the equivalent, is given a job that clearly cannot be done, he must make that point and then resign. Otherwise, the system does not work. If two or three resign seriatim, perhaps governments will be more cautious about issuing orders that cannot be implemented.
There is a lack of debate in all those issues and a lack of clarity. Perhaps there is no such thing as clarity in these issues, but at least people feel better when they talk about them. I do not think there has been enough talking.
Mr. Nossal: I think there can be clarity. I agree that there has not been enough debate, and there certainty has not been enough clarity.
Senator Stollery, let me come back to what seems to me to be your assumption; that is, that there is such a thing as international law that is comparable to the way in which we understand domestic law. To clarify NATO's purpose in Kosovo demands an understanding of the fundamental anarchical nature of international politics, which essentially means that international law simply does not have the same kind of operation as it has within a domestic context, where you clearly have a sovereign that determines what is right and what is wrong and has coercive power to back up its definition.
Quite clearly, regardless of the bumps that NATO has engaged in since March 24, or much earlier, the senior governments in NATO have determined that what was going on in the province of Kosovo represented a threat, in the future perhaps, to NATO's security, and in particular to the security of the newest member of NATO, which of course has a significant ethnic minority in another part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
The Serb forces had not altered their behaviour since the Dayton Accord, as was quite clear throughout 1998 in the province of Kosovo. Clinton went on TV on March 24 and said that this is a matter of national interest and that we are not really engaged in a purely humanitarian war, that we also have a concept of national interest. That, presumably, is the reason you can justify this war. If it was really a humanitarian war, why have 18 countries that have armed forces with the capacity to provide security for Kosovar Albanians chosen to allow thousands of Kosovar Albanians to die in the interim?
I look at it the other way. If that is the case, then perhaps we have here a war that is being fought for old-fashioned notions of national interests. In this particular case, to utterly destroy the Serbian capacity for military behaviour in the future.
If you look at the war from that perspective, and if you look at the hard-line NATO position that says, "our way or another day of bombing", it seems to me that the war makes a great deal more sense, both from a realpolitik, political and legal point of view.
Mr. LaRose-Edwards was correct. If you carefully read the definition of "genocide", it does not simply mean a holocaust-like operation. The definition of genocide in the convention that so many have signed demands action from the signatory.
To that extent, we have taken the action. At the end of the day, Kosovar-Albanians will be secure. The ethnic cleansing will stop. Moreover, and more importantly for the national interests of NATO and its various members, the capacity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to engage in the kind of behaviour that it engaged in, first of all via proxy in Bosnia, in the mid-1990s; in Kosovo, in 1998 and 1999; and potentially then in Montenegro or in Vojvodina has now been terminated.
It is futile to grasp around for some kind of international legal justification for NATO's intervention, because there is no such thing. One cannot justify it in any serious sense under the Washington Treaty. One can justify it under the Doit d'imgérence as far as humanitarian understanding is concerned and one can certainly justify it in terms of national interest.
Senator Bolduc: I do not understand why we are discussing this issue. NATO countries have decided for their own purposes that they should intervene. That should be the end of the matter.
Mr. Nossal: It seems to me what Thucydides said 2,500 years ago is applicable today. Thucydides put in the mouths of the Athenians, the most powerful people of their day, that there is no standard of justice in the international system, that the standard of justice depends upon the power to compel. The strong do what they have the power to do, and the weak accept what they must accept.
If you look at the challenge to NATO's security posed by the activities of the forces associated directly or indirectly with the government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, one could come up clearly with an argument that this is the weak accepting what they must accept.
Senator Losier-Cool: I agree with you entirely when you say that we should have a public debate and discussion so that Canadians might better understand Canada's participation in the war.
You are aware that this committee has been asked by the Senate to study the role of Canada in NATO.
What would you say if this committee, in order to promote this discussion among Canadians, were to include in its work travelling across the country the responsibility of speaking to ordinary Canadians, not necessarily those who are in the military or who are professors at universities, but those who may also have feelings about the war?
Mr. Fraser: That would be very useful. However, I have a codicil to add to that.
From listening to the various national debates that are run by the CBC, on radio, television and so on, I would urge your steering committee to ensure that the representation at these hearings is balanced.
I am an NGO. I know how NGOs can rally support on issues for which they have very deeply held ideas. There are a great number of Canadians who do not belong to such organizations. They belong to a rotary club or something that does not have deeply held convictions in these areas. However, the public has these convictions. They may not know about them.
You must determine how to get a balanced group of people at a cross-country set of hearings. Otherwise, you will receive a distorted message.
I think such a series of meetings could be useful. I am calling for more debate. It is necessary. However, it must be informed debate. That requires homework in setting up these things to ensure that the debate is balanced.
Senator Losier-Cool: Could you explain more about balance? What is a balanced Canadian view on the issue of war?
Mr. Fraser: Deep down, most Canadians support the action of the government in this instance in Kosovo. They do that largely for humanitarian reasons. They want to see Canada involved and they want Canada to be effective. Then they will go away to the cottage for the weekend.
Most Canadians do not carry signs on Parliament Hill or phone into Cross Country Checkup. If you ask Canadians on the corner or in the bar down the street, they will make their views quite clear to you.
We need to find a mechanism to ensure that those people are heard. They are Canada in the true sense, along with the activists and the people who are carrying a particular point of view. You need to hear from all sides.
In the scenario you describe, to be frank, you would hear from representatives of anti-war groups, dedicated and honest people, who feel that this is no way to arrive at a solution.
Other people would say, "We have tried other ways and they did not work, so this is where we are." That is reinforced by the other group that says, "Perhaps we should not be where we are, but we are here, and we must win," meaning that we must prevail over Milosevic. I do not mean that we have to win a war, but we have to get to the situation that Mr. Nossal described where Milosevic is not an ongoing and growing threat in that part of Europe.
Senator Di Nino: Mr. Fraser, in your introduction, you stated that the council desires a UN Security Council mandate in any enforcement action.
The action that NATO has undertaken in Kosovo is being questioned in relation to its effect on the future role of the United Nations.
My particular concern is that we are now starting to create perhaps regional or geographic power groups that would act unilaterally in future crises in different parts of the world. Perhaps we have opened up a Pandora's box and other geographical groups may decide that an issue in Africa or Asia is not something that the UN should be concerned about. However, a group of countries in that part of the world may decide to go it alone.
What effect does this role that NATO has chosen and the action that it has undertaken have on the future of the UN?
Mr. Fraser: Firstly, I am a very big promoter of the United Nations. In an ideal world, we would all live by the UN Charter. In an ideal world, we would have the resources to be able to live by the UN Charter. We all know what the resources of the UN are today. We also know that the charter is not always easy to use. It was written many years ago immediately after World War II, and it has only been amended twice since then. It is a hard instrument to use. However, in an ideal world, we should try to use it.
When the UN cannot act or is perceived as not being able to act, then something still needs to be done. I mentioned that the eighth chapter of the charter basically says that it would be nice if regional organizations and arrangements looked after problems in their regional area, having received a blessing from the United Nations.
Within the current economic community of West African states, the operation, for example, in Sierra Leone, is being done under a subregional organization there, but with the approval of a Security Council resolution. There is nothing wrong with that kind of thing happening under the right circumstances. I do not think it will get off track too much because there is not much capacity out there to do that. Despite having quoted that operation, the only reason it is still alive is that it gets support from offshore. Canada just contributed $1 million to help win that war in Sierra Leone. I do not think there is much likelihood of this spreading.
NATO is the only organization with the power and resources and the history to take on the kind of operation that it is doing in Kosovo. Done properly, as in Bosnia, which has a United Nations mandate, I do not see any problem with that. UN oversight in Bosnia is probably more theoretical than factual, but at least it is there to a certain degree. I do not see a problem.
Senator Di Nino: It is not in Kosovo. Kosovo does not have a UN Security Council resolution.
Mr. Fraser: That is right. I very much regret that. As a number of your witnesses have explained, whether in reality or perception, it seems that there would not have been a Security Council resolution. Either Russia or China or both would veto it. Therefore, an alternate route had to be found. That alternate route is rooted in Article 4 of the Washington Treaty.
As Professor Nossal says, there are no absolutes. You do the best you can do with the best you can find. The bottom line is that it is a humanitarian intervention with notions of national security attached to it. I look at it as mainly a humanitarian intervention. That is why I do not see any problem with it. I would be more comfortable with a UN resolution, but in this case I can live without that.
Senator Di Nino: The chairman suggested that I would mention this. What should they do about Tibet? If you do not wish to answer, that is fine.
Mr. Nossal: I do not believe that the intervention in Kosovo preordains anything comparable to that in the case of Tibet. The Russians know that they have total freedom to behave towards the Chechnyans the way they wish. The Chinese understand that they have the freedom to act in Tibet as they wish. The Pandora's box that you were worried about remains absolutely firmly closed. I think also the great powers understand the degree to which the ethnic cleansing going on in the central Balkans represented exactly the same kind of security threat that they themselves actually would never tolerate. I must admit that I think the Pandora's box remains very firmly closed. There is no precedent here.
Senator Bolduc: What about the Kurds?
Mr. Nossal: Again, look at politics and how that keeps everyone's mouth firmly shut. Is not the government in Ankara our ally over which we have an Article 5 security guarantee?
Senator Grafstein: This is an interesting exchange. We somehow seem to be mired in the principle or the idea that the United Nations is the exclusive source of legitimacy for enforcing United Nations resolutions, which I think is not an appropriate premise under international law. Nineteen nations agree that they will enforce the UN resolution. That is as strong a precedent in international law for legality as anything. As Senator Bolduc said, 19 nations agreed. International law depends on customary law and acceptance, and here 19 nations agree. Under international principles, that seems to be a strong sense of legitimacy.
Having said that, though, whether one agrees with that or not, there tends to be general agreement about NATO's action in Kosovo. In a strange way, is the NATO action not enforcing the legitimacy of the UN, which was unable to fulfil its own mandate? I come back to the example of the safe havens in Srebrenecia. The United Nations established, with all the resolutions and all the legality, a safe haven in Srebrenecia, Yugoslavia, and then the world and NATO members witnessed innocent civilians being slaughtered as they sought to come under the UN umbrella.
I raise that because Colonel Fraser starts with the premise of the desire of a UN security mandate in any enforcement action, but the UN failed miserably in Yugoslavia under its own mandate, at great cost of human life. Is it not better -- I put this to both witnesses -- to have alternate sources of international legitimacy like NATO than to rely on a paralyzed United Nations that cannot fulfil or support its own legal mandate? Is it not better for the principles of international law or for the rule of law?
Mr. Fraser: Perhaps I will start by picking up on part of your argument. When we talk about the United Nations not being able to fulfil its own mandate, and you use the example of Srebrenecia, it is the member states of the United Nations that did not fill that mandate.
I mentioned earlier the danger of vague Security Council resolutions. If you read the resolutions related to Srebrenecia, they are excellent examples of vague and undefined resolutions. What is a safe area or safe haven? How will you go about ensuring that? What kind of resources do you have? Members of the committee will remember when Boutros Boutros-Ghali told the Security Council, "As Secretary-General, I will try to muster resources to do that." I believe an additional 24,000 troops were needed. However, the total ended up being around 2,000. That small Dutch battalion at Srebrenecia, from a presence point of view, could not have done anything, even if they had understood what it was they were supposed to do.
Yes, when those kinds of circumstances happen, it is great that you have something in your hip pocket like NATO. As long as you can gather together enough threads of legitimacy, then I think you have not just the capacity to act but the necessity and moral authority to act.
Mr. Nossal: The key here is the moral authority as judged ex post facto. I agree with you that Srebrenecia offers us a good example. Perhaps a better example in terms of precedent is Somalia in 1992.
Somalia is widely remembered as a failure. In effect, if you look at the Somali operation, one might make the argument that the kind of muscular policy embraced by the United States was, in fact, a policy designed primarily for humanitarian purposes. In that sense, the Somali operation, the intrusion on Iraqi sovereignty in the no-fly zones, and the intrusion into Haitian sovereignty -- in other words, the implicit threat of invasion by the United States -- creates in a sense a body of practice that you can summon in the future when you say that, for humanitarian reasons, it is all right to ignore Article 27 of the United Nations, to ignore the longstanding understandings about sovereignty, and to engage in that kind of intervention.
At the end of the day, it is a matter of whether or not people looking back on an intervention judge it to be good or bad. Take a look at how we judge our behaviour in Rwanda right now.
Senator Grafstein: Was the sovereignty notion of non-interference in domestic issues, precisely the protection of minorities, not given up by Yugoslavia and our European nations in the Helsinki Accords? That was the bargain of the Helsinki Accords. Sovereignty was to take second place to the protection of domestic human rights within a jurisdiction.
Mr. Nossal: That is the pleasant face put on it by American administrations.
Senator Grafstein: Americans were the must reluctant to participate. I refer to NGOs from Canada.
Mr. Nossal: The reality is that all those highly sovereign governments of Central and Eastern Europe did not really believe the interpretation that you have just laid on, senator, to the Helsinki Accords. I would argue that, essentially, that meant the essential right of the Western countries to comment, to interfere in that sense, on the issue of human rights practice. To stretch that out to intervention is a long stretch that would snap right back in your face.
Senator Grafstein: I appreciate the opposite view.
The Chairman: Honourable senators, I think we need to be more than usually grateful to our witnesses. They have been informative and extremely patient.
The committee adjourned.