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Dear Friends,
I am forwarding a copy of Alexa McDonough's speech during the Emergency
Debate on terrorism in the House of Commons on Monday, 17 September 2001. I
hope you will be able to share it with folks on your email distribution
list. This speech sets out the position of the federal NDP with respect to
considering "the need to reaffirm our commitment to pursuing peaceful
solutions to the tensions and hostilities that breed such mindless violence
in our world".
Regards,
Anne Marie
Anne Marie Foote
Executive Assistant
Alexa McDonough, MP for Halifax
319A-7071 Bayers Road
Halifax, NS B3L 2C2
Tel: 902-426-8691
Fax: 902-426-8693
EMail: alexa-mp@istar.ca
CEP Local 232
House of Commons
Alexa McDonough MP Halifax
Leader, Canada’s NDP
A Call for Justice
Remarks on the Occasion of the Special Debate on the Terrorist Attack on the
United States of America
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join with all Canadians, who are still in a
state of shock and who are trying to deal with overwhelming feelings of
anger, disgust, pain and rage.
The horrific events experienced by our neighbours to the south last
week are unbelievable.
I want to begin by reaffirming that the New Democratic Party joins with
citizens around the world in demanding that the perpetrators of these
heinous crimes be tracked down and punished.
The statement I issued after the ghastly events of last Tuesday was
couched in the strongest language I could find to express all of the
revulsion felt by my colleagues and myself.
I also call for reflection and restraint in our response. Today I want
to reinforce that plea, the plea that the same values that cause us to be
outraged and repulsed by these acts of barbarity must guide us all and
particularly world leaders in their response.
I think our Prime Minister, on behalf of all Canadians who share those
sentiments, rose to the occasion and provided very sound words and wise
counsel to that effect.
In these extremely dangerous times it is essential that we reaffirm our
commitment to pursuing peaceful solutions to the tensions and hostilities
that breed such mindless violence in our world.
In the immediate aftermath of the horrific death and destruction, people
were driven understandably to demand instant, massive military retaliation
to these terrorist atrocities. However, as freedom loving citizens have
grasped the complexity and magnitude of what has happened, the imperative of
a more measured response, more multilateral response and more informed
response must form the basis of our actions. “Not to respond would be
unthinkable: it would diminish and demean American leadership and would
surely invite further attacks”, wrote Charles G. Boyd, a retired air force
general, in Wednesday's Washington Post. “But to react excessively or
inaccurately,” he wrote, “would put us on the same moral footing as the
cowards who perpetrated yesterday's attack.”
Canadians know that we have a very special relationship with the United
States of America and we value that relationship with our neighbour to the
south but we also have a special role internationally. If there were ever a
time that both our neighbours to the south and the world needed to hear the
voice of Canada, it is now.
Our neighbours were thrown into a state of shock last week. As the depth
and breadth of the personal tragedies come to grip their collective soul,
the cry of vengeance from many quarters will surely grow louder. As
America's closest neighbour and friend, we owe it to them to listen and to
support but we must also give them the benefit of our understanding of the
events.
A true friend lends a guiding hand when someone is blinded by grief and
rage.
The cry from America today and from around the world is that this can
never be allowed to happen again. We must resolve to see that this can never
happen again but if we pursue the path of blind vengeance, the path of the
clenched fist, we are guaranteeing that this will happen again. Military
strikes, while they may satisfy an understandable desire for vengeance, will
solve nothing if thousands more innocent people are victimized in some other
part of the world.
A survivor of the '93 World Trade Center bomb blast said:
As I silently remember my friends and co-workers who have perished, I know
only this: If we fail to wage peace instead of war, if we do not learn to
value all life as fervently as we value our own, then their deaths will mean
nothing; and terror and violence will remain our dark companions.
In the House three decades ago the first leader of the New Democratic
Party, Tommy Douglas, stated “our task is to understand the forces at work
in our society and to seek to influence them toward constructive ends. We
need to ask ourselves some hard questions”.
It seems to me that at a terrible time like this we could do well to ask
ourselves what wise counsel Lester Pearson might offer.
In the wake of these terrifying events, we need to reflect on the kind
of international community we have created, where the images of mass
destruction in the United States last week saw some Palestinian children
actually dancing in the streets, where an international community can allow
5,000 children a month to die of malnutrition in Iraq, or hunger and
preventable disease can claim the lives of thousands and thousands of
children in the too many impoverished nations of the world.
We have to ask ourselves and consider what it means. What kind of
political leadership funds and trains the likes of the mujahedeen and Osama
bin Laden to overthrow the Afghanistan government and then gets caught out
when these same people turn their evil skills on their former supporters?
Unless and until we base our policies and our allegiances on long term
values, as the Prime Minister said this morning, and not on short term
strategies, we will continue to create the monsters that come back to haunt
us.
We need to tell the world that in the eyes of Canada the wanton
destruction of life and property is absolutely unacceptable. Whether it is
in the United States or in Rwanda, whether it is in Washington or Beirut,
Baghdad or Bosnia, we need the world to know that we practise what we preach
in Canada. We need Canada to know the work of Tommy Douglas who said “the
means we use largely determine the ends we achieve and that resorting to
violence destroys the goals that we seek before we even reach them”. He
spoke of a standard by which we must all judge our actions.
Let me be clear. I am not advocating pacifism or appeasement in the face
of aggression. The international community must spare no effort in bringing
to justice all those responsible for these atrocities and rid the world of
the scourge of terrorism.
However this response must be carried out in accordance with the
principle of the rule of law. As many as 100 Canadians may have died in this
crime. Along with the United States' loss of thousands, as many as 40 other
countries have lost sons and daughters. This is a crime against humanity and
an international court should mete out the punishment. No country should be
called upon to be the judge, the jury and the executioner, least of all the
country that has suffered the greatest loss.
Supporting foreign invasions, assassinations and the abandonment of our
values will raise the level of violence, lessen our security and diminish
our capacity to advise our closest friends at a time when they are most in
need of wise counsel.
We have seen the results of ever increasing levels of violence in other
parts of the world. Indeed, this act is not an isolated incident directed at
America alone.
If the initial assumptions about culpability or inspiration about this
attack are true, this is the latest gruesome chapter in an ever expanding
cycle of violence that has already claimed cities, countries and whole
generations. How does it increase our security to bomb countries into the
stone age?
I would like to address very disturbing developments over the course of
the past week where visible minorities have been targeted by people looking
for scapegoats, both here in Canada and abroad. Other leaders have addressed
this issue as well.
The very ugliest and most horrifying incident was surely the fire
bombing of a mosque in Montreal, but we have all heard about other
incidents. The Canadian Council for Refugees in its statement of September
14 wisely reminded us that many Canadians came to this country to escape
from violence and persecution on the basis of religion, race or nationality.
Refugees and immigrants are as horrified as anyone by the events and condemn
the violence. Canadians need to work to ensure that our country is a haven
from hatred and discrimination.
In the coming days we will surely hear arguments that we re-examine our
immigration policy and procedures. We have already heard some. We in the NDP
agree that much needs to be done to overhaul our immigration system but with
an eye toward greater compassion, security and efficiency.
As we debate this issue, I invite all members of the House to remember
that their words and the passions that they excite can have very real
repercussions on the many new Canadians and visible minorities that make up
the diversity and the beauty of our great land.
It is reassuring that so many voices have been heard; political leaders,
community leaders and ordinary citizens counselling against doing anything
to create a backlash and to create prejudicial attitudes and actions
directed toward innocent Canadians.
Let us extend that same concern and consideration to other countries. A
wise, elderly woman, Muriel Duckworth, who has been a lifelong friend of
peace said to me over the weekend that there was surely a lesson for us to
learn and hear in our own words. If we are absolutely in agreement that we
must stand against any scapegoating of innocent civilians in our own
country, then surely the same consideration and concern has to be extended
to innocent civilians around the world.
The coming debate will lead us into other areas of domestic concern
such as whether or not we are to participate in the proposed national
missile defence. There could be no clearer example of the redundancy of such
a system than the terrorists' atrocities that were committed in the United
States last week. The brutal and simple logic of what we have witnessed is
that immense damage can be caused without a single missile ever being
launched. We live in an age where weapons of mass destruction can be
transported in suitcases or commandeered with a knife.
As Shimon Peres of Israel last week stated:
Up until now, the entire world was organized into armies and enemies.
Today, the classic armies remain, yet the classic enemies have practically
vanished. In their place, there are now new threats, which were unknown to
us--primary among them is the threat of terrorism. Strategy, tactics and
organized forces have yet to be developed against terrorism. The fundamental
and true conclusion is that a strategy must be developed, and military and
security organizations must be established, which will prevent terrorism.
Canada must be a leader in searching out these solutions. We need to
call upon our earlier traditions of having a more independent foreign
policy. We need to always think in terms of multilateralism. We need to use
our special relationship with the United States to represent all progressive
and peace loving countries that want to build lasting solutions to the
conditions that breed such horrendous violence.
We surely can do no better than to heed the words of John F. Kennedy
when he stated that those who make peaceful revolution impossible make
violent revolution inevitable.
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