STANDING COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE

COMITÉ PERMANENT DES AFFAIRES ÉTRANGÈRES ET DU COMMERCE INTERNATIONAL

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, March 21, 2000

• 0947

[English]

The Chair (Mr. Bill Graham (Toronto Centre—Rosedale, Lib.)): I'd like to call us to order.

Before I move to the witnesses, I want to draw your attention to the order of the day. Mr. Martin has brought a motion that the committee strike a subcommittee to look into CIDA. Let's leave the rhetoric out of the rest of the resolution.

Mr. Svend J. Robinson (Burnaby—Douglas, NDP): Has it been circulated?

The Chair: It's the order of the day, and it's on the agenda.

Do you want to address that?

Mr. Keith Martin (Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, Ref.): Absolutely.

The Chair: What a surprise.

Mr. Keith Martin: Did you expect me to say no, Mr. Chairman?

The Chair: I was hoping you might.

Mr. Keith Martin: Hope springs eternal, doesn't it?

The Chair: It was an invitation, not.... Look at these wonderful witnesses waiting here.

Mr. Keith Martin: It's nice to see that you're hopeful, Mr. Chair.

Anyway, the bottom line here is that, given the allegations of mismanagement at CIDA, given the reports that have been coming out on CIDA and the activities within CIDA, and given the fact that there are a number of constructive solutions that can be employed to make CIDA a more effective organization, I am submitting that we actually, for once and for all, deal with the situation by striking a subcommittee. The subcommittee can find effective solutions to be able to revamp CIDA so that it, as an organization, can more effectively do its job; so that the money it has can be used to address the poorest of the poor; and so that the Canadian taxpayer gets the best bang for the buck in the money being put through that organization. Currently it's not working very well for the people who are in there and it's not working for the people who are supposedly benefiting from it.

This is a constructive motion. I hope the members on this committee see it as a constructive motion. If it's passed, I know the subcommittee will draw up some effective conclusions and some effective solutions to make CIDA a more effective organization.

Wasn't that short and sweet?

The Chair: That was excellent.

Mr. Keith Martin: Sans rhetoric.

The Chair: No, it was perfectly....

[Translation]

Mr. Bellemare.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare (Carleton—Gloucester, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would ask my colleagues to vote against this proposal. Let me tell you why this proposal does not come under the jurisdiction of this committee.

[English]

There already exists a public accounts committee to review the way money is spent in federal government departments. All political parties are represented on this committee, and they may ask questions with regard to any aspect of CIDA's budget and the way it's managed. In addition, there is a Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade that meets regularly to review what is happening in Foreign Affairs as well as in CIDA.

The Auditor General conducts regular audits of the agency in any area that he feels warrants it, and he reports to Parliament on these findings. The Auditor General, in his 1998 audit of CIDA, found that CIDA had in place a good, sound financial management framework, and where money was owing, it recouped it fully. In addition, the Auditor General found that the results-based management framework was working effectively. The Auditor General has in fact conducted specific audits of different management aspects of CIDA on a yearly basis since 1997—results-based managements, bilateral programs, and financial controls over projects—and has generally found that CIDA was performing very well.

• 0950

No matter how sound the management practices are in government departments, any audit will always find something to improve. That is the very nature of audits. This is the reason that CIDA requests internal audits in high-risk areas: to ensure continuous management improvements.

Merci, monsieur le président.

The Chair: Mr. Robinson.

Mr. Svend Robinson: Mr. Chairman, in the interest of time, I want to suggest that this motion be referred to the steering committee for discussion as to how we might most effectively pursue the issue that is raised.

I don't support the establishment of yet another subcommittee. I think it would be a mistake. If there are issues to be raised—and I certainly agree that there are a number of issues to be raised, particularly around CIDA Inc.—I think this is an appropriate thing for the subcommittee to examine at a future meeting of the steering committee. I would therefore suggest that we send this to the steering committee. That's where it should have gone in the first place, frankly.

The Chair: If we get the proper 48-hour notice, that's what we do.

Mr. Svend Robinson: But we have the opportunity to send it to the steering committee.

The Chair: I'm sorry, I had Monsieur Paradis, very quickly.

[Translation]

Mr. Denis Paradis (Brome-Missisquoi, Lib.): The appropriate committee to deal with this subject would certainly be, as our colleague Eugène Bellemare said, the Public Accounts Committee. This committee, with members from all of the political parties, hears from, on the one hand, the Auditor General, and also from the senior bureaucrats who are in charge of running these programs.

I would also like to point out, Mr. Martin, that the Public Accounts Committee is chaired by a member of the opposition, specifically a Reform MP. This is the ideal place, in my opinion, to deal with this type of issue.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: Mr. Grewal and then Ms. Debien.

[English]

I'll then go to Mr. Martin, and let's then cut it off. We can't keep these people waiting forever.

Mr. Gurmant Grewal (Surrey Central, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think this motion is very much in order in light of what has happened in CIDA for quite some time, as we have been reading in the newspaper reports. Rather than discussing what is wrong—

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

An hon. member: Stop reading that National Post.

Mr. Gurmant Grewal: But let's look at the CIDA Inc. audit, if you want to. There was an internal audit of CIDA Inc. Let's look at CIDA Inc. and forget about the newspapers.

In CIDA Inc., Mr. Chairman, nine out of ten feasibility studies don't take off. This sloppy accounting has continued like the accounting we are talking about in HRDC. Similarly, there are no performance targets and so on. The laundry list is so long, Mr. Chairman, that I don't want to mention the things here. In light of these things that are happening, we have to fix it. As parliamentarians, it's our responsibility to fix it.

I think it is very timely that we set up this subcommittee to address those issues so that we can fix this problem once and forever.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

[Translation]

Ms. Debien.

Ms. Maud Debien (Laval East, BQ): Given the importance of the issue brought up by Mr. Martin, an issue that we all believe is important, we clearly do not agree that it should be studied by a subcommittee. The entire committee should look into this and not a subcommittee.

However, I support Mr. Robinson's proposal that the Subcommittee on Agenda and Procedure look into the issue and refer it to this committee as soon as possible.

The Chair: Ms. Debien, this type of a study may require some travel. In this case, it would be impossible to do so.

Voices: Oh! Oh!

Ms. Maud Debien: That would be different.

The Chair: We cannot travel; we can't do everything.

Mr. Denis Paradis: The vote, Mr. Chairman.

[English]

The Chair: No, it's Mr. Martin's turn.

Mr. Keith Martin: In closing on this issue, if you take this to the public accounts committee, as my friends from the other side mentioned, that is indeed a good place to ask questions. It's not a good place to fix the problem. That's why the issue of developing structural changes to CIDA, the place to put structural changes in place for CIDA...we can actually have a hearing on CIDA and develop the structural changes that are required. The reports from the Auditor General, the reports of the analysis of CIDA Inc., and the performance reports on CIDA have for a long time been less than adequate. This is not a political complaint, this is a complaint from the people who are recipients themselves.

• 0955

Mr. Gurmant Grewal: Exactly.

Mr. Keith Martin: They are on behalf of the recipient organizations, the donor organizations. They want to see CIDA change. They want to see it become more efficient so that it can be an organization that's more effective. Even the people within CIDA want to see changes within it, but they're not getting anywhere, quite frankly.

That's the bottom line. That's why I believe this motion is important. We need to deal with it. For heaven sake, let's suggest to Mr. Good, the head of CIDA, some effective solutions that can be done to make CIDA the best that it can be. That is the only purpose of this motion.

The Chair: Okay, I'm going to put the question now. There's a recommendation by Mr. Robinson that this be referred to the steering committee. Are you in favour of sending it to the steering committee for further consideration?

Madame David had her hand up. No, you don't get a vote. Well, it depends on how you're going to vote. We may give you one.

Okay, you're opposed to going to the steering committee. Then we'll vote on the main motion.

Mr. Keith Martin: Could we get a recorded vote, please?

The Chair: Yes, it can be a recorded vote.

Ms. Jean Augustine (Etobicoke—Lakeshore, Lib.): What are we voting on now?

The Chair: You're voting on the main motion. Are you in favour or not of establishing the committee?

Ms. Jean Augustine: No, not another committee. No.

(Motion negatived: nays, 2; yeas, 11)

Mr. Keith Martin: How close was it?

The Chair: It's as close as you're ever going to get to being the government.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Keith Martin: Thanks for the partisanship.

The Chair: I think we had better move to our poor witnesses. We've been keeping them waiting.

Colleagues, we're going to move now to the issue of Iraq. I want to thank the witnesses for coming. We had originally planned to have a meeting at which we would have heard government officials on this issue prior to hearing from the NGOs that have been good enough to join us today. We were not able to do that because of the events in the House last week. We've kept the agenda that we had originally, because our witnesses have been kind enough to get organized to come today. We will be hearing government people later.

I just want to recommend something to the members of the committee. This is an important subject for us. It gives us an opportunity to reflect on the issue of sanctions generally. When we were hearing our Kosovo issue, we were looking at what sanctions are really doing, who they are hurting and who they are helping. Hopefully this series of hearings that we're now about to go into on Iraq will enable us to understand better not only the situation in Iraq, but also generally what the utility of sanctions is and how they can work. Maybe we can get something useful out of the report on that level.

We're very pleased to have our various witnesses with us today. I'm going to ask each one of you to keep it to ten minutes when you speak, because then we can guarantee that we can get our questions in. I'm going to take each one seriatim as you are on the list, beginning with Physicians for Global Survival and Dr. Sheila Zurbrigg.

Dr. Sheila Zurbrigg (Adjunct Professor, Dalhousie University; Physicians for Global Survival): Thank you for inviting us to come to speak today. There's a lot to discuss, so I won't dally with much of an introduction. I assume you all have a copy of all our submissions. You may not have had a chance to read them all, but I will speak about a few issues in my submission.

• 1000

The Chair: That's very helpful, and I would ask the other witnesses to do that too. Don't read your submission—we do have them—just speak about the issue, if you could. The principal points would be most helpful for us.

Thank you, madam.

Dr. Sheila Zurbrigg: I'm a physician. In the last number of years, I've also been a health historian. I conduct research and teaching on the history of health in relation to changes in access to food, in relation to all hunger historically. This research and background has sensitized me from the beginning to the potential and, I would say, inevitable impact of the initial military and trade embargo against Iraq since 1990.

It's difficult to describe the scale of the disaster. We can say it's a catastrophe. It has been largely unmonitored, unfortunately. The first countrywide study of the mortality impacts of the sanctions was conducted last year by UNICEF. As you may be aware, UNICEF published its reports in August. They confirmed the worst fears, and they confirmed the highest estimates that individual UN agents and relief agencies had been making over the course of these nine years.

As a technical rate, mortality under age five is 131 per 1,000 live births. This means that one out of seven Iraqi children is dying today before reaching the age of five—one out of seven. This is an extremely high rate, and it's almost a 400% increase above pre-sanctions child mortality rates. When you take into account the child population and adult mortality, that means well over a million civilians have died in central and southern Iraq. These are excess deaths above the pre-sanctions mortality rate. We're talking about over a million deaths in a population of 18 million. If you can compare this to Canada—this is in a considerably smaller population—if we had over a million deaths amongst civilians, it would be an unthinkable human catastrophe. Not only are the rates extremely high, they're probably increasing—and I won't go into the technical reasons, which I address in my submission.

If economic sanctions were lifted tomorrow, mortality would continue to rise until the economy was restored, which would take years. We're looking at a minimum of a million and a half civilian deaths due to the economic blockade. If lifting sanctions is delayed further, that number is inevitably going to go higher, to possibly two million, perhaps more.

Hunger is a major determinant of these mortality rates. A third of children in Iraq are now seriously undernourished. They were not before the sanctions. As a health phenomenon, severe malnutrition had virtually disappeared by 1989. It is an epidemic now. The low birth weight rate is now one of the highest in the world. Of newborns in Iraq, 25% are born weighing less than five pounds. This has enormous mortality implications. A quarter of the children are severely immunologically compromised even before birth. We know there are horrific problems with contaminated water as well, but even without contaminated water, child mortality would be epidemic because of this level of undernourishment. When you have a low birth weight rate of 25%, this reflects pervasive, severe hunger amongst the general adult population, amongst women throughout Iraq.

• 1005

Something is very terribly wrong, and I hope that at the end of this session we will get beyond thinking in terms of relief, beyond thinking in terms of protein biscuits and nutritional supplements. If this kind of catastrophe were happening in Canada with an agency coming along and saying, well, here's some protein biscuits, we would think it absurd and indeed obscene. Well, it is obscene in Iraq.

But there has been relief. The oil for food program has provided a small amount of funds to provide basic needs. Is that not right? Indeed, that's what western governments and our own government refer to, saying, well, the civilian population has had 2,300 calories, and is that not adequate food? They say that if there's a hunger problem in Iraq, then it must be the government's responsibility.

Why is 2,300 calories not enough? What's wrong with this relief program?

The oil for food program, from the beginning, the initial offer in 1991, then the subsequent offer that was accepted in 1996, resolution 986, provides 21¢ for food—all food—per person per day. What can you buy with 21¢? What could you buy with 21¢?

The government requests the cheapest food possible because it knows that the cheapest food provides the most calorie per penny, or per dinar. This means that the only food affordable on this ration is grains, a few lentils, a little tiny bit of oil, and no vegetables, no fruits, no meat, no milk, no eggs—nothing that we would consider a humane diet.

We have very little information, but probably three-quarters of the population are dependent almost solely on this ration, on this oil-for-food food basket. Why? Because the economy has been essentially decimated. There are very few real jobs, real jobs that pay wages such that people can afford to buy food. Overnight, the embargo removed virtually all the population from the market: the prices of food increased initially, in the first year, by 3,000%, but salaries did not respond. Today a litre of milk costs 850 dinar—that's for one litre. The average monthly income for a household in Iraq today is 7,000 dinar. In other words, they can buy perhaps eight litres of milk—total—for a month's supply of food.

So they don't buy milk. They don't buy anything. They survive on their oil-for-food rations that they've been allowed. It's worse than this. These rations are worse than any prison rations. I'm a famine historian, so I'm quite familiar with this and with relief efforts in 19th century British India. These rations are worse than the British 19th century Indian famine relief rations. At least the British provided some allowance for fresh vegetables. This is what we're looking at.

Their oil-for-food food basket calories, even though they reach 2,300 calories—near a minimum calorie requirement—are insufficient for another reason. This food basket, for many families, is not just food for their families; it's essentially income, because they have no real work. At a minimum, 65% is a conservative estimate of unemployment. There are no earnings. There's no economy. So they have many families—some that I spoke with in Baghdad—that take this food basket to provide basic medicines, or a pair of shoes, or to even pay the the monthly rent. They have to sell a portion of this inadequate food basket simply to have shelter.

Some commentators have compared Iraq under sanctions to one gigantic prison. It is worse than a prison, much worse, and not just because of the rations. It is worse because sanctions don't provide anything besides food. It doesn't pay the rent, it doesn't pay for clothing, and there is nothing else. Most families cannot afford that, so they have to use their food ration.

• 1010

From the beginning, it was fabulously naive to think that relief in any form could substitute for a functioning entire economy. This is a grave error, and it's incomprehensible to me, as a hunger historian, how this could have been allowed to happen. Worse, we continue to blame this problem on the Iraqi government. The Iraqi government is responsible for many crimes, and I would be the first to admit that, but they are not responsible for epidemic hunger, deaths, and mortality in Iraq. The sanctions are responsible for that.

The charge is that Hussein would have other funds available from smuggled oil supplies and that he is building monuments and palaces. What funds does he have available? Only the funds that he receives from smuggling oil, mainly to Jordan. But no one, when they level this charge, has ever bothered to calculate how much funds he has available. There's only one source reference in all of the literature I've found, which gives a very high estimate in my opinion, but nevertheless, it is that $330 million a year in funds is available to the Iraqi government from the oil it sells to neighbouring Jordan and Turkey.

What does $330 million amount to for a population of 18 million? Nobody has bothered to calculate this. It works out to 4.1¢ a day per person. This 4.1¢ per day would have done absolutely nothing to prevent this health catastrophe. It's woefully inadequate. In other words, we simply can't.... Yes, resources have been diverted to sustain the military, but those resource diversions, had they all gone to humanitarian relief—which is unrealistic—wouldn't have altered this situation fundamentally at all.

The Chair: Excuse me. I have to tell you that you've gone well over the 10 minutes.

Dr. Sheila Zurbrigg: Thank you.

I won't address the issues of intent, how this resolution was passed. It's in the presentation.

I have several final comments. I believe we are trapped by the sheer horror of what we, the international community, have done. It is an unspeakable human disaster, and because it is so large, it's very difficult for people to acknowledge that they are responsible or that they have made mistakes. We have all made mistakes. The history of famine is littered with the inability of those responsible political powers (a) to acknowledge the problem and (b) to do something about it. We are in that cycle of denial and blame.

It is getting worse. We can at least afford to be in this cycle, and I believe it's going to take public pressure to force all agencies to acknowledge what is going on and to acknowledge the responsibility. It would be a grave mistake, in my opinion, to assume that most expert agencies, including those within our government, have a clear understanding of the economics of what's happening in Iraq. Having met with members of the department and having had several lengthy conversations, I am absolutely convinced that there is very little understanding of why this is happening. There is much blaming and exteriorizing of responsibility.

That's a horrible thing to say, but in fact I think it would be a grave error for anyone here to assume that there is a competent understanding of what exactly is happening. This is an emergency. It's an emergency of the largest order.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Dr. Zurbrigg.

Dr. Clark, I think you wanted to add a few words.

Dr. Arthur Clark (Representative, Physicians for Global Survival): How much time do you want me to take? I'm with Physicians for Global Survival as well.

The Chair: Could you keep it to about five minutes?

Dr. Arthur Clark: I am a citizen of Canada and the United States. I'm presenting a citizen's point of view.

• 1015

Until her death from cancer, I was married to a remarkable Iraqi woman, Dr. Irma M. Parhad, who was a professor in the faculty of medicine at the University of Calgary, became a Medical Research Council of Canada scientist, and established the dementia clinic at the University of Calgary Foothills Hospital.

My opposition to the Gulf War and the extension of that war in the form of sanctions, however, came not from my association with Irma, but from my experiences in America in the era of the Vietnam War and as a captain in the United States Army Medical Corps in the early 1970s. I had time and opportunity to witness the effects and the motives of U.S. foreign policy, and it drew me to a conclusion that resonates well with a statement from General Lee Butler, in a letter to this committee that you may remember, Mr. Graham.

I'll quote the sentence. This is from retired U.S. Air Force General Lee Butler:

We have committed the fatal sin in public policy making of becoming cynical and arrogant with respect to decisions affecting the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

Now, General Butler of course was referring to nuclear weapons policy, but the same statement applies to much of U.S. foreign policy, and the arrogance and cynicism to which General Butler refers is not unique to the Government of the United States.

So in making a citizen's statement I'm going to be very critical of governments, including the Government of Canada. I want to place this in a larger frame of reference, a framework of reference of history and law, and I want to pose the question to the members of the committee and to Canada: do you or do you not want a rule of and a respect for international law? That's the basic question.

If you want a rule of and respect for international law, you're going to have to meet certain conditions, which certainly have not been met and have been radically violated in the case of Iraqi foreign policy towards Iraq.

One, under law you have to apply the law equitably. If you have a law against murder but you apply it for only certain classes of people or only certain ethnic groups or only certain countries, then the respect for the law will be eroded and it will become worthless as law. You will subvert the law.

The second principle is that you have to apply the law in good faith, promoting the principles on which the law is based. If you apply or use the law as a pretext for the violation of the very principles on which the law is based, then, again, respect for the law will be so eroded that the law will become utterly worthless. This is a serious issue, since international law is the one guarantee—leaving aside all our wealth and the other things we have—of future peace and security for all of us.

By violating the law in respect to foreign policy towards Iraq, as has been done particularly since the invasion of Kuwait, we are threatening the peace and security of all of us. In this sense, the people of Iraq today are the canary in the mine shaft of the coming century.

With the invasion of Kuwait, Iraq of course violated international law in terms of the equitable application of the law. There had been a direct historical comparison a few months previously. In December 1989, the Bush administration ordered an invasion of Panama. The number of people killed in the invasion of Panama and the number of people killed in the invasion of Kuwait were roughly similar, the principles of international law violated essentially the same, and the punishment or response meted out to the perpetrators radically different. There was no equitable application of the law. That was radically violated and the law was subverted.

In terms of the violation of the fundamental principles of the law, I call your attention to the fact that the UN charter is established to save our future generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our generation, referring to the First and Second World Wars, has brought untold sorrow to mankind.

In the chapter VII proceedings initiated in the UN Security Council, those proceedings were subverted. The United States government took over from the UN Security Council decision-making authority. Despite a series of proposals from the Iraqi government, proposals recognized as serious and negotiable, the Bush administration said that there would be no negotiations and drove events toward a war, exactly the outcome the UN charter was intended to prevent. From the original invasion, which killed perhaps 3,000 people, the response to that killed tens of thousands of people, and the sanctions are estimated to have killed millions more.

My brief covers a lot of this. It also covers a number of arguments that are used to try to support the sanctions. I call your attention to that brief, and I hope you'll ask questions about this as we proceed.

Thank you for your attention.

• 1020

The Chair: Thank you very much, Dr. Clark. We appreciate that.

Normally, introducing questions of international law before this committee raises a lot of problems. There are a couple of international law lawyers here, so we'll see.

[Translation]

Ms. David of the Fédération des femmes du Québec.

Ms. Françoise David (President, Fédération des femmes du Québec): Would it be a problem if we changed the order of the presenters?

The Chair: No, if you wish to do so.

Ms. Françoise David: We have organized ourselves so that I may speak last.

The Chair: So then, as we say in English, we're saving the best for last?

Ms. Françoise David: I'm not sure what that means, but I would like to go last.

The Chair: Fine, very well. You prefer to go at the end?

Ms. Françoise David: Yes, please.

The Chair: Fine.

[English]

Mr. Legault, then, from Voices of Conscience.

[Translation]

Mr. Raymond Legault (Spokesperson, Voices of Conscience): My name is Raymond Legault and I am a professor of computer science. I am a member of Voices of Conscience, a group which organized the visit of a delegation to Iraq in early January, and there are a number of people present here today who were members of that delegation. Before I provide you with my comments, I'd like to say that Suzanne Loiselle and myself will both speak about the economic and social impacts of the sanctions.

Voices of Conscience believes that the war in 1991 and the sanctions that followed have caused one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent history. There have been a certain number of reports on this humanitarian disaster from international fora such as UNICEF, the World Health Organization, the UN Development Program and a whole score of other organizations. The media have barely responded to these reports, and politicians too seem reticent to recognize the importance of these reports from international and national organizations.

However, this disaster was predicted as far back as 1991, among others by Dr. Eric Hoskins, who works today with Foreign Affairs. Since then, they have been confirming what was to happen and they have been predicting the same thing for the next year and the following years.

According to Voices of Conscience, this is quite simply genocide given that it was foreseeable and that we are continuing to apply the same policies. When Ms. Madeleine Albright was asked if the death of some 500,000 children was worth it, she answered that it was a difficult question, but that according to her, it was worth it.

As for sanctions and the war, you have to understand that after nationalizing its oil industry, Iraq, in the early 70s, embarked on a process of accelerated development, developing its military industry, of course, which was supported by the USSR at that time, a generally very well-known and documented fact, but also in co-operation with Western powers such as France and even the United States after 1979.

Iraq had, therefore, developed oil and hydro-electric infrastructure, very significant social services, a health system which was comparable to ours, which was accessible and free, and an educational system which was given awards by UNESCO for its efforts to fight illiteracy in the early 1980s.

And then there was the war of 1991. From what we read, it is likely that more bombs were dropped on Iraq during this war than were dropped during the bombings of the Second World War. We have to realize that these bombs were not limited to these smart bombs that always fall on selected targets in a very precise manner. It has been well documented that the civil and economic infrastructure of this country was systematically destroyed, meaning the roads, bridges, hydro-electric facilities, big food warehouses, irrigation systems that are very important for agriculture in Iraq, the oil industry, etc.

Sanctions were imposed on the country immediately following its destruction. Since Iraq imported 70% of its food products to meet its needs, these sanctions created a tremendous problem just in terms of food alone. The report produced by the United Nations Security Council humanitarian panel described the resulting situation as a transformation from a situation of relative abundance to one of mass poverty.

• 1025

Goods immediately became scarce and inflation rose out of control, a situation that persists today. Here is an Iraqi 250 dinar banknote. This is the largest denomination in Iraq. When we exchange American money for Iraqi money, we wound up with piles of these banknotes. In 1990, before the war, this 250 dinar bill was worth more than $800 US. Now it's worth 12 cents.

That explains why, according to what we were told and what we were able to ascertain during many meetings, the Iraqis, who for the most part earn a fixed salary—that is the case for everyone who works for the public service or paragovernmental organizations, who works in the field of education or health, etc.—earn salaries of two, three, four or five dollars; they may earn up to ten dollars if their position in the hierarchy is a little bit higher.

Such an income is absolutely inadequate. We saw many engineers, architects, people with university educations driving taxis, selling cigarettes or chocolate on the sidewalk, working as dishwashers in restaurants, etc. We sometimes see this in Canada, particularly in the case of newcomers, but there, it is the Iraqi citizens who are doing this type of work when in fact they have the qualifications that I have just described.

The United Nations Development Program estimates that it will cost $7 billion just to bring the hydro-electric infrastructure, a very specific sector, back to its 1990 level. Seven billion dollars, that's about the same amount of money that 85% of the Iraqi people have received from the Oil-For-Food program since its inception.

It is important to understand that only 53% of the money from the Oil-For-Food program goes to food requirements or other basic needs for the centre and the south of Iraq, where 85 or 86% of the population lives. The rest is used to pay compensation to Kuwait and to companies that sustained damage during the war. Thirteen per cent of this amount goes to the three governments in northern Iraq, which are autonomous.

As Ms. Zurbrigg stated, there is a great deal of unemployment in Iraq. In the final analysis, all of this has had a catastrophic impact on all of Iraq's social fabric, which Ms. Loiselle will talk to you about now.

Ms. Suzanne Loiselle (Spokesperson, Voices of Conscience): Good morning. I work for an organization called Entraide missionnaire. Our work puts us in contact with civilians from various countries. I believe that it was in this capacity that our organization was invited to be part of the delegation to Iraq.

At the outset I should tell you that human rights advocacy is an important aspect of our work, both for the organization and for myself. Our work covers all aspects of human rights violations, whether these be individual or collective rights, or matters concerning social, political or economic aspects.

We feel that the imposition of an embargo is a tremendous violation of human rights. Iraq is not the first country, in recent history, that has had an embargo imposed on it for political, geopolitical or other reasons. But what we have observed as a result of our interventions in various countries and what we observed during our participation in the delegation organized by Voices of Conscience, is that, in the final analysis, it is the civilian population that suffers the effects of an embargo that has been imposed as an economic sanction. It is the civilian population that is taken as hostage in many ways.

So as not to go beyond the time that has been given to me, I will focus on certain aspects. Although it has already been mentioned, I think that we cannot overemphasize the fact that one of the first rights that are trampled is the right to life, as well as access to resources for health, education, etc.

• 1030

We observed significant impoverishment in Iraq; many reports have confirmed this. I will quote from a UN report published in April 1999:

Iraq has gone from relative prosperity to mass poverty since the UN sanctions were imposed in 1990...

Consequently, one of the major social impacts has been the impoverishment of the population. We saw this in the absence of access to services. For example, access to education was severely curtailed and we also observed a high drop-out rate. I talked to some families. I'll use the example of a family living in the southern region. This family told me that it had decided to send only three out of six children to school, something which I was told was never seen amongst these families, in this town or in this region.

Reference has already been made to the situation of professors, but I feel that we should emphasize what these people are going through. When you are earning a salary of between 4 and 5$ US per month, what happens to continuous training and job motivation? Instead, these people find themselves in a situation where they have to find a second job in order to meet the economic needs of their family and an extended family.

As for access to educational material, we learned, from our conversations with students and university professors, that they hadn't been able to renew equipment, documents, library books since the sanctions were imposed. This means that there are no recent books on education, medicine, archeology and geology. No new books have been put on the shelves of Iraqi universities in 10 years. These are facts of daily living which indicate to what extent this population has become poorer.

We could also talk about what is going on in the health sector, but as there are health experts here, I will let them talk about the impact of sanctions on the people in this field. It is tremendous. The hospitals are modern in terms of infrastructure. However, you get this feeling of emptiness when you visit them. As I walked through the hospital, I started opening laboratory doors. There are no more drugs, no more serum, no more.... We could once again talk to you about the long-term impact on the health of people, which is one social aspect of life.

Obviously, the public institutions are crumbling given the lack of resources. Because of other emergencies, money can no longer be spent to strengthen infrastructure, which was very significant in Iraq. This is no developing country according to the criteria we would use for Sub-Saharan Africa, for example. We must use another category of indicators in order to appreciate the development of this country.

Street children are another phenomenon that has occurred following the economic devastation of the people due to sanctions. This is a phenomenon that we have heard a great deal about in other regions of the world, but it was almost unheard of in Iraq. I would not say that this did not exist at all; however, many witnesses told us that it was quite new to see children begging in the main business streets or near the hotels. And even more recently, adults are now doing the begging. We saw women stop to beg along the roads or in the markets.

There is also prostitution, which I will not go into since Ms. David will deal with this subject when she describes the situation for women.

There is a lack of organization in civil society. Because of the country's economic situation and because of the sanctions that have forced the people to fight in order to survive, there is no capacity to create institutions to defend rights, to deal with illiteracy and many other social needs.

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The civilian population has been reduced to an economy of survival. And the dignity of the Iraqi people has, shall we say, been sorely tested. People are forced to have not one, but two jobs; one job, given the size of the salary, no longer enables you to meet the economic needs of your family or of an extended family.

With such impoverishment, a phenomenon that is currently growing is the black market. I do not have any information that would enable me to say that in 1986 or in 1988, there was no black market; I would never assert that. However, many witnesses told us that since access to resources is now limited, since the normal ways of doing business are absent, people must resort to using other expedients, including the black market, in order to get the basic necessities. You have to see the considerable traffic between Jordan, to the north, and with Turkey, through parallel networks that have become necessary in order to meet needs.

I will conclude by saying that an embargo is a violation of human rights, of the social rights of a population, of the right to life, of the right to work. This is a way to hold a population hostage. When an embargo is imposed, we are often trying to pursue a geopolitical goal: we are trying to change a regime. However, we have observed that, ten years later, the regime is still in place and it has not been weakened by the embargo.

Who has been weakened? It's the people, they have been hurt economically but also in their ability to organize, and their social infrastructure for education and health, for instance, has been damaged. We could talk about drinking water, water treatment, etc.. It's the ability of civil society to organize that has been damaged. There are very few NGOs, very few grassroots organizations, because the people are caught up in assuring their survival, in what they have to do in order to eat.

The Chair: Thank you.

[English]

Now we're going to move to Mr. Hildebrand from Inter-Church Action for Development, Relief and Justice.

Mr. Dale Hildebrand (Spokesperson, Inter-Church Action for Development, Relief and Justice): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to start by reading from the Bible a verse from Isaiah that we would apply to this particular situation and topic: “...loose the fetters of injustice, untie the knots of the yoke...and set free those who have been crushed.” We think that's very applicable to the situation of the Iraqi people.

I'm speaking on behalf of Inter-Church Action for Development, Relief and Justice, a coalition of six churches and church agencies that includes Canadian Lutheran World Relief; Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace; Mennonite Central Committee; Presbyterian World Service & Development; Anglican Primate's World Relief and Development Fund; and United Church of Canada.

We have been concerned about Iraq for at least a decade, if not longer, ever since the invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent Gulf War. Our concern has already been spoken to in terms of the effects of the sanctions, so I'm not going to go into details around what the effects have been. Those already have been well documented both in reports the committee is probably aware of and from the previous speakers.

The question I'd like the committee to ponder is one I think we all need to address in terms of looking at the effects, the 1.5 million Iraqis who have died as a result of the sanctions and the unspeakable suffering. The question is this: what political objective could possibly be worth the price of these sanctions?

Someone has already spoken to Madeleine Albright's answer, that they thought it was worth it, but I would hope a Canadian politician wouldn't make such a statement. We find such an answer to be callous, unethical, and immoral.

I think one of the questions we have to look at, then, is whose fault is this? Is it the fault of the Iraqi government? If it is, then I guess we might as well pack up this hearing and go home, because there's nothing we can do.

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However, when Inter-Church Action wrote Mr. Axworthy on this question, his answer back to us was this:

In the Canadian government's view, responsibility for the suffering of the Iraqi people and the continuation of the UN sanctions rests primarily with the Government of Iraq.

We cannot accept this logic. We think it's a way to escape blame. Really, what's happening is that those nations that support the sanctions have made Iraqi civilians expendable pawns in a high-stakes political tug-of-war.

The question of whether the Iraqi government has complied with the sanctions I think is an important one. I wonder whether any degree of compliance by the Iraqi government on arms inspections would result in the sanctions being lifted.

The 1999 UN disarmament panel report—and the Canadian government was key in having these panels do their work—examined the evidence and concluded that on nuclear weapons and on missiles, Iraq had satisfactorily disarmed; on chemical weapons it had already taken major steps, although a few questions remained; and on biological weapons there were still some gaps in the information. The panel stated, by way of general conclusion, that “the bulk of Iraq's proscribed weapons programmes has been eliminated”.

Another important point the panel made was that 100% verification may be an unattainable goal. Scott Ritter, one of the toughest inspectors with UNSCOM, stated in a June 1999 interview that Iraq today possesses “no meaningful weapons of mass destruction”.

The other thing to consider is that the U.S. President stated in 1998 that sanctions will be there until the end of time, or as long as Saddam Hussein lasts. So what's happening is that the political goalposts in this whole thing are moving. The toppling of the regime was not a part of the original UN objectives. One has to ask, why would the Iraqi government even want to continue with arms inspections if they know, even by whatever degree of compliance, it's not going to make any difference? The most powerful member of the UN Security Council has said that until Saddam Hussein is gone, the sanctions will continue.

To summarize, we've set up a sanctions regime in which there really is no way out for the Iraqi government. In fact what we're seeing is that the reins of power are even tighter as the sanctions have progressed.

I also want to speak to the question of the legality of the sanctions, which Dr. Clark has touched on a little bit. In our view, the sanctions are in fact illegal. They contravene the Geneva Conventions of 1977, which state:

(1) Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited.

(2) It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water etc.

In the church's view, the Gulf War did not end in 1991. The sanctions are simply another form of warfare. They've starved Iraqis. They've denied Iraqis adequate drinking water and basic health care. They're illegal. They also violate two fundamental UN charters, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

What are we to do, then? Do we do nothing at all? No. We don't think we simply withdraw. In fact, the churches have called for intervention of the Canadian government and the UN when foreign governments have grossly abused human rights and systematically repressed their people. We've done this many times—in South Africa, in Indonesia, in Burma, in the former Yugoslavia, in Sudan, and in Iraq after the 1988 persecution of the northern Kurds. So we're not calling for a hands-off approach. We would maintain some military sanctions until there's a demonstrable improvement in the human rights record of the government.

Bill will speak a little bit about what the Canadian government might do there around sanctions. We understand the Canadian government is in fact holding a forum on sanctions, which we think will be very helpful and very useful.

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When I lived in the Philippines in the 1980s, the fishermen there would drop dynamite over the sides of their boats to catch fish. What happened was it would destroy the coral, the small fish, and everything in the sea. In fact, that's the way we view these sanctions. They do the same thing.

One of my favourite quotes during the Gulf War was: “What if Iraq's main export were broccoli? Would we have the same kind of interest in Iraq?” There's the whole issue of oil and the control of oil, which I think is quite key to understanding what the sanctions are there for and what sort of geopolitical interests they're serving to further.

I want to turn it over to Bill, then, who will speak a little bit further about what the Canadian government might do.

The Chair: If you don't have time to go through it thoroughly—and you have a brief—clearly the recommendations about what might be done about sanctions are going to be the core of what we're going to try to grapple with, so you can leave us something further in writing, or send us anything after you're finished. Okay?

Mr. William Janzen (Director, Ottawa Office, Mennonite Central Committee Canada; Inter-Church Action for Development, Relief and Justice): Thank you.

I'd like to say a few things about some secondary problems before I come to the question of Canadian government policy. A number of those comments have already been made, but I would like to draw attention to several problems that are not simply hunger, sickness, and disease.

One is emigration. There are reports that 3 million to 4 million Iraqis have left in this decade, emigrated because of severe hardship, mainly professional and middle-class people. Before 1990, Iraq drew to itself between 1 million and 2 million foreign workers. That's how its economy was thriving. Now, between 3 million and 4 million people have left. It's an incredible loss for the long-term development of the country.

Secondly, there is also what one might call an intellectual embargo, in the sense that books and professional magazines are not admitted. There was an Iraqi physician who was trained in Britain, a member of the British College of Physicians, and he wanted to continue receiving British medical journals. He couldn't, even though the subscription was fully paid for. The embargo did not allow it.

Third, there's a social collapse. I won't belabour that, but it has been mentioned that school attendance is way down, and begging, stealing, prostitution, and killing are up.

Fourth, there's an illegal trade that, as the humanitarian panel has noted, encourages profiteering and criminality. It may serve the interests of Saddam Hussein and the people around him, but it does not help the people to build a measure of security. It does not build schools and clinics.

Fifth is the question of depleted uranium. It's a very important question. The war in the Gulf was the first war in which the coating on weapons was depleted uranium. It was used to replace titanium, which had been used earlier.

I want to read a brief part of our submission. If you have it, it's near the bottom of page 8, footnote 25. It says:

This nuclear waste

—depleted uranium—

has replaced titanium as a cheap coating for weapons which can pierce armour. It burns on contact, producing a fine dust which can be ingested and inhaled and which enters the food chain via water and soil....

In 1990 Britain's Atomic Energy Authority sent a report to the British government estimating that if there were a war in the Gulf, and if 50 tonnes of uranium were left there, it would lead to an increase of 50,000 cancer cases in a decade. Experts believe that instead of 50 tonnes, 900 tonnes were left there. That suggests 900,000 extra cancer cases a decade later. And indeed there's an enormous increase. I don't have figures on how big the increase is, but a doctor talks about virtually all of his relatives having cancer, when there was no history of cancer in his family before.

Now, those are secondary problems that will not be solved quickly, but they are profound in terms of the long-term development of the country. And I think we should note that Canada, if my understanding is correct, is one of the suppliers of uranium that may end up in those places.

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Now, what might Canada do in terms of Canadian foreign policy? I think that a year ago, in January 1999, Canada did take a constructive, positive step. There was an impasse at the United Nations, and Canada proposed multilateral panels or committees to study some key issues. One was what the humanitarian need is, and the other was how much progress Iraq has really made on the disarmament question, which the United Nations resolutions required.

The Security Council approved the idea of those panels, the panels went to work, and the broad conclusions of those panels were that the humanitarian need is extremely serious and cannot be overstated, and we've all spoken to that; and that on disarmament, Iraq has met virtually all of the requirements—not all of them maybe, that wasn't sure, but to a very, very large extent.

If one takes those two conclusions, should that not have led to a very substantial change in the sanctions regime? How could the sanctions regime simply continue in the face of those two conclusions? What happened?

Those conclusions were put on the table in March, exactly one year ago. It took until December before there was a resolution in the United Nations Security Council. There was all kinds of diplomatic wheeling and dealing. Increasingly, the permanent five kept the negotiations to themselves. The other members of the Security Council felt shut out.

Eventually they came to the table, had this resolution called 1284, and when it finally came to a vote, three of the permanent five abstained—France, Russia, and China. They said it could not be justified, because the resolution did so little in terms of lifting the sanctions when the reason for lifting them was so amply demonstrated. They could not vote for it.

Canada did vote for it. I don't know this, but I would like to think that Canada voted for it with a lot of reluctance, because it does stand at variance with the conclusions of those multilateral panels.

Admittedly, there were some good things about resolution 1284. It did make some improvements in the oil for food program. It did make some changes in the whole inspection regime that accommodated some of Iraq's concerns. However, the inspection regime remains, and the whole formula whereby sanctions might be lifted is quite intricate.

It said that the inspectors must go in and make a comprehensive survey of the country. That's quite a challenge. They worked at that once before. They sent helicopters flying at rooftop levels across the country with special radiation-sensing devices to see if there was anything going on, if there was any nuclear weaponry being built anywhere. When you have helicopters flying at rooftop levels all over the country, not everybody will be very happy about that. It's quite intrusive. But that was step one.

In step two, once it is established that there is nothing, there would be a monitoring system established for ongoing monitoring.

In step three, once it is established that nothing is happening, that there is no armament building going on for a 120-day period, then, step four, the sanctions can be suspended for 120 days—not lifted, not revoked, but suspended. Then after that 120-day period, if the reports come in and say nothing is happening, if nobody has any criticisms of Iraq, then maybe the Security Council will suspend them for another 120 days.

The UN chief humanitarian coordinator in Iraq says you cannot build an economy, you cannot draw in what you need to revive that economy, on the basis of 120-day suspensions. There has to be something else.

So now Iraq has rejected it.

I could go on to talk about the current situation. There's bombing going on, almost daily bombing. In the first six weeks of this year, there were 25 civilians killed every week in the almost daily bombing that's going on, plus many more injured, many more living in terror, much property...and these are killed in civilian areas: villages, fishing areas, valleys, farm fields, and so on. Meanwhile, there is more and more illegal trade going on, which may serve the regime and the elite pretty well, but it doesn't help the ordinary people. They cannot build a way of life on that.

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Also, the international consensus is breaking down drastically. Jordan, Syria, and Turkey don't like it at all. One could go on and on with that.

I think the fundamental question for Canada—there have been various remarks about international law—has to be justice. As Dr. Clark and others here have said, if we want some measure of international security, we base it on international law, we base it on justice. I think that will mean, in this case, differing from the policy that the United States has followed over these years.

One could go into critiquing the American policy at considerable length, both about what happened in terms of their influence.... Most of the 3,000 inspectors who worked in Iraq over the decade of the nineties were in fact Americans. The fact that Iraq cooperated to the extent that it did is really quite amazing, and now that will be changed a bit. But the ongoing bombing, the statements that sanctions will stay as long as Saddam Hussein stays, things of that nature—one could go on at considerable length.

Our minister has written that he wants a dialogue with the Iraqi government to deal with outstanding issues so that Iraq can be welcomed back into the community of nations as a member in good standing. That's an extremely good intent. I cannot commend it strongly enough. I hope this committee will encourage the minister to pursue that. But the dialogue must not be only with Iraq. There are too many other parties who have blood on their hands, and the dialogue must be quite diverse.

Thank you very much.

[Translation]

Ms. Françoise David: Mr. Chairman, you asked us to tell the committee what we wanted. What we want, at the Fédération des femmes du Québec, is relatively simple: we want the sanctions to be lifted.

I could stop here, but since you have allowed me a bit of time, I would like to talk to you briefly about the situation of women and then provide you with a brief summary of what we have just heard, in order to convey to the committee a message about its responsibility with respect to the lifting of these sanctions.

I would like to add to all the arguments in favour of doing away with the sanctions against Iraq one of the effects of these sanctions, that I would qualify as perverse and that was not expected or predicted: the setback for women's rights.

I would point out that, until the Gulf War, Iraq was one of the most secular states of the Middle East. All was not perfect, of course, but some improvements had been made to the living conditions of women.

That having been said, in Iraq as elsewhere throughout the world, including Canada, it is primarily women who are responsible for family life. When husbands have to go outside the country to work because there are no jobs at home, when there are several children to feed and to care for but there is no money, when there is no proper heating for the home, it is the women who have the duty and the responsibility of ensuring that children are fed, cared for, clothed and sent to school day after day.

We told you that there were problems with school dropouts. We were told—by United Nations officials, among others—that because parents now have to pay a small sum of money to send their children to school, they are often tempted to send boys rather than girls to school. This leads to a decline in literacy rates among girls.

Furthermore, since girls as well as boys represent mouths to be fed, we are seeing a resurgence of early marriages in rural areas. Girls who are 14 years of age are married off so that they can go live with another family and so that there will be one less mouth to feed.

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We are also seeing a return to more traditional religious values. On arriving in Iraq, it came as a great surprise to us to find a large number of women covered from head to foot with the large black garment that is called the chador. Yet this was not commonly worn before the war. We also observed few women in the public markets and, in general, in what I would call public spaces.

Therefore, in our view, there are many reasons for being against the embargo. However, one more must be added to them, and that is the negative impact on women's rights.

Now, why is the Fédération des femmes du Québec interested in Iraq in particular? You probably know that we are organizing an international women's march in the year 2000. One of our demands is to end embargoes. We know that embargoes usually affect people rather than their leaders.

Why are we here this morning? We are here because Canada, since it sits on the United Nations Security Council, can take direct action on the Iraq issue in particular. You have heard lengthy testimony on the dramatic effects of sanctions on the civilian population, and I won't go over the same ground. I will mention that our delegation will be able to send you a full report on its mission to Iraq by the weekend.

Allow me to stress that, when we talk about sanctions, we are talking about life and death, and not just superficial effects. We are talking about a country that has been set back 50 years. I am repeating what others have said; all of the effects of the sanctions have been amply documented by neutral international authorities.

It is absolutely extraordinary that the United Nations reports have been ignored and that the voices of the two coordinators who resigned have been ignored. It is true that, occasionally, coordinators have been somewhat forced to resign. However, those who were in charge of distributing humanitarian aid in Iraq, and all the same were not favourable to the Iraqi government, claimed that sanctions were pointless.

Believe me, it is not the leaders of the country who are suffering from the sanctions. Saddam Hussein continues to build himself palaces. We observed some extremely luxurious houses being built in some neighbourhoods for a class of new entrepreneurs whose wealth is based on the black market and smuggling. The police and political dictatorship is still in power.

In short, nothing has changed in this respect after ten years. On the contrary, we are strengthening this rule by dictatorship because the embargo, among other things, is preventing people from getting organized. All their energy goes into surviving. Furthermore, we are provoking among some people, and particularly among young people who were not even born at the time of the war or were too young to have been responsible for anything, an anti- Western feeling that will be very harmful in the short and medium term.

Naturally, many people will tell us that we are naive, that we will be forcing huge military risks on Iraq's neighbours if we lift the embargo. After all, this is the type of argument used to justify upholding the embargo. I would be inclined to reply, and others have said this before me, that many reports have indicated that the status of Iraq's weapons systems is no longer anything close to what it was in 1991. Iraq has been bled white. It should also be noted that the neighbouring countries are heavily armed today. In some cases, they benefit—I don't know whether this word is accurate—from the presence of American bases. We should therefore stop engaging in scare tactics.

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In fact, there is no reason to maintain en embargo that is criminal from the humanitarian point of view, except out of a kind of stubbornness that is increasingly irrational, that has no grounding in reality. I would like to say to the people who can exercise influence in this area, namely the Canadian government, that we do not, after all, impose sanctions against all the nations of the earth that are led by dictators, especially China. Consequently, I think that Canada, which claims to defend human rights throughout the world, should ask the Security Council to lift the sanctions.

After all, is not the most important right the right to be born? Today, there are children who are not born because of the sanctions. It is the right to be born in good health. Yet, there are many children born with serious malformations. And it is also the right to live in good health. That is the most important right, the very first right. It is, quite simply, the right to live.

In the current situation, Canada is not respecting this right by continuing to support the embargo. I would point out that it is making the Iraqi people pay a very high price for decisions that it did not make, that the dictatorship made, not the people.

Consequently, what we are calling for is simply that the Canadian government immediately announce that it is in favour of an unconditional and permanent lifting of the sanctions. Of course, there will be measures to take, matters to discuss in connection with the Iraqi dictatorship, but that is another issue. As for the sanctions, they are hurting the civilian population, not this dictatorship, and this must be changed.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. David,

[English]

and thank you, everyone, for your very interesting presentations.

Now, colleagues, we have only 50 minutes, so I'm going to try to keep everybody to a five-minute question period. I'm wondering if the opposition would be good enough to accord Mr. McWhinney the courtesy of going first, because he has been called away urgently and he just wanted to ask some questions on the international law thing. Would that be all right? Thank you very much.

Mr. Ted McWhinney (Vancouver Quadra, Lib.): Thank you, my colleagues, and thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My questions are for Dr. Clark, and they are specialized questions. It doesn't derogate from the non-legal side of your brief, but you raise some interesting legal questions and I'll confine myself solely to that.

I note you've consulted with my friend and law school classmate, Richard Falk, so I'll direct attention to two issues. We've just had extensive hearings on Kosovo and the UN role, and that UN role was achieved without prior authority of the Security Council or the General Assembly. But in relation to the Gulf War, as you know, the General Assembly and the Security Council were involved from the beginning. You've raised a question about the authority of the umbrella resolutions as adopted by Security Council and the General Assembly in 1990-91. You're not suggesting that that was an inadequate base for the action in 1990-91, are you?

Dr. Arthur Clark: You're talking about the UN Security Council resolution on chapter VII proceedings leading to the war against Iraq?

Mr. Ted McWhinney: Yes, the collection that we call the umbrella resolutions, which authorize actions and the American role—

Dr. Arthur Clark: Right. The UN charter, as I understand it, provides, under chapter VII, that the UN Security Council shall decide procedures to address breaches of the peace and threats to the peace; that's article 39. The breach of the peace, of course, was clear in the case of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, as it was in the case of the U.S. invasion of Panama—two very comparable circumstances, as I mentioned. The intent of the UN charter is to resolve that through a series of mechanisms using force as a last resort and using the decision-making process under the control of the UN Security Council.

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What actually happened was that the UN Security Council abdicated its decision-making authority—

Mr. Ted McWhinney: Well, that's one way of referring to it. But you would also agree that the UN Security Council, acting within its authority, delegated powers to an international force, correct? The abdication is a judgment call that's political, not legal, correct?

Dr. Arthur Clark: I think the UN charter has a set of principles that are intuitively obvious to a lay person like me, including avoiding the threat of war, avoiding war. What happened in terms of the UN Security Council decision.... Remember that a body that is constituted under an instrument of law can violate that instrument of law, and I think you would agree that happens.

Mr. Ted McWhinney: But there was no violation in the vote in the Security Council or in the General Assembly, correct?

Dr. Arthur Clark: I think you can say the technical issues were followed. It is very clear that the principles of the UN charter were violated in the procedure.

Mr. Ted McWhinney: Well, you would be aware that the International Court...and we could cite the Lockerbie decision, and even the most liberal of the judges of the post-war period lapses in accord here. The Security Council and the General Assembly, when they act according to the charter, determine the meaning of the charter. So there's no issue for implication of principles.

I really wanted to take you on to the next point, because I think there is a boundary line between law and politics. Would you not perhaps address your point better to the continuing operations in Iraq, which are stated to be based on the 1990-91 resolutions?

Dr. Arthur Clark: I'm sorry, perhaps you could speak just a little louder.

Mr. Ted McWhinney: Okay. Would you not perhaps be on more interesting ground if you related your criticisms of international law—which, by the way, I don't think are shared on this point by Richard Falk—to the contemporaneity of the 1990-91 resolutions to the present action by Great Britain and the United States, in which Canada is not involved?

Dr. Arthur Clark: I'm still not appreciating you.

Mr. Ted McWhinney: Well, let me just restate it.

There is no international law authority, to my knowledge, who denies the validity of action taken by the Security Council and the General Assembly in 1990-91 conformably to the charter. It's a totally different situation from Kosovo, where we didn't have that authority. But there is a question, and I wonder if you've addressed it, whether the resolutions of 1990-91 provide a sufficient legal base in 1998, 1999, and 2000 for aerial bombardment operations. Would that be correct?

Dr. Arthur Clark: Of course not. No, the bombardments by the U.K. and the United States, renewed for example in 1998, are, as far as I'm aware, a brazen violation of the UN charter. There is no authority under the existing resolutions, and there has been no authority given by the UN Security Council for those violations. Furthermore, given that the UN charter, under article 51, provides for the self-defence of countries—that is, countries can act in their own self-defence—by implication, it indicates that those countries have the right to the legitimate means to their self-defence, and it also implies that other countries in the UN should come to the aid of those countries that are under assault in violation of the UN charter.

By the way, I apologize if it's an abrasive tone. It's not intended at you personally.

Mr. Ted McWhinney: No, I was using that only when I was referring to the legal argument, not to your tone. This has been a very polite and thoughtful brief.

So I could take your answer to be that you would say the 1990-91 resolutions did not provide a sufficient authority for current actions.

Dr. Arthur Clark: That's correct.

Mr. Ted McWhinney: Can I take you to the second point, because I have to watch the time factor in deference to my colleagues.

On the issue of sanctions, you do raise certain issues of principles under the charter. But would you not agree—and is this not the position that has been made to you by your international law advisers—that the determinant of sanctions is again the Security Council and/or the General Assembly if the Security Council is incapacitated? But these sanctions have been authorized by the Security Council and the General Assembly.

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In other words, would you be prepared to argue the point that the International Court was not very clear on but, in the end, came out in a certain way in the Lockerbie case, that if there is a conflict between a Security Council resolution and fundamental provisions of the charter—not implications from the charter but fundamental provisions of the charter—then there is an argument that the Security Council powers are limited? Is that the point you're making? That would be a very interesting point.

Dr. Arthur Clark: That is the point I'm making. Under article 39, for example, is one of the necessary components of the basis in authority for the sanctions. The only phrase in article 39 that I emphasize in the brief is that since the breach of the peace has been reversed it must be the threat to the peace that Iraq poses, and under law one must have a reasonable interpretation of that phrase. For example, if you take the phrase “threat to the peace” and you apply it to Syria, Iran, Israel, Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, yes, they're all threats to the peace, but you have to have a reasonable interpretation of that.

If you look critically at the functional threat to the peace that Iraq now poses...and I actually use a Globe and Mail article there in terms of the way the term “threat to the peace” is used. The Globe and Mail article comes out and says, yes, the threat to the peace is that they're threatening U.S. pilots who might want to bomb Iraq. If that's your definition of “threat to the peace”, as far as I can see it as a layperson, that is unreasonable. That is not a reasonable interpretation of article 39, and therefore the legal basis of the sanctions is non-existent.

Mr. Ted McWhinney: There is a dichotomy between law and politics, and all that international lawyers know is sometimes subject to change. You've made these points very clearly and directed attention to matters we'd like to examine. It is, for the benefit of my colleagues, a different situation from the Kosovo situation we examined, because of course in the Kosovo situation you did not have the legally vested authority, the Security Council and the General Assembly, voting on the issue, for various reasons.

Thank you.

[Translation]

Dr. Amir Khadir (Spokesperson, Voices of Conscience): [Editor's Note: Inaudible]... the delegation that visited Iraq in January. There is presently an international panel of jurists, created on the initiative of Spanish jurists, that is considering this whole question of the legality of maintaining sanctions. I am neither a jurist nor an expert in these matters, but from what I have read, I believe that there are some very weighty arguments, in part those raised by Mr. McWhinney, in favour of challenging the legality of maintaining sanctions.

[English]

Mr. Ted McWhinney: If you could supply the chair with the names and their articles, we'd be very happy to considerate it.

[Translation]

The Acting Chair (Ms. Jean Augustine): Thank you very much.

Mr. Martin, it's your turn.

Mr. Keith Martin: Thank you, Madam Chair.

[English]

Thank you all for your interventions. It is much appreciated.

I don't think there's any doubt about the impact of sanctions against the people of Iraq—that's a profound tragedy—nor about the fact that the sanctions in fact are benefiting and strengthening the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Nor is there any doubt, in my view, that we are sowing the seeds of future anti-western sentiment by what is taking place there. That is the impact, at least in part, of these sanctions. However, at the end of the day, the west's objective is to get rid of Saddam Hussein, to ensure that Iraq is not building weapons that are going to pose a security threat, and not to hurt the people.

You speak about international law and the respect for it, but I would submit to you that international law and the respect for it is a two-way street. If you're going to have international law, which we have, in order to give it credibility there also has to be the power and the tools to enforce that law. If you don't have the tools to enforce the law, then the law becomes nice words and sometimes as effective as UN resolutions. Otherwise, we would have seen the actions of Saddam Hussein against the Marsh Arabs dealt with in a forthright fashion. We would have seen Saddam's shooting of Scuds at Israel dealt with under international law, and his $100 billion economic, environmental and social destruction of Kuwait dealt with under international law. We know where international law was in all those and how effective it was in preventing these situations from occurring.

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So my question is, how can we prevent Saddam Hussein from developing weapons of mass destruction without hurting the people? What sanctions should we lift? Because there are some sanctions we can get rid of immediately that would provide direct benefit to the people without strengthening Saddam Hussein's regime. In fact these sanctions could weaken his regime by undercutting the black market that's taking place there now. What monitoring systems can and should be put in place to deal with the regional security issues that are there?

I'm curious. Who is doing the bombing right now?

So thank you. Those are my three questions.

The Chair: Are you addressing that to a specific person?

Mr. Keith Martin: No, but I'm very interested in what sanctions can be lifted right away. What monitoring systems can and should be put in place? If any factual information you have about that bombing could be given to the committee chair, it would be appreciated.

The Chair: I have about four hands up. I just want to remind the witnesses that we only give 10-minute segments. So if Madame David takes nine minutes, it means the others only have a minute between them. Perhaps you could keep your answer short enough to allow everyone else to get in.

[Translation]

Ms. Françoise David: I am not one to exceed the time limits given to me.

The Chair: No, no, I'm not criticizing you, Ms. David. I am pointing it out to everyone.

Ms. Françoise David: Very well. I will not answer all of the questions. I would just like to make a few remarks. Mr. Martin is right when he says that the law is a two-way street. Believe me, we are not in any way defending Saddam Hussein or any other dictatorship in the world. You must be absolutely clear on this.

In addition, it is important to recall that the main goal of the sanctions, when they were put in place, was not to end Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. We must also remember that, in 1991, at the end of the war, when the people wanted to rise up against this dictatorship and waited for support and assistance from the Americans and the United Nations, this assistance was not forthcoming. In 1991, we helped maintain Saddam Hussein in power, fearing that a more fundamentalist government would take over. We must be careful not to invent new goals for ourselves after the fact, 10 years later.

Finally, I do acknowledge that Saddam Hussein has not changed and that, as an individual and as a dictator, he may represent a potential threat to the security of neighbouring countries. However, he is not a threat in himself. He needs arms first and, at the present time, all indications are that he does not have them. As I said before, in this part of the world, the neighbouring countries are heavily armed and are supported by the United States. It is rather doubtful that Saddam Hussein would start over again.

If we are so afraid that the dictator Saddam Hussein would resort to chemical, biological, nuclear or other weapons, why do we not fear the other dictators of the world who have all the necessary means available to manufacture such weapons and who, in certain cases—I'm thinking of China—already have them?

I would also like to point out that we are much more tolerant of the military occupation of certain territories by other nations, for example Israel, than we were in the case of Saddam Hussein. It does not justify the invasion of Kuwait, but it reveals that we have a two-tier policy, to say the least.

[English]

The Chair: Monsieur Legault and then Ms. Zurbrigg, quickly. We have four more people.

[Translation]

Mr. Raymond Legault: Yes, I think that we must avoid buying into the Saddam-as-scarecrow scenario. In 1990, when the Western coalition was massing its troops, we heard endless talk about the threat of Iraq, as the fourth greatest military power in the world, and so on, and so forth. They were washed up in six weeks, no question about it. There is no military equivalency between Iraq and the United States or the West.

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Iraq is a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Every year, the International Atomic Energy Agency carries out inspections in Iraq and it again did so in January. The germs that may be used to manufacture biological weapons were provided by the United States to Iraq. We must stop calling forth a kind of threat that is not real. The war that Iraq waged with its neighbour Iran for eight years, and which caused a million deaths, mainly on the Iranian side, was quite in keeping with the interests of the Western countries. It would be incorrect to say that the United States and the Security Council made every effort to prevent this war. That is not in the least true. There was a terrible massacre. We armed both sides, we sold a very great number of weapons and we let this war happen. There was even a short prelude to the invasion of Kuwait. Kuwait took many provocative actions, including requiring the immediate repayment of debts and pumping oil on the oil fields. There are oil fields along the border between Iraq and Kuwait whose jurisdiction is contested. Despite an agreement that petroleum production in this zone would be limited, Kuwait stepped up its operations. The American ambassador, April Glaspie, had told Saddam Hussein that the United States felt that conflicts between Arabs did not overly concern them and that they did not really have much to say on the issue. It was certainly not the United States that forced Iraq....

[English]

Mr. Keith Martin: I would like to interrupt, sir, just for one moment. With all due respect, if we don't start with the premise that Saddam Hussein, in the real political world, does pose a regional security threat, then we can't solve this problem for the people of Iraq, I would submit to you.

We have to address the issue of Saddam Hussein as a threat. His actions as a threat have been clearly demonstrated by your own submissions. If we accept that, then I think we can find the medium ground that ensures we do not strengthen him but that in fact ensures the people get those basic needs they urgently need today in order to address the serious health risks you've articulated quite clearly.

The Chair: Okay. I have Mr. Clark, then Mr. Janzen, and Mr. Khadir, who hasn't had a word yet. Then we're going to have to wrap this up and move on.

Mr. Clark.

Dr. Arthur Clark: The express concern about a threat has to instantly raise the question, threat to whom? For example, is Israel a threat to Lebanon? Is Israel a threat to Iraq? To whom is Iraq a threat?

For example, in the 1980s when the international threat of Iraq was at its maximum, where it carried out an eight-year war against Iran and about a million lives were lost because of that, the reason for that threat being at the level it was is that there was massive support from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and other governments to Iraq. In fact, when Iran reversed the tide and invaded Iraq in counterattack, the United States in late 1983 came to Iraq and said it was not in their interest to see them defeated. And the United States helped Iraq stave off defeat. So that was when Iraq's threat was real in terms of its maximum level. And the real level of that threat was because of massive support from outside.

So, again, I emphasize the fact that there are serious issues involved in threats to the peace, but we have to address them seriously, and we're not doing that with the current rhetoric, which is illustrated by your question.

The Chair: Who is next? Mr. Janzen, and then Mr. Khadir.

Mr. William Janzen: I'll try to keep my remarks quite brief.

In case that one question was not answered about who is doing the bombing, it's the U.K. and the U.S. They are doing almost daily bombing. They have since December 1998.

In terms of other controls, this is an area where international scholarship is developing right now, because in the decade of the 1990s the UN imposed more sanctions on more places than in any other decade. And so there is now, at the end of this decade, a serious analysis of what approach to use. And it's slow learning, but there is some learning.

I'd like to make a few points. One is the whole idea of sanctions on military goods, of no trade in military goods. That's been around for some time.

Another one is relating to the assets of leaders or elites, people on whom the leaders depend. Most of them have foreign assets in other places, Swiss bank accounts.

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A third kind of sanction is called “no dealings with”. You don't deal with the elite; you don't invite them to international conferences. That sort of things was used with South Africa.

A fourth point would be to look more at the international suppliers. How did Iraq build up a huge military capability? Where did this stuff come from? That isn't talked about very much. There needs to be much closer monitoring at that level and investigation.

Then another point I would make is that to improve the political climate, some other regional issues could be addressed. One of them is regional disarmament. That was one of Iraq's concerns, that everybody else was building up huge armaments. In the decade since the Gulf War, that has increased, and Canada has large weapon sales to that area.

Another one is the Palestinian issue.

The Chair: Going back to Mr. Clark's point, could they at least give up their atom bomb?

Mr. William Janzen: One of the things that George Bush understood at the end of the Gulf War was that having persuaded the Arab world to come onside and having to support this in this way, we must now deal with another issue, namely the Palestinian issue. That led to the Madrid conference in 1991.

Well, not much has happened on that score. There has been a lot of talk about a peace process, but there hasn't been much delivered. More justice on those regional issues and then these technical ways of controlling it could improve things.

The Chair: Mr. Khadir is next, and then we're going to have to move on.

[Translation]

Dr. Amir Khadir: Mr. Janzen has touched on the issue I wanted to discuss as a Canadian doctor of Iranian background. I am probably the one here who should be the most concerned about the security issue in that region. We are talking here about the country I come from, Iran, that bore the brunt of Saddam Hussein's adventures. I do believe that there are indeed serious concerns.

I am not about to share your perception of these threats that Saddam Hussein represents as somehow being a one-way street. Moving away from your premises, where you're considering the peace issue as somehow being a two-way street, you seem to portray this context of the danger embodied by Saddam Hussein's intervention and his numerous adventures in the region as being something entirely of his own making. I think that the general understanding that we have now, after two decades of incredible tensions in the regions, is that we are dealing with a multilateral phenomenon. Turkey has armed itself considerably, Iraq is currently armed and Saudi Arabia has been the biggest buyer of weaponry in the area over the past 20 years. We also know about Israel in that regard.

Canada might find there the opportunity to best express, right on the ground, what it meant by its statements of intent and its declared policy regarding promotion of peace in the Middle East. You really have there, in my view, all the needed elements, because even Iraq, just before resolution 1284, had finally agreed to discuss the issue of regional disarmament in its proposals aiming at finding a solution to the process. They were saying, if you want us to submit to controls, we would consider these kinds of controls if they are applied in the context of a regional disarmament process.

I don't know if Canada has the influence it needs to go forward here. This is a lengthy process which will necessitate far more complex procedures. However, the removal of sanctions would be the first step in that direction. We should perhaps seize the opportunity that we are currently presented, within the Security Council, at least to show to Iraq that Canada has such an intention. As soon as Canada shows its good will to Iraq and all Arabic-speaking people, who must be called upon here, we may perhaps, on the basis of this demonstrated good will, build the foundation of a regional disarmament and a durable peace.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Ms. Maud Debien: Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you very much for having come to our committee. I also thank you for your comments and the suggestions you made regarding a solution to the problem and the removal of sanctions against Iraq.

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I would like to follow up on Mr. Khadir's thoughts and discuss with you a little more about Canada's role in that region. Some of you also discussed it, among others Mr. Janzen, who brought out the fact that in January 1999, Canada took positive action by requesting the formation of a panel within the United Nations, which was agreed to by the Security Council and which came to two conclusions. I understood that it had concluded that Iraq had very, very urgent needs in terms of humanitarian aid, and that Iraq had met the majority of the Security Council's requirements.

However, regarding resolution 1284, you also told us that when the vote was taken, three out of five members of the Security Council abstained. Canada voted in favour but expressed some reservations because, so it seems, that resolution was not very much in keeping with the two conclusions of the panel which had been created to review the issue of the removal of sanctions. I hope I understood the resolution 1284 process properly.

I would like to link this to Françoise's contribution; she is saying that Canada must declare itself in favour of the immediate and unconditional removal of sanctions. As for myself, I feel that Canada followed that process and that we ended up with resolution 1284, with very few results. We want Canada to pronounce itself in favour of the removal of sanctions. Wouldn't such an initiative serve as an example to others? With such a powerful neighbour as the United States, where there is, as we were told, a visceral and irrational stubbornness about this, what more can we do? That is my first question.

Ideally, if the sanctions were to be lifted, which channels should be used in your opinion to provide international assistance for reconstruction or humanitarian assistance? The issue that you raised about lifting the sanctions is that Canada or the international community will then have to have bilateral relationships with Iraq. Is that what you mean?

[English]

The Chair: Go ahead, Dr. Zurbrigg, and then Madame David.

Dr. Sheila Zurbrigg: Your first question, if I've interpreted it correctly, is why did Canada vote to support resolution 1284 in December?

I don't know why they voted for it. Clearly it could not begin to restore an economy. It was more what we can call “tinkering” with getting more specific supplies into hospitals and into schools. But in terms of providing jobs, income for the mass of the population, it simply could not begin to do that. So I was absolutely astounded that Canada voted for the resolution.

The question really is why did Canada not abstain, as three of the other countries and as another member of the Security Council did? That's the question we need to pose to our government, and what to do about that.

In terms of what channels relief could go through once the economic embargo is lifted, I presume there will continue to be a need for relief, and those officials and agencies that are on the spot would best know, but the relief mainly will come from the regeneration of the economy. What we need desperately are economists and hunger economists who can understand and predict and advise the Iraqi government on how to ensure that this enormously difficult, dangerous transition back into a real economy takes place with the least damage to sectors. So it's an economic problem.

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Go ahead.

[Translation]

Ms. Françoise David: May I just say a few words in reply to your first question? Obviously, the US government does not have the slightest intention of lifting the sanctions. With a presidential election coming within a year, it is very unlikely that any of the candidates will rise to the defence of the Iraqi people and suggest that sanctions should be lifted. Let us face it. When you see that Hillary Clinton can even speak in support of the death penalty for the sole purpose of being elected, that gives you a good idea of the way things are being debated in the United States today.

However, I think we have to start somewhere. If Canada were to indicate clearly in the next few months that it wishes the Security Council to lift the sanctions, of course we would not get the immediate support of our American neighbours, but as you said, by providing leadership, Canada might lead other member states of the Security Council to take a similar stand and gradually create a momentum which hopefully would eventually bring the Americans back to reason. We all know that it will be a long-term process, but it is no reason to remain idle. All battles, and women's battles are a good illustration, have to start somewhere. We also know that more and more American civilian delegations are visiting Iraq to see for themselves the impact of the sanctions, as we did. In fact, some US parliamentarians have also visited Iraq.

Hopefully, a momentum will be created in the US and bring pressure to bear on the US government. Our government should never hide behind the fact that things are difficult.

The Chair: Mr. Khadir.

Dr. Amir Khadir: We should not minimize Canada's role. My perception comes for instance from a comment made by Mr. von Sponek, the coordinator of the UN humanitarian program, whom I met in Bagdad. He said clearly that people were waiting to hear Mr. Axworthy speak up on that issue and raise his voice in the desert. When I questioned him privately later on, I understood that many member states of the Security Council are just waiting for a clear signal from a country like Canada which does have an influence over the United States, to follow in its footsteps. I think it would make a big difference if Canada expressed at least willingness to move in that direction.

[English]

The Chair: Does anybody else have a comment? Mr. Janzen, perhaps you could respond very quickly, and then we're going to have to move on.

Mr. William Janzen: Thank you.

I'd like to emphasize that what is going into Iraq now is not aid. This is paid for by Iraqi oil. There is some aid going in, the main program. The biggest step that would help most is if Iraq were allowed to rebuild its oil-pumping infrastructure. With the bombing that's going on now, that has gone on before, they're bombing the oil-pumping infrastructure and keeping it in disrepair—the UN Sanctions Committee. Iraq has ordered a lot of spare parts to rebuild its electricity and its oil-pumping infrastructure, and the U.S. has played a leading role in putting holds on those spare parts, that equipment.

In the last two weeks UN Secretary General Annan has openly expressed concern about the American practice of putting holds on oil-pumping infrastructure, so about a billion and a half of that has been put on hold.

To elaborate on that a little bit more, some time ago one senior UN official pointed out that the goods that have come in under the oil for food program.... When they arrive in Iraq, it takes about seven days to get to the point of the local people. To ship them from the international suppliers takes 59 days. To get approval in the UN Sanctions Committee takes 66 days. Canadian officials involved in that have expressed considerable consternation that the process has been so slow.

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The Chair: Thank you very much. That's very helpful.

Mr. Robinson, sir.

[Translation]

Mr. Svend Robinson: Mr. Chairman, I will try to be brief because I know that my colleagues want to have more questions and I shall have the privilege of meeting with the witnesses later on today.

Let me first express my very sincere thanks to all our witnesses, not only for their eloquent testimonies today, but also for their hard work on that issue for many years. I have been privileged to travel with several members of the Objection de conscience delegation, and that was a most extraordinary experience for me.

[English]

I certainly believe, and I happen to be convinced, that the sanctions are not only illegal but that they are immoral and that they are genocidal in their impact on the people of Iraq, and I have tabled a motion calling for the lifting of those sanctions. I very much hope this committee will send a strong message, as well, to our government that we can play a positive and constructive role at the Security Council, particularly next month. There is some urgency that during the month we have the presidency we play that role.

I'm under no illusion that we will be able to change the minds of the Americans, and others have been very clear on that. In fact earlier this month the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke, actually warned—and I don't know how many people are aware of this—that Washington would advocate a tightening of the sanctions, to begin with, a firming up of the sanctions, as he put it, if Iraq does not cooperate with resolution 1284, which is absolutely shocking.

At the same time, there are some positive developments. There was a letter from 70 members of the United States Congress that did call on Clinton to lift the non-military sanctions imposed on Iraq, which is a hopeful sign. And I'm hoping again that this committee will, as well, be able to send that kind of message.

I really wanted to ask just one question in the interest of time—I have lots of questions—and that is with respect to, again, the role Canada can play. I must say, I'm deeply disappointed and angered that our foreign minister, Mr. Axworthy, has refused to meet with the delegation that just returned from Iraq. We have the parliamentary secretary here and other members; I hope they might persuade the minister to reconsider that decision and to meet with this distinguished delegation at the earliest possible opportunity. But I want to ask the witnesses here if they could indicate what they feel is the single most effective role Canada can play over the course of the next couple of months. That's what this committee really has to grapple with: What's the single most powerful message we can send out, as a committee, if we report to Parliament? What is that message? Is it the lifting of all non-military sanctions, as has been suggested by a number of people? What's the single most important message we can send?

Mr. Dale Hildebrand: Certainly I think what we've all called for is a lifting of the economic sanctions. I think the committee really needs to ask the Canadian government to think seriously about the larger context of sanctions and the role they are playing. But in Iraq right now we have the worst possible scenario of all situations. We have Saddam Hussein firmly ensconced in power. We have the UN discredited. We have the suffering of Iraqis continuing unabated. And so the message we have to deliver is that what's in place now is simply not working. When you have a policy in place that is doing a tremendous amount of destruction, you stop the policy before you do other things. The most important message is to change direction. So that would be my answer to your question.

[Translation]

The Chair: Mr. Legault.

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Mr. Raymond Legault: The immediate and unconditional lifting of sanctions is what we should advocate. We should not minimize the negative role played by Canada up to now. Those sanctions have been in force for 10 years now, and we are here today in part to express indignation at our own policy. We have to face that policy squarely. Only a few months ago, we voted in favour of maintaining the sanctions, after those sanctions had been applied for nine and a half years with the results we all know about.

There is still from time to time a vessel that goes out for a four-month shift in order to give effect to the embargo against Iraq. The last time Jean Chrétien made some statements about American and British bombings, it was in support of such action. Before we say what kind of good deed we could do, maybe we should first recognize that we have not always sided with the good guys regarding Iraq over the last few years.

We tend to say that we are good people, but we will not succeed in convincing the Americans. We are best friends with a major international bully, in my opinion at least. This issue should be revisited. Mr. Janzen dealt with depleted uranium. Our Canadian planes have used ammunition made from depleted uranium against Yugoslavia. That material was provided to us. When we ask the United States how many hundreds of tons have been dropped over Yugoslavia, they say that they have not tallied it, this time. The US army made some calculations of what was dropped over Iraq, but not over Kosovo and Yugoslavia. At this time, we too take part in this kind of action. The best we can do is to change the Canadian policy and then we will try to convince others. We must admit what that policy has been until now and change it.

Ms. Suzanne Loiselle: I too want to emphasize this point. We, in the civil society, say to our political representatives that we have seen and heard certain things in Iraq. We are telling you about the impact of sanctions on the civil population and we claim that those sanctions lead to dismantling of the country. I will not repeat everything we said this morning, but the more we deal with these things, the more we are convinced about it.

In relation with what Ms. Debien was saying, I will say that we wish to see those sanctions being lifted unconditionally. We also encourage Canada to commit itself to supporting humanitarian support programs, in a first phase, but we must be very aware of the fact that humanitarian projects do not contribute to the development of a country that we helped destroy. There will be another phase, in which we will support development projects, but I don't have any specific timeline to suggest in terms of months and years in that respect.

You mentioned bilateral aid. Well, bilateral aid means that two countries have finally come to an agreement. I think it is too early for that. At this stage, Canada being a member of the Security Council, it must state clearly that those sanctions are not having the effect they should have, that they impoverish the Iraqi people and systematically violate the rights of a civilian population.

The Chair: Thank you.

[English]

Dr. Zurbrigg and then Mr. Janzen.

Dr. Sheila Zurbrigg: I'll try to be brief.

The Chair: Yes, you have to be.

Dr. Sheila Zurbrigg: It's a terribly important question. I would like to stress the urgency.

The UNICEF study was a composite, aggregate figure for the last five years showing this horrific mortality rate. We can't get at the data to know what the trend is, but there's every reason to think that the five-year period showed increasing mortality; in other words, that child mortality is considerably higher than one in seven and it's going up. Certainly Iraqi government data suggest this, and the most recent statement from UNICEF suggests that this year's mortality figures are going up.

This is a genuine emergency. These are astronomical figures. We can't deliberate and discuss this for another year; we must respond, and Canada must also respond immediately.

What to do? First of all, Canada must stop blaming. Whenever we send letters to our representatives and to Foreign Affairs, we get letters back and telephone calls back saying it's Saddam Hussein's fault, it's his primary responsibility. This is clearly wrong. If they say this too many times, they're going to surely start to believe it, and that is catastrophic. We must stop blaming.

Third, Canada has no representation in Iraq. We used to have an embassy. Nine and a half years later, we still have no diplomatic representation in Iraq, and it's not surprising that we have very little information about what's happening in the country. We must re-establish an embassy immediately.

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Fourth, we made a mistake in December 1999. It is not too late to redress this. It is wrong. Resolution 1284 cannot begin to solve the problem. We must recognize that. Our foreign affairs department must recognize that.

Perhaps to make it easier, our foreign affairs department can speak to the recent resignations. This is unprecedented. Three major heads of UN agencies within Iraq have resigned in protest over resolution 1284. So perhaps we can use these resignations, which have received no media attention at all in Canada. We must use these resignations. They have resigned for a reason. Our minister must make use of that. We must speak up.

The Chair: We're now seriously over the time. We have only about two minutes left. We might go a bit over 12 o'clock.

Maybe I could pass to Ms. Augustine, and maybe we could get Mr. Janzen and Mr. Clark in on answers to her questions if they're relevant.

Ms. Jean Augustine: You can pass on my question, because I was going to begin by thanking the witnesses and recognizing the work they do, and recognizing the fact that they act as the conscience of so many people, so many Canadians. I sense that urgency, and I think, whatever we have to do, however we conclude this meeting or report on this meeting, that sense of urgency has to be there in terms of how we respond, especially with the fact that we are taking that seat on April 1. There is that opportunity.

I was also going to mention the 70 U.S. Congress people who have urged U.S. President Clinton to move. Mr. Robinson did mention this, so I won't take the time to elaborate further.

I would also like to see us take what we've heard today...and I'm not too sure what the ultimate format is going to be in terms of—

Mr. Svend Robinson: Reporting to the House.

Ms. Jean Augustine: —reporting directly with the level of urgency that this question demands, because we cannot compartmentalize humanitarian suffering country by country, or event by event, or emergency by emergency. I think this is one that's sitting before us where we have an opportunity to do something. So it's more a comment than a question.

My question is what can we do immediately? That was set out for us by the answers given to Svend.

The Chair: Maybe we can go back to Dr. Clark and Mr. Janzen to give the last comments, and then we'll wrap up.

Dr. Arthur Clark: I think it was the May-June 1999 issue of Foreign Affairs in which Mueller and Mueller pointed out that economic sanctions may have contributed to the loss of more lives since World War II than all weapons of mass destruction combined. So I think we need to recognize what is the reality and what is happening, where that reality is coming from, and who is a threat to whom in terms of who is imposing those sanctions, and get the public's orientation on the real threat, the actual threat, something that has actually happened as opposed to this constant bogeyman of weapons of mass destruction. Of course there are serious issues here, but again, we have to address them seriously and with honest discourse, and I think we have to do it through international law.

Richard Falk, professor of international law at Princeton, has called for a lawful foreign policy. He did so in Foreign Affairs in a letter, and he did so last year in a lecture, the Dr. Irma M. Parhad lecture, that addressed the international law dimensions of sanctions on Iraq. He has called for a lawful foreign policy as a citizen's right. So in response to your question, I think another question this committee should address is what are the remaining practical obstacles to Canada's taking the position that we will support, maintain, and defend international law as our foreign policy? What are the obstacles to that approach?

The Chair: Thank you, sir.

Mr. Janzen.

Mr. William Janzen: One point I will make is that Canada has a reservoir of good Middle East diplomats. Over the last 30 years, there have been exemplary people serving our country in Middle East diplomatic posts.

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Given that the opinion of many of the Arab countries with regard to Iraq and these sanctions has changed quite substantially, it would be very wise to start listening. It's a tragic irony that it is easier for two powerful countries, Britain and the United States, to send bombers than it is to go and listen. I think if a country like Canada can serve as a listening instrument to channel some things and try to even.... I don't really enjoy being anti-American. I'm not the kind of person who blames the United States for everything, but I think in this case they need help in backing away from a position that is simply untenable and immoral.

The Chair: Thank you very much. I think we'll conclude there.

I'd like to add my thanks, on behalf of the members of the committee, to each and every one of you both for coming to the committee and, as Ms. Augustine put very well, for doing the work you do. I'm sorry I didn't have a chance to ask you some questions myself.

I would like to believe that our recent hearings on Kosovo and our future and how we should be treating the former Yugoslavia and these hearings dovetail in the sense that they bring up the issue of sanctions. As Dr. Clark said, whether they're legal or illegal, they do affect innocent people, and I think everyone on the committee is extremely distressed by that. We could add Cuba and a few other countries to the list if we wanted to extend it, but that might sound as if we're getting too anti-American, Mr. Janzen, so we won't do that.

I would like to say to you that we will look very seriously at this issue, and we will make recommendations to the government. I think if you look at our Kosovo recommendations, you'll see that we are sur la même longueur d'ondes, if not perhaps ad idem on every issue.

I would like to draw to the attention of the members of the committee that if Mr. Robinson's point is correct—and I believe it is—that our taking over the presidency of the Security Council is the key moment when we should get some recommendations to the government, that means that next Tuesday we'll hear from the government officials, and following that we will have to move quickly to prepare a resolution. Now, we can't have the perfect resolution. We can't have a 50-page resolution. We can only do a resolution that grabs this and gets the core elements in it, and then we get it into the hands of the government.

Mr. Svend Robinson: Let's do it next week.

The Chair: That's what I'm recommending. We might have to sit a bit longer.

Mr. Svend Robinson: Let's do it on Thursday, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: I'm going to ask Jim to start drafting something now. Admittedly, we can't complete it until we've heard from the government officials, but let's at least start with something, because I think we'd like to get this done before April.

Again, thank you very much for coming. We really appreciate your attendance and your helping us to understand this complicated issue.

We're adjourned until 3.30, members, when we have Mr. Marchi coming before the committee.