Question Period

Our government is debating many different topics today. Accountability, the gun registry, troop deployment in Afghanistan, softwood lumber, lobby positions of ex-government officials, and so on.

There is a scary parallel here. Today, we remember the shootings of Montreal. Today, we remember 4 more dead in Afghanistan. Today, we remember that this is a young government - a minority government - and that is evident today. The levels of passion being presented in the house are clear. Much has changed in Canada since the recess of the house in June. Furthermore, another confidence vote looms in the future.

The gun registry proved useless in the face of the shootings at Dawson College. Moreover, you can't legislate, nor necessarily prevent senseless people from wreaking senseless havoc. The debate over the gun registry, a political issue because of the efforts of "$133 M" in lobbying in support of the Conservatives ascent in government, may have to take a back seat to the demand for guns to be banned outright. Gun violence in Toronto, the deaths of 4 RCMP officers in Alberta, and now Montreal, may cause the public to question their assumptions. More cops on the street and stiffer penalties for violent offenders will not necessarily prevent these things from happening. They will only serve to make the survivors feel better for a while. Deterrence is insufficient in the face of incidence. The tools of these incidents must be removed.

The words in the House are forceful and clear. The past Liberal government is consistently referred to as being patently corrupt, that chapter being "one of the darkest" in Canadian history. In the words of Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day, a "regime," echoing the English-language association with Saddam Hussein and the current battle against the Afghan Taliban regime.

The words are reminiscent of happenings elsewhere. With respect to the Canadian contingent in Afghanistan, the leaders of our nation - including our Ministers of National Defense and Foreign Affairs - are resolved to remain engaged in Afghanistan until "the job is done." Further echoes of the United States ring true here.

Paraphrasing, if Canadian forces leave Afghanistan before the insurgency is quashed, then the Taliban will return to power in that nation. Consequently, Afghanistan will certainly return to its former status of training ground for international terrorism, women and children will be subject to the harsh treatment of Taliban rule, and the world will be less safe for Canadians, Britons, Aussies, and Americans. We msut learn the lessons of 9/11.

Canada's forces are, allegedly, experiencing a disproportionate casualty rate in Afghanistan. According to a report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a member of the Canadian forces is "six times more likely" to die in Southern Afghanistan than an American armed forces is in Iraq. For a conflict that is not considered a war, as the conflict in Iraq is, but an exercise in security, counter-insurgecy, and nation-building, Afghanistan is proving a tall order for Canadian forces.

International conflict is mutating in a world that has changed since 1914. No longer are wars fought along clearly defined lines for the conquest of territory and exultation of ideology. The world changed again in 1949, wherein mutually assured destruction (MAD) rose as the only means tempering the superpowers resolve to annihilate one another. With the mutations of acts terrorism, and a war thereupon, the world is changing much faster now. Instead of states defining the course of policy, it is the static system that must respond to tiny but massively significant threats.

The lesson of 11|09|01 teaches nations that the price of freedom is vigilance. This vigilance is acted out in terms of military action abroad. The problem is, with violence practiced abroad, what is being done about the violence at home? It cannot be said, definitively, that one has nothing to do with the other. If vigilance is the sole lesson of 11|09|01 and acts of terror have ceased neither at home nor abroad in the five years hence, perhaps there is another lesson we missed.

The lesson that Afghanistan teaches us today is that violence begets more, and more efficient, violence. That 27 years in a cycle of violence tends to bring out violence in those it confronts. That people will do what they must to survive. No amount of military engagement can overwhelm the Afghan people. They are, in their own way, strong. No amount of outside interference, indoctrination, or industrialization will lead Afghanistan away from their core values -- from the history that binds them together as Afghans. No amount of progress will make them forget the past. The Canadian mission in Afghanistan must come to recognize this. To withdraw from military operations and shift, tactically, to a new approach.

The suicide bomber and the suicide shooter are kindred spirits. Each is disillusioned by the world he inhabits. Each one seeks release and absolution in death. Each seeks to inflict pain upon the world that has pained them. Each is produced in the same world we all inhabit.

Under extreme stress any person can become the unthinkable. The final lesson of any horrible event cannot simply be: "How are we to prevent this from happening again," it msut be "What in the world caused this to happen in the first place?"

Without this understanding it will happen again, and again, and again, and again...