Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, February 2, 2005

Mr. James MacLean, as an individual: I am representing the coordinating committee of the St. John's Campaign Against the War.

Mr. Chairman, honourable senators, we have a recommendation to your committee on the matter of collaboration between Canadian Armed Forces and foreign armed forces. This is our recommendation:

The Senate Committee on Defence and Security should call on the Government of Canada to end immediately all forms of military collaboration in any formal or informal military alliance with any foreign states that:

* Possess weapons of mass destruction;

* And/or illegally attack or invade, with or without occupation, any other countries;

* And/or maintain polices and practices that lead to the torture of prisoners in occupied countries and in other foreign countries contrary to the Geneva conventions;

* And/or carry out aerial bombardment of civilian neighbourhoods in occupied countries;

* And/or establish concentration camps for prisoners of war in foreign countries in contravention of the Geneva Convention;

* And/or are not signatories to the Treaty of Ottawa on land mines;

* And/or do not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court for War Crimes.

Thank you.

Senator Atkins
Senator Atkins
Senator Atkins: Are you putting this resolution forward to this committee?

Mr. MacLean: That is right.

Senator Atkins: You cannot name anything that the Canadian military have done that would violate any of those recommendations.

Mr. MacLean: Perhaps, Senator Atkins, you misunderstood the thrust of our presentation. It was not that Canadians are directly involved in such things, although I will say parenthetically that Canadian senior officers were involved in Fort Lauderdale in 2002, planning the illegal March invasion of Iraq. A small number of Canadian troops participated in that invasion, piloting helicopters, for example, and ferrying troops. However, to come back to your main point, our recommendation is that you call on the Government of Canada to end immediately all forms of military collaboration in any formal or informal military alliance of any state that carries out those practices.

Senator Atkins: Well, that is an interesting proposition.

Mr. MacLean: I hope you will follow up on it. Observations and analyses in these essays are those of the author, and are not to be attributed to the service provider or to any institution.

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