Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s refusal to allow parliamentary debate on committing Canadian troops to travel to Iraq (to assist in training local military forces there in their resistance of the ISIS terrorist forces) may seem undemocratic.
That, at any rate, is how the opposition NDP and Liberals claim to view Mr. Harper’s position on debating the issue whereby, he says, he is not committing Canadian troops to war but only as a training mission where they will act as “military advisors.”
The fact is our governments, of whatever stripe, do not generally conduct a debate on a military issue like this one; there is too much at stake, politically, for even a majority government (like the current Conservatives) to be criticized in debate for putting Canadian troops in harm’s way.
In fact, when an executive decision was taken by former Prime Minister Chretien to not join President George Bush’s “coalition of the willing” and invade Iraq because of that country’s presumed hoarding of “weapons of mass destruction” in 2003, that was not debated in the House of Commons either, and for similar reasons. The then-Reform-Alliance party in opposition, led by the same Stephen Harper, was critical of the Liberal government’s decision to not assist our US neighbours and Great Britain in this endeavour but Mr. Harper’s statements communicated by press release outside of the House of Commons did not carry the same force in influencing public opinion. Now it’s his turn to choose to participate in a mission in the same Middle Eastern nation and he is also managing to do this with minimum parliamentary interference.
It’s generally in our tradition for governments to behave in the way that former Prime Minister Chretien did, even though he had a majority government, and Prime Minister Harper is also maintaining this tradition.
When troops are committed to participate in a conflict of any sort, at any level, that inevitably means that there is the possibility of casualties, fatal and otherwise, and no government will willingly expose itself to defending the images of members of the armed forces being brought home injured or, a much starker picture, of coming home to travel the Highway of Heroes as fatally injured personnel.
Even when the House of Commons was called back for a special, short debate 75 years ago prior to declaring war on Germany, Prime Minister Mackenzie King knew it was a sure thing as the debate was a formality and the motion was passed unanimously with no public mention of the inevitable human consequences of going to war.
Since then, most Canadian military personnel have gone into conflict as part of United Nations-sanctioned operations (either offensively as in the case of Korea or as peacekeepers since the 1956 Suez Canal crisis, the idea conceived by another former prime minister, the late Lester B. Pearson).
The notable exception was Canada’s 1999 participation in the war in the former Yugoslavia as part of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-led offensive that was also not debated in the House of Commons as Canada’s membership in NATO requires our nation to come to the aid of other NATO allies who are under attack.
In the case of Canadian aircraft bombing targets in Yugoslavia, it was sanctioned on the grounds that our nation was part of a large humanitarian operation helping halt Serbian aggression against largely-Muslim Kosovo within that deteriorating nation.
It was certainly ethically a good idea but what was less clear was the justification for NATO to undertake this mission as the argument was, at best, fuzzy about which of its members was being threatened by the Serbian population of the imploding post—USSR Yugoslavia.
At that time, Prime Minister Chretien declined a House of Commons debate and vote on sending troops and materiel into Yugoslavia on the grounds that this could serve to highlight divisions in Canada over this military action.
In a nutshell, this is why these debates have been consistently avoided for the past 75 years, right up to the current decision to avoid the scrutiny a parliamentary debate would bring to the matter of sending “military advisors” to Iraq.
Governing our nation, or any country for that matter, is a tricky business at best and governments consistently choose to keep citizens as much in the dark as possible when the matter of sending troops into conflict, and thus into harm’s way, is on the agenda.
But once they’re there, the vast majority of Canadians wear red on Fridays and sport bumper stickers indicating that “We support our troops.”
Of course we do but the games governments of every persuasion play and have played in order to commit troops to direct conflict (or other military roles) with minimum public/citizen oversight and scrutiny, except for the vitally important role played by the press in this process, carefully avoid parliamentary debate and a vote on a motion.
This likely suits Canadians well: we want to support our troops and it seems somehow disloyal to them when we are too critical of their missions.
This shouldn’t be the case, of course: we can certainly be supportive of our military personnel no matter what action they’re assigned to, whether or not we agree with the necessity of Canadian participation in any particular mission.
Our governments, though, have chosen to play it safe and to not encourage public discussion among parliamentarians that could lead citizens to views contrary to the government’s stated mission.
Should this be an area in which ordinary citizens’ opinions should play a role, before the fact?
Ideally, of course it should.
Is public opinion likely to be actively sought concerning military actions, before the fact?
Likely not anytime soon and governments like our own will certainly take their clues from an unusual parliamentary debate and subsequent vote in the British House of Commons in 2013 concerning committing troops to support rebels intent on overthrowing Syria’s President Bashar Al-Assad.
In a free vote, the government motion failed. (Ironically, the rebels taking on Al-Assad at that time will most assuredly include the ISIS organization that Great Britain, the US and Canada among others are now helping to overthrow.)
