THUNDER BAY -
Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he hasn’t changed his position on
Afghanistan although he recently said the mission won’t be extended
beyond the February 2009 deadline without Parliamentary consensus and
suggested, for the first time, that the opposition parties may not
support it.
“I think I’ve
been very clear for a long time. We have always been clear that whenever
we deployour troops to
a significant and dangerous military commitment, we will take that to
the House of Commons.
That was a platform
commitment. That’s why we said when we want to extend the Kandahar
mission, which had only just begun when we took office, we are going to
take it to Parliament. We were clear that it was February 2009, and if
we were going to do anything after 2009, Parliament has to approve
that,” Mr. Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) said last week in an
interview with The
Hill Times in
Thunder Bay, shortly after announcing that former Liberal MP Joe Comuzzi
(Thunder Bay-Superior North, Ont.) was joining the Conservatives.
Mr. Harper told reporters on
Parliament Hill on June 22 that he would “want to see some degree of
consensus” around extending Canada’s presence in Afghanistan beyond
February 2009. “I don’t want to send people into a mission if the
opposition is going to, at home, undercut the work, the dangerous [work]
that they are doing in the field. My own sense, listening to the
comments of some leaders of the opposition, of the Liberal leader, the
Bloc leader, is that I don’t think they are suggesting, based on recent
comments, that we would simply abandon Afghanistan in 2009. So I hope
that sometime in the next few months, we will be able to get a meeting
of the minds on what the appropriate next steps.” Meanwhile, Mr. Harper
said he also wants to send a big “thank-you card” to Liberal Leader
Stéphane Dion (Saint-Laurent- Cartierville, Que.) for giving his
Conservative national caucus Mr. Comuzzi, and he also says the
relationship between his government and the federal bureaucracy
“generally, pretty good.” The following is an edited Q&A with the Prime
Minister.
How important is it for your
party to have Joe Comuzzi in the caucus?
“It’s a great day
for the party. Joe brings a lot of experience to the party. He brings
the voice for that whole part of the country, Northern Ontario. Yes, we
have Tony Clement, but he represents only the edge of the southern part
of Northern Ontario, but Joe gives us a real representation in the
caucus for this region.”
What do you expect now?
“This is one of
the areas that we believe that the new government should be doing better
than it is. I think that our economic and social values, policies to
reduce taxes, helping rural industries, dealing with crime, I believe
that all these things should be playing much better in this part of the
country. Unfortunately, historically, the Conservative Party is very
weak. So, Mr. Dion has given us a great favour by making Mr. Comuzzi
available to us and that’s just great.”
The fact Mr. Comuzzi is of
Italian origin, will this help your chances with Canadians of Italian
origin?
“Of course. I also
should add that Joe, being an Italian Canadian, is a plus. We know that
the Conservative Party continues not to get the kind of vote in the
Italian Canadian community that we should. Most Italian Canadians
basically agree with our positions in almost everything but, for
historical reasons, we often don’t get that vote. But I think that the
Liberal Party and Mr. Dion are increasingly sending a signal that if you
are not on his wavelength and [in] his Liberal Party, you don’t belong
and that is creating a big opportunity for our party.”
Some have interpreted your
statement last week on Afghanistan as a change of position of your
government in that area. Is it?
“No. I think I’ve
been very clear for a long time. We have always been clear that whenever
we deploy our troops to a significant and dangerous military commitment,
we will take that to the House of Commons. That was a platform
commitment. That’s why when we want to extend the Kandahar mission,
which had only just begun when we took office, we are going to take it
to the Parliament. We were clear that it was February 2009 and if we
were going to do anything after 2009, Parliament has to approve that.”
So, you still support the
mission?
“I’ve made no
secret of it, I strongly support the mission and I strongly support the
troops. I don’t like the fact that he opposition continues to attack the
mission while the troops are in the field. That’s not fair. But, when we
will get to 2009 we have to present to Parliament some options and we
are going to need, obviously, some support from the opposition parties
if we want to start a new mission after 2009. We need that support, we
need the public, and the Parliament behind men and women when we send
them into dangerous missions. No, I don’t believe it is a change, I
think it’s only dawning on everyone.”
The Toronto Star
reported a story about
some problems between your government and the bureaucracy. Any comment?
“I haven’t seen
the story in The
Toronto Star,
people have told me about it.
The Toronto Star
actually was not at the
meeting, it’s a rewrite of somebody else’s story. As you recall, I was
asked a question about foreign policy and some journalists present
expressed some concerns because they had received, basically, messages
from Foreign Affairs that were different from what the government was
saying about foreign policy.”
And you expressed some
concerns?
“I said that the
support we get from the bureaucracy was generally pretty good. We made
some changes in longstanding policies that I know have not been easy for
some of the public servants who were defending previous policies, but,
by and large, they were pretty good. But I also said that if there are
some public servants who contradict the government position when they
talk to you that that shouldn’t happen. It’s the elected government that
speaks on behalf of the people of Canada.”
