Last Wednesday afternoon, Minister of Defence Bill Graham came to speak to a full house of International Relations students. The IR Society had invited Graham for an informal gathering with U of T students-so informal that they demanded everything remain off the record.
Although Graham tried to keep the discussion light, telling the assembled students his stories of children he met in Kabul and the funny things the Prime Minister said to him in the previous night’s phone conversation, the club members wanted more substance. The minister seemed on a few occasions to be caught off guard by the depth and directness of the questions raised; The IR students, well-versed in international affairs, were not content to hear any canned platitudes.
After the event, The Varsity sat down with Minister Graham to discuss these issues in depth. As former Foreign Affairs Minister and current Defence Minister, he has strong opinions about all of the hot button issues: ballistic missile defence, Sudan and, of course, Iraq.
On the issue of Iraq Graham feels Canada has paid a price for not supporting the US in its war there, but that it was the right choice.
Erring on the side of caution was the right decision for Iraq, he continued, but when it comes to supporting the US in ballistic missile defence, it’s a different story.
“We’re taking a different approach [with missile defence] than we did with Iraq. It’s about the defence of North America, [and] when it comes to the defence of North Amearica, we have to work extremely closely with the US, even if we disagree with their techniques on how to defend ourselves” said Graham.
But the uncertainty of the outcome of the missile defence scheme and fear from opposition groups that it may cause an arms race with China and Russia remain. Some critics, however, believe that Canada simply can’t say no to the US a second time.
But Graham asserted that it is not just an attempt to make nice with the US.
“We have to have negotiations [first] and if we don’t feel that what we have is the right thing, we don’t have to go into it. If [The United States] believe it’s a serious concern, [then we should be] worried,” he said.
He dismissed the idea of an arms race, saying instead that it’s inevitable that other countries will continue to develop their defence systems, and development of a North American missile defence system “is not a threat to Russia or China [because it] will not deal with large arsenal powers.”
The missile defence issue will be reviewed when both the Foreign Policy and Defence review come out this fall. In the review, Graham plans to emphasize the balance between new defence issues at home and abroad, since he believes that “since 9/11 we have more requirements abroad [and] new challenges.” He also reinforced Prime Minister Paul Martin’s campaign promise to create a new brigade of 5,000 peacekeepers, which he assures will come out of fresh funds separate from the stretched budget the Defence Ministry is already straining under.
But don’t expect any of this new slate of peacekeepers to be going to war-torn places like Sudan. Graham says nobody is calling on Canada to put troops in Darfur. Instead, the African Union, he suggested, may have another role for Canada to play in Sudan, such as training troops in Darfur so that the local conflict can be handled by people from within the region.
“The African Union has troops there now and we’re discussing with them what their needs are,” he said. “It’s up to them to tell us, we’re not going to go in and tell them what we think.” But with Canada’s response to Sudan moving slowly, and the death toll still climbing, critics are worried that without troops, Sudan cannot be effectively helped. Graham disagrees: “in terms of international law, it takes muscle to back it up, and [with] international law focussed on helping Sudan, we have that muscle.”
