Debate heats up over mission creep in anti-ISIS campaign

The federal government is not considering sending Canadian fighter jets or special forces into Yemen, Libya or sub-Saharan Africa, the prime minister said Wednesday, amid questions about mission creep as Canada’s fight against Islamic State militants is set to expand.

On Tuesday, the government put a motion before Parliament seeking a one-year extension of Canada’s contribution to the coalition airstrike mission against ISIS, and an expansion of the mission into Syria.

Debate on the motion is set to begin Thursday, and the opposition parties have indicated they will not support it.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau asked Prime Minister Stephen Harper Wednesday about the language of the motion, suggesting it appears to leave the door open for battling militant groups other than ISIS, in countries other than Iraq and Syria.

“Is the prime minister considering sending our bombers or special forces into Yemen or Libya or against Boko Haram in Sub-Saharan Africa?” Trudeau asked during question period.

“The answer is no, we are not,” Harper responded.

“Where we face an organization -- as we do today in Iraq and Syria -- that are establishing caliphates, large territorial areas from which they are threatening to launch terrorist attacks against this country, Canada will work with our allies in every single case where that occurs.”

Earlier Wednesday, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair said expanding the mission into Syria would mean Canada is helping Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, who is accused by the international community of committing atrocities against his own people.

“I find it shameful that Canada should in any way, shape or form be putting our brave women and men in uniform at the beck and call of someone like Assad,” Mulcair told reporters as he left his weekly caucus meeting on Parliament Hill Wednesday morning.

“Helping Assad is shameful and we should not be doing it.”

After his own caucus meeting, Trudeau accused the federal government of failing to adequately think through the mission, particularly when invoking “responsibility to protect” (or R2P) principles agreed to by the international community.

The R2P principles allow nations to intervene in sovereign countries when their leaders fail to protect citizens from atrocities such as genocide, war crimes and ethnic cleansing.

“I think one of the key concerns, and one of the requirements any time one invokes R2P is that we not make the situation worse,” Trudeau told reporters.

“And I believe that the unintended but predictable consequence of helping Bashar al-Assad consolidate his grip on power in Syria is definitely something that would qualify as making things worse.”

Mulcair said Wednesday that should the NDP form government after the next election, “we will repatriate our troops.”

Trudeau said a Liberal government would “shift away from the combat mission” toward a mission focused on humanitarian aid and training of local forces “far from the front lines in a matter that is as quick as it is responsible.”

Both Harper and Foreign Affairs Minister Rob Nicholson said Wednesday that because the United States has already made its legal case to the United Nations for bombing inside Syria, Canada is pursuing the mission expansion on the same legal basis as its allies.

Nicholson did not directly answer questions about whether Canadian officials have spoken with their Syrian counterparts to alert them of the planned military engagement in their territory.

Nicholson called the Assad regime “a state sponsor of terrorism,” but said Canada’s role in Syria is to combat ISIS only.

Because Syria is “unwilling or unable to prevent (ISIS) from staging operations and conducting attacks” into Iraq, “we have a legal justification to degrade (ISIS),” Nicholson said.

“Our fight is against (ISIS).”

The motion before Parliament extends Canada’s mission to a “date not beyond March 30, 2016.”

The motion notes that “continuing to degrade ISIL will require striking its operations and infrastructure where they are located, including in Syria.”

There are four resolutions in the motion, including that the House “continues to support the Government's decision to contribute Canadian military assets to the fight against ISIL, and terrorists aligned with ISIL, including air strike capability with authorization to conduct airstrikes in Iraq and Syria.”

Asked by reporters about this language, Nicholson did not explicitly rule out expanding Canada’s anti-ISIS mission to target other terror groups or to bomb countries other than Iraq and Syria.

“The motion is very specific with respect to the extension of the mission for up to a year,” Nicholson told reporters. “We are going to continue with the operations in Iraq and as you know that has been extended into Syria. We have been very clear on that, that is what the motion is all about.”

Defence Minister Jason Kenney, who was scheduled to attend Nicholson’s news conference but did not, said Wednesday that Canada has been asked to expand its mission to include Syria because, unlike other nations bombing Syria, its aircraft have precision-guided munitions.

“With those precision-guided munitions that our CF18s carry, we can be more impactful in the strikes that we make against (ISIS) targets and also minimize potential civilian casualties,” Kenney told CTV’s Canada AM.