Foreign Affairs Committee on May 31st, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Regehr.

You will get more time, Mr. Dewar, you bet.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I wanted to include a partial question before Mr. Regehr responded, and that is to obviously connect with the question I'd initially posed. Around the CD, is there a way to have Canada perhaps play a role to get that back on track? We were there. The motion was put forward. Maybe helping to influence NATO by using that as a tool--what do you think of that?

[Ernie Regehr]

Thank you.

First, briefly on where Canada stands, I think it's important to remember that we have a very long tradition of clear commitment to the elimination of nuclear weapons. I want to pay tribute to Canadian officials who pursue that objective with great skill and determination. I've been on some of the delegations and I speak with first-hand knowledge of the extraordinary impact that Canadian officials have in these meetings, and the commitment with which they pursue that goal. But it also requires political leadership. The level of energy and initiative that can be taken by officials depends on leadership. And the kinds of statement that you just referred to of the Minister of Defence, which has this kind of compromising element to it, don't help with the level of energy. So that's why these clear political statements are very important to continue.

At the CD, I think there were great hopes. Ambassador Meyer will speak much more directly and effectively on it, but there were great hopes that the issue would be resolved and there would movement toward a negotiation of a fissile material cut-off treaty in particular. They were dashed again when states refused to agree to it.

We've often said that if we can't do it within the CD, we need to find another forum in which to do it. I think Canada was part of a tentative effort in 2005 to move it to the General Assembly. That had a very positive impact on the working of the CD. Now it's time to do that again, but that's going to take political leadership and a recommendation from this committee to explore alternative ways of pursuing an FMCT would be a very valuable thing.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I'll give you a little more time, Mr. Dewar.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Chair, to build on that, I think it would be helpful, if I may, for Mr. Regehr to perhaps pass on to the committee some recommendations in that light, simply to help us with that for consideration. Perhaps you wouldn't mind passing that on to the clerk.

Another question I wanted to look at is our role vis-à-vis the U.S.-India dilemma and Canadian technological interests. Presently, between the U.S. and India, nuclear compromise, if you will, needs to happen. I wondered about the role we can play and where things stand.

[Ernie Regehr]

As you know, the history of Canada with India and the Indian nuclear program is very, very important. Canadian technology is used to produce the materials for its nuclear program. This gives Canada an important moral obligation, but I think it also adds to the importance that other countries will put on Canada's voice when it speaks at the Nuclear Suppliers Group. So I think for Canada there's an opportunity for leadership here.

The way in which that leadership is exercised is going to be very important. The bottom line has to be a net non-proliferation benefit. The status quo with India is not going to be retained, but we have to be careful not to fold, because the U.S.-India deal, the way it was originally proposed, essentially welcomes India as a nuclear weapons state and says it's open season on civilian cooperation. We have to resist that, and as I've said, there are a couple of fundamental bottom lines to produce a net non-proliferation benefit: comprehensive test ban treaty, fissile material freeze. I think these are both reasonable claims to make on India.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you both.

I think it's always a challenge for a country like Canada to make a difference and let countries know the importance of not going into more nuclear testing and weapons. But if Canada were to simply engage in an irresponsible type of rhetoric, our credibility at the table could be hurt as well. So it's always a balancing act.

Going back to the committee report of 10 years ago, recommendation one was that Canada work consistently to reduce the political legitimacy and value of nuclear weapons in order to contribute to the goal of their progressive reduction and eventual elimination. I think it's good that we let countries know that their legitimacy isn't in having nuclear weapons. There is no political collateral for that.

We've talked a little about India. Just to close, former President Clinton, whom I don't quote a lot, said in 1988, “I cannot believe that we are about to start the 21st century by having the Indian subcontinent repeat the worst mistakes of the 20th century when we know it is not necessary to peace, to security, to prosperity, to national greatness or personal fulfillment.” Just as it's true for the Indian subcontinent, there are other places in the world, all in one part of a continent, that feel there is legitimacy in that. So it is a major challenge for the world to respond accordingly.

We want to thank you for being here.

We're going to suspend very briefly. The second hour is in the same context, and we will welcome Ambassador Meyer. We'll take a short break. Committee business will be cut back a little today because the two movers of motions are not present with us. We will need unanimous consent to do it and I don't think we will get that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Welcome back.

In our second hour we have Ambassador Paul Meyer from the Department of Foreign Affairs. He is the Permanent Representative to the United Nations and to the Conference on Disarmament.

Welcome, Ambassador Meyer.

[His Excellency Paul Meyer, Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, and to the Conference on Disarmament, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade]

Mr. Chairman, I'm very pleased to have this opportunity to appear before you in my capacity as Canada's Ambassador for Disarmament. Since my last session with the committee in December 2004, there have been a number of developments that affect the prospects for progress in the field of non-proliferation, arms control, and disarmament, which we can discuss.

In keeping with the committee's previous interests, I will focus primarily on the situation surrounding weapons of mass destruction, but I will also touch upon initiatives relating to conventional arms control and outer space.

Canada has long supported an international order that is premised on a rules-based system that seeks to ensure peace and security through the rule of law and the peaceful settlement of disputes. With respect to weapons, Canada has sought to eliminate the most devastating category, the so-called weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, and to work out accords to control other weapons with a view to minimizing the potentially harmful effects in terms of security, international and human. Both strategic and humanitarian motivations have therefore driven our non-proliferation and disarmament policy at the international level.

Chemical and biological weapons are the subjects of complete bans under widely respected international treaties, the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention of 1975 and the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997, under which these weapons have been or will soon be eliminated from state arsenals. The need to ensure the implementation of these accords is, however, ongoing and demands sustained engagement.

The biological weapons convention, for example, which lacks verification provisions, concluded a successful review conference last December with an agreement to strengthen its operations. Annual meetings of state parties as well as separate annual meetings of experts to consider specific relevant topics were agreed, as was the creation of a small implementation support unit comprising three full-time staff members in Geneva. These measures, while modest in appearance, are actually vital signs of commitment by the 155 states parties to sustaining the power of the treaty and enhancing its implementation.

The situation with chemical weapons is even more encouraging. It has 182 states parties and another six signatory states. Of the six declared possessor states, four will have completed destruction of their chemical weapons well before the April 2012 deadline, while the remaining two, the U.S.A. and Russia, are making steady progress towards this goal.

Of particular significance, the CWC has an excellent verification mechanism in the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, headquartered in The Hague, and it has a highly effective inspectorate.

Nuclear weapons, while dwarfing the other WMD in terms of their destructive power, have not yet been subject to the same type of comprehensive ban as that applied to biological or chemical weapons. The international treaty governing nuclear weapons is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, NPT, which enjoys almost universal adherence.

The NPT, which was signed in 1968 and entered into force in 1970, is a relatively simple treaty that, however, enshrines a complex tripartite bargain between the five nuclear weapons states recognized by the treaty—the U.S., the U.K., France, Russia, and China—and the other 184 states parties. The former, nuclear weapons states, commit to good faith efforts toward nuclear disarmament, in article VI; and the latter, the non-nuclear-weapons states, undertake not to produce or acquire nuclear weapons, in article II. In parallel, all states commit to facilitate cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, in article IV, subject to assurances that such cooperation will not contribute to the development of nuclear weapons, in article III.

Although the NPT is arguably the most important international security treaty in existence and has yielded over its 37 years immense security benefits, it is also a treaty that is currently under considerable strain. The last few years have witnessed a variety of attacks on its norms: the covert nuclear weapons programs of Iraq, Libya, and North Korea—the last being the first state to actually withdraw from the treaty—the unmasking of the Pakistan-based A.Q. Khan nuclear black market; the protracted non-compliance of Iran with IAEA; and now UN Security Council resolutions regarding the need to restore international confidence in the peaceful nature of that country's nuclear activities.

In addition to these problems for the non-proliferation side of the treaty, there was also serious questioning by many non-nuclear weapons states as to how committed the nuclear weapons states were to fulfilling their obligations for nuclear disarmament, pursuant to article VI of the treaty and the decisions made at the 1995 and 2000 NPT review conferences. Many of these internal tensions were evident at the May 2005 NPT review conference, which failed to produce an agreement on any form of substantive document, an outcome that itself was symptomatic of the difficulties the treaty was experiencing and the breakdown of consensus around its current priorities.

Having just led the Canadian delegation to the first preparatory committee of the new NPT review cycle, which concluded May 11 in Vienna, I can tell you that much more work will be needed to bridge the gaps existing amongst the NPT members and to restore that crucial sense of common purpose that is required for its proper implementation.

Canada and its diplomats, however, do not shrink from a challenge, and I can assure the committee that we have played a leading role in terms of remedial action to reinforce the NPT's authority and integrity. We have consistently advocated for concrete and comprehensive implementation of the treaty across all three of its pillars.

We have also presented innovative ideas for enhancing the authority and accountability of the treaty via the establishment of annual meetings of states parties, a standing bureau for the treaty, provision for emergency meetings of the membership, annual reporting on implementation, and an increased role for civil society.

We will need concerted action across the spectrum of the NPT membership if the core commitments and norms that this treaty contains are to continue to function on behalf of humankind.

Let me now turn from the WMD to the other end of the weapons spectrum, the area of conventional arms. It has also been recalled that civilians, rather than combatants, continue to make up the vast majority of victims of these weapons. These are the weapons that continue to impede sustainable peace and development and for which humanitarian factors, and indeed the obligations under international humanitarian law, play a particularly prominent role.

Multilateral efforts to restrict the use of certain weapons that have indiscriminate or excessively injurious effects have been ongoing for well over a century. The Hague declaration of 1897, which banned the use of dumdum or exploding bullets, is an early example.

The CCW, or the Convention on Prohibition or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects—you may now appreciate why there's a penchant for using acronyms in our business—was concluded in 1981, and under its auspices several protocols have been developed prohibiting the use of such arms as blinding lasers and napalm. The latest—fifth—protocol addressed the responsibility of states with respect to explosive remnants of war.

Recently, attention has been given within the CCW to the issue of cluster munitions while in parallel several countries met in Oslo in February to start a process towards an international ban on cluster munitions that have unacceptable humanitarian consequences. Canada was one of 75 states participating last week in a follow up meeting in Lima, Peru to consider what the principal elements of an eventual legal instrument might look like.

The CCW will be moving ahead simultaneously with the meeting of the Group of Governmental Experts in June 2007, which will aim to provide recommendations for a negotiating mandate to be considered at the CCW meeting of states parties in November 2007. Canada supports both processes, as they are complementary to each other, in our view.

The Ottawa process resulted a decade ago in the Ottawa Convention banning antipersonnel landmines. That treaty which now has 153 states parties continues to make a major contribution to global security with an estimated 40 million stockpiled mines already having been destroyed pursuant to the treaty and the international trade in landmines virtually eliminated. Canada remains one of the most active supporters of the convention and mine action designed to implement it.

Combating the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons is an important aspect of Canada's foreign policy. Canada supports full implementation of the UN Program of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons and continues to take active measures to address the humanitarian and development impact of the proliferation and misuse of small arms while ensuring that the existing and legitimate interest of firearms owners, producers, brokers and retailers are respected.

We also support the UK initiative to develop an arms trade treaty which would provide a comprehensive legal regime to govern international transfers of conventional arms of all types. We hope to participate in the group of government experts which will be developing the framework for such a treaty.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, let me briefly turn to outer space—the “final frontier”, as a celebrated Canadian once described it. Our global village has become increasingly dependent on satellites for a wide array of practical services. We all have a major stake in sustaining secure access to space, free of threats of attack.

In Geneva, Vienna, and New York, discussions are under way in a variety of fora to identify further measures that the international community can take to preserve a benign space environment. At a conference on disarmament in Geneva, recent discussions and working papers have focused on two broad approaches—the development of a treaty prohibiting the placement of weapons in outer space and the identification of transparency and confidence-building measures that could contribute to ensuring that outer space does not become a new arena for military conflict.

At the UN in Vienna, much useful work has been done on space debris mitigation guidelines, with some attention now turning to space traffic management. Regulating this dimension of state activity poses many challenges, but through constructive international engagement, I see considerable potential for this sphere of arms control as well.

Mr. Chairman, this has necessarily been a very compressed survey of what the government has been doing in the field of non-proliferation, arms control, and disarmament. Given the time constraints, there are several areas of relevance that I was not able to touch upon in these opening remarks—for example, the global partnership at the G8, where Prime Minister Harper recently announced an additional $150 million contribution by Canada.

I want to assure you that I would be pleased to address those other areas. I would welcome very much any comments or questions coming from members of the committee.

Thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.

We'll go into our first round, starting with Mr. Eyking.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Meyer, for coming here today.

I don't know if you were here earlier, hearing some of the comments and questions that were asked during that hour. At any rate, I have a few questions now.

On the whole issue of the disarmament of nuclear weapons, I think one of the key times was in the eighties, during the SALT talks held in Reykjavik, Iceland. I guess that's when they really started talking about disarmament. Since that time, how many have we destroyed? Are we further behind or further ahead, I guess, on disarmament in the world?

Second, Canada seems to have $150 million going to what's called the global partnership program. Is that dealing mostly in Russia? And what do you get for $150 million?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Eyking.

Mr. Ambassador.

[Paul Meyer]

Indeed, on the first question, without having the exact figures, we've come down from about 60,000 nuclear weapons in the world at the height of the Cold War to the figure of 27,000. Clearly that's progress, but equally clearly there's a long way to go still.

On that $150 million contribution, yes, it's essentially in Russia and the states of the former Soviet Union. The projects include decommissioning of Soviet-era nuclear submarines and redirecting WMD scientists in those countries to non-military purposes. And there are programs securing sites where nuclear material is located, and biological non-proliferation projects.

As was noted, I think they all do contribute to our own, and global, security.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

When they are taking these weapons apart—and they have experts there, of course, who used to build the weapons, and you're putting them more to domestic use now—can they utilize the energy in them? Do they utilize the energy in these weapons back to domestic use, or do they just make them inert?

[Paul Meyer]

Well, it depends. It's inert for chemical weapons, for instance, and that's another area under the global partnership program, where we're contributing to the building of destruction facilities.

But with nuclear material, the global partnership program envisages the possible use of elements of nuclear material for what's called MOX fuel, where highly enriched uranium and plutonium is down-blended, and then the composite material could be used as a nuclear fuel. There are lots of challenges with some of that—technological and financial—but it's a case where you could say there's an effort to utilize the stuff of nuclear weapons in or towards civilian ends.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Meyer.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Do I have time remaining?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Yes, but the last question goes to Mr. Dosanjh.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

I have a very brief question.

In your presentation you talked about cluster munitions, such as cluster bombs, and you referred to a couple of processes that are under way, but nowhere did you say what position Canada took during those processes. Is it just to advance the process, or do you have an actual position that those munitions should be banned—which would be my preference, and our preference, I believe, generally?

[Paul Meyer]

The Canadian position is that they should be controlled and that munitions that create unacceptable humanitarian consequences should be banned. The question that will evolve in this is how you define exactly what those are. The meetings, both in Oslo and in Lima most recently, have been very useful in getting into that level of detail. But the stance we've taken is that we are looking at prohibiting cluster munitions that cause unacceptable humanitarian consequences.

Now, that's obviously something that has to be defined, but we are a very conscious of our obligations under international humanitarian law and under the CCW, the convention on certain conventional weapons, that I referred to, which clearly aims to ensure that weapons that cause excessive injury or are indiscriminate by their very nature are not used.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.

You have another minute.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

I want you to be more specific. You've given me a very diplomatic answer, and that's your job.

An hon. member: Not here.

[Paul Meyer]

Thank you.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

As a political party, we have called for cluster bombs to be banned—which I'm sure others support. In the formulation of a Canadian position, as you approach these processes, is that your position as our representative?

On other munitions, you may differ—

[Paul Meyer]

Well, the Canadian position coming in is as I described it. Now, that does not equate with a comprehensive ban. There are some countries who advocate that now; many do not, and we are not one of them.