Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'll be very brief, because I know we want to go to questions.
Mr. Chairman, when you opened the meeting you drew attention to the report that this committee did in 1999, and I'm so pleased to see your two able research staff still with you. That report, Mr. Chairman and members, was a landmark in the examination of the nuclear weapons policies. It had the effect of having Canada go into NATO and secure a review of NATO's nuclear weapons policies. So we consider your work very important.
We have been here now five times. This is the fifth visit since 1999. We pay our compliments to the Government of Canada because of the leadership this government has shown in the international community in working on the nuclear weapons file.
Mr. Chairman, we have to get right down to it. The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. Kofi Annan, said only a few days ago that the world is sleepwalking--and that's his word, “sleepwalking”--toward a possible nuclear catastrophe because of the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the continued existence of nuclear weapons by those who have them. Thus, the Middle Powers Initiative makes an appeal once more to the Parliament of Canada, to this committee, to the Government of Canada, to speak out in the international community for a vigorous multilateral approach to resolving the nuclear weapons dilemma.
We're not suggesting that any one country could do all this alone. This is a very big and complex file. My colleague just referred to Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector in Iraq, who later headed an international commission on weapons of mass destruction, whose report was published last week. He said, in responding to a television interview when they asked him which of his 60 recommendations was his most important, that the most important of all is to get a comprehensive test ban treaty to shut off the nuclear arms race development. Thus, that is one of our principal recommendations.
You will find in the brief we have prepared for you recommendations that are in harmony with Blix's. Ours is what you might call a stripped-down version, and we're applying it particularly to the Government of Canada to instruct your diplomats to work in a vigorous manner with like-minded states. There are about 25 states that the Middle Powers Initiative is working with that all want the same thing. They want the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. They want a fissile material cut-off treaty. They want de-alerting of nuclear weapons. They want verification. So this is a matter of states working together to advance an international agenda.
I do not subscribe to the theory or the statement that's sometimes made that nothing's happening in this field or it's all too difficult. Not at all. We are in an historical momentum toward closing the net on nuclear weapons starting with the indefinite extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1995, the International Court of Justice saying in 1996 that all states had an obligation to conclude negotiations toward the elimination of nuclear weapons, and all states of the NPT in 2000 making an unequivocal undertaking on 13 practical steps.
So the chart has been laid. We're not wandering at midnight without a compass. We know exactly what needs to be done. What we need is the political will of states that will work together to ensure that the essential points that are made in this brief are carried out. That's the work of the Middle Powers Initiative.
I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for receiving us. We thank you again for the work that Canada has done, and we're ready to respond to your questions.