Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and honourable members of the standing committee. It is a pleasure to be here again, addressing you on behalf of the Middle Powers Initiative.
I'll be very brief. We had an opportunity to speak to some of you last evening, but I also want to turn the microphone over to my colleagues, who represent great technical expertise in this area.
Very briefly, I think the important thing for us to understand is that for many of us, nuclear weapons are not a fact of the Cold War, something we thought was dealt with when the Berlin Wall came down. We now see that in the context of 21st century security issues, particularly the issues of international terrorism threats that come from non-state actors, nuclear weapons are, unfortunately, still at the centre of that particular security agenda. They're at the centre of that agenda because of the slow progress in dealing with the nuclear arsenals of the major nuclear powers, particularly the United States and the former Soviet Union, Russia, which of course became the inheritor of the nuclear arsenals of countries like Ukraine, which gave them up. We also see there is a challenge to the non-proliferation agenda, the non-proliferation architecture in the world. A lot of this comes from the failure of many people to understand the importance of dealing with nuclear weapons and the threat they still pose to us.
On the one hand one can argue that the nuclear non-proliferation treaty was a great success, because had it not been entered into, had it not been negotiated, we would probably have a world now with anywhere between 40 and 50 states having nuclear weapons. If you can imagine that situation in the context of today's world with failing states, non-state actors interested in getting hold of these weapons, and the kind of threat that would pose today, I think we can see that however difficult today's situation is, it would be a lot worse if we did not have this treaty.
The Middle Powers Initiative is here for two purposes. One is to make the point that this is still an issue that requires the attention of all legislators interested in security issues, and also to remind this committee--not that it needs to be reminded--in the most friendly and supportive way of the very important role Canada has played since the beginning of the non-proliferation regime in being a great supporter of it, of being an architect of it. Canada was probably the first country that voluntarily agreed to be a non-nuclear power when we were very capable of being a nuclear power, having been partners in the Manhattan Project after World War II. Canada has a very strong moral authority to advocate for this issue and we have done so very effectively over the years. The message we have is twofold: one, that it's still a very important issue, and second, that we help the Government of Canada and the legislators here who are the very important link to the public. We'll continue to advocate Canada's strong role in trying to make this regime effective in the coming years.
I'd now like to turn the floor over to my colleague, Thomas Graham. You have the bios. We're going to very brief and not repeat those.