Let me relate this to what I was saying in reply to the previous question.
Once again, I think we want to play a role and I think a role would be widely supported in Canada. But you have to consider how you're placed in relation to this question. I think the first step, in the case of further nuclear disarmament, would be for us to find out what the new administration intends to do in the United States. That could be done confidentially in diplomatic conversations, initially.
President Obama said more on this subject during the campaign, but we all know there's a difference between being a candidate and being in office. All he has said in office, as I pointed out, is so far very limited. What priority does he intend to give to this? If the United States intends to take a public lead soon, that's one thing. If he has decided that this is something so vast that he's going to go at it relatively slowly and not use up political credit early in his period of office on this project, that's something else.
Where do we stand in relation to it? Well, if the United Stated were indeed to take an initiative, it would require a vast diplomatic effort that would need to be supported by various categories of countries. There will be a task of persuading countries that have nuclear weapons. There will be a task of reassuring countries that could produce nuclear weapons. And it doesn't take much to produce them; when you think that countries such as Pakistan and North Korea can produce nuclear weapons, then there are all sorts of countries in the world that have the potential, including our own.
We were the first, really, to face that option and decide not to develop weapons. We have a unique standing, from that point of view, and an entry into the question and a right, if you will, to take an initiative in the absence, perhaps, of an American initiative. We would be representing a group of countries that have turned their faces against the option of developing a weapons program, and we would have to be prepared to deal with the people who would say to us, inevitably: it's all very well for you people to speak; your security has been guaranteed from the very beginning by the Americans, in the act of defending themselves.
You'd have to be able to speak to friendly countries, such as Japan, that are much more exposed and that obviously have the industrial potential to produce weapons--although it's almost unthinkable that Japan, of all countries, would ever embark on a weapons program. But think of how exposed the Japanese are, with China and Russia and North Korea. Countries in that position have a much less secure sense of their place, from this point of view, than we have. If we are going to step out and support a cause of this kind, in doing so we have to take account of anxieties of that kind.