Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I am pleased to appear once again before the distinguished members of this committee.
The unanimous passage by the Senate on June 2, 2010, and the House of Commons on December 7, 2010, of a motion calling on the Government of Canada to deploy a major worldwide Canadian diplomatic initiative for nuclear disarmament was an act of historic importance. Never before has the Parliament of Canada acted in such a unified manner to address a paramount world problem: how to rid the world of nuclear weapons, which threaten the existence of people everywhere.
The fact that the parliamentary motion is backed by 550 members of the Order of Canada, a highly prestigious body cutting across all economic, social, and cultural lines of Canada, lends even more importance to the challenge now before the government.
How should this unique motion be implemented?
First, we must fully understand the nature of the problem. Counting all warheads deployed and in reserve, eight states—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, and Israel—together possess a total of more than 22,000 warheads at 111 sites in 14 countries. More than half of the world’s population lives in a nuclear weapons country. The controversies surrounding North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear actions pose additional problems.
Concerning the possibility of a terrorist nuclear attack, U.S. President Barack Obama warned at the 2010 Washington summit that stolen nuclear materials could easily be fashioned into a nuclear weapon. He said, “Just the smallest amount of plutonium—about the size of an apple—could kill and injure hundreds of thousands of innocent people.”
Terrorist networks such as al-Qaeda are always trying to acquire the material for a nuclear weapon. Such use, the President added, “would be a catastrophe for the world—causing extraordinary loss of life, and striking a major blow to global peace and stability”.
Also, while the nuclear weapons states bear the chief obligation to disarm, all states have a responsibility to build security systems without nuclear weapons.
In 2010, the non-proliferation treaty review conference put on the international agenda a nuclear weapons convention that would be a legal ban on all nuclear weapons. A model treaty already exists as a UN document. The NPT review conference also affirmed that “all States need to make special efforts to establish the necessary framework to achieve and maintain a world without nuclear weapons”. Also, the 2010 NATO strategic document pledged support for nuclear disarmament and stated, “We are resolved to seek a safer world for all and to create the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons.”
As a leading member of both the NPT and NATO, Canada has a serious responsibility to work actively for a nuclear-weapons-free world.
At the heart of Parliament’s unanimous motion is support for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s five-point plan for nuclear disarmament. Mr. Ban has called for: a new convention or set of mutually reinforcing instruments to eliminate nuclear weapons, backed by strong verification; a UN summit on nuclear disarmament; rooting nuclear disarmament in legal obligations; requiring nuclear weapons states to publish information about what they are doing to fulfill their disarmament obligations; and limiting missiles, space weapons, and conventional arms, all steps that are needed for a nuclear-weapons-free world.
The centrepiece of the plan is a nuclear weapons convention or a framework agreement that binds together steps to nuclear disarmament in a visible intent to achieve total elimination. It is now widely recognized that international humanitarian law requires not just the limiting or control of nuclear weapons but their complete elimination.
At the UN, two-thirds of all national governments have voted in favour of negotiating a nuclear weapons convention. In 21 countries, including our own and including the five major nuclear powers, polls show that 76% of people support the negotiation of a ban.
The European Parliament has voted for a convention, along with a number of national parliaments. Mayors for Peace, comprising more than 4,500 cities around the world, including 90 in Canada, is campaigning for it. Long lists of non-governmental organizations want it. In Japan, 14 million people signed a petition for it. Mr. Chairman, there is no doubt that historical momentum is building.
The Canadian government led the way in achieving a legal ban on anti-personnel land mines. It participated in the achievement of legal bans on chemical and biological weapons and on cluster munitions, and it was at the forefront of the creation of the International Criminal Court. The government’s scientific and political work on building verification systems has won it acclaim. The moment has come for the Government of Canada, supported by all political parties in Parliament, to turn its attention to working with like-minded states in preparing the way for global negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons.
The unanimous motion calls for a major diplomatic initiative. That initiative could begin by giving full support and co-sponsorship to a current draft UN resolution prepared by the middle powers initiative calling on the secretary-general to convene in 2014 a diplomatic conference to negotiate a nuclear weapons convention. I've attached the text of the draft resolution as an appendix to my brief.
Such a conference needs strong support from important and credible countries. Canada is well positioned to stimulate preparatory work for negotiations on a convention or framework of instruments for the sustainable, verifiable, and enforceable global elimination of nuclear weapons.
The 2010 report of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, headed by Japan and Australia, said:
Work should commence now, supported by interested governments, on further refining and developing the concepts in the model convention now in circulation...with the objective of having a fully-worked through draft available to inform and guide multilateral disarmament negotiations as they gain momentum.
Working in cooperation with the UN, Canada should consider hosting a preparatory meeting in 2012 to discuss the legal, technical, and political requirements for achieving a nuclear weapons convention. The government should issue an open invitation to all states to come to Ottawa next year to lay the groundwork for achieving what so much of the world wants: a legal ban on nuclear weapons. This action would indeed be a major diplomatic initiative in full harmony with our commitments to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, NATO, the United Nations, and President Obama's vision of a nuclear-weapons-free world.