Thank you very much.
A reference was made earlier in this meeting to the credibility of Canada. I had the honour to serve our country at the United Nations in disarmament discussions in many venues, and I always felt proud, in the sense of representing a country that had a commitment to what I would call the values of development, human rights, human security, and so on.
As a member of NATO, as a member of the NPT with a close relationship with the United States and Great Britain and France, and as a member of numerous other associations, we are instrumentally placed to play a role in getting this nuclear weapons convention off the ground. Other countries that would come to a meeting convened by Canada.... When I was asked whether I had conducted discussions in DFAIT, part of what I was discussing was this very question of who else would come. It's clear that the new agenda countries would all come. Those are Brazil, Ireland, Egypt, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, and Sweden. To that, you would also add the leading members of NATO that have called for action in this respect. Those are Germany, Norway, and Belgium. And I could go on. You have other countries in Europe, very distinguished countries, that are calling explicitly for a nuclear weapons convention, and I mention here Switzerland and Austria.
So you would have a range of, as they say in the diplomatic world, good company, countries in good company. I don't like to disparage, and I certainly don't want to disparage any country in the world, but there are a lot of countries in the world to which it wouldn't make much difference. They're fine, but the countries that I have named and associated like-minded countries, I believe, would come. With respect to the P5, the nuclear weapon states, would they come? I don't know, Mr. Dewar. I don't know if they would come to the first one. It might not be so important for them to come to the first meeting. It's only a preparatory meeting. It's sort of getting the thing focused sharply and so on. It's not a question of negotiating at the first meeting. This is not a process that can be done overnight. It's a process that's got to start because of the risks of not starting.
So I would be content and I think the Canadian government should be content with a conference here that had 40 or 50 countries. That would be more than enough, and you know, they've got conference centres around here in the greater Ottawa area. So it's quite doable.
What we are suggesting is an action plan that would be good for Canadians and Parliament and the government. It would not just be good; it would be a politically practical step for Canada to take in reaffirming itself in the world today.