The global disarmament environment is perhaps more polarized at the current time than at any period during my career. Strong views regarding the slow pace of disarmament by the P5 and others who possess nuclear weapons, obviously, have given rise to the current negotiations under way in New York on a nuclear weapons ban treaty.
Canada very much shares the frustration with the slow pace of disarmament. The prevalence and number of nuclear weapons—whose figures I have not brought with me today, so I can't quote them—is many times more than what is required for global security. Therefore, we have always supported the idea of global zero. We also support the movement, which has built up, regarding the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons.
However, our view of the current negotiations is that they are likely to deepen divisions between nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states in a way that is likely to make real disarmament in the future more, not less, difficult. Then we see in these negotiations the potential only for a declaratory statement. In this treaty to ban nuclear weapons, currently under negotiation, there will be no verification provisions, no targets, and no involvement by the people who actually possess the weapons, and therefore need to dispose of them. Therefore, the treaty is not going to lead to the elimination of a single nuclear weapon.
As a result of all of those dimensions—the practicality associated with it as well as the long-term impact on disarmament prospects—we've taken the view that now is not the time for that discussion. However, we remain convinced that earnest step-by-step negotiations with verification provisions toward nuclear disarmament are essential and cannot wait.
That is why Canada initiated a resolution at the UN General Assembly last fall, which I'm pleased to say passed with the overwhelming support of 177 member states, to initiate a preparatory group to lay the groundwork for the eventual negotiation of a fissile material cut-off treaty that I will chair for the United Nations. The elimination and restriction of access to fissile material, the material that gives nuclear weapons their potency, is almost universally regarded as the next step toward a world free of nuclear weapons. We believe it is possible to make progress. I'm very proud to say that Canada has led that effort internationally for 20 years now, and we will continue to lead that in the coming year.
I'd be happy to speak more about it as that process unfolds, but for now we're at a very early stage.