Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
Most of the documentation I used for my studies on the subject came from the archives here in Canada but only by chance. The majority of the original documents had been deliberately destroyed around 1970 or thereabouts by persons unknown. I was fortunate, however, to find microfilm taken of these documents and hidden away in a dusty corner of the archives by a civil servant we will never know. That led me to do the study.
Unfortunately even the documents I had were incomplete and consequently I could not determine for sure whether in the post-war period Canada did dispose of its considerable stockpiles of chemical weapons. We had a mustard gas plant at Cornwall, Ontario, which at the end of the war had 2,800 tonnes of mustard gas. Most of it was dumped at sea, which raises some very serious environmental questions.
A few years ago the Department of National Defence made a concerted effort to get rid of any stockpiles we had. I am confident we no longer have them in Canada.
One of the problems is verifying what countries have in terms of their compliance with legislation. With a chemical warfare convention such as this one we rely very heavily on the sincerity and the good motivation of countries. There are ways of hiding these things. That was why I was saying in my remarks that the symbolic part of the chemical warfare convention is just as important as its actual practical measures.