Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in support of my colleague, the distinguished member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, in support of this bill.
It is a subject that has occupied the world community, as a general subject, since The Hague conventions of 1899 and 1907. In fact one of the most significant acts of international law making was the act referred to by my colleague, the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, the Geneva protocol of 1925. The protocol prohibited the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases and of bacteriological methods of warfare.
The Geneva protocol reflected the spirit of its time. You dealt in general prohibitions. You established the legal norms. There was not the same attention that, by bitter experience, we have given in recent years to the machinery for concrete implementation of general principles. This is one of the significant features of Bill C-87. It is not merely the prohibition of chemical weapons, it is prohibition of the development, production and stockpiling as well as use and it includes measures for destruction.
It follows on the experiences that we derived most recently from the INF treaty of 1987, the Reagan-Gorbachev treaty on the destruction of intermediate and shorter range nuclear weapons, that general principles without supporting implementing machinery and sanctions are like tinkling cymbals. They are noble but they do not bring us down to concrete reality. I welcome this measure.
I also welcome it as another step in the process of development on a pragmatic, empirical, problem oriented, step by step basis of general universal disarmament. The Sermon on the Mount in the large, general treaties is too often ignored. It is the poetry of international law. It is not the material substance of it.
If you follow through the period when the cold war was giving way to detente and eventually ended, it was by this step by step progression: the banning of nuclear tests above the ground and in the atmosphere in the Moscow test ban treaty on through the non-proliferation treaty, on through various treaties on banning of placement of weapons on the seabed, eventually culminating in the INF treaty of 1987. It is a process and this particular treaty is a very distinctive and very happy part of that whole process. Congratulations to all the officers who have been involved.
My colleague, the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce referred to the issue of ratification. This is one of the problems with international treaties. There is an attrition rate. Perhaps 100 countries sign a treaty but then when the officials go back home perhaps half of those only will proceed to ratify or ratify in a timely fashion. If the treaty is non-self-implementing, even fewer countries will introduce legislation to adopt it. We have signed, we have ratified and we are implementing. Thus attrition is avoided.
In terms of the treaty becoming general international law, some would argue as to what sanctions, what controls should there be. If I may, I will cite the general opinion of doctrinal authorities, of legal text writers. It is part of general international law as it now stands that the use of chemical weapons is against international law. This is the view expressed, as based on the evolution of customary international law through a number of international acts.
I have referred to The Hague conventions. I have referred also to the Geneva protocol. The view was advanced by the late President of the World Court, President Nagendra Singh and myself in a joint work on general disarmament we published in 1989 that the use of chemical weapons in warfare is against international law. In the gap between the signing of the treaty and ratification in good faith and implementation by individual countries like Canada, and the treaty finally becoming general law because of the necessary minimum number of state ratifications, that principle of international law applies.
Canada, in communicating its ratification of the treaty and implementation for other countries, might draw attention to the fact that it is not necessary to wait for the ratification by the minimum number of states joined by the treaty to have recognized the principle of the use of chemical weapons in warfare being banned.
The treaty itself goes well beyond that. It follows in the spirit of the INF treaty. It is part of this step by step progression toward a system of general international law and humanizing warfare-the oxymoron that is there-temperamenta belli is what it is called, reducing the agonies of war if it has to be conducted but moving toward a general system of interdiction of armaments.
The issue has been raised with this treaty, as with other treaties, of whether it is missing some of the major problems. One of the most serious problems today is the resumption of nuclear weapons tests. It may interest the House to know that in the same volume in which we suggested chemical warfare is already outlawed under international law, the same learned authors expressed the opinion that nuclear weapons tests, as such, are against international law today.