Mr. Speaker, while the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs is undertaking its review of a report on nuclear non-proliferation, arms control and disarmament, this House is being asked to implement one of the instruments resulting from the international community's efforts to take “effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament”. I am quoting part of article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
The Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty was adopted on September 24, 1996 and has already been ratified by 21 states, as the Reform Party member must know—Canada is not among the first ones, since there are already 21 contracting parties. That treaty is one of the instruments created following the negotiations. The states that adhered to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons continue to negotiate in good faith and will hopefully achieve an ambitious objective that some feel is impossible to reach, namely the interdiction and even elimination of nuclear weapons.
The ratification of this treaty by Canada, and by other members of the international community, will be another step in that direction. Hopefully, the number of ratifications will multiply, so that we will reach the magic figure of 44 before having to convene a special session, under paragraph 14(2) of the treaty, to review the measures that could be taken under international law to speed up the ratification process and facilitate the coming into effect of the treaty at an early date.
The ratification of a treaty which seeks to continue the process begun with the Limited Test Ban Treaty—adopted on August 5, 1963, and to which Canada became a signatory on January 28, 1964—will be a major step in the quest for a planet that is at least exempt from nuclear testing if still not free of nuclear weapons .
A treaty such as the one that is the subject of the bill we are going to debate seems all the more necessary today—as the minister and the Reform Party member have reminded us—with countries such as India and Pakistan conducting nuclear tests that other nuclear power states have agreed from now on to abandon. These states include France and the United Kingdom, who made their commitment very clear by signing the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, as well as China, the United States and Russia, who also suggested they would no longer be conducting nuclear tests.
It is therefore appropriate, in the context of the present debate, to again appeal to India and Pakistan, as well as to Israel and South Korea, two other nuclear power states whose plans are still cause for concern, to heed the countless appeals already made to them and signal their intention to no longer conduct nuclear tests by adding their names to the list of nations that have already signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty.
Like the other signatories, these states would better serve the cause of international peace and security they have espoused by becoming members of the United Nations, and in respect of which they are bound to act under article 2 of the UN charter, by signing this treaty, which recognizes that the cessation of all kinds of nuclear explosions will help halt the development of improvements in nuclear weapons and end the development of new types of nuclear weapons.
By participating in the treaty's international monitoring system, which will provide a means of detecting, pinpointing and categorizing nuclear explosions, and which will also authorize on-site inspections for the purpose of determining whether suspicious events are in fact nuclear explosions, countries will help move humanity one step forward along the road towards nuclear disarmament. They will be helping to resolve a problem that originated with the use of energy in a manner contrary to humanity's interests, the misuse of a resource whose use for peaceful ends could and still can contribute to humanity's well-being and do us proud.
I am pleased to announce that the Bloc Quebecois will support Bill C-52, subject to consideration of certain amendments to improve the implementing legislation. This bill to implement the treaty in accordance with section 3, appears to be essentially consistent with the treaty and its schedule as well as the related protocol. It is designed to give effect to the treaty within the Canadian legal system and it seems to us that it contains the necessary provisions to ensure obligations will be fulfilled in good faith, as required under the pacta sunt servanda rule set out in section 26 of the Vienna Convention of the Law of Treaties dealing with the comprehensive nuclear test ban.
Amendments might, however, improve this implementation legislation, and I will have the opportunity a little later at committee and report stage to justify the Bloc Quebecois' proposed changes to Bill C-52.
The Bloc Quebecois will propose amendments to improve the wording of the bill in French, to make the amendment process more democratic in the future and to ensure that the person designated to act as national authority is accountable to the minister and, through him, to this House, for his or her participation in the implementation of the treaty. This bill is similar to the law to which his or her Australian counterpart will be subject under the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Act, 1998, which we have examined and which requires the Australian director to report to the minister and the minister to report to parliament.
As with other matters relating to foreign affairs, the Bloc Quebecois shares the values and convictions of the government party and the other parties here in this House. The values of peace and international security are at stake here, as well as the objective of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, which is to take the necessary steps to attain nuclear disarmament, That treaty, we will recall, was indefinitely extended in 1995.
The people of Quebec, whom our party represents here in the House of Commons, agree with this objective, and it is our duty to waste no time whatsoever in stating our agreement with any legislation relating to it.
I can also state before this House that the sovereign Quebec so fervently desired by my party will have absolutely no hesitation in continuing this international treaty and in ensuring its implementation, as Canada intends to do today, both internally and internationally.
While the government is today inviting us to be involved in an important milestone in the history of nuclear disarmament, we in the Bloc Quebecois are anxious to know if it will dare proceed further, as the Minister of Foreign Affairs led us to believe in the House this morning. Will it seek to take any innovative steps? Will it resist the temptation to stick with the nuclear status quo, or will it instead opt for taking a risk in connection with the nuclear challenge facing it, the international community and all of humankind?
The debate on non-proliferation, arms control and disarmament, which the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade will begin on Thursday, will give us some insight into the real policies of Canada, a middle power, a sometimes ambitious player. The Minister of Foreign Affairs demonstrated this in the crusade for the elimination of land mines, which he is pursuing with remarkable vigour, at a time when the Vancouver incidents are casting their shadow over a foreign policy which seems to have allowed truly questionable goals to take precedence over the basic freedoms of Canadians, of the students in Vancouver.
In addition to shedding some light on the government's attitude, the standing committee's proceedings will provide an opportunity for my party, the Bloc Quebecois, to demonstrate its desire to build an international community that, sooner or later, will be free of nuclear weapons, free of the balance of terror and of the terror that balance brings, “a world slightly less dangerous”, as Jennie Rosenberg, a doctor in Godmanchester, a lovely little spot in my riding of Beauharnois—Salaberry, put it in a letter she wrote me on September 16.
Ms. Rosenberg, like so many other people in Quebec, in Canada and elsewhere in the world, wants to live in a world where, as provided in article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the fiftieth anniversary of which we will be celebrating in just a few weeks, everyone is entitled to an international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in the declaration can be fully realized, an order in which the quest for peace, a fragile commodity at any moment, will win out over the threat of nuclear war, an order in which intelligence, not arrogance, will carry the day.