Mr. Speaker, this week, we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Ottawa treaty, an agreement signed by 156 countries around the world to ban the use of anti-personnel landmines. It is a ruthless tool of war, unable to distinguish between the footsteps of an enemy soldier and a child playing in an empty field.
Under the leadership of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy, Canada was instrumental in the promotion and negotiation of this landmark treaty.
Today, our energies focus on the elimination of cluster bombs. Cluster munitions post the same dangers to civilian populations that landmines do, with the additional characteristics that they are easily delivered and distributed over broad expanses of land.
Too often in post-conflict regions, farmers ploughing their fields lose life and limb while trying to put food on the table. Whole regions have been made inhospitable due to their use.
On this 10th anniversary of the Ottawa treaty, let us redouble our efforts to ban the use of a barbaric tool of war: cluster bombs.