Madam Speaker, I am very grateful to the member for North Island—Powell River for raising the issue I had planned to raise here. I want to thank the hon. parliamentary secretary for his thoughtful remarks on the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act and getting it on the record.
Clearly, Green Party MPs will vote for this. However, the ultimate weapons of mass destruction are the nuclear weapons arsenals around the world. With the hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway and the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona, I attended the second Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations in New York. I want to stress that other NATO countries sent an observer group to that session. Canada did not even send observers.
As parliamentarians from the NDP and Greens, and one independent senator, we were there, wishing our government was there with us. Could the hon. parliamentary secretary explain why Canada has chosen not to even send an official delegation of observers to this all-important convention for the prohibition of nuclear weapons?