Mr. Speaker, the bills tabled in this House, whether they are government bills or private members' bill, do not always have the same impact. Some legislation is merely technical, without any reference to principles or values.
From time to time, however, bills do affect us personally because they reflect our values and are for us an opportunity to contribute to the progress of human kind and strengthen our solidarity with the rest of the world.
Consequently, I welcome this opportunity today to speak to Bill C-87, an Act to implement the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction. The bill before the House today is a response to Canada's obligations to implement, at the national level, international commitments made by the Canadian government.
This convention, signed in Paris in January 1993 by more than 160 countries, was the result of 20 years of negotiations. In fact, I want to take this opportunity to note the leadership role played by Canada in the negotiations leading up to this convention.
Unfortunately, by January 1995, only five countries had ratified the convention, and today, only 28 countries have proceeded with ratification. At least 65 signatures are needed for the convention to come into force. The Bloc Quebecois is therefore pleased to support the Canadian government on the passage of legislation to implement the convention so that it can come into force as soon as possible.
To explain our position, I would like to provide a little background information on the use of chemical weapons in warfare throughout the ages and their capacity for massive destruction.
First of all, we must realize that the use of chemical weapons is not exclusive to the twentieth century. In antiquity, certain forms of chemical and biological weapons were already in use, although on a very limited scale. I am thinking for instance, of the custom of poisoning the wells of cities under siege or throwing plague corpses into the enemy camp.
However World War I marked the tragic advent of the science and technology of chemical warfare. On April 22, 1915, at Ypres in Belgium, the Germans used chlorine gas for the first time as a lethal weapon.
The result was horrible: 15,000 soldiers out of commission, including 5,000 dead. Sadly notorious, this gas now bears the name of the town where the slaughter took place and is still widely used.
Once this new weapon had been developed, there was a rush to improve it and make it even more deadly. At the time, since the wind, which was the main vector of the gas, could suddenly shift and turn against the user, science went on to develop projectiles that provided a better guarantee of hitting enemy targets. Bombs and mortar shells were used to accomplish this deadly task. Developments in aviation further increased the threat to civilian populations and the military. Meanwhile, science also tried to overcome the protection afforded by the gas masks in use since 1915. From now on, toxic gases were to become an increasingly devastating weapon on a massive scale.
During the Second World War, chemical and biological technology became even more sophisticated. Worse still, as increasingly toxic products were discovered, it also became possible to manufacture them on an industrial scale. The gas chambers and the thousands of Chinese gassed by the Japanese are examples of the horrifying consequences of this new deadly technology. After 1945, not only was the development of chemical weapons unprecedented, their low cost and ease of manufacturing also made them readily available.
Effective and deadly, chemical weapons soon became the poor man's atom bomb. In recent years, the use of chemical weapons has been most widespread in developing countries. Industrialized countries had already decided that chemical weapons no longer had any use strategically or as a deterrent because they had the necessary detection and protection technology. In addition, the two most developed blocks struck a
balance of terror at the beginning of the 1950s with the stockpiling of nuclear weapons.
The tragedy is that the have-not countries which use chemical weapons do not have access to the same kind of protection as industrialized countries. Since poor countries are unable to acquire the hydrogen bomb, they are using chemical weapons as a means to deter and to threaten. The balance of terror below the tropic of Cancer depends on mustard gas, which is dubbed the poor man's atom bomb.
The most recent demonstration of this was the Gulf war, which was an immense laboratory to fine tune chemical weapons. People all over the world were able to see on television the innocent victims of chemical warfare. On March 16, 1988, within a few seconds, 5,000 people from the Kurdish town of Halabjah died after neurotoxins were dropped on it. Unfortunately, Saddam Hussein did not stop there. In June 1988, he bombed the Iranian Majnoun islands with mustard gas and phosgene, killing between 10,000 and 15,000 people. Some 40,000 Iranians are still suffering from the after-effects of the many chemical attacks made by Iraq. In addition, according to a report issued by the Senate of the United States, tens of thousands of allied soldiers who fought in the Gulf war were exposed to Iraqi chemical weapons and now are showing pathological symptoms, referred to as the Gulf war syndrome.
Do not forget that this terrifying arsenal was built with the help of industrialized countries who, up until yesterday, continued to export large amounts of products which can be used to create chemical weapons. One of the reasons for the spread of chemical weapons is the fact that industrialized countries produce some of the substances used, certain pesticides for example, for civilian uses.
As I stressed earlier, western countries stopped using certain chemical substances for military purposes some time ago and continued producing them uniquely for civilian uses. I would like to remind you that Canada has already destroyed its chemical weapons factories.
This tacit abetment and lack of care in exporting toxic substances on the part of western countries have helped certain third world countries to amass a huge arsenal.
Libya is one of the countries that traded with the West in order to build up a supply and then began exporting this deadly technology.
This is how the government in Khartoum ended up using mustard gas against the people in southern Sudan, and how Somalia got hold of neurotoxins. Other countries where there is fighting, such as Afghanistan, Egypt, the former Yugoslavia, Laos and Cambodia are suspected of using these toxic gases, which quickly attack the nervous system causing convulsions, paralysis and suffocation. As states cannot be forced to submit to investigations, they cannot be condemned by any evidence, and international sanctions cannot be used against them.
Many of these countries have yet to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention. Iraq is one of them. For the moment, however, its chemical industry is not functioning, having been destroyed by a commission of the United Nations. Its arsenal of bacteriological weapons, the size of which we now know, did not, unfortunately, suffer the same fate.
In response to the horrors and destruction of chemical warfare, a number of countries in the international community decided to take measures to prevent the manufacture and use of chemical weapons. These countries had already tried to limit the use of biological weapons as early as the middle of the 1970s with a convention on biological weapons. However, as the convention did not establish a verification regime, it was not particularly restrictive and therefore of little use for disarmament purposes.
In 1925, with the Geneva convention, the international community prohibited the use of gas in wartime, but did not prohibit its possession or manufacture. Great thinking, Mr. Speaker. Prior to the 1993 convention, there was nothing in international law to prevent the acquisition and manufacture of chemical weapons.
I would first point out that the 1993 convention will benefit everyone and is in the interest of all developed and third world countries, even though it is in the latter that chemical weapons are most often used, as I mentioned earlier.
Canada, unlike other countries, does not have equipment for its armed forces capable of rapid detection of the dangers caused by chemical or biological weapons. However, Canadian peacekeepers are serving in countries which have or are supposed to have these deadly weapons. It might be more relevant to equip our peacekeeping troops with detection equipment rather than buying four submarines, as the defence minister is planning to do.
The convention is very far-reaching since it sets up a stringent inspection system aimed at discouraging states which might overwise be tempted not to abide by the terms of this international agreement.
In fact, certain provisions allow for the control and monitoring of the destruction of the weapons and civilian chemical industry of the signing parties, anywhere, anytime. Inspections and verifications will be carried out by teams of international inspectors reporting to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, created under the convention.
In this sense the signatories to this multilateral agreement are going beyond wishful thinking. They are equiping themselves with the means to ensure that the terms of the convention are abided by and to facilitate the implementation of the convention.
In brief, the convention prohibits the production, acquisition, stockpiling, transfer and use of chemical weapons. This ban covers not only chemical products manufactured for military
purposes, but also vectors and equipment used in connection with such weapons.
A planning commission has already been set up in The Hague to oversee the creation of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Several panel of experts have been reviewing different instruments and means to implement the convention. This commission is to ensure the transition to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
With Bill C-87, Canada is giving itself the means to meet its obligations under the convention, namely to gather information for the benefit of the organization, by setting up a national authority. Under its terms of reference, that national authority will also have to maintain a direct link with the organization and facilitate international inspections on Canadian territory.
Some information leaflets have already been printed on the subject and distributed to Canadian chemical companies to inform them of their new responsibilities and obligations under the terms of the convention. This shows how important the Canadian government considers the national implementation of the multilateral agreement on chemical armaments.
This commitment also does credit to the mostly pacifist attitude of Canadians in general. Let me explain to the House how much Quebecers are interested in world peace and security. Quebec sovereignists have already included specific commitments to that effect in the Parti Quebecois platform.
In the chapter on international relations, the Parti Quebecois promises to declare Quebec a nuclear weapon free zone and, consequently, not to permit any research, production, testing, stockpiling or deployment of nuclear, chemical or bacteriological weapons, or of any of their vectors, on Quebec territory.
This commitment is totally in line with the intent of the convention on chemical armaments. Also, there is no doubt possible about the intentions of Quebecers who definitely want their country to be party to that convention once Quebec is sovereign. Quebec supports this collective action on the part of the international community, which aims at the complete eradication of weapons of mass destruction.
Therefore, let me reiterate my support, and that of my Party, for Bill C-87 which will allow Canada to ratify the convention on chemical weapons as soon as possible. After all, we must not forget this is the first multilateral disarmament agreement which comes with an effective control plan.
