The Cold War has been over for more than a decade and there's an increasingly warm relationship between Russia and the US, but the 4000 nuclear weapons they possess between them still represent the equivalent of 80 000 Hiroshima blasts.
And Senator Douglas Roche says that's one reason why it is important for Canada to remain a leader in the drive to rid the world of these weapons.
In October, Canada was the only NATO member to vote in favour of a UN resolution calling for a world free of nuclear weapons. Three NATO countries — the US, United Kingdom and France — voted against it, while the rest abstained.
Roche and other members of the Middle Powers Initiative (MPI), a group of 8 international nongovernmental organizations, were in Ottawa to lobby Parliament to continue along the path toward disarmament. Included in the meeting were International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and its Canadian branch, Physicians for Global Survival.
The UN resolution that Canada supported echoed a 13-step plan to eliminate nuclear weapons that most countries endorsed in 2000 during a review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
That treaty was signed in 1968 and became law in 1970. The only non- signatories in 2002 were India, Israel and Pakistan, but the failure of NATO countries to support the resolution in October suggests a potential weakening of resolve.
Canada's solo stand impressed Roche: “It's a signal of where Canada wants to go, but it seems to be a lonely position.”
He and other MPI steering committee members, including former Prime Minister Kim Campbell, urged Ottawa to become a bridge between NATO and other countries interested in nuclear disarmament. The UN is to review the NPT again in 2005.
There is no doubt that the events of Sept. 11, 2001, have had an influence on NATO's stance, but Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information in Washington, DC, says the US has “learned the wrong lessons from 9/11.”
Rather than continuing to disarm, he said the US has resumed nuclear testing and development of new types of tactical nuclear weapons, and has opened 5 new plutonium disposal pits. Blair said nuclear weapons still “represent … a danger, [particularly] if they were to fall into the wrong hands.”
Roche ended the Ottawa meeting with a reminder of the massive task ahead. “We work on this today, hoping that one day our children will be looking in awe at the world that we built for them, and it will be one without nuclear weapons.” — Barbara Sibbald, James Maskalyk, CMAJ