Towards Canadian Nuclear Disarmament Action

The following letter from Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention welcomes the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, noting that inasmuch as the Biden Administration will help to create a more favourable climate for arms control and disarmament, Canada must take advantage of this opportune moment to support and publicly call for action on key measures (briefly described) to promote real reductions in stockpiles and to reduce the risks of nuclear use.

January 25, 2021

The Honourable Marc Garneau, PC, CC, CD, MP
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Global Affairs Canada
Lester B. Pearson Building
125 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, ON
K1A 0G2

Dear Mr. Garneau,

On behalf of Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention (CNWC), we congratulate you on your
appointment as Minister of Foreign Affairs. In this moment of multiple global crises – the pandemic, the
climate crisis, and the heightened threat of a nuclear weapons catastrophe – the responsibilities of the
Foreign Minister and of Global Affairs Canada are extraordinarily important, and we write to welcome you into this key role and to wish for you strength and wisdom as you carry out your work.

As you know, CNWC is a project of the Canadian Pugwash Group and is endorsed by more than 1,000
influential Canadians, all of whom have been honoured by the Order of Canada. Our basic call, which you have supported, is for the international community to begin formulating the terms of a global nuclear weapons convention, the kind of instrument needed to codify all the agreements, regulations,
institutional arrangements, and verification measures essential for accomplishing the prohibition and
irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons. We understand such a convention to be a long-term undertaking in support of the universally affirmed goal of a world without nuclear weapons and that, in the meantime, there are urgent initiatives and measures to be taken to reduce the risks of nuclear use and to reduce nuclear arsenals on the path to zero.

CNWC has regularly written to the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister to make the case that the old ways of trying to build security — through escalating military threats and counter-threats — rob us of the focus,  human ingenuity, and resources needed to advance the security of the most vulnerable. The perversion of global priorities in the prevailing militarized understanding of security is best illustrated by the ongoing failure to properly fund the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the failure to mount a globally coordinated response to the present pandemic. It becomes clearer with each day that only an over-riding commitment to human security – building sustainable health systems, ensuring access to clean water and affordable housing, pursuing environmentally responsible food production and credible responses to climate change, and disarmament – will forge a path to durable peace and security.

The nuclear crisis is dangerously escalating. Nuclear weapons states are rushing to modernize their still
bulging arsenals, and the disarmament/arms control architecture is in a state of collapse following the
abandonment of a succession of key treaties: including the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (in 2001), the
Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (in 2007), the Iran nuclear deal (abandoned by the US in 2018), the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces agreement (in 2019), and the Treaty on Open Skies (2020). The 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty still lacks key ratifications needed for it to enter into force. For more than two decades the UN’s designated forum for negotiating treaties, the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament, has been deadlocked and has made no progress on a promised treaty, actively championed by Canada, to block further production of fissile materials for weapons purposes.

One notable bright spot in this grim picture has been the successful negotiation, adoption, and entry-into-force on January 22 of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The TPNW is a breakthrough achievement. Supported by a majority of United Nations members, it bans nuclear weapons possession by States Parties to the Treaty, paralleling the treaties banning biological and chemical weapons. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls it an “historic” development that will “form an important component of the nuclear disarmament and non- proliferation regime,” and that will reinforce the global norm against nuclear weapons.

We reiterate our call for Canada to join the TPNW while continuing its support of the foundational Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). We, of course, anticipate that the incoming Biden Administration in the United States will help to create a more favourable climate for arms control and disarmament, and we urge Canada to take advantage of this opportune moment to support and publicly call for action on key measures to promote real reductions in stockpiles and to reduce the risks of nuclear use. We thus again urge Canada to:

• Encourage the United States to extend the New START Treaty with Russia and commence
  negotiations towards a follow-on Treaty of deeper cuts;
• Work with like-minded partners to call on NATO to revise its Strategic Concept to radically reduce
  and ultimately eliminate its reliance on nuclear weapons, and to remove all US tactical nuclear
  weapons from the territories of NATO partner states in Europe;
• Call on the United States and Russia to declare they will never be the first to use nuclear weapons;
• Encourage all nuclear weapon states to remove all their nuclear weapons from high alert status;
  and
• Encourage the US, NATO, Russia, and China to commence ongoing talks on the conditions and
  requirements for strategic stability and disarmament.

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We urge you and the Government to make nuclear arms control and disarmament a national priority. We are confident that Canadian political leaders who publicly and regularly acknowledge the nuclear crisis, and who advance constructive responses, will have the enduring support of Canadians. We are also well aware of, and deeply appreciate, the work of the skilled officials and diplomats in Global Affairs Canada on this file. They need to be publicly supported and encouraged at the highest political levels.

Please be assured of our continued support for constructive disarmament initiatives. We look forward to
hearing your responses to the above recommendations, and to learning the details of your planned
attention the existential nuclear weapons threat more broadly.

Sincerely,
Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention (CNWC):
Ernie Regehr, O.C. (Chair)
Adele Buckley
Bev Delong
Cesar Jaramillo
Douglas Roche, O.C.
Jennifer Simons, C.M.

cc: The Hon. Harjit S. Sajjan, PC, OMM, MSM, CD, MP, Minister of National Defence
The Hon. Michael Chong, PC, MP
Stéphane Bergeron, MP
Jack Harris, MP
Elizabeth May, OC, MP