FAIT Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE

COMITÉ PERMANENT DES AFFAIRES ÉTRANGÈRES ET DU COMMERCE INTERNATIONAL

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, March 17, 1998

• 0915

[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham (Toronto Centre—Rosedale, Lib.)): Order. I apologize for being detained.

We're pleased to have with us today Mr. Epstein, who we've certainly met before.

How are you, sir? Good morning.

We have Phillip Penna, from the Canadian Uranium Alliance, and from the Inter-Church Uranium Committee, Marion Penna. We have Mr. Coombes from the End the Arms Race and Ms. Adelson from the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace. We're going to start with Ms. Adelson.

Ms. Anne Adelson (Spokesperson, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace): Good morning. I'm glad to be here representing Canadian Voice of Women for Peace.

When we were considering the question facing the committee, that of Canada's contribution to nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation, we realized there are two linked components. The first is the traditional foreign affairs kind of thing, our alliances and our membership in NATO. The second is our activities in international trade. We've had strong and consistent positions on both of those areas, but for the purposes of this discussion we would like to focus on the things Canada can do in and of itself to contribute to nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation without relying on any other country or any other contribution.

A number of the suggestions we will be making have also been made by other groups. In our brief we've endorsed some of these. We're not going to repeat everything everybody said.

You will notice we start with our recommendations. The reason for this is we don't feel we're here to give you an education or to dazzle you with our expertise. You have a clear mandate. You have to give the government some directions. Our job is to help you in your deliberations.

Any activity Canada does in foreign affairs and international trade has an impact. It's either positive or negative. It's never neutral. I like the dictum that comes from the Hippocratic Oath: do no harm. I think that's a useful way to consider the effect of some of our policies. Many of our recommendations speak indeed to ways in which Canada can do no harm.

We also talk about some of the ways Canada could make a positive rather than just a negative impact. We also would like to talk a little about the democratic process and the implied contract between citizens and their governments.

I'm going to begin by reading our recommendations.

First, Canada should end the export of uranium.

Second, attention should be paid to the use of depleted uranium in weapons and ordinance.

Canada should immediately stop selling CANDU reactors abroad.

Canada should not enter into any agreement to accept nuclear waste into Canada.

Canada should refuse in principle the acceptance of weapons plutonium, the use of mixed oxide or MOX in nuclear reactors, and any entry into a plutonium economy.

For economic, environmental, and political reasons, and health reasons too, I would say, Canada can herself set an important example by phasing out nuclear reactors and proceeding with the development and export of non-toxic technologies for energy generation.

An investigation into CIDA-funded nuclear projects should be made. Those CIDA moneys should be going into the rehabilitation of reactors or efforts towards a plutonium economy.

Public funding for CIDA should be in accordance with its mandate and principles. We would like to see the principles of peacebuilding and human-based security as the yardstick of all of Canada's foreign policy and international trade.

Finally, in this and any further recommended public hearings we would like an assurance that public input will be taken into account and that the democratic process will be respected.

As I've said, I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about the things other people have said. I'm going to speak more to the ones people haven't talked about.

• 0920

One is the depleted uranium issue. I've added an appendix from Dr. Rosalie Bertell, who is one of our members. There's a case before the UN human rights tribunal that is looking at depleted uranium, most of which is Canadian and has no civilian application. It does have a military application in coating bullets and reinforcing armour and tanks.

According to this study, which you will be able to read, it's very likely that depleted uranium has been responsible for Gulf War syndrome, imperilling the health and lives of both civilian people in Iraq and soldiers. We really feel that attention should be paid to this because this is one of the ways that Canada is contributing to the spread of one form of nuclear weapons. It is not a nuclear weapon per se, but Canadian uranium does make a contribution in this regard.

I want to go on to number 4, the agreement to not accept nuclear waste into Canada. Our timing on this is quite interesting. Just on Friday there was a release of the big study on the disposal of high level nuclear wastes, a study from the environmental assessment hearings. After ten years and half a billion dollars, they have said what we have been saying all along. They have confirmed that there is no safe, acceptable way to get rid of nuclear wastes. The panel said this.

We'll continue studying it, and we believe the government should take the next step and say that given that, we should be phasing out nuclear power so we're not creating more waste. We still have the issue of how to deal with this, but we don't have to compound it.

In addition to this, we should not be entering into any trade agreements that will make us accept nuclear wastes. This is not far-fetched. Some of the clauses within the free trade agreement and NAFTA make it look like we are not prevented from accepting nuclear wastes. When the negotiations around the MAI come up, which is very soon, we should go through with that with a fine-tooth comb to make sure we're not in the position of having to accept nuclear wastes through that either.

Again, with respect to number 5, our question is very timely. Canada should refuse acceptance of weapons plutonium, MOX. You've heard about this from a number of witnesses. Yesterday, as you may not all know, was an international day of protest against MOX. Hopefully we will later be bringing in a copy of the statement that was made. Voice of Women was a signatory to it, as were some of our members, like Dr. Rosalie Bertell, who I already mentioned. Dr. Ursula Franklin was another signatory. Going through the list of people and countries that have signed is very interesting. Many other groups are Canadian, but people come from as far away as Korea, Switzerland, Denmark, and the United States.

All over the world people are saying that the acceptance of MOX into Canada would be a grave threat to nuclear deterrence, to nuclear non-proliferation. We are particularly disturbed that our Prime Minister has said, without any consultation, that Canada will be happy to accept plutonium. We are very pleased that the test burn has been postponed. We are still distressed that the only way we, as Canadians, could make our voices heard on this issue was through the Department of Energy in the United States.

On the other hand, I know that people on this committee have recommended further hearings, but we would like to make sure that if there are such hearings, people are listened to, because the voices of protest against MOX are loud and many.

Maybe this doesn't seem like a foreign affairs issue, but it's a very strong one. Canada should be looking at phasing out nuclear reactors. As far as we're concerned, there is no division between the civilian uses and the military uses of nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

Canada has been implicated in the first nuclear bombs. We were providing the uranium and the expertise for the Manhattan Project. Even when we agreed to become a non-nuclear weapons country and all our nuclear would be civilian only, we have had a big stake in nuclear arms. India was able to explode a nuclear bomb using Canadian uranium and Canadian nuclear technology.

• 0925

As well, there's a blatant conflict of interest. People who are saying Canada should be accepting weapons plutonium or expanding our sale of CANDU reactors also have a high stake in maintaining a nuclear industry domestically. We feel this is all part of the same cycle, and the place the cycle should stop is right here at home. Everything points in the same direction. We should be looking at phasing out nuclear power.

We do have safe alternative remedies to it. I'm not going to go through all of them. I've quoted one. There's a fact sheet from Campaign for Nuclear Phaseout on renewable energy options for Canada. We have not put the political or the monetary resources into developing these alternatives. If Canada wants to make a serious contribution, this is one way we can do it.

I'd like to spend a little time talking about an issue that hasn't come up very much—

The Chairman: We have to try to keep everybody to 10 minutes because we have four people on the panel and we want questions. You're running well over time at the moment. If you want to spend a little time, I encourage you to do that, with the emphasis on “little”.

Ms. Anne Adelson: It will be a little time. I'm on seven of nine recommendations.

We were here to witness these hearings earlier on, and we were quite surprised and shocked to find that CIDA, the Canadian International Development Agency, had spent something like $16 million on nuclear-related projects, mostly in central and eastern Europe. We were surprised about this because as far as we're concerned CIDA's mandate is to support development in developing countries and to contribute towards a more secure, equitable, and prosperous world. In fact, we've quoted from their mandate and these are exactly their purposes.

We don't see why CIDA money should be going to AECL and Hydro-Québec at all. We don't see why CIDA has the expertise or the mandate to be doing this kind of study at all. When we wanted to try to see the studies, people were blocked. Irene Kock, a colleague of ours, was told this was not possible.

We would like to see an investigation into why CIDA is doing this, how this contradicts its own mandate, why money is going into Canadian crown corporations instead of developing countries, and particularly how this in fact contributes to instability and a lack of social justice. Certainly it does not contribute to the benefit of the global community. This is a strong field that we think needs to be investigated.

Just to add to that, we were very pleased with the peacebuilding initiative from the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. We very much agree with the aims. Human security, looking at democratic governance, human rights, the rule of law, sustainable development, and equitable access to resources are exactly the kinds of issues we in the Voice of Women have been promoting for many years. We're very pleased the minister has caught up to us on these issues.

We were interested too that much of the peacebuilding fund comes from CIDA—the aforementioned CIDA that is doing these nuclear projects. We feel there's a great contradiction in this. We would really like to see the principles of peacebuilding as the way that not only the department conducts its business, but the way CIDA accepts its funding as well.

We would just like to finish by saying that one of the appendices we've appended is the lack of confidence Canadians, amongst many other people, have in their governments to defend their aims, to defend the democratic interest. “The Doctrine of Legitimate Expectations”, which comes from common law, basically says that any governments, corporations or organizations that sign something, even if it's not legally binding...the people bound by it should have a reasonable expectation that they will indeed live up to the expectations of this. So I'm asking you to please do that, and we will live up to our expectations as citizens.

Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Ms. Adelson. I'm sure there will be lots of opportunity for questions.

Ms. Anne Adelson: Thank you.

• 0930

The Chairman: I have a few questions myself, particularly on CIDA. That's very interesting.

Next is Mr. Epstein, who, as you know, is a representative of Pugwash at the UN and on the board of the committee on disarmament.

Mr. Epstein.

Mr. William Epstein (Individual Presentation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's always a tremendous pleasure, and I think I'm not incorrect in saying it's an honour and a privilege to have been asked to be a witness to this important committee.

I am very pleased to be here. I think I was last here some fifteen years ago, and since that time things have improved an awful lot in the world, but not nearly as much as is necessary.

I wish to apologize for having overloaded you with a lot of written material, but I'm asking your indulgence, because I think the situation today is worse than most people realize.

I think the publics, particularly in the nuclear countries, have been lulled and gulled and they've become apathetic. They're teaching the continuation of the nuclear arms race, although on one side they're reducing and on the other side they're improving by making better, more modernized ones. I think the situation today is worse than it has ever been in recent times.

I'm the only person who has been at the United Nations from its very beginning some 52 years ago. I want to get as much of my stuff out—and that's why I asked your indulgence—during the few remaining years I have to do work on this subject.

As the chairman mentioned, I didn't do the one-page summary of who I represent and what they represent, because the NGO committee on disarmament represents disarmament. I'm a member of the board of directors, and I'm the representative of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs to the United Nations. That organization is trying to live up to the great honour bestowed upon it when it was awarded the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize.

I should add, too, that although what I'm saying is pretty much in consonance with both organizations, the details are just my own personal views.

After the end of the Cold War, there's no real danger now of a deliberate war by the nuclear powers, and there have been a number of very important, positive developments. Nevertheless, as I say, the public has become apathetic. They've come to accept this continuing nuclear arms race, even though 70% to 80% of the American people always vote in public opinion polls saying they would be happier and much better off in a world in which there were no nuclear weapons.

There were a number of very important positive achievements. I've listed them not only in my papers, but I've summarized them in my notes for today, which I've cut down to some three pages in order to squeeze it all, as much as I can, into the ten minutes I'm allowed.

But there's one thing I do want to mention. A year ago, the generals and admirals, some 60 of them from around the world, all came out very strongly in favour of getting rid of all nuclear weapons—abolishing them.

Last month in Washington, the civilian leaders, ex-prime ministers and presidents and important international figures, most of them retired but a few still existing prime ministers, signed a parallel balanced statement to, again, get rid of all nuclear weapons, outlining the intermediate steps on the way to be able to achieve that very important and difficult goal.

I want to say—and I'm very proud of this fact—that I was able to get the signature of Pierre Trudeau to that statement of leading civilians, most of them retired, and I don't think I need to explain to you people how difficult it was to get something like that out of Pierre Trudeau, who doesn't give any interviews or sign any statements. Nevertheless he thought that one was important enough to sign. I don't know whether it's going to impress all of you people, but I hope it does. It certainly impressed me.

A voice: Most of us.

Mr. William Epstein: All right. Thank you very much.

The optimism generated by the long list of important things—and there really are. I'm getting up to the second paragraph of my notes. I list them all except the fact that Pierre Trudeau signed it. The optimism has been largely replaced by growing fears that the way forward on the path to ridding the world of nuclear weapons has now been blocked. With the exception of China, the other four declared nuclear powers adamantly refuse to enter into any multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations, either in a Conference on Disarmament which has been named as the sole international negotiating body on disarmament matters, or anywhere else.

• 0935

The first item on their agenda, ever since they adopted a non-proliferation treaty in 1968, has been nuclear disarmament and cessation of the nuclear arms race, but they refused to even consider a program of action tabled in 1996 by the Group of 21—although there were 28 who signed it—in August 1966. There are no negotiations whatsoever going on now amongst the five nuclear powers, and so far as anybody is aware the START II treaty, signed in 1993, is not going to be ratified by the Duma.

In the Conference on Disarmament, the nuclear powers are only interested in one treaty. They are willing to sign a treaty on the cut-off of the production of fissionable material for weapons purposes. That was one of the four points put forward by Prime Minister Trudeau in 1978, and I helped draft the first resolution for it. All the nuclear powers at that time opposed it; now they want it, but only with respect to future production of fissile material and they refuse to agree that controls should be put on current existing stocks. But it is the current existing stocks...because of loose nukes and the deteriorating situation in the former Soviet Union, Russia, there are dangers of these weapons getting out to what they call rogue states or international terrorist groups. So the non-aligned members of the Conference on Disarmament say, we are prepared to go along with this if it is to cover all existing stocks and/or be part of a program leading to the elimination of such, but we are not going to participate in just another treaty for the cut-off of future production. That is just another non-proliferation measure. It has nothing to do with nuclear disarmament.

South Africa and Canada just a month or so ago introduced almost identical proposals at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva calling for the setting up of a committee to discuss what they might be able to discuss or negotiate later. It is a committee to discuss what they might be able to later discuss.

The Chairman: That happens around this town sometimes too, Mr. Epstein.

Mr. William Epstein: It is an old diplomatic trick, but it is no good unless it leads to good results. South Africa is a member of the non-aligned group and Canada is a very loyal member, as a rule, of the western group, but they have put proposals forward to try to break the deadlock. It has received support from all sorts of areas from the non-nuclear weapons states, but not one of the nuclear states has yet pronounced itself upon it. I stopped off in Geneva just a week or so ago on my way back from a trip around the world talking about these same problems, and I was told in private that the nuclear powers are basically against it. But they are trying to work out some sort of improvement.

If they really insist on doing that, as somebody said to me when I was in Geneva, the Conference on Disarmament is not only paralysed but it is becoming “increasingly irrelevant”. That is a terrible thing to happen when they are supposed to be the sole negotiating body in the world for disarmament. If they continue in this it is bound to have a negative impact on the non-proliferation preparatory committee that is beginning to meet in Geneva for two weeks at the end of April, and it could even affect the viability of the non-proliferation treaty itself. Canada from the very beginning—I know because I have been in this thing throughout—has been one of the strongest supporters in the world of the non-proliferation treaty.

As I point out later in my talk, Canada could have been the second country in the world to make a bomb after the United States—even before the Russians. They built a plutonium reprocessing plant by 1949, but they decided not to. I think it was a very wise decision.

Canada was also the first country to get rid of American nuclear weapons on its territory in 1984. So Canada has been involved in this thing from the beginning. My plea to you is to get a little bit more involved in the future.

• 0940

The nuclear powers seem to have forgotten in their arrogance that there's an iron law of military defence that says if one state has even one superior weapon, such as a nuclear bomb, which is the ultimate weapon, other states are bound to get it sooner or later. They're bound to acquire it. If they do, that's proliferation. They most likely all will proliferate if they don't stop this nuclear arms race and start abolishing all nuclear weapons. If they do proliferate, they will eventually be used, and if they are used, they will destroy our world. That's really how bad the situation is. The longer it lasts, the greater is the danger of some unintended catastrophe.

One thing I forgot to mention about the bad things that have happened is that in November, the United States issued a PDD, a policy directive decision, the first one since 1981, when President Reagan and Cap Weinberger issued one.

It's true they modified it a little bit. They say we're not going to have to fight two wars at the same time. Well, there isn't anybody who's going to have to fight with nuclear weapons right now. But unfortunately it was a step backward, not a step forward, because they reiterated their complete reliance on nuclear deterrents to preserve their peace and security. They reiterated that they were prepared to use nuclear weapons first in response to a conventional attack against any one of their allies or themselves, or in response—and this was new—to any chemical or biological attack.

I've circulated a paper by General Lee Butler, who used to be the man whose finger really was on the trigger from 1991 to 1994 in the United States, in which he makes a profound, wide, deep, sensible attack on the whole idea of nuclear deterrents. He says they're immoral, they have no military or political utility whatsoever, and they should be abolished. He says it would be actually immoral to use them against even a chemical or a biological weapons attack.

Those weapons can wipe out a town, maybe, but they're dangerous also to the users. Nuclear weapons can wipe out millions in minutes and destroy our civilization. I remember Perez de Cuellar once said there was no greater arrogance than those who want to use nuclear weapons as a means to deter war, when, if they are used, they will destroy not just the current generation but all succeeding generations to come. General Lee Butler reiterates some of that in a speech that you're going to receive the full text of.

The Chairman: We have the speech. Don't worry; we've seen that one.

Mr. William Epstein: Okay, good. I'm delighted you have. It's worth rereading. At least I have.

The Chairman: You're not the first one who's told that to us.

Mr. William Epstein: There are a number of real possibilities for action. We could make real progress.

Without even a consensus in the Conference on Disarmament, we got the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996. This was without a full consensus, but there were enough people there to work on it in order to refer it to the UN General Assembly, whose first resolution, adopted in January 1946—and I'm delighted to say I was there—called for the elimination of all nuclear weapons. That was in January 1946, and we're nowhere near that now.

Another reason for the possibilities is that we might be able to take advantage of this wonderful Ottawa process that Canada and Lloyd Axworthy started. There's no reason in the world you cannot call any conference of any people to come to Ottawa to work out any treaty you want. Three nuclear powers were opposed to the anti-personnel landmines ban, and yet Canada went ahead and it worked beautifully.

In addition to that, another thing is that an official UN document has now been tabled, and the number is A/C.1/52—that's for the 52nd session—number 7. It was introduced and can be introduced and discussed by any member of the Conference on Disarmament or at the forthcoming Non-Proliferation Treaty prep con or at the United Nations General Assembly.

Although the United Nations General Assembly cannot make binding decisions on anybody, as the Security Council can, it can make recommendations on anything. They can make a series of recommendations. They can urge the nuclear powers.

• 0945

I list here five steps, and these things I list are the same as are listed by the Canberra Commission, and, what is more important, in the unanimous report put out a year ago by the National Academy of Sciences in the United States, a very, very influential body. They have come out with these same basic ideas.

The first and most important point is that they should take nuclear weapons off immediate hair-trigger alert. They did that to the U.S. bombers but they have not on missiles. They did it for aircraft. They can be recalled even after they have been launched for an hour or two, but you cannot recall missiles from submarines or land-based missiles. General Butler makes a tremendous plea to do that.

That's why not only do you have to de-alert them and separate the warheads from the missiles but you have to have declarations of no first use of nuclear weapons. That is terribly important, I think, because we nearly got into a nuclear war. It's amazing how close we were. The black box was brought into Yeltsin's office to stand by to press the button when Norway sent up a scientific rocket in January 1995 and they mistook this on their radars as a possible missile. Just in the nick of time the message the Norwegians had sent to the scientific people in Russia finally got through to the military people. They tracked it down that it was a scientific rocket. That's the way the entire world could have been destroyed. Nobody seems to know much about that story, but it's true. You can look into it.

So we have to link the de-alerting with no first use. Then we have to do the next thing, to end the deployment of what they call non-strategic, tactical, or battlefield nuclear weapons in Europe. Only about 150 are left. There used to be thousands and thousands there, outside the territories of the United States and the Soviet Union. Now they are down to 150. They should pull them all back to their own territories, because these are the most dangerous, these tactical weapons. If there's any danger of their being overrun in some sort of little conventional attack, you know the old rule of “use them or lose them”. There will be an awful temptation for local commanders to use them rather than lose them, and that could trigger another nuclear war. It's just too damned dangerous for the survival of humankind to permit such things to go on.

So the first and most important point I'm urging, and I will be making it a little plainer later, is that Canada should take the lead in getting rid of these, in calling for no first use and in de-alerting nuclear weapons.

There are three other things I have. We should get the Russians to resume their bilateral talks.

The Chairman: I'm about to use my first-strike, first-use prerogative as chairman and tell you you're now into 15 minutes. I don't like to interrupt you, because what you're saying is very important, but it's not fair to the other witnesses and what happens is—

Mr. William Epstein: I apologize. If you'll give me just one more minute I'll make my formal proposal.

The International Court of Justice I think came up with something that implies they know first use would be illegal. Since the nuclear powers are not complying with their obligation, and the court found unanimously that they have an obligation not merely to conduct but also to conclude the negotiations for the elimination of nuclear weapons.... That was part of our legal obligation. It was a unanimous one. The president of the court calls it “this evil weapon”. This is now binding customary international law.

I think what should be done is that we should have another go-round at the International Court of Justice, asking two questions: are the nuclear powers in compliance and is there any legal first use of nuclear weapons?

I list several other little points. We now have this draft model nuclear weapons treaty. You can call the conference in Canada to discuss this thing. If the nuclear powers come, fine. If they don't come, then let's have another meeting, as already called for by Mexico, of non-nuclear weapons states. A conference was held in 1968, but unfortunately after the NPT was signed. There was a tremendous battle to postpone it until afterwards. They finally gave in because they didn't want the NPT to be that much in danger.

• 0950

That can be done again. Canada has a unique record in this field. There's no other way than taking some of these five initiating actions on some of these five things. I haven't gone into detail with the rest of them, but they're all written down in my written papers and notes.

The first country that could have had the bomb after the United States is the first country that decided really not to do it. It's the first country to get rid of all nuclear weapons on its territory. Canada has been so popular in the UN—it's one of the most popular—because we always supported the UN from beginning to end. I think Canada would be the ideal country to take the initiative, to be a lead.

I ended my speech at the Canadian Council on International Law—I'm glad to say it received a tremendous ovation—by asking: who better than Canada can lead the way? That's what my urging is to this committee and its members.

Thank you, sir.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Epstein.

Next, from Canadian Uranium Alliance, we have Mr. Phillip Penna.

Mr. Phillip Penna (Spokesperson, Canadian Uranium Alliance): Good morning. My name is Phillip Penna. I'm here representing the Canadian Uranium Alliance.

I submitted to you a written document with some attachments. My oral text has been submitted, and there are also attachments there for you to look at afterward.

Again, just to remind you, generally speaking, our concern—this is in the written text—is the nature of discourse around nuclear issues in this country. That is, when we talk about nuclear weapons, we feel we should be talking about it within the context of a whole pathway and not simply deal with it over here. It makes no sense, from our point of view, to isolate one part of the uranium pathway from another part of the uranium pathway. We discuss our opinion in our written text.

As I promised in my written text, I was going to tell you a story about two themes: foreign affairs and international trade. The story begins in 1990, when I was working with the Inter-Church Uranium Committee. We discovered that Saskatchewan uranium was shipped three ways: east to Blind River, south to Metropolis, Illinois, and further south to Gore, Oklahoma.

I decided to do some further research into this, and here's what I found. I found an anonymously written memo by a disgruntled U.S. Department of Energy employee that was called “America the Bluetiful”. This described the questionable business activity of General Atomics, which is owned by Neal and Linden Blue, and a series of articles about General Atomics' takeover of Chevron Corporation's uranium properties and of the Sequoyah Fuels Uranium Conversion Facility in Gore, Oklahoma. I found a series of articles about depleted uranium, information about Cameco's interest in developing laser enrichment technology, and information about some business dealings involving Fred and Paul Hill of Regina, Saskatchewan.

The anonymous Department of Energy staff person was upset by the dealings of Neal and Linden Blue and their company, General Atomics. General Atomics was negotiating an illicit deal with the Soviets whereby Neal Blue could take Soviet enriched uranium, swap its identity through paper transfers in Europe, and then sell it to U.S. utilities at long-term prices, thus realizing huge profits. The dumping of Soviet uranium on the market in the late 1980s may have been facilitated by General Atomics.

I note that at the same time I got this document, I received a phone call from a journalist in Blind River, Ontario, who, during a tour of the Blind River uranium refinery, asked about a large number of uranium yellowcake containers in storage there. The journalist was told that they contained uranium from Russia. I found this curious.

It's also curious that Cameco in 1993 began to negotiate a deal similar to the one described in the DOE memo with Russia. I have attached some information about that.

The article also described how the Blue brothers tried to get control of uranium in South Africa when doing so was very illegal. By using a Calgary-based company, they tried to get into an arrangement whereby they would mine uranium in South Africa, strike a deal in Europe or the U.S.S.R. for a paper-origin swap for the South African uranium, and then import it into the U.S. under some other politically acceptable flag. The Calgary-based company was Harvard International Resources Incorporated.

• 0955

I finished reading the articles about the Blue brothers' purchase of General Atomics. In one article I found out something that was very interesting. I quote:

The Blues are sole shareholders of General Atomics Technologies Corp., GA's new ownership entity. A third investor, Frederick Hill of Regina, Saskatchewan, a Blue business associate, was dropped from the buy-out team because of U.S. restrictions on foreigners owning interests in defence contracting companies.

Fred Hill is perhaps the wealthiest man in Saskatchewan and a fellow member of the Roman Catholic Church. He is also the chairman of Harvard International Resources Ltd. Neil Blue and Paul Hill are the vice-chairmen. The Hills and the Blue brothers bought the company in the early 1980s. Also on the board is John Edward Jones, who sits on the board of General Atomics.

I stayed focused on the issue of Cameco's uranium shipments to the Sequoyah Fuels plant in Gore, Oklahoma, a company that had a history of spills, over-exposures to its workers, and deceit. This facility was a defence contracting facility that produced uranium tetrafluoride for depleted uranium bullets, and the Canadian public through Cameco Corporation was doing business with it.

Sequoyah Fuels has been shut down since 1993 and General Atomics has formed a new company with Allied Signal to run the uranium conversion facility in Metropolis, Illinois.

I came across a 1988 licence from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Sequoyah Fuels Corporation had a contract to supply Aerojet Ordnance Tennessee with depleted uranium tetrafluoride. Aerojet was granted a licence to ship up to one million pounds of tetrafluoride to Eldorado Resources Limited's Port Hope Refinery, which is now owned by Cameco. The licence stated:

AOT will supply the uranium tetrafluoride to Eldorado Resources who will use it to manufacture Depleted Uranium metal for AOT's use in manufactured depleted uranium penetrators (armour piercing shells) on U.S. Department of Defence contracts.

The licence was to cover the period from spring 1988 to December 31, 1990. Cameco has denied that this contract was executed. Indeed, it denies that any such work was ever done. Yet the Department of External Affairs confirmed that Cameco Corporation and its predecessor, Eldorado Nuclear, has processed imported uranium tetrafluoride of U.S. origin into depleted uranium metal. The metal was subsequently exported to the U.S. for use in the production of armour-piercing munitions.

Cameco is presently trying to develop laser enrichment technology, known as AVLIS, with the U.S. Enrichment Corporation. It is doing some experimental work at its Port Hope facility, which is fed by its Blind River facility.

I went back to the article “America the Bluetiful” and discovered that General Atomics was actively lobbying for the contract to develop the AVLIS technology. Did General Atomics get that contract? Maybe.

Along with this contract with Cameco, the United States Enrichment Corporation has contracts with other companies to develop different aspects of the technology. These companies are Allied Signal, Bechtel, and BWX Technologies. So it may not look like GA got the contract, but it is hard to know, as Allied Signal is involved, and Allied Signal and General Atomics run the uranium conversion facility in Metropolis, Illinois.

Remember, Cameco ships uranium directly from Saskatchewan to the plant in Metropolis, which is co-owned by the Blue brothers, who are in deep with the Hill family. What relationship does the Hill family and the Blues have with Cameco? It's not clear, but it is clear that two of their business colleagues sit on the Cameco board of directors. They are Robert Peterson and Allan Blakeney.

Robert Peterson is the president and CEO of Denro Holdings Limited in Regina. Denro and the Hills own Crown Life Insurance Company through their co-owned company, Haro Financial Corporation, and Allan Blakeney sits on that board of Crown Life.

This may not mean anything regarding the Hill family and Cameco, but it certainly deserves more attention, since the Hills were trying to get into the nuclear industry with the Blue brothers in the 1980s via the Calgary-based Harvard International Resources and the purchase of General Atomics Technologies Corporation. Why would they then not try to get into a position of influence in Cameco? We must remember that AVLIS is not simply going to make it easier to enrich uranium for a nuclear reactor fuel. AVLIS is military technology as well. AVLIS will make enrichment much cheaper and easier to accomplish. If it is developed, the risk of continued and increasing proliferation of weapons-grade materials will also escalate, as the prohibitive cost of building enrichment facilities would be eliminated.

• 1000

If Canada wants to be at the forefront of the international effort to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons, then Canada should be questioning the trade practices and research and development endeavours of Canadian companies. Cameco's history of working with a weapons contracting company, General Atomics, as well as its own involvement in helping to produce depleted uranium bullets for the U.S., demands a response on the part of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

The added possibility of the Hill family and the Blue brothers influencing Cameco should also be explored by this department. This committee should request that such an investigation be undertaken immediately. You should also discover what mechanisms may presently be being used to monitor such activities, make a judgment on the adequacy of such measures, and keep in mind this question: why would a U.S.-government-owned nuclear company give such a contract to a foreign company?

Pierre Trudeau once said that in order to eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons, we must deny them the oxygen that keeps them alive. That oxygen is uranium. Canada's largest uranium company needs to come under greater scrutiny in its international dealings. They should not be allowed to engage in activities that either directly or indirectly contravene the disarmament policies of this country, not to mention the desires of the Canadian public to eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons in all their varied and insidious forms.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, sir.

Next we have Mr. Neil Sinclair from the Inter-Church Uranium Committee.

Mr. Neil Sinclair (Board Member, Inter-Church Uranium Committee Educational Co-operative): Good morning. My name is Neil Sinclair and I am representing the Inter-Church Uranium Committee Educational Co-operative.

This is the first time I've done something like this, so here I go.

Canada has played, and unfortunately still does play, a role in nuclear weapons proliferation. From the very beginning of the uranium mining industry, nuclear weapons of mass destruction were the planned result. During the 1960s, civilian power reactors began to consume uranium that Canada produced, but this did not halt Canada's uranium from ending up in nuclear bombs. The Canadian-government-promoted nuclear industry has shown severe naivety in its conduct with regard to this spread of nuclear technology.

When India exploded its nuclear bomb with the help of Canadian nuclear technology, a cold dose of reality hit home. The system tightened up and real concern was shown, but this still did not stop Canada playing a role in the escalation of the number of nuclear weapons worldwide.

Although Canada has a policy of only selling uranium for peaceful purposes, it simply does not work. Countries that maintain nuclear weapons programs and receive Canadian uranium do not have separated nuclear fuel cycles for weapons and energy. All the uranium goes into a common enrichment facility whereby it all gets mixed up. This was noted by the joint federal-provincial panel on uranium mining developments in northern Saskatchewan in their 1993 report. They stated there is no process for keeping Canadian uranium separate from uranium derived from other sources. Therefore there is no proven method in existence for preventing incorporation of Canadian uranium into military applications.

Our nuclear relationship with France is one glaring example of the failure of Canada's nuclear non-proliferation policy. The first nuclear bomb tested by the French was on February 13, 1960, in Algeria. Within a few years the people of Algeria won their independence. France needed a new test site. To no one's surprise, the rural countryside of France was not chosen. Instead, the colonial possession of French Polynesia was picked. Were the people of these remote Pacific islands asked if they wanted scores of atomic bombs blown up over their islands? No, they were not.

At the time, Nobel laureate, Dr. Albert Schweitzer was dismayed by the decision. He commented:

I am worried about the fate of the Polynesian people. I have been fighting against all atomic weapons and nuclear tests since 1955. It is sad to learn they have been forced on the inhabitants of the Polynesian islands.

• 1005

The first nuclear test to be conducted on Polynesia occurred on July 2, 1966. For the next 30 years, France blew up nuclear bombs in Polynesia.

You may ask what this has to with Canada's role in nuclear arms proliferation. For half of those 30 years, France has operated its state-owned uranium mining company, Cogema, in Canada, and specifically, in Saskatchewan. Since the early 1980s, Cogema has been in Saskatchewan mining uranium for export to France. As noted earlier, once this uranium leaves our borders, we lose control of it.

The Canadian uranium exported to France goes into a common enrichment facility where it gets thoroughly mixed up with uranium from other sources. France makes nuclear bombs. France also exports nuclear technology that has contributed to nuclear weapons proliferation. France blows up nuclear bombs in other peoples' lands.

What has Canada done about this? Nothing. We sat back for 15 years while uranium from Canada was used in nuclear bombs being blown up in the Polynesian Islands. Shame on us. What is really sad is that we might actually have been able to halt the nuclear bomb tests if we had stopped uranium exports to France because of their nuclear bomb testing, but we will never know.

Speaking of halting exports of a product to meet foreign policy objectives, I must comment on the multilateral agreement on investment, which is being promoted by the Canadian government. The MAI will severely curtail the ability of Parliament to put restrictions in place, as I have just mentioned in regard to France and its importing of Canadian uranium.

Under the MAI, exports are not to be restricted. Any action taken that reduces investor profits in any way is to be compensated promptly in an internationally traded currency, so it would be against the MAI regulations to halt uranium exports to France, and Cogema could sue the Canadian government for all lost profits. The MAI must be stopped.

My next subject is plutonium. Once again, Canada's policy is lacking. The recently proposed MOX fuel burning in Ontario Hydro's CANDU reactors appears to have a very narrow focus; that is, the payment from the United States will cover the cost of the broken Bruce reactor that is to be repaired. The argument that this will eliminate the plutonium is false, because as the original plutonium is being burned up, a new plutonium is being created from the uranium 238. Two-thirds of the original amount will come out of the reactor after the plutonium burn.

It is true that this is no longer pure weapons-grade plutonium, but it is plutonium mixed with many other radioactive elements. It is still possible to separate out the plutonium and make a nuclear bomb if people are willing to suffer the consequences of being exposed to high levels of radiation. In a recently declassified report done for United States security agencies, it was concluded that it is possible for a terrorist group to make a nuclear bomb if they have plutonium. They would need modest facilities and equipment.

Another important factor to note is that all types of plutonium, not just plutonium 239, can be used in a nuclear bomb. The problem of international security in regard to expanded use and potential theft of plutonium becomes that much greater with a plutonium economy. How does a country defend itself against a rogue nuclear weapons attack? The answer is that there is no way. Even a police state would be unable to protect itself from a small determined group with a small nuclear weapon; plus, the loss of civil rights would be unacceptable in our democratic system.

What we have happening today is a reversal of United States policy going back to 1977. President Carter stated:

We have concluded that serious consequences can be derived from our own laxity in the handling of these materials

—these being plutonium—

and the spread of their use by other countries. We will make a concerted effort among all other countries to find better answers to the problems and risks of nuclear proliferation. We will defer indefinitely the commercial reprocessing and recycling of plutonium in the U.S. nuclear power program.

Also, plutonium is an extremely dangerous substance without being made into a bomb. Terrorist groups could threaten to contaminate a water supply or areas where people live. To move towards a plutonium economy is a very dangerous step indeed.

Canada should not take part in the MOX fuel program. We should use diplomacy to convince Russia and the United States to use other methods to dispose of their plutonium and above all stop producing more, as Russia is still doing.

• 1010

There is a new generation of weapon we should be concerned about. I'm speaking of the new depleted uranium weapons used by the United States in the Persian Gulf War. These are a hybridization of conventional and nuclear weaponry. The depleted uranium, which is uranium 238, is used on shell armour to give the weapon improved warfare characteristics.

In our opinion, these are nuclear weapons. Although they do not create a nuclear explosion, they do explode and leave behind radioactive contamination. The half-life of uranium 238 is 4 billion years, so the land of southern Iraq will be radioactive for many years to come, thanks to the United States. The resulting radioactive contamination was spread over areas far removed from the battlefield itself.

Upon impact, a high-velocity projectile of uranium metal partially burns up and generates huge amounts of micrometre-size particles of uranium oxide. Like dust, they can be carried great distances by the wind. Uniforms or other garments contaminated with these particles can become secondary sources of airborne uranium particles, which will expose medical personnel treating the wounded, and if uniforms or clothes are returned to the original country they can contaminate civilians.

People who breathe these particles will retain many of them, trapped permanently in their lungs. The yearly radiation dose from alpha particles to lung tissue immediately surrounding each uranium oxide particle can be high and will continue to increase as long as that person lives. Year by year the probability increases that lung cancer will develop.

Indeed, it could be argued that depleted uranium weapons are weapons of mass destruction. Like biological or chemical weapons, all three share the same characteristics of microscopic invasion of the human body, with serious injury or death resulting. You could argue that depleted uranium weapons are the worst of all, because of their long-lasting consequences. Could it be that the Persian Gulf War syndrome many allied soldiers are suffering from is due to exposure to radiation derived from depleted uranium weapons? Many Iraqi civilians are suffering from increased cancer rates in the area where depleted uranium was left.

This weapon should be banned by all civilized countries, as chemical weapons have been banned. Those countries refusing to do so should be put under nuclear quarantine until they also ban this weapon of mass destruction.

Canada should cease nuclear trade with nuclear weapons countries. Also, Canada should take up the cause of banning depleted uranium weapons, as it did with land mines. This new depleted uranium weapon is one of the worst, because of all the people it will injure and kill far into the future, after the war has ended.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, sir.

Our next witness is Mr. Coombes, from End the Arms Race.

Mr. Peter Coombes (President, End the Arms Race): Thank you, sir.

I'm president of End the Arms Race, one of Canada's largest peace groups. We're based in Vancouver. I was going to start off today by thanking you very much for having me come to Ottawa. Unfortunately I have to complain. Within five blocks I froze from head to toe, walking here. I don't know if I should be grateful for the invitation or not.

The Chairman: Now you know what we put up with every year.

Ms. Raymonde Folco (Laval West, Lib.): It's a non-nuclear winter.

The Chairman: We just wanted to remind you how lucky you are to live in Vancouver.

Mr. Peter Coombes: I just wanted to remind you that Vancouver is in full bloom.

The Chairman: Most Canadians, when they come to Ottawa, say, aren't we lucky to come from where we come from?

Mr. Peter Coombes: Thank you very much for having me. I'm pleased to be your last witness. I hope that, being the last witness, I'll leave some small impression on you.

After that disarming little joke, let me move on. What I'm about to say may surprise you, coming from a peace activist, a peace worker. I agree with Mr. Epstein that today we're in a situation worse than ever. With the end of the Cold War, though, I believe the probability of full-scale nuclear war is relatively low. That's probably surprising to hear from a peace activist. What I believe, and I believe the evidence demonstrates, is that in the near future the greatest likelihood is limited nuclear attack, an intended catastrophe. We are now witnessing the political and technical changes that make limited nuclear war possible.

• 1015

Even during the recent U.S.-Iraq crisis there was talk, mostly rumour, of the U.S. using a nuclear weapon to obliterate suspected chemical or biological weapons facilities in Iraq. What's most important about this situation, whether it's true or not, is that the debate was presented as a viable and even logical solution.

I'm sure I don't need to elaborate on the ludicrous nature of nuclear weapons in deterrence at this point. You've heard it many times now from Physicians for Global Survival, Veterans Against Nuclear Arms, and the Canadian Peace Alliance. My colleagues here today and many others have already described the devastation of one nuclear weapon and the fallacies of nuclear deterrence. I'm glad to hear you've received copies of speeches by General Lee Butler, who has been very passionate and articulate on this issue.

In the paper I've presented to you, “The New Global Threat, NATO Expansion & Limited Nuclear War”, I outline the dangers of NATO expansion and the changing military policies. There is a tacit agreement of leaders of the western world that the west won the Cold War. According to this thinking, not only does the west have the right to expand its empire, but in the interests of western security we are actually obliged to do so.

NATO is a military pact. It's not, as some try to suggest, a framework for European common security, nor is it an economic or political institution. It's a military institution and probably the largest of its kind known to the world.

More frightening is American policy today, and consequently NATO policy, regarding the use of nuclear weapons. It has always been official NATO policy to use nuclear weapons first but only if attacked by a nuclear weapons state. As we've already heard from Mr. Epstein, it is now official U.S. policy to use nuclear weapons against any country that threatens its security by using weapons of mass destruction, whether they be nuclear, chemical, biological or radiological.

The new nuclear weapons targets are Third World countries, and prominent on the U.S. target list are countries such as Libya, Iran, North Korea, and Iraq. Adding third world nations to the target pool also meant upgrading weapons systems. That upgrading is already under way.

Russia too is taking on the same policies. In early 1996, following the announcement of intentions to expand NATO, Russia quickly and publicly rescinded its no first use policy for nuclear weapons. Even more significant, Russia plans to cut its ground forces in half by 2005 and will rely more on nuclear weapons for future conflicts. Russia's new military doctrine will soon be applied and they will potentially use nuclear weapons in local and regional conflicts or major wars.

In the meantime, China, Israel, and Pakistan will not give up their nuclear weapons as long as the largest military alliance in the world possesses them.

It appears, then, that limited nuclear warfare is a strategy being adopted by all countries now in possession of nuclear weapons. Among the greatest threats faced in the world today is that the social and political taboo that nuclear weapons should never be used is breaking down. Russia and the United States have adopted this policy, and essentially all the nuclear weapons states are developing similar policies. K.B. Menon, the Indian military attaché to the United States, states that India's

...official policy is that we keep the nuclear option open. The fact is if you were to get into some kind of conflict, even if you lose the war, you should be in a position to give the other side a bloody nose.

He's referring to nuclear weapons.

• 1020

There's also the development of new technology that makes it possible to use nuclear weapons within a more contained area, thereby reducing the overall destruction and death toll, making it more saleable. Even the potential introduction of an anti-ballistic missile system by the United States, and Canada's potential involvement, will make limited nuclear attacks even more feasible.

If all these conditions continue and governments remain ineffective at getting rid of nuclear weapons, then there is a chance—just a small chance, though—that a nuclear bomb will be used within the next two or three years against a rogue state. More likely, a nuclear bomb will be used within the next fifteen years. Sadly, as long as there are nuclear weapons and as long as these conditions continue, within my lifetime I believe we will witness for the second time in history the use of a nuclear bomb, and within the next 25 to 30 years. It will most likely be used against a third world nation, a state that cannot retaliate.

I think there are simple and clear recommendations. First, Canada must preserve its tradition of upholding the rule of international law by strictly adhering to the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice decision that the use or threat of nuclear weapons is illegal.

Second, Canada should withdraw from all alliances that permit the use or threat of nuclear weapons.

Third, through the United Nations Canada can help build a global alliance that is dependent on mutual or common security systems and not reliant on military or adversarial security systems.

Fourth, Canada should work closely with other middle-power countries to support de-alerting and no first use of nuclear weapons.

Lastly, Canada must and can take the leadership in calling for an international convention to abolish all nuclear weapons.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Coombes.

Before I go to the questions of members, I wonder if I could deal with one matter of business, in case members have to leave before 12 a.m. The report by the subcommittee on the MAI has now been completely distributed and we're out of it. I know many members of the public are still very interested in this report. I would like to recommend to the committee that we authorize the publication of another 750 copies, which will cost us $4,100.

[Translation]

Mr. Daniel Turp (Beauharnois—Salaberry, BQ): All right.

The Chairman: Thank you very much. Do you have any questions, Mr. Turp?

Mr. Daniel Turp: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to thank the five witnesses for taking part in our proceedings. I would also like to tell you that it is not because opposition members are not here that the Bloc québécois, as an opposition party, is not interested in this issue. I am here and I was interested in your presentations. I even had the opportunity to read some of the briefs before coming here today.

Just to inject a little life into our committee's proceedings this morning, I would like to tell you how surprised I was a few days ago to hear an astronomer tell us about an asteroid that could eventually collide with the earth—this is a current issue, isn't it?—and that the only way to prevent this collision would be to use nuclear weapons.

I was also somewhat surprised and interested by an opinion expressed by an expert very much respected in scientific and academic circles who criticized me for believing, like you, that nuclear weapons should be completely abolished under a binding international agreement.

• 1025

I was somewhat surprised by this view and wondered whether there wasn't a certain truth in his view that might cast doubt on your ideas and those of certain governments.

First I would like to hear you react to this issue, which has never been addressed in this committee. That may enable us to see whether or not it isn't a completely ridiculous idea on the part of someone who fears for the planet and its fate in the next century.

I would like to ask Ms. Adelson, Mr. Penna, Mr. Coombes and Mr. Sinclair a question concerning the MOX project. We are troubled and concerned by this project. It seems to me it must concern everyone who doesn't want nuclear weapons to spread throughout the world. Could you tell us the reasons why this project should not be implemented? Could you very clearly state the reasons why this committee should recommend that work not continue and that the project actually not be authorized?

We did not get a satisfactory answer on this from your colleagues and I would like to have one. I would also like to ask Mr. Epstein, whom I had the pleasure to hear at the meeting of the Canadian Council on International Law in October, the closing talk, and who has experience at the United Nations and in international circles, to tell us how Canada and other countries can convince the United States to change its position on this issue and convince the NATO countries to agree to have NATO amend its first strike policy and generally change its nuclear weapons policy.

It seems to me it is the United States that must be convinced on this difficult issue. But how can it be convinced on this issue when it could not be on antipersonnel mines? Those are my three questions.

[English]

The Chairman: Who's going to go first?

Depending on your answers to this question, we may have to change the name of the committee to the committee on foreign and extraterrestrial affairs. We'll see how far this takes us.

Mr. Sinclair.

Mr. Neil Sinclair: I'll take the first question, about the asteroid.

Even if we had no nuclear weapons or explosive devices in existence today, that asteroid is expected to pass near the earth 28 years in the future. There is more than enough time to build a nuclear device from scratch to divert it off its path.

If we didn't notice an asteroid until the last possible moment, it would be too late to use a nuclear device anyway, because it would be too far away to divert out of the earth's path. We would have enough warning time to build a nuclear device.

Mr. Daniel Turp: Would it have to be nuclear?

Mr. Neil Sinclair: It depends on the size of the object, but the only advantage to having a nuclear device is that you have a lot of explosive power in a small compact thing.

Mr. Daniel Turp: That was the argument. You need nuclear devices of that strength to do something like what would need to be done.

Mr. Neil Sinclair: But we don't need it, though, unless there is a threat, and then we can build it from scratch. We will never get rid of the technology; we'll always have that knowledge to do it. But we don't need thousands of nuclear warheads around the world, which I think are far more of a threat than an asteroid striking the planet.

The Chairman: Aha! There are more opinions on that.

Ms. Anne Adelson: I haven't heard this seriously suggested, and I'm surprised, as you were. I would think if we were going to be hit by an asteroid we would have enough problems to deal with without also dealing with the fallout of a nuclear explosion over the earth as well.

• 1030

So I would look at it, but I don't think we would need those extra problems as well.

Maybe I should move into my direct question. Why not? What's wrong with the MOx proposal? As I had promised, I was going to append the statement from Nix MOx, the international protest against MOx, which lays out pretty strong reasons that people all over the world are saying no.

The first one is it's not going to get rid of the plutonium. This is the way it's been presented, like we'll burn it up as if it were fossil fuel. Well, it's not fossil fuel. Plutonium is a man-made substance. It comes from nuclear reactors, so any nuclear reactor is going to produce more plutonium. It's not going to get rid of the problem. It might divert it a little bit, making it more radioactive and harder to handle so less accessible in bombs, but this is a short-term, minimalist thing. In effect we will still have plutonium, whether or not it goes through CANDU reactors.

That will cause a whole raft of other problems. I've attached this, but I can read some of them. First of all, we're going to be transporting this across the world, with all the risks of danger, explosions, terrorist attacks, and accidents.

It's going to increase corporate control and vested interest in plutonium.

It's going to be a further blurring of the boundary between civilian and military uses. A number of witnesses have already said how those guidelines are very blurred at the moment. There's no way of saying our Canadian uranium is not going to end up in nuclear bombs, and even if we were to say ours will stay in separate parts, any country that produces bombs will be freeing up uranium to go into it.

Plutonium is much the same thing. If you have military plutonium going into so-called civilian nuclear reactors, that's a blurring and a threat to the non-proliferation treaty. A number of witnesses have said how important it is to have some international treaties as well.

It has health effects the whole length of the way. It has environmental effects. It also has a great number of effects on our civil rights, because there have to be incredible safeguards, especially along all the miles and kilometres that this would have to travel.

It would cost us a lot of money. We would be subsidizing it. It would also ensure, which we think is not a good thing, that nuclear reactors would have to stay operational for another 25 years, even if it weren't in the best interests of Canada.

What else do you want?

Mr. Daniel Turp: Those are a lot of reasons, but what is the most important reason not to accept the project?

Ms. Anne Adelson: I'll throw it back to you. Why would you accept the project?

Mr. Daniel Turp: Some people say it has an economic value for Canada.

Ms. Anne Adelson: It does have an economic value. It would cost us a lot of money. It's not a benefit.

Mr. Daniel Turp: So is that the most important reason?

Ms. Anne Adelson: No. I would think the most important thing is it really makes the world a much less safe place. That's the bottom reason.

If you look at the doctrine of common security, this is really where things are going. As I say, we were encouraged that the minister is talking about human-based security as the way we have to look at our peace in the future. Military weapons, whether they're conventional or not, do not make the world safer.

In fact militarism is a threat to security. This came out in a recently released Carnegie report as well, saying militarism is actually a threat to our security. It's been portrayed as a sort of “swords into ploughshares” thing, where those dangerous things are going to disappear. They're not going to disappear. They're going to be around. They're going to be around for thousands of years to come.

Plutonium has this incredibly long half-life, so even if we could have the safeguards in place to say that plutonium won't go out in your mandate when you're an MP, what are you going to do about mandates thousands of years in the future? How are you to regulate it then?

• 1035

There's no safe way of getting rid of plutonium. There are safer, less risky ways. We endorse the immobilization thing your committee has heard about, but this will make the world less safe, not more safe.

The Chairman: Let me just follow up on that, because this obviously preoccupies everybody. The strongest argument we've heard is, “Look, we know this stuff is dangerous and we know it's crazy, but it would be better and less dangerous and less crazy if we had control of it rather than leaving it in the unstable Russian situation we're in today.” One of the witnesses has already said the Russians are going to turn to nuclear weapons because their conventional forces are deteriorating.

I was recently in Russia and talked to some American congressmen, who were saying that the system is seriously in default. The very example of the potential black box that was set out by Mr. Epstein is an example of the fact that their system is not working.

The argument that's made to us is this one: why on earth, if this stuff is as dangerous as you say it is, would you leave it there? Isn't there a duty for other people in the world to take control of it and ensure that it's rendered as “un-dangerous” as it possibly can be? This is not the prisoner's dilemma, but it's sort of...it's the dilemma. What is the least dangerous of these? That's our problem.

To tell us that it's going to be dangerous for us to take it...we've heard that and we know that. But what we need to know is whether it is less dangerous to leave it there. Or is it just going to come over the pole and land on our heads anyway if we sit here and say that we don't want it? That's what we have to worry about.

Ms. Anne Adelson: I'll just say one thing. Then other people have things to say. This MOX initiative would turn the plutonium into a commodity. I think that's what makes it very dangerous. If you could state right up front that it is a dangerous substance requiring delicate, difficult control, that would be a very strong statement from this committee. Turning it into a commodity, into something that could be used to very conceivably create a plutonium economy with many dangers...like “we've heard what was wrong with this but we can expand for the next little while”.

So first of all, by having it there you don't have all the risks of the travel. Somewhere in our papers we have a map of the routes this would travel on. It shouldn't be something that anybody could benefit from economically in the future. I think that would be the strongest reason to keep it there.

The Chairman: Thank you. That's helpful.

Mr. Epstein.

Mr. William Epstein: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Firstly, if I may, on the question of asteroids, I'm not an astrophysicist or anything like that, but I talk to all sorts of scientists. It's as you said; it's going to be years before they come this way. The first prediction said it was going to miss the earth by 30,000 miles. The corrected statement is that it's going to miss by 600,000 miles.

It's true that nuclear weapons have been suggested by a number of people because they have a tremendous force. But since there's weightlessness up there, and you know that astronauts get moved all around by just little puffs of air behind them, by the jet effect...then there are other suggestions saying that we have lots of time to develop huge conventional weapons that will have enough force to deflect it, and if it's going to be some 600,000 miles away, then we don't need to worry about that at all.

With respect to the MOX, I certainly agree with Ms. Adelson. The problem is that the nuclear powers are just awash with plutonium. They don't know what to do with it. There are only two things you can do with it. You can either burn it up in reactors or bury it somewhere down in the earth in plutons. I've heard that in the Cambrian shield you could go down a couple of miles—it's been stable for years—and you could bury it there, because it has a half-life...plutonium will last for a quarter of a million years before it loses its radioactivity.

I agree completely with Ms. Adelson when she says the idea of making plutonium a commodity or saying it's good to use for peaceful uses is just going to leave too much plutonium around in the world. The only thing you should do with it is bury it. If the scientists and the technologists were to spend as much time thinking about how to get rid of plutonium as they spent on how to develop plutonium and the most sophisticated and dangerous weapons in the world, we'd find a way to get rid of it.

That is why the only way you'll ever get rid of nuclear weapons is by abolishing them entirely. The only way you're going to get rid of the plutonium effect is by abolishing that entirely. The only way you can abolish it, because of its long period of radioactivity, is by burying it. There have been ideas about burying spent waste and plutonium in that mountain down in Utah or Nevada or wherever it is. I forget the name of it at the moment. If they were to apply their minds to it and really decide to get rid of it, they would find some ways to do it, and it would be a lot better than finding the ways of letting the thing continue in existence for years, with civilian reactors and other things, whether it's MOX or pure plutonium that's being burned. It's just too dangerous, because if you have that much plutonium around terrorists will get at it.

• 1040

On your final question, sir, how other countries can be convinced, and how Canada can convince the U.S. and other countries, there's an old saying, that in politics and diplomacy never, never means never. It took us four decades at the UN to get rid of colonialism, and boy, that was something people really believed in. The colonial powers dug in their heels, but we got rid of it. It took us about the same time to get rid of apartheid in South Africa. They said we could never get rid of that; we would never persuade them.

I remember when I was appointed to be a consultant to the Latin Americans when they were talking about denuclearizing their area. I was told then by four nuclear powers—not China; it wasn't in the UN—Bill, they said, you are wasting your time; you know these Latin Americans; they are good at making speeches and they are very good at analysing international law, but they never implement anything. Well, they did agree on the treaty. Britain signed it immediately, because it had Harold Wilson's government. France, the United States, and Russia said they would never sign it. They all gave good individual reasons why they wouldn't. What happened 25 years later? They all signed it.

Another thing that happened is when we started the Partial Test Ban Treaty amendment business, not only did all the nuclear powers say we were wasting our time but at that time the Canadian foreign minister issued a statement saying this was an irresponsible abuse of the disarmament process and because the three nuclear powers had a veto over it, it would never happen. We knew they wouldn't vote for it, but as a result of pushing for it, eventually we did get the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The test ban had sunk to the bottom of the international agenda. We at least raised it up to the top.

Nobody knows how long it's going to take. But the only way you can ever get rid of these weapons or get countries to change their policies is to get more and more countries to pressure them, to keep arguing, and to educate the public.

It was something in the nature of a moral crusade that led the world to get rid of anti-personnel land mines in the Ottawa treaty, even though three nuclear powers, Russia, China, and the United States opposed it. You'll see. Sooner or later they will come along.

So let's push and let Canada lead the way, as it did on the anti-personnel mines. They maimed 25,000 a year, but nuclear weapons, even if a few small ones are used, can kill millions in minutes. Let us just try what is the right thing. It may take a decade or two or three more, but eventually what is right and solid will succeed.

The Chairman: Mr. Reed.

Mr. Julian Reed (Halton, Lib.): I have three questions. The first one has to do with Mr. Sinclair's comment about the MAI and the fact that such an agreement would curtail, if I heard this correctly—perhaps you can clarify it for me—Canada's ability to control exports. Is that what I heard?

Mr. Neil Sinclair: Yes. From my reading and study of it and from talking to people about the document we have our hands on, one that was released early last year, a 176-page document, investors have the right to unmitigated export of their product. Any action taken by a government causing loss of profits such as halting exports would have to be compensated. It's like the way the Ethyl Corporation is now suing the Canadian government for $347 million. That type of mechanism would kick in place.

• 1045

With regard to Cogema, if we were to cut off uranium exports to France, Cogema, being an investor in Canada, under MAI would be able to sue the Canadian government for lost profits 20 years into the future.

Mr. Julian Reed: Are you aware of the list of reservations Canada has put on the table?

Mr. Neil Sinclair: I'm just aware of the ones from early last year.

Mr. Julian Reed: So obviously you're not aware that Canada has stated adamantly that the definition of expropriation, which is what this falls under, should be the internationally accepted one. It does not apply to business dealings. It applies only to the expropriation of hardware, that is, property, buildings, etc. That is what they call the narrow definition. It has historically been accepted by case law in Canada and is also accepted in international law.

I want to throw in the suggestion to be very cautious about comments on the MAI. We're only in our second week of negotiations. What you got off the Internet last May was simply a group of 29 countries throwing stuff into the pot that formed a draft. Negotiations are just under way now, and Canada has thrown in its lot in terms of expropriation—specifically what you mentioned—and said it will not accept anything but the narrow definition of expropriation.

Mr. Neil Sinclair: Okay, I stand corrected, but I will make one comment. We've been trying to get government representatives to come to Saskatoon to discuss the document with us and we've had no luck at all. Maybe that's why I'm a little less informed than you are here. The government has not made very much effort to help those people concerned about it find out about it.

Mr. Julian Reed: I don't want to get into a debate on the MAI, but I happen to be fairly close to it. Send me a letter and invite me.

Mr. Neil Sinclair: Okay.

The Chairman: Do you have a copy of the subcommittee's report on the MAI? Have you seen this subcommittee's report?

Mr. Neil Sinclair: No.

The Chairman: It's been available on the Internet for two months and it is certainly available as a public document. I highly recommend it. You'll see that the issue of a national security exemption is very clear. All international documents, whether from the WTO or anything else, contain a very clear reservation in favour of national security. We've always made it clear that our exports of uranium in this country are a national security issue. They do not and would never fall under normal trade laws. I don't think that would seriously be a concern, honestly, sir. I'm not saying there aren't concerns about the MAI—there are lots of them—but I don't think that has to be one.

I can see Mr. Turp is nodding as well.

Mr. Reed.

Mr. Julian Reed: My second question has to do with a comment Mr. Coombes made that the west won the Cold War. Does anybody win a war, Mr. Coombes, really?

Mr. Peter Coombes: I wasn't suggesting we won the Cold War. I was suggesting the common belief out there and the position put forward by many government leaders around the world, the media, and politicians is that the western world won the Cold War. It's definitely not my belief. I don't think we won the Cold War at all—not close. We both lost during the Cold War.

Mr. Julian Reed: Everybody loses in a war. I think you would probably agree with that. The notion that we won the Second World War is also thrown into question. We stopped a particular evil, but in terms of who won, if you look at history and the way history is played out, there are really no real winners in the end. At least I submit that to the committee.

Ms. Adelson talked about MOX, and I agree with a lot of things mentioned about it. Burning it in a reactor produces more plutonium. You could reduce the level by a little bit, but what do you gain? What's the net effect?

• 1050

Our chairman threw in the suggestion—and this is one that I happen to be in agreement with—that if Canada were able to gain more and more control of the available plutonium in the world, we could then possibly do something in terms of long-term safety with plutonium.

We've had suggestions to this committee that we vitrify it. I don't know how successful that technology is. I've seen with my own eyes vitrification of radioactive waste, but it has been liquid waste of different kinds.

So the question is, we have a dilemma on our hands. It's a problem that exists out there.

In terms of transportation of plutonium, I've seen the map, and it goes right through my village at home. I'm not the least bit concerned about it. If you spill a lump of plutonium, you can pick it up in your hand if you don't have any cuts in it, because the radioactive rays are so short they won't burn you. I see disagreement.

The transportation doesn't really bother me. What concerns me is, are we using the right set of reasons to make an intelligent choice, to make an intelligent decision? This is our dilemma as members of the committee. I am very concerned that the utilization or the consumption of MOX in our nuclear reactors will not really do a lot of anything towards the elimination of this problem.

A suggestion was made to bury the plutonium, and yet a recent committee finding published last week has suggested that it can't happen in Canada because the public is not ready to accept it. I think you probably have seen that report. So where do we go with this problem?

Ms. Anne Adelson: I'll start with the MAI. I am very pleased that this committee has reservations, that the Canadian government in negotiating it has a list of reservations.

From my point of view, and possibly some of my colleagues, I would certainly hope that those reservations become not just reservations but work their way into the legal text of the document, so that it's not just saying, well, we were a little bit concerned about these things. Let's make sure the legislation is airtight so that the things you were worried about cannot be problems under the MAI as it's signed.

I urge you to do more than just state what you're worried about, to ensure that unless those reservations are adequately dealt with legally, you won't sign those clauses; you won't sign the MAI. That's my point of view on it.

I would be very happy to read everything that is going on. When I spoke to my own MP and said I'd like to get a copy of the MAI, he told me I couldn't. I could get it off the Internet if I wanted to, and this and that, but the process hasn't been very accessible.

Mr. Julian Reed: Give me your address. I'll send you one.

Ms. Anne Adelson: Thank you.

Mr. Sarkis Assadourian (Brampton Centre, Lib.): Who's your member?

Ms. Anne Adelson: Jim Peterson.

Now I'll get on to the—

The Chairman: We've had a lot of requests in our office, too. The problem is, it's a very bulky document, as you know, and very expensive, and parliamentarians have a limited budget. If I had responded to as many requests for MAI copies as my office would supply, frankly, I would have to go to the Speaker and say, you're going to have to give me an extra $10,000 for my budget.

We don't have that kind of budget, so I don't think Mr. Peterson was being obstructionist in any way. It's just that our budgets are very limited and we have to choose how we serve our constituents. That has been a problem for us, because there's a huge interest in the country about the MAI and we want to be more responsive to it.

But I highly recommend you look at our report.

Ms. Anne Adelson: I'd be happy to.

The Chairman: The report clearly says the Canadian government should not and will not sign it unless these objections are met, and the government has responded to that by saying it won't sign it.

Ms. Anne Adelson: Fine.

[Translation]

Mr. Daniel Turp: Mr. Marchi was not clear on that in the House of Commons. It's not clear at all. I agree with your criticisms on the government's transparency on the issue. I'm very much in agreement.

[English]

Ms. Anne Adelson: I will respond to the question of what will we do about the MOX, which was Julian Reed's question to me.

• 1055

There isn't an easy answer. I agree with most of what my colleagues have said, but Mr. Epstein hasn't been in Canada. I was one of the people who was relieved when they said we can't bury nuclear waste under the Canadian shield, because there are a lot of problems with that.

There is no one right answer. Vitrification looks like the best of the bad alternatives. At least it takes it out of the whole economic cycle.

You raised the question about the instability in Russia. With a lot of out-of-work nuclear scientists, we really shouldn't be doing things to encourage them to get into a new cycle of nuclear technology that could lead to nuclear weapons technology as well.

I don't think it's going to be safer just to say we will have control over it. Even if you feel—people would disagree with you—that transportation is safe, just consider those kilometres of potential for theft, accidents, and terrorists.

MOX has gone missing. Plutonium, even with the safeguards we are supposed to have in place, has disappeared.

I don't think this will be safer. It's all very well to say that at least if it's in Canada....

I again draw your attention to the very long half-life of it. We might think we have a very stable country here. We are talking about a country that's 200 years old. That's Canada's history as a nation; this is talking about hundreds of thousands of years into the future. How can you make those guarantees for that far into the future?

I endorse, for the Voice of Women, the immobilization option as the best of the alternatives. I think it creates fewer problems than the MOX initiative.

Mr. William Epstein: In connection with Mr. Reed's question about vitrification and what other things you can do, the National Academy of Sciences, which is a government agency in the United States, did a report on the same question about three or four years ago.

They came to the conclusion that there were only two possible ways of dealing with it. One was to vitrify it in huge blocks or bricks and bury it deep down in the earth. The other was to burn the plutonium in reactors, whether it was pure plutonium or as MOX fuel.

They said they didn't have a completely good answer for either of those. More research and study was necessary because they failed to find a deep receptacle of iron or vitrified logs for burying. That hadn't been entirely solved, nor had they solved the problem of the burning up of the plutonium. They recommended that we had to continue for a while with both methods.

In Pugwash, we dealt with that for a number of years. I think it is fair and correct to say that, on the whole, we are opposed to the idea of burning it up, because this tends to legitimize the continued existence and possession of plutonium.

The best thing to do with plutonium is get rid of it. The only way to get rid of it safely is to vitrify it and bury it deep in the earth where it can stay for 250,000 years. That may be in the Canadian shield or something similar in Brazil, where there are stable, earthquake-free areas deep down in the earth that have been free of earthquakes for generations and centuries.

But as I said earlier, if the scientists of the world would only spend a tiny fraction of the money they spent on building up plutonium and nuclear weapons toward trying to solve these problems, we'd solve it very quickly.

Mr. Phillip Penna: I would like to add something into the mix here. I'm not disagreeing at all with what has been said by my colleagues here; I just want to add another side to this issue.

The discussion we have had so far around this table this morning has mostly centred around technological issues, which are important issues. But if you go back to that report on high-level waste that was issued on Friday by the federal environmental assessment panel, it gives some very clear and good advice on issues around the social aspects of these technologies.

• 1100

We have to remember that nuclear technology has social implications. All technology has social implications. One recommendation was that an independent agency would take it over, but we need to develop a technology within a proper social framework, and we've not yet developed a society, a proper social framework, to deal with nuclear issues.

Mr. Julian Reed: What do you mean by that?

Mr. Phillip Penna: What do I mean by that? We've not yet thought through the ethical implications of using nuclear technology. We've not asked what this means for society and what we would like to have happen in our society. How should society deal with this as a whole?

We very much piecemeal it. We have the Atomic Energy Control Board that licenses this, we have the environment assessment that does this, we have the foreign affairs committee that does this, and there's no integration. There's no integration at that technocratic level, and there's no integration in the whole society. We need to come to grips with the reality that we as a society have been completely determined by the Cold War and now what we're dealing with is the fallout, if you will, of that Cold War. We haven't thought about what that has meant for us as a whole group of people, as different cultures. What has that meant? We've never asked that question. That question will determine the technological innovations that need to be made.

What's happening now is technology is determining culture. What we need is to have culture determine technology. That's not part of the debate, and we need to have that as part of the debate. So I would recommend you go back and read that report, because it gives some very clear advice on nuclear waste, but it applies to nuclear technology across the board.

The Chairman: Mr. Penna, if we're going to have that debate—and I totally agree with you on a coherent policy—would you agree with me that we could only do that in an international context? We might do it in Canada's domestic policy, but ultimately, since this is a global issue, we'll have to address it at a global governance level as well. If so, is there an institutional framework there in which we could have a useful and profitable examination of that?

You've posed an extraordinarily important question, but we always bump up in this committee against the problem of the lack of the institutional framework within which to have these proper discussions.

Mr. Phillip Penna: Sure. I'll answer that question in two ways. I always answer a question in two ways.

The Chairman: You must be a Liberal.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Phillip Penna: We won't get into that.

[Translation]

Mr. Daniel Turp: You are a Cartesian.

[English]

Mr. Phillip Penna: The first way is that at the national level we need to create that structure itself. If we want to have that reflected internationally, we have to have a base at the national level and subsequently at regional levels as well, particularly in Canada, because we're very regional.

At the international level, the suggestions that Bill Epstein has put forward around modelling after the Ottawa conference.... We need to explore that possibility around this issue further, but on a permanent basis. A permanent basis is what we need. We need a permanent forum to discuss this as a societal issue.

The Chairman: Sorry to interrupt.

Mr. Assadourian.

Mr. Sarkis Assadourian: In this brief, Ms. Adelson, on the first page you say, “If you want peace, prepare for peace.” Some people who have come here as witnesses in the past have told us that one way to prepare for peace is to prepare for war so you can avoid it. I suppose that's not the way you feel about it, but if you can elaborate on that, I would really appreciate it.

Then, on your recommendation 3, you didn't go into details when you made your presentation. It's a shame on my part to skip the subject without raising it, and I'm sure the chair agrees with me. You oppose CANDU reactor sales to Turkey. The argument some people use—not me, but some people in this committee and outside this committee—is that a CANDU reactor sale will generate economic benefits: each billion-dollar investment brings in 10,000 jobs or whatever.

Another argument they use is if we don't sell it, the Germans, the French, the Italians, the Americans, or the British will sell it. Someone will sell reactors to Turkey. And if none of those countries sell, Russia will sell for sure. Obviously they're selling it to Iran.

The other argument can be used for or against, depending on which side of the fence you are on. If Israel gets a nuclear weapon somehow, it would be advisable, if that's the case.... Since if you prepare for war, you achieve peace, maybe we should sell CANDU reactors to Syria to balance the situation in the region, or maybe we should even sell to Greece to balance the situation with Turkey.

• 1105

Do you agree we should do this: just because we want to prepare for peace, we give the CANDU to anybody who pays the money? It creates jobs, benefits. Or do you have a different perspective on it?

Mr. Daniel Turp: You don't want us to sell CANDU reactors to Turkey.

Mr. Sarkis Assadourian: No, some people say if you sell to Turkey it creates jobs. What I'm saying is if that's the case, let's sell one to Syria, one to Iraq, one to Greece. We'll balance the situation there too.

Ms. Anne Adelson: I don't think you'll be surprised to hear me say I don't think we should be selling CANDU reactors to Turkey, Greece, Syria, Israel, or anybody else. I think this is very much making the world a less stable place.

The reason I glossed over that recommendation is not that I don't think it's important. I was here when you mentioned the motion you were going to put forward. I felt the committee had probably heard about this and had enough background to take note. I just wanted to allot my time differently.

I would just like to get back to this matter of if you want to prepare for peace. I think it very much ties in with the whole debate about where we want to go, which is a values debate. We've let the technology rule us.

Things are changing. On a micro-level look, the world is a very dangerous place. If you look at it over a longer term, there is a change, a gradual shift. I think it started with the Agenda for Peace that came out through the UN. It started talking about peacekeeping and post-conflict peacebuilding. Of course Canada had a leading role in peacekeeping, and now I think Canada is taking a leading role in where the peace process is going, which is peacebuilding, not just post-conflict peacebuilding after a situation but looking at the long-term solutions for how to make the world a better place.

I get back to what I hope all of you on this committee are sufficiently aware of and enthusiastic about, the peacebuilding initiative of the minister. It's the right direction for the future. That should be the blueprint with which we look at all our policies. Do they make the world a safer place? Do they make it a less dangerous or a more dangerous place? It's an extraordinarily broad thing.

Of course, when you were saying we need to look at things internationally, we do. We are a unit. The only way to look at security is on a global level. Peacebuilding is the effort to strengthen the prospects for peace and decrease the likelihood of violent conflicts. If we want peace, we have to create the conditions that make peace possible. If that can be the mandate of this committee, I think you've done a wonderful job.

Peacebuilding is looking at things such as improving democratic governance, improving human rights, sustainable development, equitable access to resources. Just a few years ago these were not seen as part of peace, so I think the definition of peace is becoming much broader. Canada has the potential to play a leading role in this.

So again, when I talked about CIDA—and nobody has asked questions about that—and how CIDA has a role in peacebuilding as part of its development work, through sustainable development and democratic governance abroad, it's an incredibly important role. We have to look at how the resources are balanced: $10 million went into that fund, DFAIT, and CIDA are managing it, but most of the funding is going through CIDA. This is a very interesting partnership that is beginning to develop. Unfortunately, from our perspective this was overshadowed by the $16 million that went into nuclear-related CIDA projects, which I don't think make the world a safer place.

That's the broad context. Another thing is “if we're not going to do it, somebody else will”.

People brought up South Africa, which I have a strong attachment to. That's my native country. I was very distressed to see that kind of logic coming from one of the most prestigious statesmen we have, Nelson Mandela: let's sell arms; if we don't, somebody else will. I think that's exactly the kind of attitude.... We need to say, let's not care about everybody else; what can Canada do to make the world a safer place?

I hope this is the way you will look at the recommendations you make. We certainly oppose.... I'm one of the signatories of “Let's not sell CANDU reactors to Turkey or anywhere else”.

• 1110

Mr. Sarkis Assadourian: We didn't sell chemical weapons to Iraq, but the States did. Does that justify us selling chemical weapons to Iraq? How do you feel about that? Obviously if we don't sell it, someone does. There's the proof.

Ms. Anne Adelson: We don't have to. And we didn't sell chemical weapons, but we might have had a role through the depleted uranium. I urge you to read the attachment by Rosalie Bertell that I've put into our brief. A few people have mentioned it.

Is it moral for Canadians to be inflicting leukemia on Iraqi children? I'll ask you that.

Mr. Sarkis Assadourian: That's the answer. Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Mr. Epstein.

Mr. William Epstein: I would like to say a little more about the CANDU reactor, if I may. If you recall, North Korea had a Russian reactor, which doesn't use heavy water like the CANDU does for the moderating thing, to slow down and control the production of neutrons. But the Americans said it was too easy to convert into plutonium, so the North Koreans agreed to dismantle that one and go to an American light-water reactor. That entire thing has to be closed before you can remove any of the rods and is a lot safer than the natural uranium one.

The Canadian CANDU is a natural uranium reactor, which makes it very easy to produce the plutonium. The 44 countries in the world today, those who have to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, can all go nuclear if they want to because they have reactors that can produce the plutonium—if they so decide.

Nearly 30 years ago, we, the Canadian Pugwash group, persuaded the Canadians not to sell any more reactors without getting the full scope of safeguards. Canada finally adopted that position and was the first country in the world to insist on full-scope safeguards.

Then we went back to them and asked them to do what the Russians were doing. We told them that if they sold CANDU reactors and got full-scope safeguards, the only way to ensure that it was safe was to have them return all of the spent fuel to Canada, just as the Russians insisted that all spent fuel had to be returned to Russia. I don't know whether that's continued now by the Russians. That was at the time of the Soviet Union.

But the answer we got from the government at that time was no. The government said it was too dangerous, that we had enough problems disposing of our own spent fuel and we didn't need more. That isn't really an absolutely good answer. The Soviet Union used to insist on getting it back.

If we're going to sell this dangerous product, it.... Honestly, the fact that other people will sell it isn't a good argument. Other people will sell drugs and heroin and all these other things. That doesn't mean we should too.

I think Canada has established a moral leadership in many ways here. I think we should go further. If Canada continues selling the CANDU, which is a cheap, easy, and good reactor, Canada should insist that all spent fuel should be returned here. Then we have the problem of how we are going to deal with the high-level waste.

I wish somebody would send me a report of that too. I know you're short of funds. I would have brought along 25 copies of the model nuclear weapons convention, but the UN is short of funds now too and I couldn't.

But let me say this: the CCIL report said they would annex the full text of the treaty as an appendix to my talk at their 25th anniversary meeting, so you'll be able to read the thing in a month or two when they come out with their final report.

But I'd like it very much if somebody would please send me a copy of this report that just came out.

Mr. Phillip Penna: I'll do that.

Mr. William Epstein: You'll do that? Fine. The government's too broke. I'm glad NGOs are not.

Voices: Oh, oh!

Mr. William Epstein: That's a very rare thing.

Mr. John Cannis (Scarborough Centre, Lib.): Mr. Chairman, my question ties in with Sarkis' question—

The Chairman: You may ask it if Mrs. Augustine allows you to pre-empt her, because she's next on the list.

Will you allow Mr. Cannis to jump in here? He's trying to sneak in.

Mr. John Cannis: Just for one question—

The Chairman: Mr. Cannis.

Mr. John Cannis: It's about the spent fuel. Can we put in guidelines to say that it must be properly stored as a condition of selling the CANDU to Turkey, let's say? Could we say that proper storage must be developed, as you suggested, that they could dig deep and bury them? Could that be a condition? Could we say that the unspent fuel is not going to come back, but—

• 1115

Mr. William Epstein: That would be a little bit better than the present one, but it's still just an aspirin; it's not a cure.

They've been trying to update and improve the IAEA safeguards over the last couple of years, but they still are sufficient, because if anybody can hide a few, then you have to have the same rights that UNSCOM now has in Iraq to go anywhere at any time and search.

The best thing would be if they had to return and account for all of it to Canada. We'd have a problem getting rid of it, but we have a lot more space than they do. We would then not have to worry about whether they would decide one day to make a weapon, too. I think that's the only possible answer.

Mr. John Cannis: Thank you.

The Chairman: It might inhibit the sale of reactors somewhat, too, Mr. Epstein, which might be a very good thing.

Ms. Augustine.

Ms. Jean Augustine (Etobicoke—Lakeshore, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the witnesses. I found your presentations to be not only impressive, but also very thoughtful.

I want to go back to the issue of the International Court of Justice. You spent some time in your paper on this, Dr. Epstein. When we heard from the Canadian ambassador to the UN, I came away with the impression that his response to us—and again, I'm saying my impression—was that Canada has accepted the broader dimensions of the opinion, but that somehow we have not really bought into it. This was the sense I got, that there is no particular course of action that we are taking as a result.

I just want to ask your opinion on that reluctance to adopt, that reluctance to consider that advisory opinion by the ICJ, and what you think we have to do in this regard.

Mr. William Epstein: If I may be permitted to answer, thank you very much for asking that question. It's something that bothers a lot of us Canadians, in the UN and elsewhere. Canada is noted for its adherence to the rule of law. It has done quite well in the International Court of Justice over the years.

Canada has granted very little fillip to the opinion of the court, because the Malaysians have been putting forward a non-aligned resolution for two years in a row now and it's been carried.

The main or operative purpose of one of the paragraphs is arising from the ICJ advisory opinion, the main conclusion being that on the basis of that opinion, where they unanimously decided they had a duty not merely to conduct but to conclude successfully their obligation to negotiate in good faith for nuclear disarmament, they say, “All right, now let's start negotiation on a convention to eliminate all nuclear weapons. You'll have to have all of the intermediate steps included in the convention, or conclude them before you draft the final convention, but at least start on it.” On that resolution, one paragraph merely quoted the unanimous opinion of the court. The president of the court said that since it was unanimous by these people, that makes it part of binding customary international law. Canada asked for a separate vote and voted yes on that, but voted twice against the resolution as a whole calling for negotiations to begin.

One of my big pleas is that Canada should be more active in saying we have to live up to that. I suggested in my talk two things that Canada might take some leadership in. One is to ask for another advisory opinion of the court on whether the nuclear powers are in compliance with the opinion of the court, which they say is now part of binding customary international law, because they have the highest legal authorities in the world, even though it's just an advisory opinion.

But in international law, as you know, the opinions of scholars and justices and so forth make it customary international law that whether they're in compliance...since they now refuse to negotiate multilaterally at all and aren't even negotiating amongst the five of themselves, or with the other three, even. There's not the slightest hint of anything going on.

Even the bilateral ones, I pointed out in my talk, are in danger, because the Duma may not ratify it again because of the expansion of NATO, as somebody pointed out in his talk here too.

• 1120

The second question they should ask has to do with the fact that seven people came out and said it's generally contrary to international humanitarian law, which is international law. Seven said it has not been decided whether or not it is permissible to use or not to use nuclear weapons when the very survival—defence—of a state is at stake. Then the president cast a deciding vote making it eight to seven, saying it was generally contrary to international law. But since three of the people dissented and said it had not been decided, they dissented not because they disagreed, but they said the law goes beyond that. It really outlaws all use, even in defence when the very existence of a state is at stake.

So there were ten in favour of saying it's illegal and only four in favour of saying it hasn't yet been decided. I think the time has come, particularly since we have seen both in Bosnia and in Iraq that you don't need nuclear weapons to defeat.

Even though the life of Kuwait was at stake...or, as people say, Israel could be invaded by the majority of Arab states. They have 10 or 100 times the population of Israel, so Israel's very existence could be at stake.

But we saw that it was very easy for them to destroy Iraq with conventional weapons if they'd wanted to—certainly to win the war and save Kuwait. They also found it very easy—although it took them a long time to decide—to do something to save Bosnia.

So I think it is very worthwhile to go back to the court and ask, is it legal to have any first use of nuclear weapons? All I can say is just read General Lee Butler's statement about it. He calls it immoral, illegal, and having no military purpose and no political purpose. That basically is my position.

I think Canada is in a better position to take the lead. I know for a fact—I've been told—that the United States' government has inquired and complained about why Canada voted for that one paragraph of the court. They finally voted against the resolution, but can you imagine that they don't think Canada should even vote for a unanimously decided paragraph in the court's opinion? I really think it's worth going back for another advisory opinion. Lots of people have recommended that. I've talked to lots of delegations who think it would be a wonderful idea, but everybody has the problem of who's going to bell the cat—the old problem.

I was at two conferences a month ago and three conferences in Southeast Asia, and they all agree with these ideas I've put forward here. But they say privately, “Bill, you know it's very difficult for us now. We don't want to get into unnecessary arguments with the United States.” That's part of the reality.

As I say, who better than Canada can take that lead? Who better than Canada should rely on the International Court of Justice and the rule of law? Thank you.

[Translation]

Mr. Daniel Turp: May I ask a question?

[English]

The Chairman: I don't know if Ms. Augustine is finished or not.

Ms. Jean Augustine: I'm still grappling with something. The main question for me is, why are we reluctant? Are you saying that because there was not unanimity in the judges or the split...?

Mr. William Epstein: No, I'm not saying that.

Ms. Jean Augustine: I'm asking why.

Mr. William Epstein: The only reason why is that, led by the United States, the nuclear powers are determined to bury the judgment. It's not legally binding; it's only an advisory opinion. Even if it were legally binding, I know of no way you can compel a nuclear power to do something against its will.

Nevertheless, as I said, it took decades to get rid of colonialism and apartheid. If we pursue the right policies, and certainly the right policy is to abide by the advisory opinion of the court, particularly on points on which they're unanimous and on points on which you think you can get a majority ruling on, I think you should be able to get two good rulings: one on whether the nuclear powers are in compliance when they refuse to negotiate at all, and they have not only a duty to conduct negotiations but to conclude them successfully; and secondly, because a majority of the court are against first use and believe it's illegal, immoral, and everything else.

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The only way you can convince the world of this is to raise the thing. We have to get this whole question raised to a moral, ethical issue now, just as the landmines became. Unfortunately there was no CNN or television at the time they dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now there is television, but how do you persuade people, on television, that the opinion of the court was a world-shaking, dramatic event? Only the lawyers could understand that, and only the lawyers and people who believe in the rule of law should pursue that line.

Canada would be the ideal country to pursue that line.

Ms. Jean Augustine: Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. Turp.

[Translation]

Mr. Daniel Turp: As a lawyer, I would like to...

The Chairman: And distinguished professor.

Mr. Daniel Turp: As is Mr. Graham. I would remind you, moreover, that an opinion can only be requested from the World Court by the U.N. General Assembly or Security Council, or another international organization or its various bodies. The World Health Organization requested an opinion from the Court, which refused to give one.

Do you believe it is realistic to think that Canada or another country can convince the Security Council or General Assembly to seek an additional opinion in view of this opinion which is so divided, so divided that the Chairman of the Court, Mr. Bedjaoui, had to cast his vote as Chairman to produce a majority on the issue?

I feel it is a bit of an exaggeration to suggest that the Court itself is of the view that, or has ruled as to whether, a first strike would be contrary to international law. That's not what the Court said, and I don't think we can attribute the authority that you ascribe to the Court's individual opinions to suggest that the Court itself has proscribed the use of nuclear weapons in a first strike capacity.

[English]

Mr. William Epstein: Thank you, sir, for those very good questions, both of them.

Of course it's only the General Assembly that can do it. Don't go to the Security Council. All five permanent members are nuclear powers, and they can veto it. The General Assembly goes on the basis of a majority vote, either a simple or a two-thirds majority.

I was one of the persons who also worked with the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy in New York. They were the ones who started this whole movement. The first year we brought it, it didn't succeed in the General Assembly. People weren't sufficiently convinced. The second year it was raised, it was passed. It was adopted by the General Assembly. I'm asking that Canada raise it in the General Assembly, not go itself for an advisory opinion. That's the first one. You raise it in the General Assembly, and you'll get a lot of like-minded countries going along with you.

Canada has an awful lot of respect around the United Nations, more than some of the non-aligned who were pushing the first appeal to the court. If Canada were to take leadership here, I think you'd find it overwhelmingly approved by the General Assembly.

The second point is on the no first use. It's true they did not rule that first use is illegal, but the implication of the majority opinion is.... And it's not just eight to seven, but there are three more judges, making it ten to four, who said it's always illegal to use nuclear weapons under any circumstances. So the implication is that they would say first use is illegal.

There's no guarantee, but I don't think you go to the court if you know what the guaranteed result is. You go to courts when the results are not clear. They said themselves the law was not yet developed or clear as to whether you could even use it in defence when the very existence of a state was at stake, meaning an ally as well as the nuclear power itself.

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I have discussed this matter. He said so publicly, so there's no reason why I shouldn't repeat it here: McGeorge Bundy and I were both present when they adopted the Non-Proliferation Treaty. I was representing the secretary-general, and he was the legal counsel to the United States. Both of us are agreed that this is a very good idea: to go to the court and ask them to settle this very touchy and difficult problem, where there isn't unanimity because the countries....

The decision of the court, this first one, was surprising. Amongst the members of the court, five nuclear powers were represented and four of their allies, so nine out of the fifteen were nuclear powers or their allies. Nevertheless, we did get the eight to seven decision, with the casting vote, and three more said it's always illegal to use them, under any circumstances, because it goes all over the world and affects succeeding generations and it affects civilians—all the usual arguments.

I think it would be very, very worth while, and so does McGeorge Bundy, who was legal counsel to the American delegation at the time and a very noteworthy international lawyer. I'm not noteworthy, but I'm also a bit of an international lawyer. We are agreed, and we were there at the time, that this is a very, very useful question to ask of the court.

[Translation]

Mr. Daniel Turp: You are recommending that this committee suggest that the government move that the General Assembly request another advisory opinion on this issue. If that were to happen, what support do you think Canada could secure among its NATO allies?

[English]

Mr. William Epstein: That is a more difficult question. I'm not at all sure how much support Canada will get amongst its NATO allies. I understand from talking to people from many different countries that they don't at all like the idea of the expansion of NATO. They don't because it may lead to either a revival of the Cold War or a new “Cold Peace”.

It's true that part of the reason for the Russians withdrawing their no first use pledge was precisely that, the expansion of NATO, which in their eyes is a hostile thing. Unfortunately—and we all know this very well; it's a fact of life and we have to bear it in mind all the time—the United States is now the sole superpower. Certainly it's the dominant force in NATO. It's not the easiest thing in the world for Canada to go against the leader of the western world in NATO, and certainly the Americans and the other nuclear powers don't want more advisory opinions from the court.

In my paper to the CCIL I go to considerable lengths in showing the number of times Canada decided to do the right thing irrespective of American opposition. I listed a few of them in the field of disarmament, but there are many other areas, economic, social, humanitarian, where Canada has shown individual leadership. The three nuclear powers didn't like what Canada did about the anti-personnel land mines. Canada did it and won the acclaim of the world. If Canada were to take leadership on another appeal to the advisory court, I think I can almost guarantee—that's an exaggeration; I can't guarantee anything, but I think I would bet money on it—you will get nearly all the non-aligned people to go along with you; to support you.

I don't think you will get too much support from the NATO allies. Nevertheless, not all the NATO allies supported Canada on the anti-personnel land mines or on many other things Canada did. I think most of them supported Canada when, against the will of the United States, it was the one that took the initiative to give the seat of China to Communist China in the United Nations, taking it away from the Nationalists. They have done many things like that.

Canada really has a tremendous influence in this world. They used to exert a lot more independent influence during the days before NATO than they did after NATO, because now they have a much more difficult time. They say, look, we're part of an alliance and it's not easy to take a single, solitary outside step.

Well, it was done by many Canadian governments before. They got rid of American nuclear weapons from Canada. The Americans weren't happy about it...or from their forces in Europe, but it was the right thing to do. I think if Canada is going to uphold international law—and certainly every Canadian seems to believe that Canada has more freedom of action and it will be a better world if the United Nations succeeds than if you leave it all to one, two, three or four nuclear powers.

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The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. Daniel Turp: Very good.

The Chairman: I have a couple of questions myself, but I have to pick you up on your last comments, Mr. Epstein, because with all these problems, it's a seamless web problem. Everything leads into something else. I take it what you're saying is we as a committee, if we go to your belief in terms of what we should do on the nuclear issue, have to recommend to the Canadian government that we get out of NATO as well.

Mr. William Epstein: No, I don't think you have to do that.

The Chairman: Well, I don't see any other conclusion for what you've just told us, because it so circumscribes our capacity—

Mr. William Epstein: I don't think you have to get out of NATO. I think you should have a real discussion with them. I'm not suggesting that you withdraw from NATO. I think you could state principles in NATO, that they should maybe think again about expanding, not only with these three but even suggesting that within a few years' time they may even bring in the Baltic States. I agree with George Kennan that this is the biggest mistake being made by the west since the end of World War II.

Mr. Daniel Turp: Why?

Mr. William Epstein: Because it may alienate Russia. It's going to create tremendous problems. It's going to cost a lot more than it's worth, and it isn't necessary. This is a military alliance. Let them join the European Union. Support that. Let them join the organization for European security.

The Chairman: The European Union is having a lot of trouble admitting them. We talk regularly to our colleagues from eastern Europe on this issue. It's a very complicated issue.

We don't disagree entirely with what you're saying, but we'd better not get into NATO expansion in this committee report or we'll never get this report done.

But I totally agree that there's a link, because certainly first use is going to be the most complicated and difficult issue and probably the most contentious one that this committee will have to deal with. So I don't disagree with you. It's linked to NATO, and we will have to deal with it.

But let me get to my two questions and observations, and then everybody can answer at the end, if you want.

The first question is about the nuclear deterrence vis-à-vis chemical and biological weapons. It seems to me this is very troublesome, too, at least for me. What we're being told by the advocates of that position is that biological weapons and chemical weapons are terrible in and of themselves, and if we are going to have a world regime that prohibits them and prohibits them effectively, and if somebody cheats on that, then the only way you can have an effective deterrence is to have some deterrents. They're saying, well, we're not allowed to have a chemical weapon and we're not allowed to have a biological weapon, so the only deterrence left for us is nuclear deterrence. Now, if you don't want to let us have nuclear deterrence, I guess we'll start making secret biological weapons and we're going to be back in the Hobson's choice problem.

Those are the arguments. So I'd be very interested in your reaction to that, and I don't think it's helpful to say, well, we can't do something bad if somebody else is doing something bad. I think there has to be a strategic reason.

We've heard persuasive arguments. For example, we heard from one witness who's totally against nuclear weapons that the possible fact that Israel possessed one during the Iraq crisis was one reason Israel was not attacked by biological or chemical weapons by Iraq, because they knew damn well what they would get back. That's an argument we have to try to weigh, because we're talking about the benefit of the world here, and we don't like it but we have to deal with it. That's my first question.

My second question is specifically to Mr. Epstein. That is, I detect from you, sir, some distinction. I think the other panellists are telling us that if we really want to get rid of nuclear weapons, sooner or later we're going to have to get rid of the nuclear industry as a whole, because it's the feed chain.

Do you agree with that, or do you believe a civilian nuclear industry is compatible with a nuclear-weapons-free world, bearing in mind, particularly, that the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the obligation on the nuclear powers when they got other states to agree not to develop nuclear weapons, was that they would help them to develop their civilian nuclear capacity? If we're going to renege on that promise, how do we get out of it? That's my specific question to you.

The third one is really more of an observation about the World Court opinion, which we've heard a great deal about in the committee, and it's very interesting and obviously complex. Lawyers can always argue on both sides; that's what lawyers are all about.

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But going back to Ms. Augustine's point, it seems to me the position taken by the Canadian government representatives here before the committee was that the reason Canada did not participate in the opinion was precisely to uphold the rule of law. Our government was of the view that to get an advisory opinion in these circumstances—which the nuclear powers would pay no attention to, because of matters of fundamental security of states.... I remember Dean Rusk once said there are matters of state with which international law has nothing to do. That's what he said when they were dealing with the Cuban missile crisis, and he said this was contrary to international law.

If we create an international law judgment that the nuclear powers thumb their nose at and throw away, we are creating a world where the rule of law will not prevail, because we've created a situation where we've said law cannot prevail. That in itself may be worse than getting an advisory opinion that you like but that people don't agree with.

When we pass laws in this Parliament, if the citizens refuse to obey them, we're not going to have a civil society here very long, because we're not going to have a legal society. That's the nature of law, as you know. That is my understanding of the difficulty we are in in respect of the advisory opinion.

Again, these are all issues we're still trying to form in our minds here, but I think all the committee would be quite interested to know about the relationship between civil and nuclear power.

Also, how do we deal with this other side issue of these biological and chemical weapons, which we dealt with here in the committee? We had the chemical weapons treaty here. It wasn't when Mr. Turp was here, but in the last Parliament. We adopted the legislation to put it into effect, but as you know, that legislation is very draconian. It almost runs counter to the charter in some respects, we were told, because in order to make it work, you have to have an international inspection regime that makes it work properly. And for biological weapons it will be even more complicated to have one that will work.

How is this going to be balanced in this deterrence theory that we get from the strategists? You may all want to jump in there.

Mr. William Epstein: I'll bet they do, but I think you directed them at me.

The Chairman: Well, I certainly directed the second at you.

Mr. William Epstein: I'd like to answer all three of them. This is really the nitty-gritty. This is getting down to real cases now, and I'm glad you asked that.

The first one was a question of nuclear deterrents, biological and chemical weapons. In 1969 I was chairman of a unanimous study on chemical and biological weapons, done by a group of consultant experts of the secretary-general from all around the world. Their study was one of the things that led to the Biological Weapons Convention, and it even played a role in the Chemical Weapons Convention.

For the first time, people from the nuclear powers—I think we had all but China represented there—made comparisons of the damage that could be done by chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. They said chemical and biological weapons were mainly terrorist weapons. They said people hesitate a long time before using them, because under the old Geneva Protocol you could respond with the same sort of weapons; that was a no first use Geneva protocol. Another thing that held them back is there's no way you can stop the chemicals, the germs, the bacteria, or the toxins from coming back and affecting your own people. For example, the 1918 flu went all around the world, even though it started—

The Chairman: That was the point about the use of these new nuclear-coded devices. It seems to have affected American servicemen as much as anybody else.

Mr. William Epstein: This is one of the restraints. To this day, as I said, chemical and biological weapons could destroy a town and then maybe go a little bit further and affect more. But they're also bound to affect the country that initiated the use, and not just the enemy, so to speak. In any case, they can't do the damage that a nuclear bomb does, which, as I said earlier, can kill millions in minutes. These things go slowly and you can get defences against all of them, biological and chemical. There are defences. Both treaties allow research to go on on defending against them.

It's pure speculation that Iraq did not use chemical weapons against Israel because she feared they would be used back. A greater fear was that she'd get wiped out by American conventional weapons. That's really what held her back there. But we don't know; that's sheer speculation. Had they had a nuclear weapon, my guess is they might have used it there, even though there was a danger of retaliation. But the chemical and biological, no.

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The Chairman: We're going to run out of time quickly, and I know the other.... What about the—

Mr. William Epstein: On the biological weapons, they're trying to add a verification system to it, as they have to the chemical weapons.

On the other question of whether I favour getting rid of all nuclear energy, I don't, because until we can get alternate cheaper energy from sunshine, wind or other things we will have to use it. It's like asking whether we should get rid of all oil and gas because they tend to pollute the atmosphere. We shouldn't, but I think we should make it a lot safer by insisting, as I said before, that they return all spent fuel to the original source. We have much stronger IAEA safeguards over the peaceful uses. They could and should be strengthened. They were already strengthened a little as a result of the North Korean thing, but not enough.

You ask what we will do if the nuclear powers oppose. Even if it's a legally binding thing and the nuclear powers oppose it, there's no way you can prevent that. There's no way you can impose your will on them. Nevertheless, we have found that over time they do come along. They were against the anti-personnel mines, they were against giving up colonialism, and some were against giving up apartheid. Eventually, if you keep persisting and you're on the right track, which is the rule of law that most people tend to have some respect for.... They're not fighting the court's opinion; they're trying to bury it so people should forget it.

The Chairman: The landmines agreement was a negotiated agreement that states agreed to. This is a World Court judgment. If they disagree with it, we're told there's a risk it will bring the rule of law into contempt; whereas if they agree or don't agree to a state convention on landmines, that's the free will of states.

This is the way law is made. I don't disagree with you about de lege ferenda. We studied all this in international law, and used to teach it, but I just wondered in this case....

Your view is we're better off with it than without it, if I can just summarize your position.

Mr. William Epstein: Which?

The Chairman: The World Court opinion.

Mr. William Epstein: Oh, absolutely.

The Chairman: Okay, that summarizes it.

Mr. William Epstein: As I said before, never never means never, particularly on the part of nuclear powers when they have to deal with a whole world of problems, and above all with their own domestic opinions. There still is respect for the Supreme Court in the United States and the International Court of Justice.

In the Nicaraguan case they finally went along, although they never accepted the judgment.

The Chairman: Mr. Penna, I think you wanted to add something.

A voice: Can we move across this way so we all get a chance?

The Chairman: Sure. I don't know if everybody wants to or not. Does anybody want to add something very quickly?

Ms. Anne Adelson: We have lots to say and very little opportunity to say it, so we will not say no to this opportunity.

The Chairman: Okay, great. We have 10 minutes left, so we'll try to split it up.

Ms. Anne Adelson: In terms of the question you raised of why we would go with something that's not legally binding, there are many agreements that are international conventions through the UN. If we had agreed to the UN charter we would have no war, not only no nuclear war.

So is there any value in having these things? I think the question is not whether we should have them because they're not binding on the nation states or, the other side of the question, how do we actually move to make these things binding on the countries that have signed them, and particularly on citizens of the countries that live there. The UN charter starts off with “We, the people...” and doesn't seem to have a lot to say to we, the peoples.

In that regard, I'm not sure if Dr. Hanna Newcombe mentioned this when she was here, but one of her proposals is to have a permanent people's assembly at the UN to have some way of saying what to do about all these wonderful statements. If we had agreed and lived up to everything, we would have a global structure respecting the rule of law to create peace, justice, security, non-discrimination, and eliminate poverty—all of these things. We don't have it, but this is the direction we have to move toward. We have to look at how to do that and not sign any more treaties, because many of them are not enforceable.

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About deterrence, there certainly have been many conventional wars amongst countries that have held nuclear weapons, and, particularly during the Cold War, with client states of the superpowers. In many ways I'm not sure where this myth comes from.

Just to go back to what Canada can do, Mr. Epstein and others have talked a lot about the anti-personnel mines treaty. I think this is a turning point, in many ways. Not only was it a way of Canada really asserting some independence by working with countries beyond the United States, which never signed it, beyond NATO, but with like-minded countries.... Canada has always had a very strong role with middle powers. I think we should rework that initiative.

I think the question of NATO membership is whether this is preventing us or helping us in our way of making the world safer. That should be again our guideline. If it's getting in the way, maybe we should rethink NATO membership.

The anti-personnel mine treaty had another effect. It was a real partnership between governments and NGOs. I think we should look at ways of expanding on that initiative in that direction too.

The Chairman: Thank you. It's very helpful.

Mr. Penna.

Mr. Phillip Penna: On the first question, do we organize for deterrence or do we organize for peace, I think our policy frameworks need to be framed in that way. That's my opinion.

The Chairman: I'm sorry to interrupt you, but the argument of the deterrence folks is that without deterrence you're not going to get to peace. How do we deal with that? That's the constant debate we're getting.

Mr. Daniel Turp: What alternative is there to deterrence to achieve peace?

Ms. Anne Adelson: Read the Carnegie report. We've had far more people involved in war since we've had nuclear weapons than before we had them.

The Chairman: I don't disagree with that. That's right. The conventional wars are expanding at a rate that's really terrible.

Mr. Phillip Penna: Right.

The Chairman: So really we have to get the seamless...we have to go back to your point, Ms. Adelson, about social democracy. We have to create the conditions in the world. So CIDA...everything has to plug into creating the right conditions for a civil society to exist, whether it's democracy building or wealth building and everything else.

Mr. Phillip Penna: A little aside, because we keep going to little asides: we also have to redefine the role of the military within that framework. But I don't want to get into that.

The Chairman: Don't you think we're doing that in this country through our peacekeeping? Compared with the American military.... I've spent a lot of time with the American congressmen. The attitude in this country on what the military should do vis-à-vis their attitude is enormously different.

Mr. Phillip Penna: That is a good example of why we can stay within NATO if you so choose and still have different opinions.

The Chairman: Yes.

Mr. Phillip Penna: But both the rule of law and whether it is upheld if some people go against it.... All that means is that they are criminals. It doesn't mean the rule of law is not respected and therefore it will continue to be disrespected. All it means is that those people who do not accept the rule of law are criminals—and I think we should call them that, because that's what they are.

The third point, about the middle question....

The Chairman: When the criminals outnumber the civil society members, you've created a problem with the nature of the law you've created.

Mr. Daniel Turp: Only if a breach of law is a crime; breaches of laws are not always crimes. In your case you would suggest that those people are committing a crime against humanity, a crime against peace, or something like that.

Mr. Phillip Penna: Absolutely, and we should name it that. We should be honest. They are criminals. Then we have to take a look at our own relationship to them.

That brings me to a story. Bill Epstein brought up the whole issue about bringing back nuclear waste if we're going to sell reactors. During the regime of the Cold War—and this carries on, but I'll give that example—there were four enrichment facilities in the world. One was run by the Russians. When we send uranium to those enrichment facilities, what happens in the enrichment facility is the uranium is split to U-235 and U-238. U-235 can be used for nuclear power reactors. U-238 becomes a by-product. After 90 days it becomes the property of the United States, or of France or whatever country has the enrichment facility. Therefore it can be used in the production of nuclear weapons or bullets. That is the history of nuclear weaponry and our relationship to it, despite our agreements. That is the loophole.

But when the Russians were enriching uranium for Swedish reactors, our uranium, we asked that an equal amount of depleted uranium not be removed from Russia and given to Sweden. Why did we do that and not ask the same thing from the United States, or from France or from Belgium? Because we had a strategic relationship with those countries that was different from that with Russia and we didn't ask for our own agreements with those countries to be upheld, which was that our uranium not be used in nuclear weapons.

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That is a fundamental problem. That's what we mean when we say the two, nuclear power and nuclear weapons, are completely interlinked on a policy level and a technological level.

The Chairman: Thank you very much. It's very interesting.

Mr. Coombes.

Mr. Peter Coombes: I guess the first question is around deterrence, and it goes back to the question someone asked earlier: do you need to prepare for war or for peace? That issue has been around for the millennium, and I think history has shown that we've been preparing for war for the millennium and we've been having wars for the millennium. So it just seems history has proven us—those who say deterrence doesn't work—right.

Using nuclear weapons to stop biological weapons is just a ludicrous assumption and a ludicrous argument. There is no argument. It's an assumption. It's a statement. The reality is that we have nuclear weapons, yet countries are building biological and chemical weapons anyway and stocking. In fact, I would say having nuclear weapons encourages countries to want to have biological and chemical weapons, because as long as you have a big weapon, someone else wants a bigger one or something comparable, and that's the real threat to them.

Mr. William Epstein: A poor man's atomic bomb. A poor nation's atomic bomb.

Mr. Peter Coombes: That's right. Going back to the NATO issue—I wanted to bring that up—I have slight disagreements with some of the people at the table. I don't think it's a realistic policy that Canada is going to pull out of NATO. There's no doubt about that, but I'm not here to present to you necessarily realistic policies. What I'm here to talk about is what we need to do in order to secure our future, in order to protect ourselves from nuclear weapons, from war, etc.

NATO is essentially a rope tied around Canada. Every time Canada moves, every time Canada tries to make any defence policies, we get the same response back from the Canadian government, which is, we can't do that because we have to live up to our NATO obligations; we have to go off and fight in Iraq. Why? Because our NATO ally, our NATO superpower, the dominant power, tells us we have to go and fight in Iraq with them.

The reality is NATO is a threat to Canada. NATO is pulling Canada into the global war system. NATO is what links Canada to nuclear deterrence. As long as we are members of NATO, we continue to believe that our military survival is dependent on nuclear deterrence.

Mr. Daniel Turp: What do you do with NATO?

Mr. Peter Coombes: I'll answer that question in a second.

That takes me back to the ICJ advisory opinion. I think the reality is that when the court makes a decision of that nature, it's very important to the world to hear what's legal and what's not legal. What's important is to find out who is going to live up to those agreements in the world. As a member of NATO I think we're not living up to that agreement as strongly as we should be.

To my knowledge, Canada has never not abided by the law of the international court. I don't think there's one time other than this time where Canada has not strictly abided by the law of the court.

The Chairman: At the time of the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act, contrary to international law we withdrew our jurisdiction from the court because we refused to put it to the court. That's how law-abiding we were in that respect, so we're not quite as pure as people like to think.

Mr. Daniel Turp: There are only two case where there were decisions of the court concerning Canada.

The Chairman: I wouldn't make that assumption necessarily. I don't say that with any pride, but I wouldn't make—

[Translation]

Mr. Daniel Turp: Besides it was a Liberal government that...

[Inaudible - Ed.] ...that statement.

[English]

The Chairman: It's a difficult problem.

Mr. Peter Coombes: There is one example potentially, and unfortunately I think the mud is in the face of the states that don't abide by the law in the end. That's what I would have to say.

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What do we do instead of NATO? I think there's the CIS that we should be promoting, the—

Mr. Daniel Turp: The Commonwealth of Independent States?

Mr. Peter Coombes: That's right. Sorry.

Mr. Daniel Turp: No, no, it couldn't be.

Mr. Peter Coombes: No, the CIS is the—

The Chairman: That's the Russian CIS.

Mr. Peter Coombes: Not the CIS, sorry.

The Chairman: The OSCE?

Mr. Peter Coombes: Yes, the OSCE. Sorry, I knew I was getting my initials wrong. Initials are important, aren't they?

There's that particular route we could be following, and the United Nations, I think, is the organization that we should be building international security through. NATO is a military alliance that divides the world into two parts. We should be looking at creating a global network of security.

Mr. Daniel Turp: You would ask Canada to withdraw?

Mr. Peter Coombes: I would seriously consider Canada withdrawing.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Mr. Sinclair.

Mr. Neil Sinclair: I have a few comments about nuclear deterrence in reference to those states that may use biological or chemical weapons. I think there is enough conventional power and conventional weapons by those countries opposing the illegal use of biological and chemical weapons to act as a deterrent. For the example of the United States with Iraq, there was an overwhelming superiority in conventional power used against that country.

One other thing about the nuclear deterrence, biological and chemical: the problem with this planet, this earth, is that we have such differences between the wealthy countries and the poor countries. Unless governments start working to improve the social condition of a lot of people around this world, we're going to keep on having wars and fighting going on. People are going to raise up arms and attack the rich western northern countries.

We have to get at the foundation, at the root of the problem, and that is, improving the condition of those in the world who are suffering today and not exploiting them as some western corporations do.

A second area is NATO. I think NATO should be allowed to evolve into a less military aspect. Definitely the organization should not be expanding into the east. Why is this occurring? The whole purpose of NATO, during the Cold War, was to be a military alliance. If one of the countries is attacked by the Warsaw Pact, or today, Russia, all the member countries help defend that country. But are we really going to go into the eastern European countries and send Canadian soldiers over there to defend them against this supposedly Russian attack? I mean, the Russians are not going to attack. Anyone who thinks they are is badly misinformed as to their conditions. So why is NATO being expanded? What's the purpose?

Another area is the civilian nuclear industry and whether it can be separated from the military nuclear aspect of it. The whole history of the civilian and military nuclear industries is that they've been entwined, as Phillip Penna just mentioned about the uranium enrichment. Unless they were prepared to make major, major, expensive changes, they always will be, and I can't see them spending massive amounts of money to make that possible.

The Chairman: Thank you.

I remember when I was teaching public international law some years ago, I used to give the students an article written by a learned professor of many years ago, in which she said if the world were a village of a hundred people, and five of them in that village owned 80% of the assets, they might spend more on putting a fence around their part of the village than on sharing with anybody else.

I think that's sort of the point you're making, and it's one we're all trying to work on, trying to figure out how we can channel our energies more into that.

I just want to thank the panel. I have one reflection on NATO. You say people are misinformed if they're worried about a Russian invasion, but the people asking to get into NATO are Poland and Hungary and others that have suffered many generations under Russian tutelage. They don't share your opinion, I can assure you of that. We've spent a lot of time talking to them. They have had a different experience that makes them very, very nervous. They're seeking some form of security that this won't happen again.

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But I don't disagree with you. We don't want to create a condition where in fact we've just created a new form of fear in Russia that in turn will up the ante in the arms race. We're all struggling with all those difficult things.

Mr. Epstein, we've over our time. You can have 10 seconds and that's all.

Mr. William Epstein: All right.

Belarus and some other countries are urging that there be a nuclear weapons-free zone in central and eastern Europe that will take in the territories of these former Warsaw Pact countries. That is one way in which you can solve this problem of the expansion of NATO. If Canada were to come out in favour of the central and eastern European nuclear weapons-free zone, that could be a way of solving that problem.

The Chairman: Right.

Mr. William Epstein: I don't know whether the text you have of General Lee Butler's speech includes the questions and answers—my text does—in which he answers the question about specific—

The Chairman: The answer to your question is yes.

Mr. William Epstein: You do. Okay, fine. The questions and answers may go a little further than the speech.

The Chairman: We really appreciate this morning's panel. It has been very interesting and very stimulating for us, and it feeds into a lot of other work we're doing, at the OSCE and NATO and everywhere else. It's very helpful to all the members of the committee to have had your views.

We're adjourned.