Canada in the World: Canadian International Policy

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International treaties concerning disarmament	3 min 14 sec	Windows Media l QuickTime
The Landmine Treaty	3 min 19 sec	Windows Media l QuickTime
Canada's Role	3 min 10 sec	Windows Media l QuickTime

Transcript

International treaties concerning disarmament

My name is Michael Byers. I hold the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia. I have been here for a year and a half. Although I am Canadian, I have spent 12 years outside of Canada—first in England at Oxford University and then in the United States at Duke University in North Carolina, where among others things I was director of Canadian Studies. But the Government of Canada’s Canada Research Chair Program brought me back and I’m very grateful.

There are a range of international treaties concerning disarmament. In fact, this has been one of the areas where treaty-making has been most active. And so you have specific treaties, such as the Ottawa Landmines Convention, which reflect a concerted effort to deal with a particular kind of weapon. You have also, perhaps most significantly, the nuclear non-proliferation regime, which is centred on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)—a fabulously important treaty—which has largely succeeded in, not stopping, but slowing the spread of the most dangerous weapon, the atomic bomb and hydrogen bomb. These of course exist in their thousands and if unleashed could actually spell the end of the human species.

The NPT of course is very central to current debates concerning Iran, and more recently concerning India, because some countries have ratified the treaty and are now trying to stretch the rules. That is the case in Iran, and there are other countries, a handful of countries, which have not ratified the treaty. There is a question as to what degree other countries are allowed to engage in nuclear cooperation with these non-ratifying states. So there are a lot of legal issues there which are very much in play and are very much at the interface between the highest geopolitics and the technical rules of international law.

Then of course there are conventions on biological weapons and chemical weapons and a range of international organizations that deal with all these. I am proud to say that Canada has always played a leadership role in these areas. And very much to our credit, we have resisted the temptation to arm ourselves with these kinds of weapons.

We were at one point a nuclear weapons state. We had a nuclear weapons station on Canadian soil, and we made the right choice. We actually gave up those weapons. In my view now we can take an additional step and formally declare Canada to be a nuclear weapons free zone to show additional leadership on these difficult issues.

The Landmine Treaty

The real value of the Ottawa Convention is not that it imposes strict legal obligations on states that ratify it, but that it adds to the groundswell of international public opinion against the use of anti-personnel mines. We are creating a taboo on the use of these devices. People are increasingly realizing just how horrific and unfair these are, because the majority of the victims are completely innocent; many of them are children. So it has added to that wave of public disapprobation and that is the true significance. And yes, there are countries that have stayed out of the regime; the United States is just one of them.

To be brutally honest, there are countries that have not done as much as they could. To give an example that is very close to home, when Canada ratified the Ottawa Convention, we put what is called an “understanding” in at the same time. We filed a qualifying statement that actually said that we understand that the prohibition on the use of anti-personal mines does not extend to indirect reliance on landmines laid by a country that is not party to this convention. The British did the same thing. It is a loophole. It is not illegal, but in my view it is contrary to the spirit of the Ottawa Convention and certainly unfortunate on the part of the country, Canada, that really led the drive to make this happen. So again there is a need to get into the complexity to ensure that we really are pushing forward and that we do not have our fingers crossed behind our back.

There is this tension here, but one thing that I do—certainly as a public intellectual and not just as an academic—is to try to hold governments to account, so that politicians cannot get a free ride on their statements as to their commitment, while behind the scenes they have lawyers and diplomats negotiating loopholes.

There is a loophole in the Ottawa Convention, and I think most Canadians would be appalled to know that. Again, it is not illegal, but it enables, for instance, Canadian soldiers who were based at Bagram Airbase to rely upon landmines that had been laid by the Soviets, which ringed the airbase. Were it not for the understanding that we entered at the time we ratified, our presence at that airbase might have been illegal under the Ottawa Convention. In my view, we should not have entered the understanding; it would have made things more difficult, and we would have had to spend more money. We probably would have had a disagreement with our allies, but upholding these fundamental rules and making them stronger is not easy and that is the whole point. If you are leading the development of international law, if you are pushing for disarmament, if you are trying to make the world a safer place, you have to work hard, you cannot take the easy course. Canada, most of the time, does pretty well. But we are not as good as we think we are.

Canada’s Role

We’ve played a constructive role in the past and done some very good work in the United Nations Conference on Disarmament, and the Landmines Convention is another example where we had a foreign minister who exercised real leadership, being receptive to the approach of civil society and facilitating a large coalition of activists in making something happen at the interstate level. So we have been pretty good, but at the same time we could do better.

I think there is a slight concern that if we push too hard we might annoy more powerful countries, particularly the country next door. And so, for instance, we remain within the nuclear planning group at NATO. The nuclear planning group at NATO has a first-strike policy for nuclear weapons and Canada is part of that group, which to my mind seems unnecessary, particularly because we do not have nuclear weapons any more. But the perception, I think, is that this would be a needless annoyance vis-à-vis the United States. We sit at the table and we keep our mouth shut, but we do not make the statement of formally leaving the discussion.

At that level I think Canada could exercise more leadership. I mentioned the possibility of declaring Canada a nuclear weapons free zone. There is actually a provision in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty encouraging countries to do this. And because we are nuclear weapons free, we do not need to actually change anything on the ground—just make the statement, send the signal to countries that Canada is stepping up to the plate on this one. And again I think the hesitation is that at this current moment, we do not have an administration in Washington that is particularly open to disarmament efforts. They are wrapped up in the so-called war on terrorism and have other priorities right now. So we are just not going to rock the boat.

That is a real shame, because objectively I think Canada is a very influential country. We are much more influential than most Canadians think we are. We’re the eighth largest economy in the world; we are the second largest territory of any country in the world. We have 32 million well-educated and healthy people who live in harmony despite massive ethnic and religious diversity, and we are respected very well everywhere. We have real clout, and yet because we are in the shadow of the world’s most powerful country we somehow talk ourselves down and underestimate our potential. On the disarmament file—where there are nuclear weapons, biological weapons, chemical weapons, small arms, landmines—we’re doing okay, but we could do so much better.

Last Updated:2006-11-08

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