Peace groups run 3-page ad calling for nuclear debate
With the UN Nuclear Ban Treaty set to “enter into force” on Friday, January 22, over 100 Canadian peace groups ran a 3-page ad in the January 18 edition of influential Hill Times newspaper calling, once again, on the government to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
Beneath the headline, “Toward a nuclear weapons-free world”, the ad stated:
The UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has been endorsed by 122 nations, and will become international law for more than 51 ratifying States on January 22, 2021. Regrettably, Canada boycotted negotiations in 2017 and has refused to sign or ratify this landmark Treaty.
Nuclear weapons, along with climate change and pandemics, are the greatest threats facing human civilization. An exchange of even 1% of the global arsenal of 13,400 nuclear weapons would kill tens of millions of people. It would plunge the planet into a nuclear winter and result in widespread famine, killing billions more.
The world was not adequately prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic. The International Committee of the Red Cross asserts that it is impossible to prepare for nuclear holocaust. Humanity’s only hope is prevention through the elimination of nuclear weapons.
Canadians have a right to know, and to hear from our national leaders, how nuclear weapons could impact human health, health care systems, the environment, the economy, the global biosphere and the future of life on earth.
The undersigned, therefore, respectfully call upon the Government of Canada to have Parliament debate the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and to allow the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development to hold public hearings on the Treaty and on Canada’s role in advancing global nuclear disarmament.
You can view the ad and all of the organizations and individual signatories online.
Our congratulations to the Hiroshima Nagasaki Day Coalition, and its campaigner, Anton Wagner, for this successful project.
I regret the Canadian government’s position on the nuclear ban as it does not speak for me and millions of others. And as a first-in-line member of the UN and all it stands for it betrays us and our history as a non-nuclear country.
I have been trying to get friends and acquaintances to pay more attention to peace activities before excessive personal enjoyment and pleasure, but it is not easy. I’ll try my best, but I have the memories living through WWII as a teenager & don’t want to today’s youths having to go through a war – anywhere in the world.