Canada’s Statement to Whittle Down Fissile Materials, Whittle Down Nuclear Weapons: A high-level event to breathe life into the thirty-year effort towards an FMCT

Check against delivery.

September 19, 2023

Assistant Deputy Minister for International Security and Political Affairs (Ms. Heidi Hulan), Global Affairs Canada

It has been 30 years since our first United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution on this issue. More than a generation of deliberations at the Conference on Disarmament (CD) and UNGA.

In that time, we have deepened our collective understanding of what it will take to adopt and implement a treaty. Canada is honoured to have chaired both the Group of Governmental Experts and High-level Experts Preparatory Group, which concluded five years ago. These both provided valuable insight and a menu of options for a future treaty.

Indeed, the Preparatory Group – which I myself was honoured to chair – took us to the point where we confidently assessed that we were mere steps away from a draft negotiating text. To be blunt, we were ready to launch negotiations then, and it is ready to go now.

Which brings us to why we are here, five years later, and no closer to the launch of negotiations.

All of us in the room today are aware that the challenges that we are facing are not diminishing and that fragmentation is growing. The world is at a crossroads and there is a clear strain on the disarmament and non-proliferation architecture. Indeed, behind the scenes, we wonder whether we would be able to get the multilateral agreements that now exist if we had to negotiate them today. But we must try.

If we stay complacent, we run the very real risk of backsliding on our commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons as we fail to account for the bigger risks caused by inaction, such as:

• risks of re-armament and proliferation, a new generation of states heavily armed and on high alert, with heightened capabilities developed through emerging technologies;
• risks to human life and the environment; and
• incalculable socio-economic costs of arms races, instability, and conflict.

Over the course of this year, we have undertaken thorough consultations to seriously assess the scope for progress towards negotiations. However, we have reached the regrettable conclusion that there is currently insufficient political support amongst key states to negotiate a treaty at the CD, nor does there exist sufficient support from key states for negotiations outside the CD. The reality is that, despite differing stances, key states need to get to the table and undertake negotiations without pre-conditions.

So, where do we go from here?

Politically we are no closer to the start of negotiations than we were in 1993. In some ways, we are further apart today. It is clear to Canada that we cannot continue with the status quo. Political will is needed.

This treaty has long been a flagship Canadian disarmament priority.

Canada will be calling on key states – the ones possessing nuclear weapons - to engage in transparency and confidence building measures amongst themselves. The aim would be to enable negotiation of a treaty to at long last begin. We urge other states to advocate the same. We also believe that the UN Secretary General and High-Representative for Disarmament Affairs could have an important role to play in facilitating these efforts.

Under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, non-nuclear-weapon States are legally obliged not to develop nuclear weapons, meaning that by extension, we would not manufacture fissile material for nuclear weapons. That commitment is reflected in our IAEA safeguards agreements; effectively there is already an FMCT governing us. What there is not is one for possessor states.

Ultimately, there is no world without nuclear weapons without an FMCT.

Canada stands ready as ever to support the process to bring forward an FMCT.

Thank you.