Report to the Government of Canada
On October 24, 2024, Canada’s four leading nuclear disarmament organizations—the Canadian Pugwash Group, the Canadian Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, and Project Ploughshares—convened an expert Roundtable on “Nuclear Disarmament in Times of Unprecedented Risk.” This was the second extraordinary roundtable held in response to rapidly escalating nuclear threats. The convening organizations share the profound conviction that Canada must urgently reassert its voice and leadership in the global disarmament arena.
The world now stands on the razor’s edge of the most severe nuclear weapons threat since the Cold War. Recent years have seen a deep erosion of the global nuclear arms control and disarmament framework, marked by the collapse of critical treaties, advances in destabilizing weapons technologies, record-breaking expenditures in conventional arms, and an alarming resurgence of great-power competition.
While nuclear-armed states invest heavily in modernizing and upgrading their arsenals and related infrastructure, the international framework intended to mitigate nuclear risks has been dangerously weakened. This trend is compounded by a lack of effective diplomacy for conflict resolution, combined with reckless rhetoric surrounding nuclear weapons and the real possibility of their use—particularly in the context of the Ukraine conflict.
Canada’s approach to nuclear disarmament, heavily influenced by NATO’s nuclear policy, raises troubling questions about the country’s commitment and resolve in pursuing this critical objective. The continued validation of nuclear weapons as NATO’s supreme security guarantee appears more conducive to their perpetuation than to their elimination.
Like other nuclear-dependent states, Canada endorses, relies upon, and sustains the threatened use—including first use—of nuclear weapons through its support of nuclear deterrence as a legitimate security doctrine. It does so despite the existential risk deterrence doctrine entails, its weakening of non-proliferation norms, and in stark contrast to the global imperative to eliminate nuclear weapons. It is incumbent upon Canada to take clear, urgent, and decisive action to reinvigorate its nuclear disarmament agenda, push for concrete progress towards nuclear abolition, and help avert a nuclear weapons catastrophe. Read full report here