The General Secretary of the Canadian Council of Churches, the Rev. Dr. Karen Hamilton, has written Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird regarding the Preparatory Committee of the Non-Proliferation Treaty meeting, beginning on April 28, 2014.
The letter calls progress toward eliminating nuclear weapons “necessary, urgent and possible,” and asks that the federal governement take “specific steps” during the meeting of the Preparatory Committee, including:
- Affirming “the new momentum toward a ban on nuclear weapons on humanitarian grounds”
- Referencing the ways in which a humanitarian ban on nuclear weapons would make it easier to achieve the goals of the Non-Proliferation Treaty
- Announcing Canada’s intention to participate in the 3rd International Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, to be convened by Austria in late 2014
This letter is sent in collaboration with the World Council of Churches and its member churches, who are contacting their own governments with similar messages.
This is just the most recent example of the Canadian Council of Churches’ work on nuclear disarmament, notably through Project Ploughshares. Together with the World Council of Churches, the CCC rejects “the claim that any nation’s security requires the capacity to annihilate other nations,” and calls on the government of Canada, and the governments of the world, to “negotiate and establish a ban on the production, deployment, transfer and use of nuclear weapons in accordance with international humanitarian law.”
Read the June 25 2010 letter from the CCC’s denomination leaders to Prime Minister Harper.