Citizens’ Assembly
PQCB is proposing a Canadian Citizens’ Assembly on Nuclear Disarmament.
In recent years, a new form of participatory democracy has begun to emerge in different parts of the world: Citizens’ Assemblies. Sometimes called Citizen Juries or Panels, or Deliberative Mini-Publics, the guiding principle of these experiments is the same: to assemble a small group of volunteer-citizens, scientifically chosen to reflect the full diversity – racial, socio-economic, gender, etc. – of their community or state, and entrust them to study and make recommendations on a specific area of policy review and reform. Examples include abortion rights and marriage equality in Ireland, where Citizens’ Assemblies played a crucial role in generating social support for constitutional reform; climate change strategies in the UK and elsewhere; municipal post-pandemic recovery programmes; and, in Canada, options for electoral reform (including an ongoing Assembly in PEI).
To our knowledge, no nation has yet convened a Citizens’ Assembly to review policies on nuclear weapons and nuclear disarmament, despite the fact that nuclear war poses an existential threat to life on Earth equaled only by the menace of global warming. Peace Quest Cape Breton believes that Canada should set a progressive, peace-loving precedent by establishing such a forum to thoroughly review a full range nuclear policy options. Though Canada does not possess nuclear weapons, it is a member of the world’s only nuclear-armed alliance, NATO, and an active participant in NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group (NPG), which routinely reviews and updates nuclear war plans. Canada, moreover, has played a major support role in the atomic age, providing uranium – taken from stolen indigenous land – for the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and fueling arms races and proliferation through its exports of nuclear material and technology.
Yet Canadian citizens have never directly been asked to approve or disapprove of their governments’ continued support for these genocidal weapons of mass destruction, or to explore new ways and means Canada can help a goal it has rhetorically embraced since 1945: a world free of nuclear weapons.
We have already received numerous endorsements for our proposal, including from Canadian-citizen and prominent anti-nuclear activist Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing. And in September 2022, together with our friends and supporters, we will be launching a public campaign to demand that parliament convenes a Canadian Citizens’ Assembly on Nuclear Disarmament.
As Canadians, as citizens, as human beings, we demand to be recognized as stakeholders in our own survival!
A CANADIAN CITIZENS’ ASSEMBLY ON NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT: A MODEL ASSEMBLY
On September 21 – UN International Day of Peace – Peace Quest Cape Breton released a ‘Model Canadian Citizens’ Assembly on Nuclear Disarmament,’ detailing how such an Assembly might function and be structured. The ‘Model’ was produced in response to numerous requests, from supporters and sceptics of the proposal, following the release of our Concept Paper on August 6 (Hiroshima Day). In his Foreword, PQCB Campaign Coordinator Sean Howard stresses that “the Model is intended and offered as a work-in-progress, and we welcome the opportunity to engage with others to further develop the proposal.” Its release forms part of the public launch of PQCB’s Citizens’ Assembly campaign, inaugurated by an event at Cape Breton University co-sponsored by CBU’s Global Social Justice Project.
The Model proposes a simple, tripartite structure, in which the Assembly would examine in turn:
The past – Canada’s remarkably complex, globally significant, and frequently dramatic nuclear history;
The present – Canada’s current nuclear-policy balancing act as a member of both a nuclear-armed alliance, NATO, and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), committed to achieving a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World; and
The future – options for revising, renewing – or, alternatively, reaffirming – Canadian policy with regard to nuclear weapons and nuclear disarmament.
For the full text of the Model, please click the button below.
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