We request the support of Mayor Mike Savage and the Halifax Regional Municipality for the ICAN Cities Appeal, a commitment to encourage governments around the world to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). The City Appeal states as follows:

Halifax is deeply concerned about the grave threat that nuclear weapons pose to communities throughout the world. We firmly believe that our residents have the right to live in a world free from this threat. Any use of nuclear weapons, whether deliberate or accidental, would have catastrophic, far-reaching and long-lasting consequences for people and the environment. Therefore, we support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and call on our government to sign and ratify it.

As cities are the main targets of nuclear weapons, municipalities have a special responsibility to their constituents to speak out against any role for nuclear weapons in national security doctrines.

The Covid - 19 pandemic has taught us some valuable lessons. Citizens are able to flatten the curve, so that dedicated health care workers could cope with the resources and facilities available. In the event of a nuclear detonation, doctors and health care workers would be killed or severely injured along with the general population. Hospitals, clinics, and other medical facilities would be destroyed or rendered unusable.  Indeed a nuclear detonation would have a much greater indiscriminate effect than the coronavirus. 

In July 2017, 122 nations voted to adopt the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). On awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to ICAN for the creation of this treaty, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee acknowledged the Treaty as the best pathway towards a world without nuclear weapons. The TPNW has been ratified by 38 countries to date and will enter into international law once 50 nations have ratified.  Unfortunately our government of Canada is not among them.  

In 2014,HRM became a member of ‘Mayors for Peace,’ the Hiroshima-based coalition of over 7,500 municipalities in 163 countries advocating nuclear abolition. On the 75th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, HRM should now put its name on the ICAN map of pro-Ban Cities.

Nova Scotia Voice of Women for Peace (NSVOW)

International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War Canada (IPPNWC)