OTTAWA — Former foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy wants Canada to mount a campaign with like-minded countries to stop eastern European allies from leaving a treaty he helped broker that bans the use of anti-personnel landmines.
On Tuesday, defence ministers representing Poland and the three Baltic nations said they "unanimously recommend withdrawing from the Ottawa Convention," which took effect in 1999, due to the growing threat from Russia to front-line NATO states.
Since then, Canada has spent millions to help rid the world of landmines that overwhelmingly injure and maim civilians and children, including in Ukraine.
But the ministers of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia argue that the security situation along NATO's eastern flank has "fundamentally deteriorated” since they signed on to the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, and that “military threats to NATO member states bordering Russia and Belarus have significantly increased.”
“With this decision, we are sending a clear message: Our countries are prepared and can use every necessary measure to defend our territory and freedom," they wrote.
Despite the intention to leave the treaty, the ministers said they would remain committed to humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians during armed conflict.
Axworthy, who was the driving force behind the Ottawa Convention, said pulling out of the treaty would help speed up the disintegration of the global order.
"I'm deeply dismayed," he said in an interview with The Canadian Press. "It's the beginning of an unravelling of an important treaty that saved a quarter of a million casualties in the last 25 years."
He said it could even be the beginning of the end for a "whole series of arms-control and disarmament issues."
Axworthy agrees with the region's leaders when they say that security has "fundamentally deteriorated," and said U.S. President Donald Trump is "going to the dark side" in disparaging allies and warming to Moscow.
But he said that pulling back from the convention will help revert the world to "big-power pushing around" and make the planet less safe.
Axworthy also said the move creates further strains in the NATO military alliance and thinks Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly should lead an effort to convince allies to stick with the treaty.
A week ago Axworthy co-wrote a letter to Joly, along with Humanity and Inclusion Canada, asking her to take action to try and keep the treaty in place, warning eliminating it "could lead to a domino effect of non-compliance and the abandonment of hard won gains for the protection of civilians, and leading to a very uncertain and dangerous world."
Joly's office has been asked for comment.
"Our own country was able to show a significant direction, and we didn't count out the big powers; we did it as an independent country," he said.
"This is an area that we have leadership in, and we need to exercise it."
Mines Action Canada said it was "appalled" by the proposal to withdraw some countries from the treaty, arguing Ottawa should try to convince European allies that exiting the treaty would only help Russia undermine the world older.
"It's really projecting a sort of weakness, at a time when we really do need to be strong and united within NATO," the group's head Erin Hunt said in an interview.
"This is a flagship Canadian foreign-policy initiative that some of our closest allies are abandoning, with not a lot of rationale behind it."
She noted research by the International Committee of the Red Cross shows that landmines aren't useful in preventing war nor in actual conflict. It's for that reason the U.S. no longer produces these arms.
Hunt said the move puts Canadian Armed Forces personnel serving in Latvia "in a very awkward position" because Ottawa's close allies "want to change their adherence to the broader international humanitarian law."
Roughly 1,900 Canadian troops are serving in land, air and sea forces to help deter a Russian invasion of Latvia.
She said Canada's Defence Department should work to convince their colleagues that there are better ways to defend themselves, noting that the statement didn't come from the foreign ministries.
"This announcement from these (defence) ministers seems to be trying to put their thumb on the scale," Hunt said.
The international watchdog Landmine Monitor said in a report last year that landmines were still actively being used in 2023 and 2024 by Russia, Myanmar, Iran and North Korea.
In Finland, the MP chairing the country's defence committee said this month that the country should leave the Ottawa Convention by this summer, citing concerns over Russia and a petition calling for such a move.
Nearly three dozen countries have not acceded to the Ottawa Convention, including some key current and past producers and users of landmines such as the United States, China, India, Pakistan, South Korea and Russia.
— With files from The Associated Press
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 18, 2025.
Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press
