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Outside the negotiating room in New York Monday, the Trump administration signalled it won’t back away from nuclear weapons-production any time soon.

Trump’s envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley, argued in a press conference that if “bad actors” have nuclear weapons, so should the proverbial good guys.

“There is nothing I want more for my family than a world with no nuclear weapons, but we have to be realistic,” Haley said. “Is there anyone that believes that North Korea would agree to a ban on nuclear weapons?”

Trump had told Reuters in February a nuke-free world would be “a dream,” but, “if countries are going to have nukes, we’re going to be at the top of the pack.”

Canada is abstaining from talks this week because “the negotiation of a nuclear weapons ban without the participation of states that possess nuclear weapons is certain to be ineffective and will not eliminate any nuclear weapons,” Alex Lawrence, a spokesman for Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, said in an email.

Canada still “strongly supports efforts towards nuclear disarmament,” he said, but is showing that support in other ways: by championing a fissile material cut-off treaty and supporting a Norway plan to form an expert group around “nuclear disarmament verification.”

That’s flawed logic, says Ray Acheson, a Canadian who runs the disarmament program of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

For one thing, the fissile material cut-off won’t lead to the elimination of nuclear weapons themselves, either. “So it’s sort of a disingenuous argument,” she said. “There’s other countries that Canada’s very strong allies with that are here negotiating this treaty. Most of the world is involved in this.…It’s really absurd and saddening not to have them here.” Among the participants, for example, is the Netherlands, a fellow NATO ally.