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Paul Meyer, another Canadian ambassador for disarmament from 2003 to 2007 and currently a fellow at Simon Fraser University, agreed an abstention would have been better than a “no.”

“As a good international citizen, it’s important to recognize that when the General Assembly has established a process, that you should participate in a constructive fashion, and obviously use the process to continue to advocate for your preferred positions,” Meyer said. “To turn your back on the whole thing is not productive.”

Still, Dion told the National Post Tuesday he doesn’t think change will happen if non-nuclear states agree “between themselves,” though it’s “too hypothetical for now” to say whether Canada will play a role within or alongside negotiations.

“Since the nuclear countries are not in the process … it will be more symbolic than real,” he said. Asked whether he thinks nuclear powers will ever acquiesce to a treaty, he said, “not in the foreseeable future, but step by step, we’ll go there.”

Meyer rebutted there’s “probably no multilateral security agreement in existence” that had all states participating from day one, including the UN’s nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Veteran politician and diplomat Douglas Roche, who headed the UN’s disarmament committee in 1988, recalled that a UN landmine convention initiated by the “Ottawa process” 20 years ago was first “blocked completely by the major landmine possessors.” But Canada was “undeterred” and went ahead anyway.