Roger and Denise Lagassé
Box 39 Southwood Site,  RR#1 Halfmoon Bay B.C.  V0N 1Y0  Ph: 885-4353

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                                                                January 28, 1999

Premier Glen Clark
Provincial Legislature
Victoria, B.C.

Dear Premier Clark,

It is with great dismay that we learn of ongoing federal plans to perpetuate the deployment of weapons of mass destruction just 15 km from Sechelt in the Strait of Georgia.  (Vancouver Sun, Jan. 26)  We join thousands of other Strait residents in urging your government to continue to denounce and resist this folly.  Please remain firm in your plans to cancel the Nanoose weapons testing range lease.

Everything has changed in the 1990’s except American military paranoia.  The U.S. stockpile of nuclear, biological and  chemical  Weapons of Mass Destruction (WOMDs) exceeds, in destructive power, those of all of the other nations of the world combined and still the Pentagon wants more.   President Clinton recently announced massive increases in military spending in spite of widespread homelessness, millions of Americans without basic medical insurance coverage and huge, unattended environmental problems including vast and growing amounts of nuclear waste from weapons production.   U.S. trident nuclear submarines patrol the oceans around the clock and are capable of eradicating the Earth at the push of a button.  In spite of the accident-prone history of ballistic nuclear submarines, Ottawa continues to press for a renewal of the Nanoose testing agreement, which allows these behemoths access to one of the most populated areas in Canada.

Robert McNamara, formerly the US secretary of defence, become a passionate nuclear
disarmer, now believes  nuclear weapons are simply too dangerous to be left in man's fallible hands.  General George Lee Butler, former commander of US Strategic Air Command, now works for total nuclear arms abolition. According to Butler: "It is simply wrong, morally speaking, for any mortal to be invested with the authority to call into question the survival of the human race."  The world court has ruled that nuclear arms are illegal and that the use or even the threat of use of nuclear weapons constitutes a war crime.  Still the U.S. adheres to it’s first-strike policy.

British Columbians living in and around the Strait of Georgia support your continued  leadership on this issue.

      In peace
 
 

      Denise and Roger Birklein-Lagassé
      for the Sunshine Coast Peace Group