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Canada, a sparsely populated giant, is not a land of patriotic zealots. Compared to the economic powerhouse down south, our dollar is always low, and our dependency on the world’s last remaining superpower often leaves us with the belief that the “true north strong and free� is but a pilotfish living off a shark. Canadian citizens, however, have an extraordinary reason to be proud.

The Chretien administration has allotted one hundred million dollars to the global eradication of landmines, a noble goal. Our elected officials trumpet the Ottawa Convention On The Prohibition Of The Use, Stockpiling, Production, And Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines And On Their Destruction, and can now boast of 136 signing nations, six of which are members of the G8: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom. This treaty is viewed by many as establishing a new standard. A precedent for the prohibition of weapons of war has been set with the ban upon chemical gases, but a revolutionary process has begun: The multi-national negotiation and acceptance of an arms control agreement by same-minded states and organizations outside the confines of the United Nations. Canada is in the midst of ridding the world of a scourge.

According to Clear Landmines, a non-profit organization devoted to the removal of these weapons of destruction, anti-personnel mines kill or mutilate 26,000 people a year, 8000 of which are children under the age of fifteen. Though there are over 344 models of these devices, the Soviet PFM-1 or “butterfly mine,� as it is called because of its shape, is one of the most heinous. Widely used in Afghanistan, the surreptitious contrivance is scattered by airplane into fields, where youngsters pick them up, believing them to be toys. The innocents not only lose limbs but also develop eye impairments due to the toxicity of the explosive. The gas released is so hazardous that when...