Some Member States have already participated and intend to participate further in the US-Russian driven programme, called the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, by shipping the spent fuel of research reactors to the United States of America and to the Russian Federation.

24. Recalls the acknowledgment in the declaration of the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh that global trade imbalances have been at the roots of the financial crisis, and that a cooperative process of mutual assessment of national trade policy frameworks should be launched; calls on both sides to acknowledge the linkages of trade policy with the prospects of achieving global financial stability and a fair currency exchange alignment among the main economies; calls for a new agenda for the WTO, under the premise of the adaptation of global trade rules to financial crisis prevention, currency alignment, poverty ...[+++]reduction and climate change mitigation goals;

Canada is taking a leadership role there, putting significant funding into this program, and the U.S. has the global threat reduction initiative, which is doing similar work within the national context and through the G-8, funding major initiatives to disarm decaying Russian subs and retrain Russian technology experts and scientists.

With regard to Russia, while there are indeed very serious concerns about Russia, it is in a process of very serious engagement on these issues, and I'm very much encouraged by the cooperative threat reduction program and work through the G-8 on some of these issues.

S. whereas under the US disarmament programme Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) specific programmes for dismantling ballistic missile submarines were developed, as well as possibilities for an extension of CTR to general-purpose submarines that pose even larger environmental threats to Northern Europe; whereas the US Congress is only willing to provide half of the funding necessary for CTR continuation;

Here is what the British Columbia health minister said about these cuts, and I quote: [English] ``Last February's budget which cut transfers to provinces for health has forced provinces to look at unpalatable cuts that threaten medicare'' (1720) [Translation] If Canada's health minister was so concerned about the health care system in our country, he would have done what his colleague from Notre-Dame-de-Grâce did and would have opposed his government's last budget attacking social programs.