Jennifer Wiebe Archive
$1.7 trillion
By Jenn Wiebe, MCC Ottawa Office Director In 2016, global military spending amounted to a staggering $1.68 trillion. It likely won’t be surprising which countries topped the military-spending charts—that year, the U.S. and China clocked in at $611 billion and $215 billion respectively. While nations like the U.S. are, of course, in a league of their own, Canada is not off the hook. Though not commonly known as a “military superpower,” Canada is still in the top 16 highest defence spenders worldwide (and 6th out of 28 NATO countries). What’s more, last June the Canadian government unveiled a plan to […]
Moving backwards on nuclear disarmament
Moving backwards on nuclear disarmament By Jennifer Wiebe, director of the Ottawa Office of MCC The Humanitarian Disarmament Forum, held October 14-15 in New York, was abuzz with a celebratory spirit. It’s not hard to imagine why. After all, the International Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons (ICAN for short) had just won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. And the landmark Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons—the result of years of hard work by millions of global campaigners—had opened for signature at the UN merely a few weeks earlier. In the world of humanitarian disarmament, history had been made yet again. I had […]
Swords into Ploughshares
Swords into Ploughshares by Jennifer Wiebe, Director of MCC Canada’s Ottawa Office When Ernie Regehr and Murray Thomson started Project Ploughshares in 1976, their initiative was only supposed to last six months. Just over forty years and many awards and accomplishments later, Ploughshares stands as one of the leading peace research organizations in Canada. How did it all begin? The seeds of Ploughshares were first sown four decades ago when two groups of people, each working separately on a common concern, came together. Ernie Regehr—witnessing the links between militarism and under-development while working in southern Africa—teamed up with Murray Thomson (then-Director of CUSO) in 1976 […]