The purpose of this two-day event is to list the best public policy innovations for preventing six global threats:

• war and weapons (especially nuclear);
• global warming;
• famine;
• pandemics;
• massive radiation exposure; and
• cyber attacks.

For information about these threats, see our website: http://tosavetheworld.ca.

We'll hear talks and Q & A responses from experts on all these threats. Among the speakers are:

• Professor John Polanyi, Nobel laureate in chemistry (keynote speaker;
• Hon. Douglas Roche, former Canadian ambassador for disarmament and Canadian senator;
• Peggy Mason; former Canadian ambassador for disarmament;
• Dr. Gordon Edwards, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility;
• Angela Bischoff, Ontario Clean Air Alliance;
• Hilal Elver, UN special rapporteur on the right to food;
• Professor Evan Fraser, Research Chair in global food security, University of Guelph;
  
• Catherine Abreu, chair of Climate Action Network;
• Professor Mark Z. Jacobson, of Stanford University;
• Professor Matthew Hoffman, co-director of U. of Toronto's Environmental Governance Lab;
• Dr. Ronald St. John, former director general of Canada's Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response;
• Dr. Larry Brilliant, former director of the Skoll Global Threats Fund;
• Dr. Bryna Warshawsky, , Medical Director, Communicable Diseases, Ontario Public Health;
• Professor Paul Werbos, director of the Centre for Large-Scale Complex systems and Integrated Optimization Networks;
• Professor Paul Meyer, Fellow in Internatonal Security, Simon Fraser University and former disarmament ambassador;
• Professor John Kirton, political scientist at the University of Toronto;
• Toby A. A. Heaps, co-founder of Corporate Knights Inc. and publisher of Corporate Knights Magazine;
  
• Fergus Watt, executive director of World Federalist Movement - Canada; and
• Dr. Jeremy Whitlock, past president, Canadian Nuclear Society.
  

On Wednesday evening, most of us will dine in the Free Times Restaurant, where Globe and Mail journalist Doug Saunders will speak about the protection of democracy.

On Thursday we will break into separate groups to select the most promising policy proposals for each threat. Then, upon returning to a plenary session, we will compile them as a one-page-long list of 25 public policy proposals called the "Platform for Survival." Activists, researchers, and NGOs working on all six threats will be encouraged to adopt it thereafter as a common agenda for campaigns to repair our world and keep it safer for everyone.