Bill C-5 (Historical)

Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act

An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident

This enactment establishes a liability regime applicable in the event of a nuclear incident that makes operators of nuclear installations absolutely and exclusively liable for damages up to a maximum of $650 million. Operators are required to hold financial security in respect of their liability. This amount will be reviewed regularly and may be increased by regulation. The enactment also provides for the establishment, in certain circumstances, of an administrative tribunal to hear and decide claims. Finally, this enactment repeals the Nuclear Liability Act and makes consequential amendments.

Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to participate, at least for a little while, in this important debate on Bill C-5, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident, also known as the nuclear liability compensation act, or as some of my colleagues in this corner of the House have referred to it as the worst nuclear practices act.

That should give an indication of where New Democrats stand on this issue. We have been very opposed to the legislation. We thought it needed significant improvement before we would be able to support it. Unfortunately, despite doing our best in committee and later here in the House, those improvements did not happen and the bill is headed to be endorsed by the Liberals, the Bloc and the Conservatives. We think that is very disappointing for Canadians.

We know many Canadians have very serious concerns about nuclear energy. We know many Canadians understand that nuclear energy is not green energy, that the potential for accidents, the safety concerns surrounding nuclear energy, are very significant. Also the serious concerns about the disposal of waste from the nuclear power process have also baffled and troubled Canada for many years.

The member for Timmins—James Bay made it very clear that attempts to deposit waste from nuclear plants in northern Ontario will be resisted by the people of northern Ontario again and again because of the problems with that kind of process and waste.

There are many problems with the legislation. The legislation was developed to limit the amount of damages a nuclear power plant operator or fuel processor would pay out should there be an accident causing radiological contamination to property outside the plant area itself. The legislation really only applies to power plants and to fuel processors. Those unfortunately are not the only places where nuclear material is used, where there is the potential of an accident that might cause a claim for liability and compensation.

The current legislation dates from the 1970s and it is incredibly inadequate. We know changes are needed to that legislation. Right now under the existing legislation the liability limit is only $75 million, which is a pittance when we consider the kinds of accidents and liability claims that might come about as the result of a nuclear accident.

The proposal before us, however, only considers raising that to $650 million, which is the rock bottom of the international average of this kind of legislation around the world. We know, for instance, the liability in Japan is unlimited, with each operator having to carry private insurance of $30 million. The liability in Germany is also unlimited, except for nuclear accidents caused by war, and each operator has to have almost $500 million in private insurance. That is a far different approach than we take in Canada. Even in the United States, there is a limit of $9.7 billion U.S., with each operator needing up to $200 million in insurance.

The Conservatives' attempt pales by comparison with the assessment of other countries of what the level of liability, what the dollar amount attached to liability, should be. It is easy to understand why it should be so high when we consider the kinds of problems that would result from a serious nuclear accident.

The problem also with the legislation is that once the $650 million liability threshold is reached, the Canadian taxpayers are on the hook for the rest. A nuclear operator would only have to pay out a maximum of $650 million, while the public would be on the hook for millions, possibly billions of dollars in the case of an accident. There would be a special tribunal set up by the Minister of Natural Resources to look at the liability beyond $650 million and that liability would be paid out of the public purse. That is not an appropriate approach that Canadian taxpayers could support.

There are a lot of concerns. Many believe the legislation is an attempt to make the situation for the privatization of Canada's nuclear industry more attractive to foreign corporations to step in and get involved in the ownership of the Canadian nuclear industry, that the Conservatives have a plan to move that way. Given some of their other movements and their other steps, it is hard not to believe that it is what they have in mind.

British Columbia fortunately does not have nuclear power generation, but we are concerned about nuclear power and fuel processing at the Hanford station in Washington state in the U.S. It has been a long time source of concern for many people in British Columbia. We know that over many years the nine nuclear reactors and five massive plutonium processing complexes put nuclear radioactive contamination into the air and into the water of the Columbia River.

Thankfully the Hanford site has been decommissioned and is now in the process of a huge clean up, which will cost a minimum of $2 billion a year, and this clean up will go on for many decades. There are other specialized facilities to aid in the clean up, like the vitrification plant, which is one method designed to combine dangerous waste with glass to render it stable. That facility will cost $12 billion. Sadly the clean up has been put off. The timelines originally scheduled will not be met.

Billions of dollars are being spent just to remediate a former nuclear processing plant area and a nuclear generating site. This shows the extreme cost of an accident, which would be far more expensive.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Outremont for his question.

He is quite right. It is important to establish a strategy that includes other kinds of energy.

Fortunately, we in the NDP have done so recently, with the energy plan we are currently establishing in order to really create a new kind of sustainable development in Canada. We believe that a vast majority of Canadians support this new kind of development.

I know the hon. member represents a very important community in Quebec and I also know that he is worried about the position of the Bloc Québécois, who wanted to follow the NDP's lead regarding Bill C-5, but who threw in the towel and said they would stop fighting the Conservative government, as one Bloc member just mentioned.

The Bloc says the Conservatives and the Liberals are too strong and that it cannot do anything. We saw this with the softwood lumber agreement and we are seeing it again with air safety. Time and time again, the Bloc Québécois refuses to represent Quebeckers—

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would just like to make a comment in response to the statements by the member for Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel. It is interesting to note that he spent his entire 10 minutes talking about the NDP. That is likely because of the big nominations we have seen recently, such as the one in Outremont or the one yesterday in Gatineau. Three hundred people came out for the NDP nomination in this riding represented by the Bloc Québécois. Obviously the Bloc feels it is important to try to attack the NDP, because it can see that more and more Quebeckers are turning towards the NDP.

Why? It is very clear. The Bloc's position on Bill C-5 is incomprehensible. We know what the Conservatives are doing, and I will come back to that in a moment. We know that the Liberals go along with anything the Conservative Party says. As for the Bloc Québécois, after supporting the Conservative Party on all those budgets and confidence votes, this is the third time it has given up when faced with something that is not in the best interests of Quebeckers.

In the case of Bill C-5, it is clear that civil liability will fall on Quebeckers for any amount over $650 million if there is an incident. That is what happened with Gentilly-2, just east of Montreal. Once this is privatized, Quebec taxpayers will have to pay. Based on the costs of other nuclear incidents, that could mean paying $499 for every dollar paid within the liability limit. That is ridiculous.

I wanted to make these comments before moving on. I do not understand the Bloc's position, but it is very clear that this is not in the best interests of Quebeckers.

I would like to come back to this issue of Bill C-5 which should be known as the worst nuclear practices act put forward by the government in an attempt, in the long term, to essentially privatize Canadian nuclear facilities.

We know that the current status of nuclear facilities makes it impossible for American private companies to take over Canadian nuclear facilities because there is liability legislation in American law that when foreign liability insurance is too low those nuclear companies are responsible for picking up the liability in the event of a nuclear accident.

What have the Conservatives done? Their privatization agenda seems to be as broad and vast as possible. They have privatized airline transportation safety and given it over to the companies, which certainly did not work with railway safety or business aircraft and it will not work with public transport in the skies, and now nuclear liability itself. The government seems hell bent on privatizing every facet of Canadian life. We have to wonder if this is in the interest of the Canadian population.

I will come back to this term of worst nuclear practices because we need to look at what is happening around the world and how other countries are handling this same question. Hopefully, in all four corners of the House, there would be some degree of consensus that we have to move to best practices, not worst practices.

What is the issue of liability? What it means is that whatever the liability limit is in Canadian legislation, Canadian taxpayers will be picking up the tab for everything beyond that amount.

What does that mean? It means that if we privatize nuclear safety, and the government has shown its willingness and determination to privatize safety in every other aspect, we could have a private nuclear company botching its nuclear safety and causing a massive accident. It would not be the first time it has happened. We have tabled in the House dozens and dozens of nuclear accidents taking place since 1945. It is a regular occurrence.

Therefore, to say that there is a possibility of an accident, one needs only look at the facts and the reality. We cannot pretend that there will not be an accident when we have this past track record. Therefore, we need to look at the whole issue of how we handle these accidents and how we handle liability.

Other countries have said that companies need to have strong liability levels. Germany and Japan both have unlimited liability. In the United States we are talking of liability limits that are in the order of $10 billion. What do the Conservatives propose, with the support of the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois, three-quarters of this House basically just dropping their arms in surrender and saying that whatever the Prime Minister wants he gets? They are proposing $650 million. It is ridiculous.

We need only look at one nuclear accident and the estimated damages, the nuclear accident that took place in the Ukraine. The estimated amount in terms of overall damages by the Russian government is in the order of $235 billion. I will repeat that because I think it is important for our hon. friends in the other three-quarters of the House to understand the difference between $650 million and $235 billion. What does that mean? It means that the potential consequences of shoddy management practices in nuclear facilities would cost in the order of $235 billion and yet the government proposes to set the liability limit far below that.

In fact, in that particular case, if that had been a Canadian nuclear reactor and if that had been on Canadian soil, under the guidelines of Bill C-5 that would mean the company's liability would be $1 and the Canadian taxpayers' liability would be $500. For every $1 of the company's responsibility, the taxpayers would be libel for $500.

I say that is absurd and so do members of the NDP caucus who have been speaking in the House against this bill. It is absolutely absurd that we would limit the company's responsibility to that small an amount, the minimum possible international standards. That is why we in the NDP say that Bill C-5 should be known as the worst nuclear practices act.

In the recent statistics coming out of the latest parliamentary session, and I do not think I am betraying anything unless there is a massive shift in the next 24 hours, it turns out that the average NDP MP does 19 times the work of MPs from other caucuses, particularly backbench Conservatives and Liberal MPs.

When Bill C-5 came forward, we immediately got to work offering dozens of amendments to clean up the bill so Canadian taxpayers would not be on the hook. We raised it in committee and thought we had the support of the Liberals and the Bloc. However, any time there is a bill the Prime Minister wants passed, the Liberals back off immediately and simply agree to pass it. In something reminiscent of the softwood lumber sellout, which both the Liberals and the Bloc supported the Conservatives on and on which B.C. is still suffering the enormous consequences of that sellout, the Bloc told the Prime Minister to take whatever he wanted and Bill C-5 was not amended.

We then brought forward amendment after amendment in the House and still there have been no changes, which is why we have been speaking against this bill. It is ridiculous. It is simply the worst possible nuclear practice. It is not in keeping with Canadian interests and it is irresponsible.

The reason we have been speaking out against this so-called responsible bill, the worst nuclear practices act, in the House of Commons, and raising this issue in every tribunal that we can and, by the way, getting significant public support, is because it does not make sense to push for the privatization of the nuclear industry, to lessen safeguards over the nuclear industry or to have a liability amount that is so ridiculously low that Canadian taxpayers, in the horrendous and horrific possibility of a real nuclear accident, would be on the hook for centuries.

We know that nuclear material is radioactive for centuries. This bill, the worst nuclear practices act, is a radioactive bill because it would have consequences that would last for centuries, which is why we are opposing it.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

We will not talk about the disasters in the provinces or the NDP disasters in Ontario. This member makes me laugh when he says that the NDP has been in power in five Canadian provinces. In any event, it has never been in power federally. We have an advantage over the NDP in that we know we will never be in power, whereas the NDP is doing everything it can to come to power.

The NDP will never come to power for the simple reason that the New Democrats do not get it. That is the tragedy of the New Democratic Party: it does not understand. It does not understand that the Conservative Party introduced this bill on compensation because it wants to develop nuclear energy.

We know that, in Quebec, nuclear energy will not solve all our problems. Those days are gone. We have plants in Gentilly, but those days are gone. We have moved on to hydroelectricity. We in Quebec do know, though, that we are going to have to pay 22% of the bill when there is damage. That is a fact.

Every day in committee, the member for Beauharnois—Salaberry defends the interests of Quebeckers, as I do every day, and as all our Bloc colleagues do. Our objective is to defend our fellow citizens. We are Quebeckers.

This bill has one benefit: everyone agrees that the $75 million for compensation is out of date. It is true that we would have liked to improve on the $650 million.

We would have liked to have supported the NDP, except its problem is that it did not understand that the Conservatives and the Liberals were together and had decided that $650 million was enough. What the NDP is doing is just delaying the implementation of this bill. In the meantime, if there were an accident, there would be no bill to guarantee the $650 million in compensation.

As the member for Beauharnois—Salaberry said, at least the bill states that it will be reviewed every five years. If the minister ever finds that the compensation is insufficient, he will be able to increase the amount. Once again, it is a matter of understanding the dynamics of politics.

Earlier, the NDP critics said that they are not playing politics. When the Liberals say white, all they do is say black. It is always the same. Since I came here in 2000, it has always been the same. In their approach to politics they are cut from the same cloth as the Liberals. They look at what the Liberals are going to do and then decide to do the opposite.

That amazes me, especially when we are talking about issues as important as compensation for damage in case of a nuclear accident. It does not need to be spelled out. We know that reactors, not just in Canada, but throughout the world, are not in good shape. We know that these nuclear reactors are dangerous.

So it is important to be able to counter that. Obviously the Conservatives want to develop this energy system. It is really something to hear the Minister of Natural Resources claim that it is a clean energy, yet no one knows what to do with the nuclear waste.

Furthermore, the tragedy for Quebeckers is that the government wants to bury the nuclear waste in the Canadian Shield in Quebec. We are not the ones producing the waste, and we are the ones getting stuck with it.

Every day in this House, the Bloc Québécois will fight tooth and nail to keep nuclear waste that has been produced in other provinces from being buried in Quebec. Imagine. Other members in this House need to realize this.

In Quebec, we decided to develop hydroelectricity without a penny from the federal government. I hope that no one faints: we did not get one penny from the federal government.

Quebeckers alone paid for the development of hydroelectricity, through their taxes and their hydro bills, which they pay to Hydro-Québec, a crown corporation. The federal government has never contributed a cent, yet Quebec has always paid 22% to 25% of the costs of nuclear energy based on its contribution and its population compared to that of Canada. Quebec has always footed approximately a quarter of the total bill for development of nuclear energy, non-renewable energies and fossil fuels, the oil sector and all of the investments made. That is a fact.

So there is no reason to be surprised if the Bloc Québécois members rise in this House to defend the only solution we see—quite simply, Quebec's separation—so that we can manage our own energy development. Quebec is the province most likely to respect the Kyoto protocol because we developed our hydroelectric system with our own money.

We are doing the same thing with wind energy. Admittedly, the federal government is somewhat involved, but not anywhere in the range of the $900 billion invested in fossil fuel development.

I would point out that tax credits for petroleum development still exist, but there is no such development in Quebec. Furthermore, not a single litre of oil produced in western Canada goes to Quebec, because of the Borden line. People listening to us all think that Canada is an oil producing country and that we pay our share, but not a single litre of that oil makes it to Quebec, thanks to the famous Borden line, which comes from the west and stops at Borden. The rest goes to the United States. We, on the other hand, have to get our supply from other countries. It arrives by tanker along the St. Lawrence. We buy it from overseas. That is the reality.

If Quebec were its own country, it could have energy self-sufficiency. It would be very easy, simply because we produce our own hydroelectricity and receive our oil from other countries. We buy it internationally, so we do not need Canada. People must accept that reality.

We worked very hard in committee, especially the hon. member for Beauharnois—Salaberry, to try to improve this bill as much as possible, in order to force companies in nuclear development to be responsible in the future, and have them pay compensation and pay out large sums in the event of a nuclear disaster. We are talking about $650 million. We chose the maximum amount possible, while remaining very realistic.

The Conservatives and the Liberals were in bed together and therefore had the majority. Considering the Conservatives' hunger to develop this sector, we simply want to pass a bill very quickly to increase fines and compensation in the event of a nuclear incident or disaster. That must be clear. Otherwise, the Conservatives will sell the development of this sector to the Americans, as they have done with so many Canadian businesses. They like to let things take their course. Clearly, that allows foreigners to come and make their profits at our expense and, especially, in the event of an incident, at the expense of certain people who could not be reimbursed for all damages.

Once again, we are supporting certain bills but we are not happy about it. We had hoped the NDP amendments would be adopted and we supported them. However, reality caught up with us. The Conservatives and the Liberals are in league on this one. They have chosen to go full steam ahead in that direction. Unduly delaying Bill C-5, as the NDP is doing, will prevent passage of a bill that could be of great benefit in the event of a nuclear disaster.

We saw what happened after the nuclear disasters at Chernobyl in Ukraine and Three Mile Island in the United States. No one wants disasters to happen but they do. The only way to avoid them is to stop building nuclear power plants or to devote them to producing other types of energy. However, there are none. The Conservatives have no imagination when it comes to energy. The Conservatives' priorities are oil, nuclear power and the military. They do nothing for seniors, the forestry and manufacturing sectors or the general public and everything for all-out development.

Once again we will vote in favour of the bill even though we know it could have been better. It is nonetheless better than what we have.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and speak to Bill C-5, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident.

I am especially pleased to be speaking right after our critic, the member for Beauharnois—Salaberry, who does an excellent job and very capably represents the Bloc on the Standing Committee on Natural Resources. A specialist in community services, she always defended peoples' interests when she was in business or working in the community. She always paid special attention to the men and women around her. That is why she is capable of defending her constituents every day, and that is why our colleague from Beauharnois—Salaberry sits on the Standing Committee on Natural Resources.

I am not an expert. I have some things to say. I listened to her speech and learned from it. However, I do understand the political game the NDP is playing. It will always astound me, because the NDP has never been in power in this country—

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is truly a pleasure for me to speak to this bill at third reading and to answer the NDP's many questions about the Bloc Québécois' position.

We have been talking about this bill since October 2007. This bill would overhaul an outdated act that both Conservative and Liberal governments have cast aside. Under the old act, maximum liability for damages was $75 million. Many of our debates have hinged on the amount of compensation. Those on the other side of the House have not really talked about the mechanism, the tribunal, provided for in this new legislation to support citizens and communities seeking compensation.

Bill C-5 seeks to modernize the old act. The amount of liability has not changed in some 30 years. The NDP's position is irresponsible because if a serious nuclear incident were to happen right now in Ontario or another province, even Quebec, compensation would not exceed $75 million. Delaying the passage of this bill is irresponsible because the status quo is not acceptable.

I understand and agree with many members of this House that $650 million is not nearly enough. The interesting thing about this bill is that it includes mechanisms allowing the minister to change that amount as often as every five years. That does not mean the amount will be changed every five years; that just means that it can be.

The fact that the NDP has done everything in its power to delay passage of this bill means that today or even yesterday, had there been an incident, people and communities would have received just $75 million in compensation instead of $650 million. Even though we disagree on certain points, and even though we often disagree with the critic during Standing Committee on Natural Resources meetings, we have good discussions, and we often end up reaching an agreement.

When Bill C-5 was being debated in committee, we heard from many witnesses. A fairly rigorous examination was conducted. This is a somewhat technical bill dealing with insurance. Within the committee, there were no members with expertise acquired in the insurance industry prior to being elected. Accordingly, we listened very carefully to the witnesses as well as to the House and departmental legislative staff who advised us very well. We asked them many questions and I think we did a good job. Of course, the Bloc Québécois cannot say that it agrees with the bill 100%, but we do believe that, basically, it represents an improvement. The status quo was unacceptable. We think this is an improvement and that this bill is better than the previous legislation.

We do share some concerns of the members opposite who were wondering why the Conservative government suddenly woke up and decided to modernize an old act that had been abandoned by previous Liberal and Conservative governments. Why are they suddenly waking up and exerting pressure to see this bill passed quickly? Of course, the Conservative government endorses nuclear energy and is looking into opportunities in that area. Canada's legislation was completely outdated and no longer met international standards and accepted norms.

In that respect, I completely understand the distress and concerns, since I share them as well. The fact remains that, after all the evidence, all the work done in committee and after debating the amendments proposed by the Bloc Québécois and the NDP, unfortunately, very few amendments were retained. If the Blocs' amendments had also been accepted, the bill would have been even better.

In any case, we believe that the creation of a tribunal to hear cases and ensure compensation for communities and citizens is already a step in the right direction.

We heard some rather touching testimony. All municipalities with a nuclear power station located in their limits are members of an association and the mayor of a “host” city spoke to us about her concerns.

Her message was that she does not oppose the bill because she believes that this old, outdated law—cast aside by the Liberals and the Conservatives—should be revised. However, she was particularly concerned that $650 million would not be enough to compensate both individuals and the communities. For example, she stated that all infrastructure could be affected, requiring much more than $650 million in compensation.

Yet, the mayor also said that $650 million was better than the $75 million currently in place. The testimony to this effect by several witnesses determined the position we took in the committee.

It is rather odd. We studied a large number of amendments in committee, which were presented in the proper way and democratically. Then, all of a sudden, without consultation or democratic debate by our committee, a series of NDP amendments were presented in this House and, unfortunately, the committee was unable to hear witnesses in order to further study them.

I am a new member and this is the first time I have had such an experience. In committee, we carefully studied a bill and the amendments; then at subsequent readings in the House, we were faced with fifteen to twenty amendments. Some had been studied in committee and reintroduced, but others were altogether new. I know it takes a lot of work to introduce amendments, and I found it unfortunate that we were unable to study them in committee with new witnesses.

The Bloc Québécois is very concerned by the renewed interest in nuclear energy and, above all, by all the energy this Conservative government is putting into promoting it. I often laugh under my breath. In fact, I find it amusing that the Minister of Natural Resources justifies promoting nuclear energy by stating that it is a clean energy because it reduces greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, he says that every province is responsible for choosing its own energy and that if the provinces choose nuclear energy, that is their business.

I am saying to him that safety and waste management are federal responsibilities, and thousands of dollars are currently being spent for nothing. There are the MAPLE reactors. Half a billion dollars was invested to design a replacement reactor for the old Chalk River reactor. But this design, unfortunately, will never be built because Atomic Energy of Canada decided to scrap the project due to a major design flaw that could not be fixed. The world's top experts are not able to find a solution to the MAPLE design flaw.

It is true that energy comes under provincial jurisdiction. However, the federal government is responsible for waste management and technology development. Unfortunately, we are facing a government that spends Quebec and Canadian taxpayers' money on projects that result in money pits.

Ultimately, we wonder who will benefit from these projects, which really should be condemned. That is what the Bloc Québécois is doing. We are telling the Conservative government that it is on the wrong track, promoting energy that will produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions in the short term, but will create problems further down the road. We have a problem right now, but we are putting off fixing it until later, which creates serious consequences in terms of waste management.

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to the presentation of the hon. member opposite.

I was on the Standing Committee on Natural Resources and I studied Bill C-5 with the rest of the hon. members.

The Bloc Québécois certainly shares some of the concerns of the hon. member opposite with respect to the $650 million compensation amount. This was cause for much debate in committee. Unfortunately, none of the witnesses who were asked to appear before us swayed us or even suggested an alternative, perhaps because data on that amount was not available at the time. Neither the Bloc, the Liberal Party, nor the NDP asked the witnesses specifically to address the $650 million compensation amount. The only thing the witnesses said was that, unfortunately, it was not currently possible to insure and reinsure the compensation in the event of an incident.

I would like to know what my colleague has to say about that. Since we did not have the opportunity to hear from witnesses and to debate this here in this House or in committee, can he share his sources with us? What witnesses, in his view, could have come to testify and contribute to our debates?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to rise to speak today on behalf of the New Democratic Party on the issue of Bill C-5 and--

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

I am not sure if that has anything to do with Bill C-5. There was a point of order raised previously about relevance, so I will give the floor to the hon. member for British Columbia Southern Interior to respond, keeping in mind the rules of relevance regarding the third reading stage of the bill.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my hon. colleague for reminding me of that. I just got so involved and excited about this wonderful plan that we have that I just could not help but talk about it. With respect to Bill C-5, we have to be very careful. It is not advantageous for our country to adopt this bill the way it currently stands.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am a little disappointed that there are not more members here when they knew that I would be making this speech. In any case, I will do my best. I know that the members who stayed are very interested in what I have to say.

In the first part of my speech, I was trying to give an overview of our environmental plan. I was talking about how we can avoid the nuclear industry by creating green jobs. Before going on, I would like to put all of this in the context of what I call political will.

Anything that comes from the government, such as bills and so on, can sometimes diminish the government's power and give more powers to large, multinational companies. What I am seeing is a struggle between big business and the will of the people. Bill C-5 is an example, because it sets a limit of $650 million, instead of truly protecting people and society.

I would also like to point out that this is all going on in the context of what I call the Friedman philosophy, which talks of privatization, deregulation and a government that is pulling out of programs for which it is responsible.

Before I continue, I would like to share with my colleagues a book, which no doubt some of them have read and if they have not, I am sure it would be good, depressing bedtime reading. The book is entitled The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein, in which she outlines exactly what I have been trying to get at, the role of the corporate sector in dismantling our societies, not only in our country but in the rest of the world.

In case I do not have time to continue in outlining our plan for the environment, I would like to give a few examples of what has happened in other countries of the world with regard to the nuclear industry.

For example, on April 10, 2003, in Hungary, partially spent fuel rods undergoing cleaning in a tank of heavy water ruptured and spilled fuel pellets at Paks Nuclear Power Plant. It is expected that inadequate cooling of the rods during the cleaning process, combined with a sudden influx of cold water, thermally shocked the fuel rods, causing them to split. Boric acid was added to the tank to prevent the loose fuel pellets from achieving criticality. Ammonia and hydrazine were also added to absorb iodine.

On April 19, 2005, in Sellafield in the United Kingdom, there was a nuclear material leak. Twenty metric tonnes of uranium and 160 kilograms of plutonium, dissolved in 83,000 litres of nitric acid, leaked over several months from a cracked pipe into a stainless steel subchamber at the THORP nuclear fuel reprocessing plant. The partially processed spent fuel was drained into holding tanks outside the plant.

Most recently, on March 6, 2006, in Erwin, Tennessee, 35 litres of a highly enriched uranium solution leaked during transfer into a lab at the Nuclear Fuel Services Erwin plant. The incident caused a seven month shutdown and required a public hearing on the licensing of the plant.

What we are seeing is the nuclear industry is by no means 100% safe. The fact that even if there is the slightest accident, this can cause havoc on the environment. As I was trying to point out earlier in my speech, this can cause irreparable damage also to the health of individuals.

There is an alternative, and I started to outline this alternative in my speech just before being stopped. At that time, I was speaking about the fact that, in addition to establishing a cap and trade system, we could create green jobs and also continue to make sustainable consumer choices more affordable.

We need a national energy plan that would make a better building retrofit and energy efficient strategy, which would constitute a groundbreaking, historic construction project for Canada in every community, creating thousands of new local jobs, making Canada a world leader in building efficiency skills in technology.

I referred to the fact that a few months ago, a Canadian solar power company was forced to set up shop in Germany because Germany was providing the Canadian company with incentives to develop this industry, where there were no incentives in our country. This is really a shame on our future and on our country, that we are not able to promote clean, efficient energy in our country.

I would like to go further and say that there are now approximately 12.5 million homes in Canada. Green Communities, an environmental organization involved extensively in residential home audits and retrofits, estimates that home energy efficiency improvements can result in greenhouse gas savings of four tonnes a year per house.

What is our strategy? Our strategy is a new program for retrofitting low income homes to replace the program that was cancelled by the government. We also want to expand and revamp the co-energy programs by providing low interest loans and improved grants for energy efficient home and building retrofits, modelled on the city of Toronto's successful better building partnership using revolving funds.

We also feel that we should amend the Canadian building code to add energy conservation and efficiency to the criteria.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-5, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident, be read the third time and passed, and of the motion that this question be now put.

Nuclear Liability and compensation Act

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Mr. Speaker, once again it is my pleasure to appear before a full House to speak to Bill C-5. I notice my friend, the hon. member for Prince Albert, who knew I was speaking, decided to listen to my speech today, and I thank him for that.

First, I want to zero in on Bill C-5, speak a little about it and try to put it the context of what we are dealing with when we look at energy.

In an overview of Bill C-5, the Conservative government is taking what some would say a cavalier toward nuclear safety, and this recklessness is being supported by the other two opposition parties.

The bill will shortchange ordinary Canadians who get sick and die from a nuclear accident, or may lose all they own because of contamination or lose a family member who dies from cancer or radiation sickness.

The $650 million cap on compensation is not sufficient. The United States has a limit of $10 billion. Germany has an unlimited amount. Many countries are moving toward unlimited amounts. No private insurance is available, and it has been estimated that a nuclear accident would cost billions of dollars in damage, personal injury and death.

Let us look at nuclear safety. Despite assurances from the nuclear industry, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Windscale all show that the potential for a nuclear accident is real. Later on, if I have some time, I will once again give an account of some of the accidents that have happened in this industry.

The safety of nuclear installations must be paramount. We have already seen the government willing to put the lives and property of Canadians at risk to keep unsafe nuclear reactors running.

The nuclear industry is not really a green choice, as opposed to what some people might want us to believe. Nuclear waste remains deadly for thousands of years.

A few weeks ago I gave a brief statement on depleted uranium and the effects it had on those who used weapons containing depleted uranium, not only the soldiers of those armies who use these weapons, but civilian populations in countries such as Iraq.

Canada exports uranium to the United States with supposed assurances that it will never be used for weapons. However, experts say that some of it actually creeps into depleted uranium weapons, which then endangers the lives of people in those areas.

The last time I spoke with regard to depleted uranium, I mentioned a film which graphically illustrated the damaging effects. I have asked the government to ensure that we become a leader in banning and abolishing all the depleted uranium weapons in the world.

A person exposed to a used nuclear fuel bundle will be dead within an hour. There is no long term storage solution that has been found for the waste. The processing of fuel and waste has resulted in widespread contamination requiring expensive cleanups, and I cite the example of Fort Hope, Ontario and Rayrock Mine in the Northwest Territories.

Before moving on, I will mention that some people on this continent and in the world are tracking nuclear power reactors and the effects they have on surrounding populations. It would be very wise for our government to explore the possibility of doing a comprehensive study, at least in our country, and perhaps coordinating it with our neighbours to the south, to see what effects there are on the health of people who live in the surrounding areas of nuclear reactors.

Approximately a month ago I met with Dr. Leuren Moret from the United States. She has been quite heavily involved in the nuclear industry and is one of the leaders in the world exposing the danger of depleted uranium. She has been coordinating and looking at studies that link the effects on health with nuclear reactors. In addition to cancer, there is some evidence pointing to the correlation between high rates of diabetes and the proximity to nuclear reactors. Whether this is in fact the case, whether this is science, I am not sure, but these concerns warrant an investigation.

Our country should take the lead on this and say that we will challenge the world to investigate the fact that some people may suffer and die from the effects of living too close to nuclear reactors. As we move on in this debate, this is one of the things at which we could look.

The answer is not in building more nuclear reactors. In the budget the government has been investing in nuclear energy. It seems there is quite a lot of money for nuclear energy, but very little for green alternatives, such as solar power, wind power, wave generation, geothermal and all kinds of things that truly are green clean sources of energy, which have very little impact and leave a much smaller footprint on our planet. The government should be supporting more of these sources of energy in our country.

If the passage of the bill allows the expansion of nuclear power in our country, it will be a big step backward for us in our quest to have a greener and cleaner energy source in many ways. We need to ensure that it not only does not create greenhouse gases, which it does not in that respect, but we need to look at if for other things, such as the waste, the mining that takes place and the tragedy, human and otherwise, to which I just alluded, that it could inflict if there were to be an accident.

It is not the green source of energy we should invest in so heavily. We should be thinking of much cleaner greener ways to go. I will outline a few points from our NDP plan for the environment in a few minutes.

Bill C-5 limits the total liability of a nuclear operator to $650 million, which is the bottom of the international average. This is not enough.

Before outlining some of the tragic instances of nuclear accidents that have happened, it is important for us to realize there is another way of conserving energy and making our planet much more conducive to the environment. One way is what our party has proposed, and that is a cap and trade system. This is a mechanism at the heart of the Kyoto protocol. In fact, both candidates for the president of the United States have embraced cap and trade, making it a key tool in the continental fight against climate change. Cap and trade has already been tested in Europe and the NDP's plan builds on the lessons learned there.

My colleague, the hon. member for Outremont. was at an OECD conference in Europe. He said that the Europeans were embracing cap and trade as the way to conserve energy and fight climate change. They were not holding on to the fallacy of trying to put a tax on carbon so ordinary people would suffer, as my colleague from Winnipeg Centre pointed out.

When we called on other parties to reject the Conservative's dead on arrival clean air act and work together to build better legislation, the resulting legislation was deemed a breakthrough bill by environmental groups. The centrepiece of the bill was a carbon pricing regime. However, that is not enough. In addition to this method, which works, we need to create jobs in the green environment sector.

We would propose a green collar jobs fund be established that would allocate $1 billion per year to train workers, displaced workers and new entrants to the job market, so they could be provided with the skills that would be necessary to power Canada into the new energy economy.

The green collar jobs fund would be used to leverage training apprenticeships and investment partnerships from provincial and territorial governments, from first nations, Métis and Inuit communities, and from the private sector. For my hon. Conservative friends I repeat, from the private sector.

High skills training would be needed for such areas as installing and maintaining energy efficient and renewable energy technology for alternative cars and fuels, manufacturing parts for wind turbines and other new energy technologies, and energy efficiency auditing expertise.

It is a shame that a Canadian solar power private enterprise has to go to Germany to set up business because there is not enough incentive available in our country. Parallel to this, tax breaks are being given to the big oil companies that are reaping billions of dollars in profits. Something in this equation is not right.

At the same time, as we see with this bill, we are limiting the amount of liability in a nuclear accident. As my hon. colleague who spoke before said, there is something wrong in this equation.

In the province of British Columbia, where I come from, we had BC Hydro in control of our public water and our power system. The current government in British Columbia is slowly dismantling the public trust of our waters and our energy and creating what it calls public-private companies to damn the creeks, create energy and sell it on the open market.

I want to emphasize the importance for senior levels of government to take the lead and the initiative. The time is gone when we could just sit back and say that we would let the market take over and let private enterprise run our energy system. It is up to each and every one of us to--

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Western Arctic quite rightly points out that it is the absence of a cohesive plan, an overall central strategy that is worrisome, because often these piecemeal bits and pieces are at the whim or the will of an aggressive corporate lobby. They are individual incidents but they create a motif or a theme.

We recently dealt with Bill C-7 where the government is dismantling the safety associated with the air transportation system. Now we are dealing with the nuclear industry where the government is dismantling the safety provisions in the nuclear industry. I would suggest that not one person in this House should vote on this bill until they have read Dr. Helen Caldicott's book, Nuclear Power is Not the Answer. I implore members to get the book out of the library and read it. I will put it back today because I have read it.

I want to point out that the nuclear safety record in the world when compiled is a staggering and horrifying list. We have the explosion and combustion of the graphite reactor core in Pripyat, Ukraine that spread radioactive material over much of Europe. That was not in 1956 at the advent of the nuclear age. That was in 1986. Some 300,000 people had to be evacuated from the fallout areas.

We would think that would have ground the nuclear industry to a halt and that it would have regrouped to ensure that could never, ever happen again. However, in 1989, in Greifswald, Germany, fuel damage operators disabled three of the six cooling pumps. However, instead of the automatic shutdown, the fourth pump failed causing excessive heating which damaged and exposed 10 fuel rods. Workers again were hurt.

Earlier that year, at Hamm/Uentrop power station in Germany, fuel damaged spherical fuel pebbles became lodged in a pipe used to deliver fuel elements.

The technology is so complex that every step of the way is fraught with potential failures. I am a tradesman. I am a carpenter by nature and I have been in installations of hydroelectric dams. I have never worked on a nuclear power plant but I know the complexity associated with generating energy and the room for failure in a hydroelectric dam when it stops producing energy for a while.

The possibility for failure in an incident associated with a nuclear power plant is that it can devastate whole communities, whole regions and contaminate them for generations to come. However, the government is trying to pass a bill today that would put the maximum liability on any nuclear company that has this kind of a nuclear incident, for Monty Burns, $650 million, which is peanuts. A couple of hundred people alone who were affected by some of these accidents would easily burn that up in the liability lawsuits that are bound to follow.

Somewhere out there Homer Simpson is running a nuclear power plant. Somewhere out there Monty Burns is lobbying the Conservative Government of Canada today to ensure the safety regulations are not too onerous because “How am I supposed to make a buck cranking out nuclear energy if you make me pay for my mistakes?”.

I put it to the government that if we are looking to nuclear power to meet our energy needs in the coming decades, we are not trying hard enough. In fact, we have ignored the obvious and we have embraced the outdated technology.

The post-war era was tragic in many respects. The petrochemical industry, the asbestos industry and the nuclear industry ran amok. We are just beginning to realize that we have soiled our own nest to the point where we can hardly live here any more if we do not change our ways.

We do not want to see the Darlington nuclear power plant doubled in size. We want to see it shut down. We want to see clean energy from demand-side management, from energy retrofitting, from solar and wind energy. We do not want to see the industry contemplating the next generation of nuclear power.

Some of us believe it was a mistake. We believe that a government with some vision and leadership would have done more than expand or compound the problem. We also believe that an opposition party with some leadership would come up with something better than the carbon tax that it is flogging today, because it will not tax the guy who drives the Hummer. The people who are trying to heat their home in the western Arctic at $800 a month for home heating fuel will to pay the carbon tax. The guy driving the Hummer will pay nothing because it is excluded.

The government will take money from the person in the western Arctic heating their home but give a tax break to the guy driving the Hummer. That is the most convoluted, pretzel logic I have ever heard in terms of meeting a well-defined environmental problem.

We have been let down by both sides of the House today, with the exception of this little end where the NDP lives, where people are hearing some reasoned debate. The Conservatives have let us down with Bill C-5, hobnobbing with nuclear lobbyists again. I believe they have fallen victim to a bunch of clever lobbyists again. We have been let down by the official opposition as well because those members have come up with something that will suck all the life out of the debate about reducing carbon emissions.

We only get one shot to capture the public's imagination, if we are to talk about limiting carbon emissions. Unfortunately, the debate is going to be about defeating this bad idea instead of being about solutions. We are going to have to waste our energy defeating the government's bad idea first before the genuine debate can begin.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I was quite innocently trying to illustrate that a lot of industries and the corporate sector are negligent in warning workers in their industry about the potential hazards, the nuclear industry being one of them.

I was using the asbestos industry as another example of how the asbestos industry and the nuclear industry have successfully duped the general public into believing that their product and their industry are safer than they really are. Let me put it that way.

They do so, as I illustrated earlier, by spending hundreds of millions of dollars in marketing and PR campaigns to try to convince the public that there is really nothing to be afraid of and that we can dismantle our safety regime, such as Bill C-5 does, because, they say, “trust us” and they will take care of us.

This book by Dr. Helen Caldicott should be mandatory reading for anyone who intends to vote on Bill C-5. I urge everyone to read this book tonight, tomorrow or whenever they can before they vote on Bill C-5. I guarantee that it will turn people around on a dime. If they intended to support this bill, they will not any more after they read the cautionary tale associated with this book. Bill C-5 is designed to protect corporations more than citizens.

I know I am getting short on time, so I am coming to a conclusion. The point I was making about demand side management is that Canada is better than reverting to nuclear as a solution to our greenhouse gas emissions problems. We are smarter than that. We have the technology.

We should be leading the world in demand side management measures. We should be a centre of excellence for all the world to see in energy retrofitting, doing our public buildings first, our institutional buildings second, our private buildings third, and then every home in the country.

I remember the residents of a small town, Espanola, Ontario, who made up their minds about this when the member for Toronto Centre was the premier of Ontario in the early 1990s. They decided to see how far they could go. They decided to see how much energy they could save if they energy retrofitted, even to a small degree, every home, business, gas station, hospital and school in all of Espanola, Ontario.

The results were staggering. Even without comprehensive retrofitting, even with minor retrofitting, they harvested units of energy out of Espanola that they sold to the rest of the province, and they precluded the need for building any more nuclear power plants for quite some time.

If only we would expand that reasoning across the whole province. We have not even scratched the surface in harvesting units of energy out of the existing system. It is like mining for gold. Energy is gold these days. There is gold going up the smokestacks or leaking out of the leaky windows of every building in the country.

I began my speech by saying that a unit of energy harvested out of the existing system by demand side management measures is indistinguishable from a unit of energy produced at a generating station, except for a number of important differences.

First, it is available at one-third the cost.

Second, it is online and available for resale immediately. The moment we turn off that light switch in a room, that unit of energy is available for the light switch next door to be turned on.

Third, it precludes the need to borrow billions of dollars to build a generating station.

Fourth, it creates seven times the person-years of employment. If we are concerned about employing another generation as our manufacturing sector goes down the tubes and every job in the country is given to China, this give us employment as we energy retrofit our building stock. We can develop a technology and an expertise that we can export around the world. We will become known as champions of energy retrofit technology and energy conservation measures. That is an export technology I can be proud of.

I do not approve of giving loans so that countries can buy CANDU reactors from us, set up CANDU reactors in their countries and create bombs. We created the nuclear risk between India and Pakistan because we gave them both nuclear capabilities. We paid for it with loans that were never repaid. We did the same in Romania.

We are so desperate to sell our bloody reactors that we give countries the money to buy the reactors from us and we do not even ask them to repay the loans. I would rather be exporting energy retrofit technology. The best and most energy efficient windows in the world should come from Canada. The best energy efficient furnaces should come from Canada.

We should be proud to lead the world in this because we have the intelligence, the technology and the educational background. If we only had the political will.

It makes me want to cry when the only idea that we see debated in this country on energy and greenhouse gas emissions is a carbon tax on home heating fuel that will make some poor senior citizen living in northern Canada, who is already paying $800 a month for home heating fuel, pay more. However, the guy who drives a Hummer will not pay any penalty. He will enjoy the tax cut that is supposed to come from this poor little old lady who is paying astronomical home heating bills.

If that is the level of debate we are having, we are wasting our time, our God given talent and the gift of technology in this country. We are completely blowing it in terms of an opportunity to develop the technology of energy retrofitting and demand-side management.

Before the member for Tobique—Mactaquac interrupted me, I was saying that 68,000 buildings in this country are owned by the federal government. What a brilliant place to start as a demonstration project, first to show the private sector and then to show the world how it can be done. Copenhagen has just declared that it will be the most energy efficient city in the world in the next 10 years and it has set about a cooperative public-private partnership to make that so.

We could do that on a national scale if there was any kind of vision. If we had a national dream to become that country, we would be that country. Instead, we are tinkering with rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic by adding a carbon tax in all the wrong places. It is a complete diversion that will waste the time, energy and intellectual capacity of the nation when that energy and capacity should be applied to something transformative and meaningful as we wean ourselves off dirty energy and embrace clean energy.

Yes, hydroelectricity is good and I am proud that the province of Manitoba will meet its Kyoto targets. It already is because of all the hydroelectricity it produces. I wish the Minister of the Environment was here. If it could sell that clean hydroelectricity east-west instead of just north-south, it could help Ontario wean itself off of its dirty energy and nuclear energy. Saskatchewan would benefit enormously, God bless it. However, there are three or four important key elements that need to fall into place before we can go down that road.

As we contemplate nuclear energy as an alternative, we would be negligent and irresponsible if we ignored the actual empirical evidence associated with the use of nuclear, such as in Kiev, Ukraine on February 4, 1970. We do not hear about these things in the national news, partly because, I would not call it a conspiracy, there is an unwillingness to share all of the facts. We have the Voronezh nuclear power plant in Russia in 1971. Bhopal is another liability and the costs associated with cleaning it up.

Bill C-5 would limit that liability. We are almost doing the industry's dirty work for it. Rather than the industry ensuring it does not happen any more, we are limiting its liability to $650 million. That does not pay for the cleanup of a great deal of contamination in a major nuclear incident. What if we had something on the scale of Bhopal, my colleague from Western Arctic asks. There was a chemical spill at that time and 3,000 people were killed and 10,000 people were affected.

We could have thousands of people affected by a nuclear incident and the total liability would be $650 million. I say that one individual being affected for a lifetime could be eligible for a settlement of millions of dollars. This liability would only pay for perhaps a couple of hundred people. It is wrong-headed and it should be defeated.