Bill C-20 (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

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

My hon. friend is making some comment, but I cannot quite understand it. I guess it was humorous because his colleague from Tobique—Mactaquac enjoyed it. I am glad to see they are enjoying themselves.

We heard how important it was at that time when they brought this bill in as Bill C-5. Those comments were repeated last year with Bill C-20. Now we are dealing with Bill C-15, the latest incarnation of the government's nuclear liability legislation, and the same arguments are being echoed. It is almost as if there are ghosts in here, there are so many echoes. We will see how far it makes it this time.

Canadians will recall that two years ago it was politically convenient to jettison this legislation so Conservatives could break their own fixed date election law and force a vote before they had to admit how badly they had mismanaged the country's finances. As we learned, they had put the country into deficit before the recession even began by their decisions in terms of spending and tax cuts that they could not afford. We had a deficit last year of $54 billion and who knows how much in the current year.

Last December the nuclear industry was quite excited when the bill was introduced, when it passed second reading, when it went to committee where it was approved and then reported back to the House. Industry stakeholders thought that after many years the bill would become law. Of course the Prime Minister panicked over the prospect of having to tell Canadians the truth about Afghan detainees and promptly prorogued Parliament to protect his political assets. Nuclear liability legislation became collateral damage to that decision in the government's ongoing battle to suppress the truth. It is really part of the government's ever-expanding Conservative culture of deceit.

However, now we start again from square one. We heard the parliamentary secretary tell the House how important the legislation was to the government and how significant it was to Canada's nuclear industry. That was quite a performance, deserving of some sort of Prairie Oyster award or something like that.

The bill would provide much needed update to industry standards to ensure stability and protection for Canadians. Hopefully this time the Conservatives can put the needs of the nation ahead of their party interests and actually enact the legislation, not prorogue the House, not break a fixed date election law, or whatever.

Bill C-15 would replace the 1976 Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act and establish a clear regime in the event of a nuclear accident. While we pray that never happens, the recent events in the Gulf of Mexico remind us we need to always be prepared, as my son the Boy Scout would say.

One of the key changes in Bill C-15 would be to increase operator liability from $75 million to $650 million. That is a significant increase but some ask if it is enough. The last time the legislation was before us the government claimed that $650 million was all the Canadian insurance industry could bear. That is why it would not entertain going higher to $1 billion, for example.

However, during a comprehensive study, which we heard about at the Standing Committee on Natural Resources, we learned that this was not quite the case. Hopefully, during this debate, we will hear some more about why the government feels that $650 million is adequate. Hopefully this time we will get a clearer and stronger answer. We have had a bit of an answer today. We need to hear more about that.

When the former bill went to committee, before it was killed along with the government's talk tough on crime agenda and other bills that the government claimed were so important before it prorogued and killed them all, all parties at that time did agree on a number of amendments that strengthened the legislation. I look forward to the committee's further study in the weeks ahead. My party and I will be supporting sending Bill C-15 to committee.

While the bill would provide much needed changes, the basic principles of the nuclear liability and compensation act will remain the same. Operators are absolutely and exclusively liable for damage. That is one principle. Operators must carry insurance. An operator's liability is limited in time and amount. Suppliers and contractors are effectively indemnified. All those are important basic principles.

According to the Department of Natural Resources, the new liability limit reflects a balance of considerations. It is looking at the question of risk and if it address foreseeable rather than catastrophic accidents and if the insurance reflects insurance capacity that can be available at a reasonable cost. It puts Canada on par with the liability limits in many other countries. It responds to recommendations made by the Senate Standing Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources.

Since this is the third time the House has seen this legislation, there is little need to address all of its details. Instead, I would like to note that despite the fact that the Conservatives consistently lack the legislative fortitude to actually see nuclear legislation completely through this process, at least they have not been too afraid to bring it to the House for debate. They brought it back after they prorogued for other reasons.

That is not the case for another key aspect of the nuclear industry, the sale of AECL assets. The government continues to hide its highly suspect plans for the outright sale of our world-class CANDU technology. I find that very disconcerting. Like Bill C-15, this is critical for the industry, but the Conservatives believe they can move without consulting the people most impacted, people directly involved in the industry, the employees of AECL and the industry itself.

The Conservatives believe it is okay to hide what they are doing from the same Canadian taxpayers who have invested hundreds of millions in this industry in recent years. In fact, they put the terms of this in the budget bill. Why would the decision of whether one sells a Crown corporation be in the budget bill? What place could it possibly have there? It does not make much sense.

It is not like this is the sale of a surplus filing cabinet or a used prime ministerial limo. We are talking about an industry that supports about 70,000 jobs, after all. In fact, a lot of those jobs are in the ridings of Conservative MPs. Like Bill C-15, the sale of AECL will impact a lot of jobs in a lot of Conservative ridings.

In order to encourage investment in our nuclear industry and to protect this sector and the jobs it generates, we are debating Bill C-15 as a way to provide legal and insurance certainty for suppliers and operators. However, while it is good to debate Bill C-15, the government has dropped a cone of silence over its privatization plans for AECL. Conservative MPs have been muzzled once again by the Prime Minister's Office.

Maybe we should not blame them, though. When people are so immersed in the Conservative culture of deceit, they may not recognize what is actually happening. Maybe they feel it is safer to bow to the wishes of the Conservative upper echelons who consider this industry an embarrassment and just want to get rid of it. They want to unload the CANDU technology. They want to unload AECL after many years of Canada being a world leader in the development of nuclear technologies. Things like medical isotopes were developed right in Canada. Canadians can be very proud of that. It is a shame.

There is even a story going around that we are about to sell off AECL to foreign interests because of a tantrum the Prime Minister threw when his ministers repeatedly bungled the medical isotope crisis. It is a scary thought that this is his reasoning behind this decision.

If the government really believes in strengthening the industry with legislation like Bill C-15, why is it not prepared to openly debate the outright sale of AECL's commercial assets? I do not know what Conservative MPs are telling those families in their ridings who rely on jobs in this sector, but I hope they will come to their senses on this one and insist that the government open up debate on this question.

Natural Resources

[Leon Benoit, Conservative, Vegreville—Wainwright, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the fifth report of the Standing Committee on Natural Resources in relation to Bill C-20, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident.

The committee has studied the bill and has decided to report the bill back to the House with amendments.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

The government, of course, still retains the power to assign the tribunal, but the chair, as we've seen through the bill so far, holds a very important place in terms of what's allowed in, what's allowed out, and what's considered appropriate. We've heard that from our witnesses.

There's a slight typo, Chair; it should read, “who shall elect from among themselves a person who shall act as the”.

Amendment NDP-20 is essentially saying that once the government assigns the tribunal, the judges, whether current judges or past judges, then select their chair. It makes it one step further removed. The government still gets to choose the people it wishes to have on the tribunal, but the tribunal members then put forward their chair. It allows those final decisions to be one step removed from the government.

The chair, from what I read on C-20, holds extraordinary powers. It's the critical position on the tribunal. This amendment simply allows the tribunal to pick its chair. The government picks the tribunal, of course.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

So the situation you would have under Bill C-20 as it currently stands is that where a victim of a nuclear accident is given no limit south of the border, a similar person with the exact same case is given a 30-year limit afterwards.

I don't see any reason not to have the unlimited limit, I suppose, at the end of the day, if it can be directly shown as causal, and we have evidence that says particular forms of cancer can show up many years later, especially in young people and especially intergenerationally. It seems that the type of contamination we're talking about is one that can pass through the generations, so we have to be wary of that.

Again, I point to the committee's good judgment, but I think this is a reasonable clause and it's certainly one that our friends in the United States felt was reasonable as well.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

NDP-17 seeks to amend the legislation.

Just in terms of the time allotted in terms of somebody's ability to come back and file for compensation, under C-20 we have a number of limitations. One of them is around the actual liability limit, but it also imposes a ultimate period of 30 years. A number of witnesses who came before us said that the 30-year limit is artificially low and that some cancers that are caused by exposure to nuclear pollution can manifest over a much longer period of time.

There's a corresponding piece of legislation in the U.S. called the Price-Anderson Act that no longer has this limitation period of 30 years, or any such limitation. Where they modify the act in the U.S. is they say it's three years after the moment of first recognized harm. So once the cancer is identified, if cancer is the case, you have three years to report it. That seems reasonable.

But the 30-year limit on discovery often.... Unfortunately, we know as individuals, people in our family often have cancer that goes undiscovered for a number of years. Something happens consequentially and then they go in for a test and they find out they have cancer. But it manifested maybe many years before. That's also true with the types of cancer caused by exposure to nuclear radiation.

The Canadian Environmental Law Association brought this evidence forward to committee, and the committee has also received a number of letters from folks across Canada, some of them in the medical profession.

So that's essentially the amendment, Chair. It seeks to modify C-20 exactly that way. I would be curious as to the committee's opinions about the need to remove that one stipulation within the act.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Exactly.

What we're trying to understand is...and have a mechanism for the government every year to declare, “The total liabilities we would estimate, under a nuclear accident, would be the following: these are the liabilities that we deem are out there right now, every year.” Those will shift, depending on how many reactors there are in the country, the nature of those reactors, and their close proximity to....

We need to base that upon some sort of research, some sort of assessment. If you add more onto your house, let's say, your insurance gets adjusted. If the neighbourhood gets more expensive to live in, your insurance gets adjusted. Things change. Insurance regimes change.

Bill C-20 is trying to set up an insurance regime, and will do so for many years. We didn't change the last act for however many years. One has to imagine this thing lasting a while without any major changes. We want to be able to tell the Canadian people that this is the total liability that's out there--every year, as it changes.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Yes. Okay.

In the event that...and Bill C-20 does this. As you said, it requires the minister to prepare, or at least to anticipate the need for Parliament to release more funds--yes?--in the event that it exceeds the $650 million covered by private insurers.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

At what point and where can the Government of Canada say to the Canadian people every year, adding up all the potential damages and the costs that we may be on the hook for, “These are our current standing liabilities, this is what we may, in the unlikely event of a nuclear accident, be on the hook for”? Where can that appear? Why would it not appear in conjunction with an act like Bill C-20?

I understand the point of the limited liability is that this is all that can be made liable under Bill C-20, but there may be more, and there is an estimation. This whole thing has to be based on the idea that there's about this much needing to be paid out in the event of a nuclear accident, right? That's the whole premise of the bill.

We also would want to know, because we've talked about what damages would be covered under Bill C-20, which ones wouldn't. I think it's a worthwhile exercise for the Canadian people to know, of those that wouldn't be covered, this is what sits on the books right now for liabilities for the Canadian government.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

What new clause 26.1 attempts to do--and this is for the interest of the committee--is it attempts to say that under Bill C-20 the government, every year, must come forward to say, above and beyond the insurance coverage that reactors will have, what liabilities will Canada potentially be on the hook for.

Ms. MacKenzie is saying no.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

So what I'm asking about is that Bill C-20 seeks a different regime.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Good afternoon, everyone.

Welcome to our guests.

Mr. Hénault, Mr. McCauley, and Ms. MacKenzie, thank you for being here again.

We're here today to continue our clause-by-clause of Bill C-20. When we left off we were about to start dealing with a new clause 26.1, which is amendment NDP-15. It is a new clause.

First of all, Mr. Cullen, do you want to move that motion?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

This took us a while. It wasn't really until the clause-by-clause stage where we could get into this as committee members, but on the assessment of risk, as we saw in the Magellan study, the way the risk is assessed is the whole exercise. If you limit the risk assessment to a certain reactor under a certain defined set of conditions, you come up with a number for liability and a number for compensation. That same study asked the government to expand its view and look at more severe accidents in denser populations.

I'll read for members what NDP-14 seeks to do: “When the Minister causes a copy of a reinsurance agreement to be laid before each House...the Minister shall also cause to be laid before each House a copy of all related risk assessment studies that were completed before the reinsurance agreement was entered into”.

I referred to the Magellan study. If this clause had existed previously, all members of this committee and the Canadian public would have had access to that research. So when the government says that it's building Bill C-20 “based upon this assessment”, all this amendment says is to put the assessment before us so we understand where the number comes from.

Instead, we've had to go through all these witness hearings, and it was in a seemingly casual way--I don't want to say that it was in a casual way, because I'm not knocking the witnesses at all--that we got to see the report. Also, the report was made available to committee members, but it wasn't translated. I think we need to formalize this part of the process because the rules you set out at the very beginning for the study will eventually determine the liability limit.

So we're simply asking the government, when it's setting any new liability limit, to tell Parliament and the Canadian people, “This is the study we used to set the liability limit”. It seems logical. The amendment is not asking for any state secrets or anything that would be a corruptive influence. It just says to tell us how you got to the number, show us the data, and allow us to have some conversation about it. That's what NDP-14 seeks to do.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Okay. I might have that wrong.

The report I'm referencing is the one that the government commissioned. It looked at two reactors around which we had much discussion here. There were three factors. One is, the report is eight years old. That's when this bill was constructed. It was constructed around an eight-year-old report.

Second, the two recommendations that came out of the report—there were only two—said that the government should look at Pickering, a place with a higher density of population, and it should also look at different types of accidents, more severe accidents than the one the examiners studied. They were given a direction to study two more isolated reactors under a limited set of conditions for a design accident, one that was imagined, as opposed to a more severe accident. The nuclear insurance group came before us, and under a question from my colleague, Mr. Rafferty—I'll repeat this, because I think this is important—the question was, “As a lawyer, would you think it would be fair to limit liability to an entity if an accident were to happen because of negligence and incompetence?” That is what we're dealing with here.

The answer from Mr. Walker—this is from the nuclear insurance companies themselves—is that “the classical answer would be no”. I guess there are no countervailing arguments in a nuclear environment. From the insurer's point of view, to Mr. Allen's point, when the concept that's brought up here about proven negligence and given the moment where you can have this limited liability, the insurance said no. They said that when you look at it this way, you shouldn't do this.

Our report is eight years old, and the government ignored the only two recommendations that came out of the report to study what may in fact happen. We're going to a question of proven negligence, in which the insurers themselves said that if you have proven negligence, the special circumstance that Bill C-20 creates should be modified. Our amendment is modifying that circumstance in saying that we're giving you special treatment as an industry because it's so hard to insure you guys flat out--that it can't be done. That was said by the nuclear industry themselves: without this type of legislation, you don't have a nuclear industry, period.

We're saying that's fine to an extent. We've argued already for a higher liability limit. There's disagreement on that. We're now saying that just in a point of proven negligence, should they still be afforded that special privilege of limited liability? We're saying sure, that it still is afforded to them, but charge them more for it, because they were negligent, and it was proven, and the insurance companies themselves who are involved said that would make sense.

Those are the arguments we're making around NDP-5. I think for all the points I raised, it makes sense. We submit ourselves to the vote of the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Yes, Mr. Cullen, what you're arguing is that there wouldn't be additional money if amendment 16 were to pass. I've ruled that amendment 16 isn't in order because the introduction of additional security in the form of contributions is a new concept that's outside and beyond the scope of Bill C-20 and therefore is inadmissible.

So you're basing your argument for saying there wouldn't be any additional spending required on the condition that amendment 16 would pass, which isn't going to happen because it isn't in order.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

A lot rests on the judge, obviously, because that's the way the tribunal is established. But there was nothing earlier on the judge's own experience, potential bias, or interest. The current or ex-judges are simply appointed by cabinet. The act itself, Bill C-20, allows the judge quite a bit of discretion to determine what's vexatious and what's not.

Imagine the public having a concern if a judge had previously been a lawyer, had worked for one element of the nuclear industry, became a judge, and was appointed to this because of their experience. But the act leaves so much available to the judge to decide. This could involve many millions of dollars and be quite important. There's no direction given on discretion, if you follow my meaning.

Is that because it's impossible to guide the government that way? You have a judge who worked 20 years as a lawyer for part of the nuclear industry and ends up becoming a judge. Then 10 or 15 years later he's appointed to a tribunal as a retired or sitting member of the bench. Now the public has to come before a judge who used to litigate on behalf of the nuclear industry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Good afternoon, everyone.

We're here to continue our clause-by-clause on Bill C-20. We left off at clause 45. We had some discussion on clause 45. Is there any more discussion on clause 45?

Yes, Mr. Cullen.

(On clause 45--Powers with respect to witnesses and documents)

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

What I'm trying to understand here, Chair, is that between that list of things that you've said require the reinsurance.... I don't really know what this is.

You said they were things that insurance companies were not willing to cover, and the small research reactors, but it's difficult for me as a committee member to understand what that all amounts to. Is this a large field of things? Is it incredibly small?

Then again, to go back to what's sitting in the pot right now and what is estimated by Bill C-20, is it growing at 1% per year? I'm flying a bit blind here. It's not showing what we're actually reinsuring, how much is sitting there in that reinsurance pot, and what happens to these uninsured items if that pot is exhausted.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I would just like some explanation from our witnesses. We didn't necessarily hear a lot of testimony about the reinsurance component. Can you very briefly explain the justification of clause 27 in terms of this account. Does that account exist now? What does Bill C-20 do to alter it, if it does exist right now?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I appreciate the words of my colleague Mr. Anderson.

First of all, getting the French wrong on such an important motion for the government seems reminiscent somewhat of some of the parts of this bill. Regarding the intentions associated with the timeline, I had an assumption—at least for my part, and I suspect others on the committee had—that the government was also going to do what committees do, which is to hear the evidence that is brought forward by the many varied witnesses, take that evidence into account, and then consider amendments to a bill, which, we've now been brought to understand, is more than eight years old, in an environment such as the nuclear industry's that is constantly changing and shifting.

It was my intention in doing my job as a committee member to take the information that was given to us as committee members and then apply it to the bill that was in front of us, Bill C-20. The questions I have put to the committee witnesses to this point have been as clear and concise as I can make them. I find also that, especially in this last round of witnesses, some of the answers have, I think both for the witnesses and certainly for me as a committee member, been thought-provoking and reflective of a deeper understanding of what implications for the Canadian taxpayer Bill C-20 holds.

It has been well apparent to me that the agreement we set out, Chair, attempted—and I think Mr. Regan is right in pointing out that the very nature of it is to be not necessarily a unanimous, all-party process—to look at the bill and consider amendments. When I've brought considerations and thoughts to the government side, at least to ask whether they would consider one aspect or another aspect, they've refused out of hand. There's been no notion of negotiation, no notion of being able to improve upon the legislation before us.

While I understand that when in government all sorts of pressures come to be applied and that greater considerations might be out there that the committee members from the government side will not divulge to us, it seems to me that a motion such as this that is before us today to put a timeline on a bill—which the government seems ambivalent about, frankly....

It hasn't moved a single amendment to an eight-year-old piece of legislation; it didn't move a single amendment after hearing many hours of witness testimony; it hasn't considered, frankly, any of the amendments that we've brought forward as opposition; it's just not open to the conversation. If the parliamentary secretary wishes to speak about good faith in the process, I'm all for it. I'm very interested in good faith. That is how I enter into any discussion that we have around this committee table, whether it happens to be about the timeline, as Mr. Anderson has pointed out here today, or in fact the legislation that's before us, for which this timeline is adjusted.

It seems to me, and I say this in all sincerity and imploring the government, that if the government is truly interested in speed, which is what this motion speaks to—moving this thing quicker—then certainly they can find it in their schedules to sit down with committee members. I'm willing to do it today; I'm willing to do it right now. If the parliamentary secretary would like to take a five-minute break, I'll put forward to him again some of the very most reasonable and sensible amendments based on the testimony that we heard from witnesses, both within the industry and outside, to understand what the government's intentions are around this bill.

To this point, the government has simply told us to get lost. They've simply told us that they're not interested in making the bill better; that the thing when crafted eight years ago was an immaculate perfection, anticipating all the things that were going to come in the following eight years, anticipating everything the witnesses told us from around the world and within the industry. That's an incredible amount of intelligence that this government seems to claim: that they could anticipate all of those things; that their bill was swayed not an iota by the testimony they heard.

It calls into question why they even bothered studying the bill at all, if they knew this bill to be perfect in its initial manifestation of 2002. It suggests that they anticipated the European nuclear liability regime, that they understood where the Japanese were going, where the Americans would land. Of course they did not.

In regard to this motion and trying to understand what the government's actual intentions are, I am led to conclude that rather than do the work a committee is meant to do, which is to study legislation and try to improve upon it as best we can—which the government has made zero effort to do, on such an important issue as nuclear liability and safety.... It seems to be a perversion of what the responsibility is to be a government, which is to design the best legislation, with the most current information possible.

Instead what we have in front of us is this idea that we now need to affix a timeline to it because of some notion of good faith and responsibility from the Conservatives.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

That wasn't my question, and that's not what I'm raising, because we've been there. It was more beyond those schemes, because these things can be shut down for a couple of years. Those schemes don't last a couple of years. I want to know if the government, if the operator, is liable under Bill C-20, clause 18, for any compensation to a worker, showing no prejudice towards the other schemes that are available?

The last time I recall, we couldn't get to an answer on this question.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

In the consultation process leading up to Bill C-20 and clause 18, aside from sitting down with the nuclear providers themselves, the operators, and the CNSC—we're talking about communities being affected in evacuations and such—did the government sit down with any of the communities that host these nuclear facilities?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

So in the plans you've looked at, from.... I don't want to make an assumption. Has the department looked at the emergency plans we referenced back in clause 17? We identified that every site has one of these emergency plans in the event of an accident. I assume that when drawing up Bill C-20, the department looked at them. We talked about competent authorities, who's in line to do what, and who can say what. Is it true that the plans also imagine that the workers at the site are the ones doing the repair and cleanup in the event of an accident?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

The parliamentary process is a wondrous thing.

The question I have we referenced earlier. At first, folks weren't entirely certain. We got into the notion of workers at the site. I think this was back in clause 15. We weren't sure about collective agreements. That was put aside. I don't know if you have any further research on that. We also found that the nuclear operator itself—I think you have clarified it again in clause 18—can't be compensated for anything they were doing to the site itself, so if an order is issued and there is an accident, for damages that are repaired or shored up, the nuclear operator can't seek compensation under Bill C-20. That would be counterintuitive.

For the workers working at the plant who are also ordered out, under one of these instances--I imagine it wouldn't be a day necessarily, it could be quite a long time--are they able to seek compensation? For instance, their neighbours are evacuated, and these folks are also evacuated but are also out of work. Under clause 18, is this a place for that authority...? I think you actually referenced clause 18 a bit when we were talking about clause 15, and you said there was something further down the line in terms of whether an authority had issued an accident.

Could you help me out?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

In terms of the breadth and definition of what we've defined as environmental damage under Bill C-20and the comparison legislation in the U.S., did the department spend any time looking at what the U.S. had drawn up for this measure?

[Brenda MacKenzie]

Then Bill C-20 says, you've made an order under CEPA to clean this up; therefore, it's compensable under this. This is compensation legislation.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Then Bill C-20 comes in and deals with the actual--

[Dave McCauley]

It's not Bill C-20 that will determine that; it will be a court, when it's presented with the claim for damages. In your example, if the individual is not told to decontaminate the property, then there would be no compensation for that decontamination.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

That term “any number” concerns me. There's a potential for confusion. I want to know who's running the show to determine the environmental impact once an incident happens. Who is the relevant authority, as decided by Bill C-20?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

If a company tried to call something a nuclear incident to avoid having to pay any compensation, they would have to go in front of a Canadian court--it wouldn't be that tribunal we talked about before. It would not be to prove subclause 16(2) but to prove that Bill C-20 now applies to their situation, and if they can prove it under the definition of what a nuclear incident is under this bill, then they would be forgiven any damages that they would normally have to pay under a contract. That is where that would get proven.

I'm trying to find out who would make that decision.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

We're now talking about population and proximity to what is anticipated in insurance, which is a nuclear accident.

That's why you set up insurance; it's in the anticipation of something going wrong. To quote from that same page, “The near range covers an area up to a radius of several tens of kilometers. For this analysis the near range was selected as 55 km.” So the government has said, when constructing Bill C-20 and trying to understand where the economic loss may happen, that you're going to choose an area in a radius around the site of 55 kilometres.

Is that right, or is that exclusive to this study?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

This is where I'm losing you.

You suggest that Bill C-20 is meant to also cover severe accidents.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

If Bill C-20 is not an act meant to address the event of a severe accident, and we're now on the compensable damage clauses, why is that not inferred in the act?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

There are only two recommendations—and this is the important part for the committee to understand—that came out of this government-commissioned report, or the CNSC-commissioned report. One recommendation was that the analysis be repeated to cover the domain of what they call “severe” accidents, again using a probabilistic analysis approach to provide an accident coverage presentation for serious accidents at both Gentilly-2 and Darlington.

There are only two recommendations made out of this report. One of them was that the government should do another analysis to cover what they call “severe” accidents. Did the government do this analysis prior to the presentation of Bill C-20?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Good afternoon, everyone.

We are here today to continue our clause-by-clause study of Bill C-20, an act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident. We had started our discussion on clause 15.

Is there any further discussion on clause 15?

Mr. Cullen.

(On clause 15--Liability for economic loss)

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Cullen, we can deal with clause 64 when we get to it.

It is 5:30, so we will adjourn the meeting for today.

Mr. Cullen, you can certainly continue at the next meeting if you'd like.

Thanks to all of you for waiting for the vote and for being here to answer the questions. We'll see you again on Wednesday to continue with clause-by-clause of Bill C-20.

The meeting is adjourned.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

So in the predecessor to Bill C-20, it's imagined both ways. While it's not mentioned in this bill, this bill just assumes that continuation?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Yes. The reason is that Bill C-20 establishes a liability regime that makes nuclear operators absolutely and exclusively liable in the event of a nuclear incident. This amendment proposes to extend liability to persons other than nuclear operators, so what it does is really contrary to the principles laid out in the bill.

Mr. Cullen.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Good afternoon, everyone. It's great to be here today dealing with clause-by-clause of Bill C-20, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident.

We have today as witnesses, from the Department of Natural Resources, Dave McCauley, Director, Uranium and Radioactive Waste Division, Electricity Resources Branch, and Jacques Hénault, Analyst, Nuclear Liability and Emergency Preparedness.

Welcome to both of you.

From the Department of Justice, we have Brenda MacKenzie, Senior Legislative Counsel, Advisory and Development Services Section.

Welcome.

Thanks to all of you for being here today.

We'll get directly to the bill. We're going through clause-by-clause consideration today, of course. As usual, pursuant to standing order 75(1), consideration of clause 1 is postponed, so the chair calls clause 2.

(On clause 2--Definitions)

I'll just take the time required, so indicate if you need a little more time at any point. I know that there are a lot of papers to follow.

Mr. Cullen.

[Simon Carroll]

Thank you, and thank you very much for inviting me to appear before your committee today.

I've been working with nuclear liability and compensation issues for about 20 years, mainly in the context of the international conventions and the development of national legislation in Europe. It's from this international perspective that I've looked at the provisions of Bill C-20.

In my presentation today I will argue that the proposed liability limit is too low and not in line with relevant international standards. However, having just listened to Mr. Murphy's intervention, I can see that the proposal from the insurance industry would bring it more in line with what exists internationally.

However, the bill as it stands today already appears insufficient and out of date. In my opinion, the bill as it stands today would not establish a modern comprehensive nuclear liability and compensation framework for Canada. There can be no doubt that the current Nuclear Liability Act needs updating. The bill aims to do this mainly by providing a new definition of damage and a significant increase in nuclear operator liability.

I agree that the bill would provide an improved definition of damage and an appropriate scope of damage to be compensated. These provisions are in line with those found in current international instruments and in contemporary national legislation in other countries with major nuclear power programs. These are clear improvements, and I will not discuss them further in this presentation.

The increase in the liability limit to $650 million Canadian is perhaps the most noticeable feature of the bill. At first glance, the proposed increase appears considerable. As was mentioned earlier, it's a nine-fold increase, although taking into account the inflation since 1976, I understand that this figure should now be around $350 million Canadian. However, the amount looks insufficient compared to what would be needed following a nuclear accident. There is no single internationally accepted methodology for assessing the economic damage that might result following a nuclear accident. Therefore, estimates of such damage vary widely, but whatever approaches are taken to calculate the possible damage, it is clear to me that $650 million Canadian would not be sufficient to compensate for damage from a moderately large nuclear accident. On that basis alone, I would argue that the proposed liability limit is inadequate.

This, I should note, is with respect to nuclear power reactors, and I take on board the comments about research reactors made earlier.

There are two other explanations that have been offered for the proposed liability limit, that they're in line with current practice internationally and that there is a need to settle them within the capacity of the insurance market. I do not consider this to be fully the case.

In claiming that the new liability limit is comparable to those found internationally, the basis for comparison is not clearly made. I would suggest that the only meaningful comparison should be with international instruments and national legislation that is applicable in countries with a similar standard of economic situation to Canada and with a similarly developed nuclear power program. On this basis, the relevant international instrument is the OECD's Paris Convention. The Paris Convention is open to any OECD member state and it has attracted membership from much of western Europe. In 2004 it was amended by a protocol intended to modernize this instrument. This protocol requires a minimum operator liability of about $1,100 million Canadian. This is the minimum standard that nuclear operators in western Europe are now expected to meet, and this minimum far exceeds the upper limit proposed in the bill. Indeed, a state that would apply the proposed Canadian liability limit would not be able to ratify the protocol to the Paris Convention. The proposed limit is simply too low.

It is also worth noting that the 2004 protocol to the Paris Convention removes any requirement for an upper limit on operator liability. A number of Paris Convention states already have in place, or are considering, unlimited liability for their reactor operators. This is already the case in Switzerland and Germany, and has been for some time. It is also the case in Finland, where a large reactor is presently under construction.

Earlier this month a Swedish government inquiry stated that there are “overriding reasons for introducing unlimited liability for the nuclear power industry in Sweden”, and it proposed amending legislation accordingly. Outside of the Paris Convention framework, Japan also imposes unlimited liability on nuclear reactor operators.

It is true that there is a finite capacity of the insurance market, in Canada and elsewhere. However, there is no inherent reason to bind operator liability to this limited insurance. There are other ways to provide additional credible, verifiable financial securities for compensation in the event of an accident. By failing to consider such possibilities, the bill unnecessarily limits operator liability to what can be provided by the insurance market.

One approach developed elsewhere to provide additional compensation funds is the pooling of operators' resources, not insurance pools. The principal advantage of an operator pooling system is that large sums of private money--not public funds--can readily be made available to compensate victims. Perhaps the most familiar example of this is the United States, where by combining third-party insurance with an operator pooling mechanism, the total compensation made available per incident is over $10 billion U.S.

Operator pooling was introduced in Germany in 2002. This was because the financial security required from nuclear reactor operators was raised to nearly $4,000 million Canadian per incident. That amount far exceeds the capacity of the German insurance market. The solution developed to meet this goal was to combine individual operator insurance with an additional mutual agreement between German reactor owners. Each partner agrees to contribute to the total financial security required, based on that share of ownership with the German reactor fleet. The partners must also demonstrate to regulators each year that the promised funds would be available if needed, and the ultimate liability of the operator remains unlimited. In the event that the damage caused exceeds the financing available, other assets of the operator are available to add to the compensation amounts, including recourse against the assets of reactor owners if necessary.

Earlier this month, a Swedish government inquiry proposed a similar approach to that being used in Germany; that is, a combination of individual third-party operator insurance combined with an additional mutual agreement. It proposed that the nuclear operators be required to ensure a fund of $1,900 million Canadian per accident. The reactor operators’ liability would also be unlimited. The Swedish inquiry favoured such an approach as it was economically efficient and also provided reassurance that the nuclear industry would be responsible for the major costs of a nuclear accident. I would note that the Swedish proposal is in the context of a planned new investment in Swedish nuclear power.

In conclusion, I would like to reiterate three points. Yes, I believe the bill would improve on current Canadian nuclear liability legislation in some respects. However, the proposed new operator liability limit of $650 million is not comparable to minimum liability obligations found in the most relevant international instrument and does not compare well with compensation funds in other western countries with major nuclear power programs. Taken together, key provisions of the bill appear insufficient and out-of-date already, when compared with those found in contemporary nuclear liability legislation elsewhere. Thus, in its present form, in my view, the bill would not establish a modern comprehensive nuclear liability and compensation framework for Canada.

Thank you very much once again for this opportunity to appear before your committee.

[Dermot Murphy, Manager, Nuclear Insurance Association of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My name is Dermot Murphy. I manage the Nuclear Insurance Association of Canada, also known as NIAC.

As Chairman Tonks pointed out, I'm joined today by Colleen DeMerchant, the assistant manager, and John Walker, of Walker Sorensen, our legal counsel.

As advised when last we met with the committee, NIAC was established in 1958 in response to the need to provide adequate insurance coverage arising from the peaceful development of nuclear power in Canada. NIAC provides statutory coverage to nuclear power operators and others, as required by Canada's Nuclear Liability Act, of up to $75 million Canadian.

NIAC is a pool of property casualty insurers who operate in Canada. Each insurer who is a member of NIAC insures a percentage of the policy limit. It is important to note that insurers provide highly secure protection. Each member of NIAC is regulated by the Canadian office of the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, known as OSFI, which requires insurance to be very well capitalized indeed. NIAC insurers have a combined $10 billion in capital, approximately, which relates to a hundred times the current limit of the operators' nuclear liability policy.

A pool is a mechanism whereby a number of insurers agree to appoint a common agent to underwrite, jointly, a particular risk or class of business. It is commonly used when the risks needing insurance are few in number, require a spread of risk, or present some particularly hazardous exposure that would otherwise be impossible to insure.

Insurance is a true risk-transfer mechanism that has proven to be cost-effective, but more importantly, does not impact upon nuclear power operators' balance sheets at the time of loss.

We've observed that one of the main questions raised in the speeches during the second reading of Bill C-20 is whether $650 million Canadian is an appropriate limit on operator liability. The issue of the appropriateness of the limit of liability and the issue of how much the amount of insurance each operator should be required to purchase can be seen as independent issues. However, it would not seem appropriate to require operators to purchase more liability insurance than is available in the nuclear insurance market.

In our appearance before the committee last time, we advised the committee that the insurance market could provide $650 million Canadian in capacity. I am now pleased to report that it appears likely, barring any unforeseen events, that the nuclear insurance market will be able to provide $1 billion Canadian in capacity.

A question we are frequently asked is exactly how much nuclear liability insurance costs. Currently, for a $75 million limit, the approximate cost is $200,000 Canadian per nuclear reactor. This, by the way, is the equivalent of the cost of insuring approximately 130 automobiles in Ontario that have full coverage and limits of $1 million.

Previously we advised this committee that the cost of providing the $650 million limit, which is about nine times the existing level, would be approximately four to six times the cost of providing the $75 million limit. We estimate that the cost of providing the $1 billion limit, which is 13 times the current limit, may be approximately in the five to eight times range as compared to the cost of providing the existing $75 million limit.

We very much appreciate this opportunity to discuss nuclear insurance with this committee, and we welcome any questions in due course.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Christopher Heysel, Director, Nuclear Operations and Facilities, McMaster Nuclear Reactor, McMaster University]

Thank you.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, committee members, and fellow witnesses.

My name is Chris Heysel and I am the director of nuclear operations and facilities at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

First, l would like to say how grateful and appreciative I am to be here to have this opportunity to address the committee today. I was invited to speak to the committee to give a university perspective of the proposed changes to Bill C-20 and how these changes will impact Canadian university research reactors.

In Canada today there are six remaining university research reactors: the five-megawatt pool reactor at McMaster University and the smaller, 20-kilowatt Slowpoke facilities at the University of Alberta, the Royal Military College, the University of Saskatchewan, École Polytechnique, and Dalhousie.

Every country whose energy mix includes nuclear generation uses university research reactors to help educate and train those highly qualified individuals needed to design, operate and license its nuclear fleet. Indeed, the first step in any nation's journey toward nuclear energy begins with a research reactor. These facilities provide the initial and ongoing education and training for the scientists and engineers that are needed to launch and sustain a nuclear industry.

The McMaster nuclear reactor--indeed all university reactors exist to support the education and research missions of their parent institutions. While it is common to refer to these research reactors as university facilities, they are truly part of our national infrastructure and should be viewed as Canadian assets.

The McMaster nuclear reactor serves our education mission at the university by giving undergraduate and graduate students studying physics, nuclear engineering, material sciences, medical physics, and health physics a hands-on educational experience. As part of their curriculum, these students attend laboratory courses using the reactor and associated facilities to enhance their theoretical studies through actual experiments and interactions. These students represent the future intellectual capital for Canada's wide and diverse nuclear industries, capital that today is in short supply and in extremely high demand.

McMaster University also tours approximately 1,500 high school students through our facility each year. The open pool design at McMaster is the only facility in the country where one can actually see an operating reactor. Prior to coming to McMaster, the closest most of these students will have come to nuclear technology is driving along Highway 401 and seeing the large concrete structures of our nuclear power plants standing behind the intimidating security fences that surround these sites. This is a somewhat daunting sight for these young Canadians, but by touring the McMaster nuclear reactor and seeing the signature blue glow of the core, the mystery shrouding nuclear technology is quickly lifted and students are left with a better sense of how the technology works, and hopefully with an interest to further their education at the university level in a science or engineering discipline.

Research is also one of the critical missions of Canada's nuclear university reactors. These truly unique and powerful research tools provide academia and students with the opportunity to further their investigations in a variety of areas of interest. These fields include nuclear engineering, material sciences, radio-chemistry, radio-biology, geosciences, environmental sciences, archeometry, medical and health physics and medical isotope research and development.

In addition to supporting the research and education missions for our respective institutions, university research reactors provide a wide variety of irradiation services supporting important Canadian industries such as mining, environmental monitoring, automotive, oil and gas, aeronautics, and radio-pharmaceuticals.

With over 20 years of experience in operation of research reactors, I am provided with a thorough understanding of the costs associated with operating these facilities. In order for university reactors to cover their operating costs, they provide services and products to various industries and users. While we do a good job at keeping our costs in check, we do have to compete with like facilities when selling our services.

Despite their increasing importance and relevance, with the exception of RMC, university research reactors receive no government funding to cover operating, maintenance, decommissioning, insurance, or the fuel costs necessary to keep these national facilities in service. This is why even small changes to Bill C-20 are directly very important to university research reactors.

In the absence of federal funding, in order to survive, university research reactors need to generate income by providing a wide range of services and products to markets that are also served by our two main competitors, namely, the AECL facilities at Chalk River and the U.S. research reactors south of the border.

AECL, as a crown corporation, receives a major portion of its operating funds from the federal government. Hence, fuel disposal costs, salaries, decommissioning costs, and liability insurance are all ultimately federally funded. South of the border, U.S. research reactors are loaned their fuel from the Department of Energy. Hence, fuel and fuel disposal costs are borne by the federal government. In addition, unlike Canadian facilities, decommissioning funds are not a requirement for operating facilities as long as university trust funds have adequate equity to cover these future liabilities. This is an opportunity not open to Canadian universities.

More relevant, nuclear liability is capped at $250,000 for these non-profit educational facilities, with the balance to a maximum of $500 million covered federally. This $250,000 figure was the original amount set by the Price-Anderson Act and has remained unchanged in subsequent revisions to the act in recognition of the fundamental national importance of university research reactors.

In reality, it is extremely difficult to compete with U.S. research reactors when their prices for services do not carry the costs associated with reactor fuel, fuel disposal, decommissioning, and the Canadian levels of liability coverage. Competing with AECL is even more unfair.

Despite the growing demands on Canadian universities' research reactors to provide highly qualified personnel to the nuclear power and medical isotope industries, the ability of these facilities to continue to generate the funds necessary to sustain operation continues to be eroded. The changes contemplated to Bill C-20 constitute one more example of how Canada is unwittingly allowing this erosion to continue. The proposed changes would require Canadian universities to carry liability insurance at a level 15 times that of our U.S. counterparts. We are currently carrying a liability six times that required south of the border. Such an increase places Canadian university research reactors on an unlevel playing field with AECL and our U.S. counterparts.

Despite the difficulties we face at our Canadian university research reactor facilities, I'm proud of the contributions we continue to make to our nation from a training and research perspective. These are important outcomes that must be maintained now and well into the future.

In conclusion, I would ask that the members consider the fact that we are already being asked to carry a liability limit in excess of that required of our counterparts to the south and urge the members to amend the bill to place our facilities on an equal footing with those in the U.S. In parting, I implore the committee members to reflect on the fact that research reactors at universities here in Canada are non-profit, non-government-funded entities whose sole purpose is to support the scientific and educational mandates of our nation.

Thank you.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll start with one of the most basic questions. In OPG's deck here, it says “timely passage of Bill C-20 is essential”. Could you elaborate--briefly, of course--on what particular elements make this bill essential to OPG?

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Why would you want to limit the liability of those who would create such a catastrophic accident? You are leading us to say that we should increase the limit. I would like to ask you a question which has been on my mind since the beginning of our deliberations on Bill C-20. To what level should we raise it and what is the cost of a catastrophic accident?

If there was an accident in Pickering, could the people from Ontario Power Generation tell me who would be impacted and how much that might cost?

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Good afternoon, Mr. Rubin.

You said that Bill C-20 would not survive a charter challenge. Are you referring to the Charter of Rights? Is it the compensation amount compared to that of damages that would be challenged? Could you clarify what you mean?

[Norman Rubin]

Thank you, sir.

I'd like to make four points. I'll start not with my first, in logical order, but with what I think is the shortest; that is, as somebody who has spent more time in court while the Nuclear Liability Act's legality and constitutionality were debated than anybody in your room, I would suggest that neither the Nuclear Liability Act nor its draft successor, Bill C-20, is likely to survive a charter challenge after an accident. That is, if, God forbid, the act is triggered, I believe it will be struck down and the protection it gives to the risk-maker will not actually be there when called upon. I will leave that there for discussion later and go on to my other points.

My first point, logically, can be summarized with the question: why in God's name? If you have an industry that is capable of creating a catastrophic accident, and job number one for a government is presumably to ensure that such a catastrophic accident never happens, and job number two of a government should be to ensure that the consequences of such an accident are mitigated and minimized to the extent possible, and job number three is to ensure that every potential victim of such an accident is taken care of to the extent that they deserve, why in God's name would you limit the liability of the entities that might cause such an accident?

I'd like to point out that one of the useful strains of research in this area is to look at past catastrophes. We can examine, for example, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl in the nuclear area; we can examine the Challenger crash; we can examine when two jumbo jets collided on a runway. And what we find when we look at these catastrophes is that virtually every one of them, when viewed in hindsight, seems to have been caused by a combination of negligence and incompetence. Then the question is how, in a proactive way, looking forward, would you extend the incentives to try to minimize incompetence and negligence going forward? I would suggest that the last thing you should ever consider on a list of what you might do is to tell a number of potentially responsible parties in advance that they will be held blameless and to tell the remaining party that they will be held responsible, but only up to a certain point, regardless of the total bill to clean up the accident and to mitigate the consequences and to give reparations to the victims. Yet that is exactly what the Nuclear Liability Act does at present and exactly what would be preserved in Bill C-20 if it is passed into law.

I'd like to just spend another minute or two on this. Obviously prevention is key, and telling somebody that they aren't responsible is counter to the incentives to prevention; I think this is simply logic. It will be extremely obvious after an accident, although it's now theoretical, thank heavens. In addition, we've done some studies. In fact, for our failed constitutional challenge of the existing Nuclear Liability Act, we commissioned a study on the consequences of a potential nuclear accident, a catastrophe, at a CANDU station. What that found is, obviously, first of all, the size of the release is a key variable in the consequences, but the impact of a given release can vary incredibly hugely, from effectively zero to enormous tens of billions of dollars of damage. The variables that drive that difference are two. One is the weather, over which we have no control, and the second is contingency planning, over which we have a great deal of control. We should have every incentive applied to the risk-makers to ensure that they ensure that contingency plans are as good as possible and as good as they would require if they felt they were going to have to pay the damages in full.

Let me be clear. Contingency plans, getting potential victims out of the way of the radioactive release, turns out to be right up there with the weather in determining whether you have thousands of victims, thousands of casualties, or whether you have perhaps none.

I'd now like to compare Canada with two other states—Germany and Japan, both of which, as I understand it, have imposed unlimited liability on their nuclear operators. I have several questions about this situation. Why do we have to be different? Are their reactors safer than ours, either by design or by operation? Is their emergency planning so much better than ours that their industry doesn't mind operating under unlimited liability? Are their operators simply gutsier? Do they have more nerve than ours? Or is their federal government more independent from the industry that creates the catastrophic risk? In other words, have they simply taken the needs of potential victims as paramount, rather than caving in to the requests of the risk creator?

I think you can tell from the way I framed the question that I have a guess about where the main difference is between Canada and these other countries. I think their governments played hardball and our government did not. Our government behaved, first and foremost, as the shareholder of AECL, as the creator of one of the world's prominent reactor designs, as an international salesman of nuclear reactors around the world. Their governments, in contrast, acted as elected officials, the representatives of the potential victims and the guardians of the environment that would be contaminated in this kind of accident.

I'd like to close with a brief reference to one growing development. We are gradually shifting from a regime in which nuclear reactors are built and operated by governments, or by creatures of governments, like crown corporations, to a regime in which reactors may be built by private entities. It is worth considering how the federal government would act on behalf of potential victims where you couldn't count on a provincial government, for example, to backstop the owner and operator of a reactor.

I believe the main area where the federal government must act is not in limiting liability—liability should be unlimited, limited only by the consequences of a catastrophe. Rather, the federal government can and must mandate a minimum depth of pocket.

There must be assurances that even after the entity that owns and operates a reactor loses the reactor and incurs a massive internal bill and a loss of equity from that, it still has, through a combination of insurance and other instruments, approximately enough money to meet the needs of a credible but worst-case, beyond-design-base accident. I think there's a shadow of that in Bill C-20 and in the Nuclear Liability Act, but I believe it's only a shadow. That is, I believe, an essential role of government.

We are entering a period of a couple of months now when Bruce Power is going to be actively negotiating with the Government of Saskatchewan toward building a new reactor, probably a CANDU. They've set themselves a deadline of December. I always predict failure for these efforts, but it's just conceivable that there actually will be something happening, and some of this will matter. Let's hope that victims will have more than $650 million of compensation available to them, and that the decisions about siting, about emergency planning, and about design will be informed by full liability extending to the private owners of that facility.

Thank you.

[Rex Loesby]

Thank you for giving me a few minutes to talk with you about Bill C-20 regarding liability caps for nuclear reactors in Canada.

The bill is of interest to our company as we are working to provide clean and safe electric power to remote communities and mines in Canada through the use of small nuclear power stations.

First, I want to give you a little background on Canadian Remote Power, and then I'll address a concern we have about the regulations that may accompany the bill.

The idea to pursue the use of small reactors grew out of my work for a mineral exploration and development company, Western Troy Capital Resources. We're developing a copper-molybdenum project in a remote area of Quebec, and we found our power costs were going to be very high with a long power line from Hydro-Québec or a diesel power plant. This led us to look at a small reactor as an alternative. We found that a number of countries are developing small reactor designs, but we were surprised to find that in a country where low-cost power is needed in remote areas, no one was pursuing the idea here. So we formed Canadian Remote Power Corporation to do just that.

Now, Canada has a national treasure in its nuclear industry. Its CANDU reactors, along with its nuclear scientists and engineers, have gained world recognition. Over the past 50 years, 45 CANDU reactors have been built around the world, and they have operated without a significant safety incident. Nuclear power is one of the most economical methods to generate electricity, and there are no carbon emissions. Canada can continue to be a world leader in the industry as long as it is willing to encourage the industry and keep its regulatory system consistent with recognized world standards. Canada has the opportunity to play a leading role in the world to reduce carbon emissions.

At Canadian Remote Power we recognized very early that we needed a very strong technical team, and we're very fortunate that good Canadians are available. Your handout lists these folks, along with a bit of their background. I'll highlight one member of the team, just to give you an idea of the calibre of the people we've been able to attract.

Dr. Gary Kugler is on our board of directors and is a member of our technical advisory team. Dr. Kugler is the chairman of the board of Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Organization and is a director of Ontario Power Generation. He was with Atomic Energy of Canada Limited for 34 years.

The question is this. Is there a real need for small nuclear plants in Canada? Currently, electric power for remote communities and mines is generated using diesel engines. These diesel plants generate approximately 17 million tonnes of carbon emissions per year and the electric power produced costs between 25 cents and $2 per kilowatt hour, as compared to what you might pay connected to the grid, about 4 to 10 cents per kilowatt hour. In Nunavut alone, the diesel fuel budget is more than $200 million a year. With small nuclear plants we can eliminate carbon emissions and substantially reduce the power costs for these communities and mines. While we don't believe nuclear plants are the only answer, we believe they can and should be a large part of the solution to the challenges of maintaining and developing sustainable communities in the north.

On the mining side, there are currently eight mines in the north using large diesel power plants. There are projected to be 18 by 2016. These mines are projected to need 400 megawatts of generating capacity. In the Northwest Territories, there are 11 world-class mineral deposits that could be mines if power costs could be reduced. Another application for small nuclear plants is to provide heat for oil sands recovery.

Can small reactors be safe? Well, we're looking at a number of reactor designs. One design is a TRIGA reactor designed by General Atomics in San Diego. In your handout is a picture of a TRIGA reactor. As with all the reactor designs we're considering, the whole installation might require only two acres of land. This design is attractive for two more reasons. First, if there's any unplanned rise in reactor core temperature, the chemistry of the fuel shuts the reaction down. Secondly, there are 67 TRIGA reactors installed around the world. Some have operated since the 1950s. They are installed in hospitals and universities. There has never been a problem.

We're also considering other designs, including Canada's CANDU reactor. There's a Toshiba 4S that we're looking at. Argentina has a CAREM design. We haven't decided which way we're going to go yet.

I will talk about nuclear safety.

You see in your handout a table showing the fatalities over the past 40 years in the United States and the United Kingdom for three major electric power sources: coal, natural gas, and nuclear. This table is from a June 2008 publication of the World Nuclear Association entitled, Safety of Nuclear Power Reactors. Chernobyl is not included in this as there was no containment structure at Chernobyl, and there was not an internationally recognized safety regimen in place like there is in Canada. You can see that nuclear energy is by far the safest of the three sources. It's misleading, though, because I haven't included hydro. There are actually 4,000 fatalities in hydro, but those are as a result of boating accidents on the reservoirs. Obviously, if you can do hydro, you want to do hydro.

Technological innovation in all areas of clean energy development will come from both public and private entities and ventures. Canada will be well served if its government can respond to the clean energy challenge by making the regulatory environment as conducive to innovation as possible without compromising public safety. One of those innovations may be small nuclear power reactors.

The regulatory process for permitting such small reactors will be difficult and there are substantial uncertainties in the permitting process. The more these uncertainties and timeframes can be reduced, the more likely it is we will be able to raise funds for our venture. We hope to work with Parliament and the regulatory agencies to reduce the uncertainties and timeframes in many areas, without compromising public safety.

The issue before you today is Bill C-20 , which would bring Canadian regulations more into line with international standards regarding liability caps for nuclear power plants. How might Bill C-20 impact our efforts?

Well, in the past the maximum insurance cap for all reactors, as you know, was $75 million, and existing regulations allowed lower insurance caps for small reactors. The amount of these caps for small reactors is determined by Natural Resources Canada and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission through the regulations developed by those agencies. Bill C-20 sets the maximum at $650 million, and the bill has a provision for setting lower caps for small reactors. Paragraph 66(c) reads:

66. The Governor in Council may make regulations

(c) fixing an amount of reinsurance for any nuclear installation or for any prescribed class of nuclear installation;

An outline of the regulations related to Bill C-20 has been drafted by Natural Resources Canada. There are provisions in the outline for reduced insurance caps for small reactors, but the caps are not well defined. We've discussed this with the staff at Natural Resources Canada and suggested the regulations should include consistent and better defined caps for all reactors. The staff there has been really responsive and has encouraged us to suggest modifications to the outline.

Our suggestion is to include the language you see in the handout in the regulations. It gets fairly technical, and to keep my presentation short, I won't read through it now. This addition to the regulations will provide a greater level of certainty for developers of nuclear power stations as well as preserve the right of the Governor in Council to modify the liability caps for special circumstances.

How does this affect us? If we do not have that certainty for the insurance caps for our small reactors, we would have to assume pretty much the worst case for our fundraising efforts. If we were required to carry the maximum of $650 million of liability coverage, our insurance underwriter has suggested our premium could be $1 million or more per year for each installation. If the liability is capped using the formula we've suggested, our annual premium would fall to an estimated $100,000, thus improving the overall economic forecast for our business and potentially lowering the power cost to the consumer.

Thank you for taking the time to hear our story and suggested language for the regulations to follow the bill. I would be happy to answer any questions when the time comes.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

I call the meeting to order.

This is the 40th meeting of the Standing Committee on Natural Resources. Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, June 1, 2009, we are discussing Bill C-20, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident.

Today we are continuing our deliberations. We welcome our guests and witnesses. In the first panel, from 3:30 to 4:30, we have Mr. Rex Loesby, president of Canadian Remote Power Corporation, and from Ontario Power Generation Inc. we have Mr. Albert Sweetnam, executive vice-president and director of nuclear new build, and Mr. Pierre Tremblay, senior site vice-president, Pickering. Welcome.

Through our videoconference technology, from Toronto we have Mr. Norman Rubin, director of nuclear research for Energy Probe. Mr. Rubin, welcome. Are you hearing us okay?

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Binder, there is more and more talk of terrorism and more and more concern because of it. You know that the city of Trois-Rivières sits right next to the Gentilly nuclear generating station.

To what extent does Bill C-20 deal with it? Would terrorism be considered an exclusion like any other disaster that might happen? In some policies, for example, there are exclusions for armed conflicts and things like that.

[Dr. Gordon Thompson]

That's a good question. Before I answer that, I'd just like to address Mr. Bains' question about the scope of Bill C-20. The scope of damages has been expanded, and that's a change that I welcome. The expansion is not in the magnitude but simply in the range of types of damage that would be addressed. I believe the current scope is a better match with what we know about the long-term consequences.

In regard to your question about the basis for the $650 million liability cap, Mr. Hénault spoke to that issue, as I said, at a conference in Toronto in October. He said it comes from a balance of considerations, one of which is that it addresses what he terms “foreseeable” accidents, which as I explained is a term of art meaning design-basis accidents, accidents that plants are designed to withstand. Experience and a very large body of technical literature show that there is actually a universe of accidents well beyond the design basis that are indeed entirely foreseeable, because two major events of this kind have occurred.

Insurance against an industrial accident surely has to accommodate events that are foreseeable in the sense that they have occurred and in the sense that technical analysis shows they could occur again.

In the chemical industry, for example, the Bhopal accident is a historical event. It was beyond the design basis, and yet it's part of a reality. If one were insuring a chemical plant, one would have to consider a Bhopal-type event.

The $650 million limit does not consider events that are foreseeable and that indeed have occurred.

[Peter Mason, President and Chief Executive Officer, GE-Hitachi Nuclear Canada Inc.]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It's my pleasure to be here today to tell you why this bill is important to GE.

We have put forward a written presentation to the committee, but in the interests of time I'll just hit the high points, and then you can ask questions.

As many of you are aware, I think, GE is a very large, diversified global company, with revenues of $180 billion a year around the world and over 300,000 employees.

It has a wide range of products, from light bulbs to aircraft engines, and, in our energy portfolio, from wind turbines to nuclear reactors.

In the U.S., GE has developed its nuclear technology and today builds nuclear reactors, together with Hitachi, of Japan, in a number of sites in the world.

If we turn our attention to Canada, GE in Canada has been an integral part of the nuclear industry. In 1955 we joined together with AECL and Ontario Hydro to build the first commercial reactor in Canada, in Rolphton, Ontario, and since that time we have played a role in serving the industry. Today we supply the majority of the CANDU fuel to the CANDU reactors in Canada, together with inspection and maintenance services, the design of robotic equipment for inspection and maintenance, and service of the existing fleet equipment.

There is no doubt we could do a lot more than we do today, but we're prevented from doing so by the inadequacy of the current nuclear liability legislation in Canada. At this point in time, we are unable to leverage the resources of our parent company, depriving our customers of technology, expertise, and those resources that have been developed over many years.

I'll give you an example of why this is such an issue. WIth the current legislation that exists between the two countries, in the event of a nuclear incident in Canada, a U.S. claimant could take their case to a U.S. court; the U.S. court could deem the $75 million cap to be inadequate for potential compensation and therefore hear the claimant in a U.S. court. Under those circumstances, all of the assets of the General Electric Company would then be vulnerable to that claim. That is a risk that the shareholders of the company are not prepared to take, and that is the situation for many other private sector companies. Other companies that are perhaps in the public sector do not have the same risk profile, but it's certainly something that shareholders of private sector companies are not prepared to take.

If we turn our attention to Bill C-20, this is really a very important step in addressing the liability issue for Canada. First of all, the bill will ensure the channelling of liability through the operator of the facility where the incident occurred, rather than being open to the discretion of different courts. Secondly, the increase of the liability cap from $75 million to $650 million is very much a step in the right direction, and certainly it is consistent with the International Atomic Energy Agency's Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage. With minor amendments to this bill, Canada would be in an excellent position to move forward and ratify the Convention on Supplementary Compensation, which would address both of the issues necessary for us to be able to work fully in Canada.

One might say, “Well, what about Canadian companies?” The fact is that if Canada signs this Convention on Supplementary Compensation—and I would add that the U.S. government has already ratified it—this would form a global legal framework for the nuclear industry. This, in turn, would protect Canadian companies as they engage in export activities around the world.

I would ask this committee to move forward with the bill, particularly the minor technical amendments that need to be made in order for it to conform to the conventional supplementary compensation, which, as I mentioned earlier, should be ratified as soon as possible.

I'd like to thank you all for listening to me, and I'd be happy to take any questions.

Thank you.

[Dr. Michael Binder, President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm pleased to be here today to discuss the role of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and Bill C-20.

As you know, the CNSC is Canada's nuclear regulator. Nuclear regulation is exclusively in federal jurisdiction. We regulate all nuclear activities in Canada, including those facilities covered by the proposed legislation.

The CNSC mandate is clear. We regulate for the protection of the health, safety, and security of Canadians and the environment, while respecting the Canadian international commitment to the peaceful use of nuclear energy. In essence, the CNSC works every day to ensure safety across Canada's nuclear industry. Every licensing action, every inspection, every audit, every compliance activity is designed to mitigate risks and to minimize the probability of incidents that could result in claims under the proposed legislation. Our job, along with the nuclear facilities operators, is to ensure that this legislation is never used and that no claims are ever filed. Nevertheless, we recognize the need for insurance and are therefore supportive of the proposed legislation.

As the minister stated in her appearance to open the committee's consideration of Bill C-20, Canada's nuclear regulatory framework is embodied in three pieces of federal legislation: the Nuclear Safety and Control Act, which created the CNSC; the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act, which created the Nuclear Waste Management Organization; and the Nuclear Liability Act, which would transition to the Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act through Bill C-20.

The Government of Canada recently hosted an international peer review by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, of Canada's nuclear regulatory framework. Their report, which will be published soon, commended Canada for maintaining a modern regulatory framework, a framework that is based on safety culture. Canada has an impressive internationally recognized record of nuclear safety and reliability. Our oversight is prescribed by the Nuclear Safety and Control Act, which came into force in 2000.

This is modern legislation which sets high-level safety requirements and a strict licensing and compliance framework which the CNSC monitors on a daily basis.

It enables us to ensure that the nuclear industry is safe and secure, and that the environment and the health of Canadians are protected.

The CNSC oversees approximately 3,300 licences and 2,100 licensees. Last year, we deployed 800 staff, including 115 inspectors conducting over 2,000 inspections, to ensure compliance. Our framework is designed to mitigate risk to health and safety. Our licensees must have a strong safety culture and be safe; otherwise they would not receive a licence from us. We look in detail at what could go wrong with the facilities, and we require licensees to have multiple barriers, both physical and procedural, to limit the probability of a serious incident. Through the oversight of our on-site staff, our ongoing compliance program ensures that all the safety protocols remain effective and in place. The CNSC pushes licensees to continue to improve operational performance as new information and technology become available.

I would also like to stress to the committee the importance of transparency in ensuring trust in our activities. The CNSC conducts public hearings in renewing licences for major facilities. In fact, the last three commission hearings have been on the road in Saskatchewan, in Bruce County last month, and in Port Hope in August.

These hearings are open to the public and are webcast. I hope that you have had the opportunity to catch one of these broadcasts off our website.

I will turn to today's subject and Bill C-20.

The CNSC's role concerning nuclear liability is clarified under the proposed legislation. Under the current Nuclear Liability Act, which has been in force since 1976, the CNSC and its predecessor, the AECB, have been responsible for both the administration of the legislation and for the designation of facilities.

As an aside, I'm really pleased to report, Mr. Chairman, that during our tenure as administrator of the Nuclear Liability Act, no claims were made under this act, and we look forward to a similar track record in the future.

The CNSC is supportive of the new legislation and of our new reduced role. We would no longer designate the facilities and we would no longer be the administrative authority for the legislation. The primary role for the CNSC under the proposed legislation would be to support and provide technical advice to the Minister of Natural Resources on the designation of sites. Because we license all nuclear facilities in Canada, the CNSC is in the best position to know which ones are authorized to have fissile material, a prerequisite for the requirement for nuclear liability insurance. There are currently 19 sites designated, and we will continue, under the new legislation, to provide advice on these designations to the government.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, we have been regulating nuclear facilities in Canada for over 63 years. Our track record for safety is excellent. Canada must continue to demonstrate responsible leadership in its nuclear sector and its regulatory framework, and modernizing the nuclear liability regime is a step in continuous improvement and clarity, which are hallmarks of our approach to ensuring safety for Canadians.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing me the opportunity to speak about nuclear safety in the context of consideration of the proposed legislation.

Merci beaucoup.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, June 1, we are continuing with Bill C-20, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident.

I would like to welcome, on behalf of the committee, Mr. Jacques Hénault, who will be appearing as an individual.

From the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission we have Mr. Michael Binder, president and chief executive officer; and Mr. Peter Elder, director general, directorate of nuclear cycle and facilities regulation.

From GE-Hitachi Nuclear Canada we have Mr. Peter Mason, president and chief executive officer. By videoconference from Cambridge we have Mr. Gordon Thompson, who is with the Institute for Resource and Security Studies.

We will begin with our presentations.

I will be coming to you last, Mr. Thompson.

[Theresa McClenaghan]

Almost the only difference between the current bill and Bill C-20 is the amount of insurance. So yes, while Canada has been out of compliance for a long time with what to this point has been some of the international practice, in our view the $650 million is still so inadequate that it won't make a meaningful difference to the public.

[Michael Lees]

Maybe I can take the first crack at that.

First of all, in terms of what is a reasonable value, $650 million or some higher number, my understanding is that the $650 million exceeds what the current levels are in other countries. I am aware that other countries talk about unlimited liability, but you have to be very careful in how you interpret that. Those same countries will allow a nuclear utility to create a corporation where the only asset in that corporation is the nuclear plant itself, so inherently you're able to create a liability that is much lower than you might perceive it to be when people talk about unlimited liability. I think that needs to be clearly understood when we talk about comparisons between what Canada might do and what other countries might do.

I also understand that Bill C-20 has the ability to increase the level on an ongoing basis subject to approval and perhaps some level of review by NRCan. So there is a provision already built into the bill that allows an escalation of the dollar value if it is deemed at some point in time to not be adequate or not consistent with the CSC as it may evolve in time.

I don't know, Murray, if you have anything to add to that.

[Shawn-Patrick Stensil, Energy and Climate Campaigner, Greenpeace Canada]

Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak to you again.

Greenpeace released a report today analyzing the subsidies that are provided to the nuclear industry by this act. I hope you have received it by e-mail; it will also be provided to the clerk. Il y a aussi un résumé de ce rapport en français.

By way of introduction today, let me present a contrast. The federal government has provided $650 million in subsidies this year to Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. for waste cleanup, designing its next-generation reactor, project cost overruns, and simply keeping the lights on. I think it's useful to contrast this subsidy from 2009 to AECL with the cap on liability proposed in this act.

I think it raises some common sense questions about whether Bill C-20 would in fact provide an adequate level of environmental and financial protection to Canadians from any potential future accident. I think it also underlines that this is an industry that can't afford itself. Indeed it raises an issue I spoke to you about previously, three weeks ago: despite receiving billions of dollars in direct and indirect subsidies over the past 50 years, this industry has failed to innovate, lower its costs, and build safe reactor designs.

Special protection for the nuclear industry and the framework for this liability regime date back to the 1950s, when American nuclear vendors feared being sued for the catastrophic damages if one of their reactors underwent an accident. This situation was originally supposed to be temporary, but the industry still needs it today.

Commendably, this government and past governments have begun a process to modernize Canada's nuclear industry by transferring the costs from the taxpayer to the industry through the privatization of AECL. Greenpeace believes that forcing this industry to take responsibility for itself, as any 50-year-old industry should, is a good thing for the taxpayer, for the environment, and, one could even argue, for the nuclear industry itself.

The Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act as it stands before you now is not a modern piece of legislation. It is still built on the 1950s legislative framework that prioritizes protection of the industry over citizens and the environment. Greenpeace would like to urge this committee and the minority Parliament in general today to work collaboratively to modernize this bill and, like the government's efforts to privatize AECL, force this industry to grow up. Such collaborative work would benefit taxpayers, victims of any potential nuclear accident, and nuclear safety, and it would aid Canada in meeting its commitments towards transitioning towards a more sustainable economy.

What follows is a summary of our concerns.

The liability cap, as it stands, shortchanges Canadian victims in industry compensation compared to those in other western countries. The cap under the revised Paris convention is over $1 billion Canadian. Japan and Sweden are moving in a similar direction, and other countries such as Germany, as Theresa mentioned, have completely removed the cap on operator liability.

This cap on liability also represents a hidden subsidy to nuclear power: the report that we released today estimates that the subsidy from the cap is equivalent to 5.4¢ to 11¢ a kilowatt hour. It's a huge subsidy. Based on the electricity output from Canada's reactors in 2007, the Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act would provide an implicit subsidy of $4.8 billion to $9.7 billion. This creates an unfair playing field for safer green energy technologies and contradicts Canada's commitment to sustainability and the polluter pays principle.

The $650 million cap also shifts responsibility for cleaning up nuclear accidents from the industry to the federal government. Much like the off-book liabilities that we witnessed recently with the cost overruns at the Point Lepreau nuclear station, these were theoretical risks; then suddenly this year, in 2009, the federal taxpayer had to dole out $300 million. This creates a massive unaccounted-for liability to the Canadian taxpayer. The federal government has failed to carry out, to our knowledge, any studies to tell Canadians how large this liability actually is or to develop any mechanisms for reducing it or eliminating it over time.

Industry studies show that even just the health consequences of a catastrophic accident at the Pickering B nuclear station would total over $52 billion. Again, that is a significant off-book liability, and from an accounting framework, it's not too responsible.

Our long-term commitment to the polluter pays principle requires that we, at a minimum, put in place mechanisms to track, reduce, and eliminate this liability, that is, transfer nuclear risks from the taxpayer back onto the industry. I would ask this committee to examine ways of revising the bill in order to do this.

Greenpeace also questions the adequacy of the federal risk studies used to support the $650 million liability cap for so-called foreseeable nuclear accidents. Greenpeace would like to note that the nuclear risk studies are increasingly being withheld from the public, raising transparency issues. Under the proposed Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act, risks are public, and we deserve the ability to scrutinize and assess the risks imposed on us.

Other industry studies contradict the $650 million cap. For example, a foreseeable nuclear accident at the Pickering B Nuclear Station, if calculated out, would surpass $1 billion. So in terms of the government's own criteria for setting the cap, it's not meeting that criteria.

Finally, at a high level, this act ignores Canada's modern commitments and legal obligations to sustainability and the polluter pays principle. Indeed, the Nuclear Liability Act breaks this principle and requires Canadians to pay, potentially, for the industry's pollution.

Fundamentally, many of my affirmation concerns regarding transparency, financial, and environmental risks imposed on the public would be addressed if this act was amended to acknowledge and implement Canada's goals towards sustainability. On this point, I would like to speculate why this legislation has overlooked Canada's commitment to sustainability.

Minister Raitt, just two weeks ago, told this committee that the Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act:

...is the culmination of years of consultation involving extensive discussions with major stakeholders, including nuclear utilities, the governments of nuclear power generating provinces, and the Nuclear Insurance Association of Canada--and it has received broad support.

Support from industry, that is to say. She omits any mention of consultation with the Canadian public or, for example, municipal governments that would be negatively impacted by a nuclear accident.

Greenpeace acquired, through access to information, a 2004 Natural Resources briefing note that explicitly acknowledged that consultations with non-industry stakeholders were being avoided during the development of this bill. The document stated, and I quote:

Consultation with non-industry organizations is an issue. Municipalities, environmental groups, and the general public have not been consulted.

Another extract from the document reads:

Consultations with non-industry groups would attract a fair amount of attention.

Similar to most studies in the nuclear industry, government has avoided broader public consultation to avoid, I would add, justified criticism and scrutiny of this act.

Mr. Elston noted that this act has been delayed a number of times because Parliament has been prorogued. I would also note in other documents we've acquired through access to information dating from 2004 that the nuclear industry was advising the industry not to table this legislation at that point. I'm not sure why, but it didn't seem politically convenient. So we should have room to have a bit of a step back on this one.

All in all, this has resulted in a bill that prioritizes industry interests, shortchanges Canadians, and ignores the federal government's modern legal obligations to sustainability. I would urge this committee, then, to work collaboratively to create better legislation that is in the public interest and not solely in the industry's interest.

At a high level, Greenpeace recommends the following: increase the insurance cap to at least 700 million euros, or about $1 billion Canadian, that is, the industry-insured norm in western countries; above that, remove the liability cap and transfer risk back onto the industry—countries such as Germany have done this, and Sweden just received a report recommending they do this just three weeks ago—and acknowledge Canada's commitments to sustainability and the polluter pays principle in the goals of the act. These factors should be a driving motivation in future revisions of the act, such as the five-year review on the liability cap.

With regard to the five-year reviews, future reviews must address the lack of public transparency we've seen with the current act; that is to say, they should not be simply at the discretion of the minister, as it is currently worded.

Such reviews must explicitly consider and report to what extent the Nuclear Liability Act distorts electricity markets by subsidizing nuclear operators, and a motivating objective of future reviews should be the polluter pays principle.

Finally, we've heard from some colleagues today about the Convention on Supplementary Compensation. We should probably have a broader discussion about that.

My understanding of that convention is that it also would leave Canada open, potentially, to paying for the cost of accidents overseas, so if an accident signs on another member of the convention, Canadian taxpayers may be on the hook for that as well. Given that this would be a Canadian liability, we should probably have a broader discussion about that.

That concludes my remarks.

[Theresa McClenaghan, Executive Director and Counsel, Canadian Environmental Law Association]

Yes, I will.

Before I start, maybe I would say that's one thing we have in common: the view that the bill is long overdue for revision.

I was noticing in reviewing some historical material for today that my organization, the Canadian Environmental Law Association, made submissions on the Nuclear Liability Act and proposals to revise it in 1984, and I myself was involved in the litigation concerning the current legislation from about 1988 to 1995.

I thank you for inviting the Canadian Environmental Law Association to appear before you. Our organization is a non-profit public legal clinic. We were established in 1970, and our mandate encompasses using existing laws to protect the environment, as well as advocating law reform.

I should say, with my apologies, my written submission was not ready on time for prior translation. It has been provided to the clerk, but I understand, with the rules of the committee, you won't see that until a later date.

I also expect that we will file a supplementary letter with more detail on potential amendments, but I'll speak to them briefly here.

We have three main submissions to make with respect to Bill C-20. Firstly, we would recommend that the bill be amended to remove the cap on liability and to remove the exemption on third-party liability, and I'll speak to each of these in turn. Secondly, we would recommend that the minimum amount of insurance and financial assurance required to be carried by operators be amended so as to substantially increase the available resources even beyond what Bill C-20 provides and to provide for the consequences of a catastrophic accident with off-site impacts. Thirdly, we would recommend that the bill be modernized to accord with principles of sustainability.

I'll speak to each of these in turn.

With respect to the first submission, to remove the cap on liability and to eliminate the exemption that is accorded to suppliers, many other nations are either in the process or have removed their liability caps. The original argument was that nuclear power generation would not be pursued for peaceful purposes without such a cap, but we would submit that's long out of date; that's no longer applicable. Nuclear power was commissioned in Canada decades ago and is well established today. Just as Germany and Japan were able to remove the cap, Canada should be able to do that, too.

Those countries that did remove the cap wanted to “normalize” their nuclear power plant operation in accordance with other fields of industrial activity and also to exhibit the confidence their government had in the safety of their reactors.

Also, as we've often argued, the provision of a cap on liability operates as a subsidy to that single form of electricity generation—that is, nuclear-powered generation. No other form of electricity generation has such an advantage. The subsidy amounts to the costs that the operators would otherwise incur to either insure for or pay the real costs of a severe nuclear plant accident. Those who bear those costs today or under Bill C-20 that might exceed that amount are the public, whose damages and claims would not be compensated except to the limited amount provided by the cap, unless government chose to step in and account for the difference, which is discretionary.

I might add that a serious accident in which radioactive materials escaped containment is a credible scenario that we do have to consider if we're going to allow this type of generation and make the rules governing its operation. In the written brief—when you get it—you'll see a citation from the Auditor General's report from 1992, echoing the fact that because we've had relatively successful accident-free operation on the part of the Canadian nuclear program doesn't mean that accidents can't happen or that we shouldn't consider what the consequences would be if they did.

In the litigation that I mentioned to you earlier, evidence was led on the part of the plaintiffs that damages for a very severe accident could extend between $375 million and $30 billion in 1990 dollars, but in that case, even the industry estimate, which I might add was based on U.S. studies because no Canadian studies had been done, was that such a severe accident could amount to $10 billion. In either case, it far exceeds the amount that is proposed under Bill C-20.

Similarly, the act proposes to cover certain potential damage from transportation of fuel to or from the nuclear power generating plants. Again, there was a contention in the evidence in another case about 10 years ago involving the shipment of mixed-oxide fuel for tests at the Chalk River reactor; the contention was whether the containers were meant to properly protect against serious, especially airborne, accidents. Again, the sufficiency of the cap would be an issue.

With regard to the issue of the act's removal of liability from third parties, as you know, in both the current act and the proposed act, the legislation exempts all of the other parties in the supply chain from any liability whatsoever. This dates from original indemnities that were provided to those suppliers by operators such as AECL and Ontario Hydro, in some cases with federal government consent. That was replaced subsequently by the Nuclear Liability Act.

First of all, I would note that no other supply chain in the electrical generation industry obtains that kind of protection from liability. I would also say that because the industry is well established today, the need to continue to provide that kind of protection is not evident.

The next point I'd like to speak to is an increase in the minimum insurance requirements. Such an increase could be done through a variety of mechanisms, such as pooling or other arrangements, so as to increase the available coverage. I spoke earlier about the fact that the coverage required could greatly exceed the amount provided by this bill.

The note I would make on that point is that in the United States, as you may know, the Price-Anderson act provides a pooling of insurance such that, depending on which dollar exchange you're using and which year you're using, the range is between $9 billion and $11 billion available from a single accident through a combination of insurance, pooled insurance, contribution from the industry, and supplement by the state. Similarly, under the pooling arrangements and state supplements in other countries such as Germany and Japan, as well as others that subscribe to the Brussels convention, much greater resources are available to those who might suffer in the event of a serious accident. I would submit that even the proposed $650 million amount here is not in any way comparable to the amount available just on the other side of our international border.

The third point is to modernize the bill in accordance with principles of sustainability. I will speak to those very briefly. I will first mention the Rio Declaration, which Canada acceded to in 1992.

One of the principles is the principle of intergenerational equity. We would submit that the provisions of this bill should explicitly meet principle 3 of the Rio Declaration. As well, principle 16 is the polluter pay principle under the Rio Declaration. National authorities should endeavour to promote the internalization of environmental costs and the use of economic instruments, taking the approach that the polluter, in principle, should bear the cost of pollution. Another way to put this in the environmental discourse is that costs of potential harm should be internalized to the activity. We would say that removing the cap, increasing the resources available, and eliminating the third-party supplier exemption would more firmly align with principle 16.

To conclude, we think the present bill needs to be amended.

I would like to note that there are multiple objectives the bill may serve. First, if the objective is to provide for compulsory insurance, we would submit that this objective can be achieved without the liability exemptions and limitations. Second, if the objective is to provide a special duty or absolute liability, this can be done, again without completely exempting non-operators and without the caps on liability, just as is the case in other jurisdictions. If the objective is to expedite compensation, this can be done, again through a provision for a special claims tribunal. Similarly, if the objective is to provide some level of protection to suppliers, this could be done by indemnity agreements and without a statutory removal of the plaintiffs' or claimants' rights.

Finally, if the objective is to promote nuclear power generation, I would submit that the committee should recognize that the mechanism of a cap on total liability and exemption of third-party supplier liability is promoting nuclear power generation by imposing the difference in cost on the public. I would submit that's not merited in this day and age.

Finally, I would request that you view the question of amending the Nuclear Liability Act as a question of what system of compensation should be in place in the event of an accident. I would submit that you not view the act primarily as a mechanism to expedite the operation of nuclear power generation facilities.

In my submission, the system we would want in place in the event of a real accident would not consist of historical legislative protection to the industry from the consequences of an accident; rather, we would want a much more significant amount of minimum insurance and pooled resources to assist accident victims. We would want a removal of that cap on liability and the exemption to third parties. We would want to retain other elements such as absolute liability, extended limitation periods, retention of jurisdiction of the courts, and a specialized tribunal, but there is no necessity for the package to include the cap on liability or the exemption for third-party suppliers in order to accomplish those means.

Thank you.

[Michael Lees, President, Babcock & Wilcox Canada Ltd.]

Sure.

First of all, thank you very much for the opportunity to appear in front of the committee. I look forward to providing some input on Bill C-20 from the perspective of a supplier of equipment and services to the global nuclear industry.

What I'll do, in terms of the presentation, is just give you a very brief background to B&W Canada, followed by a summary of the key points as to why this bill is important.

First of all, at B&W Canada we've been in business since 1844. Our roots go well back in history. We've always been an active supplier to the power generation industry in Canada and worldwide.

Currently, we have facilities in Cambridge, a large manufacturing facility, where we do both nuclear and other components for the power generation industry. We also have a facility in Melville, Saskatchewan, as well as regional offices across Canada.

We employ about 1,000 people, and over half our business is related to nuclear. We provide highly engineered components to the CANDU systems, owned by utilities, both internationally and domestically, and we also provide services domestically and internationally as well.

We are the only nuclear fabricator that still remains in North America, all the rest having closed their shops as the decline in nuclear manufacturing took place through the seventies and eighties. As a matter of fact, I think B&W Canada is a good example of how a company has taken technology developed for the CANDU business and turned around and applied it to an international market for PWR reactors. Over the last 20 years, we've built approximately $1.5 billion worth of equipment and exported it to customers in the U.S. and across Europe.

We feel it's important to have an updated Nuclear Liability Act in Canada in order to allow, really, Canada to ratify the CSC. CSC is the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage, and the CSC is an IAEA initiative that basically commits the international community to common standards for handling claims from a nuclear facility accident. So we feel that's very important.

There are five reasons why prompt CSC ratification is important to both Canada and B&W Canada. One, it gives Canada a credible voice on the international stage in nuclear power, in non-proliferation, and on the role of the IAEA. Without Canada being a signatory to that treaty, our credibility is diminished.

Two, it allows an active export industry to both grow and develop, and therefore that export business allows us to control the type of equipment and technology that we send outside our borders. With those restrictions on the use of technology, it does allow us to control, to some extent, how that technology is used. Also, that technology inherently makes other nuclear plants safer, an advantage of western technology.

We also believe the CSC will allow more exports to occur, and that will help Canada's balance of trade as well, which we feel is important.

We also see that a ratified CSC would also preserve Canada's nuclear infrastructure. What I mean by this is that considerable investment takes place to enhance our capabilities to be competitive in a global market, and a broader industry and market being served both in Canada and internationally allows us to make those investments. If we were to rely simply on the Canadian market, we would have difficulty making the types of investments required to grow a business.

And the last point I would make is that it brings new vendors and new technology to Canada. Many companies are prohibited from or feel constrained in doing business in Canada because of the lack of the CSC treaty. This would allow that technology to come into Canada, it would generate competition, it would generate innovation, and it would generate lower costs for Canadian utilities.

In summary, we feel that Bill C-20 should be passed in a form that is consistent with the CSC, and that after adoption of Bill C-20, the CSC treaty should be promptly ratified.

Thank you, and I'd be happy to answer any questions at the conclusion.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

This is the thirty-ninth meeting. Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, June 1, 2009, we are dealing with Bill C-20, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident.

We have the various briefs that have been provided through the clerk. There is one from Babcock & Wilcox Canada Ltd., and we also have a submission from Bruce Power. Also, at the end of the committee's proceedings, could we have a few minutes? We also have the budget for the committee's study of Bill C-20. Perhaps around 5:35 or 5:40 we can deal with that.

Today, for the first panel, we have Michael D. Lees, president of Babcock & Wilcox Canada Ltd.; Mr. Murray Elston, vice-president, corporate affairs, Bruce Power; Theresa McClenaghan, executive director and counsel for the Canadian Environmental Law Association; and Shawn-Patrick Stensil, energy and climate campaigner, Greenpeace Canada.

To all of you, welcome.

We will be going to approximately 4:30. I think all of you know generally what the routine is. We first have the presentations, and we try to keep them within 10 minutes. Then we have seven-minute rounds of questions from the members.

Without any further ado, we will proceed.

The second panel will begin around 4:30.

I think we'll go in the order of the names I called out. Mr. Lees, as president of Babcock & Wilcox Canada Ltd., perhaps you'd like to lead off.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

I'm interested in your reprocessing facility, because this also has implications with respect to Bill C-20, on the liability insurance. As is proposed in this bill, if I understand it correctly, in Canada the owner-operator would have that liability.

What are the transportation issues? You're talking about fuel coming from Japan to this facility. Who bears the liability and who bears the insurance on the nuclear fuel being transported?

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for that formal introduction.

Thank you to our guests today. I have just a few questions on the bill and one in general. When we're looking at insurance, it seems to me the big thing about that is related to safety and risk. There's always this discussion, and I think we sometimes get clouded in our discussions about AECL and then try to blend that into Bill C-20, and neither of the two shall meet. From my standpoint, in each of our installations in Canada we typically have a utility that is operating that installation. Do we see any of that restructuring having an impact on this bill, and do we think anything will be any less safe in Canada as a result of the restructuring of AECL, or will CNSC be impacted by that?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Regan, there's a difference between what we ask the officials and what we might ask the minister. I have allowed great latitude in questioning the minister, as long as the questions dealt with proper committee business.

We have the officials here now. It would be appropriate if you would ask them questions on the issue they're here to talk about, which is Bill C-20.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Anderson.

When the minister is here, there is a lot of latitude allowed in the questions asked, as long as they're questions that belong before this committee. We have the officials here now. They've come on Bill C-20, and I believe that any question outside the scope of Bill C-20 should be asked of the minister. There are ways. Of course, Mr. Regan, you can do that.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

The officials are here to discuss Bill C-20. That's what they've come prepared to discuss, not last June's meetings.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

This section of the meeting was given over to the discussion of Bill C-20. I don't know if Mr. Regan understands that, but he's definitely not talking about Bill C-20.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Mr. Cullen was talking about the different liability limits. The bill we have before us, Bill C-20, talks about $650 million as the liability limit. He was noting that currently it's less than the limits in other countries, although with the way the Canadian dollar is rising, $650 million Canadian may be more than $1.2 billion American in a couple of years.

Is there anything in this legislation that would prevent the government from raising the limit in future years?

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

One of the other things you mentioned in your testimony was Canada's excellent safety record. As you've handled this portfolio and from your experience dealing with people in the industry, what do you feel are some of the major reasons? Is it legislation like Bill C-20? Is it our regulators? Is it that we have particularly conscientious companies? What is the core of the reason we have such a good safety record in Canada?

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Halton, ON]

Thank you for the question.

Certainly industry operators, suppliers, and contractors have indicated to us that this is a priority bill for them. They want to have certainty. They recognize that there will be construction of new facilities in Canada in the coming years and they want to make sure that there's a level playing field vis-à-vis the United States in terms of liability. That's what Bill C-20 addresses.

As has been indicated already, this is something we've been working on for many years, and it's time to modernize this last piece of legislation.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I only ask because in the midst of all this the Prime Minister also talked about Canada needing to get out of the isotope business, at the same time as we were doing all the things you just said about extending the life. I think it sends some strange messages.

I want to talk about Bill C-20; this is the main part of your appearance here. You talked about it as new legislation, and yet this is its third or fourth incarnation as a bill. The department has been working on it and consulting for a long time. It worked on an initial prospect in 2004; we're now on the edge of 2009-10. This concerns a liability limit in the event of nuclear accidents. The question I have for you is, do you believe that the $650 million that's cited in the bill is sufficiently high, in the global market of what other regions of the world set their limited liability at?

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

I have another question concerning Bill C-20. This bill limits the liability of the operator of the nuclear facility to $650 million, instead of $75 million under the current legislation. Obviously, $75 million was far too little and our laws are often outdated.

How can we differentiate risk? For example, there are operators who have only one nuclear reactor, such as in Quebec and New Brunswick, and others that operate several reactors with the same risks. What is the operator's financial liability? Is it the same whether the operator has one reactor or several?

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Minister, you say that Bill C-20 puts Canada in line with internationally accepted compensation levels, which is valid.

How important do you think this bill is as part of the AECL restructuring? Does it have an impact on the desire to sell AECL? Is security required for the private sector to be able to buy AECL? Is this bill part of that?

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Halton, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to tell the committee on this one that I do have a much shorter presentation; therefore, you'll have lots of time.

I'm pleased to have this opportunity to speak to the standing committee today on Bill C-20, an act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident. The legislation passed second reading in the House of Commons in June, and it's to repeal the Nuclear Liability Act and bring Canada's liability legislation in line with the other pieces of our modern nuclear regulatory framework.

As committee members know, a strong nuclear industry brings great economic and environmental benefits, but there's also responsibility to ensure that the public interest, health, safety, and the environment are protected through strong legislation and regulations, and to ensure the legal framework is in place to allow nuclear development to proceed efficiently.

Canada's nuclear safety record is second to none in the world. We have a robust technology, a well-trained workforce, and we have stringent regulatory requirements. The three main pieces of legislation that govern Canada's nuclear industry are the Nuclear Safety and Control Act, the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act, and the Nuclear Liability Act. Both the Nuclear Safety and Control Act and the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act are modern pieces of legislation that put Canada at the forefront of nuclear regulation. The Nuclear Liability Act, while standing the test of time, does need to be updated to complete our modern legislative framework for nuclear power.

In Canada, we put in place the Nuclear Liability Act over 30 years ago to establish a comprehensive liability framework for injury and damage arising from nuclear incidents. Both this earlier legislation and Bill C-20, now before the House, apply to the following: nuclear power plants, nuclear research reactors, fuel fabrication facilities, and facilities for managing used nuclear fuel. The framework established under the initial Nuclear Liability Act is based on the principles of absolute and exclusive liability of the operator, mandatory insurance, and limitations in time and amount. These principles are common to nuclear legislation in most other countries such as the U.S., France, and the United Kingdom, and these principles are just as relevant today.

Mr. Chairman, the underlying principles of Canada's existing nuclear liability framework balance the needs of victims with society's interest in nuclear development. It has provided the stability and the security needed to support the continued development of Canada's nuclear power industry.

However, although the basic principles underlying Canada's nuclear liability legislation remain valid, the act does need updating to address issues that have become evident over the years and to keep pace with international developments. As a result, the Government of Canada has conducted a comprehensive review of the act and is proposing the new legislation that the committee is considering.

Bill C-20 is a major step forward in a comprehensive modernization of Canada's nuclear liability legislation. It puts Canada in line with internationally accepted compensation levels, and it clarifies definitions for compensation, and as well the process for claiming it.

The challenge for the government in developing this legislation was to be fair to all stakeholders and to strike an effective balance with the public interest. The bill is the culmination of years of consultation involving extensive discussions with major stakeholders, including nuclear utilities, the governments of nuclear power generating provinces, and the Nuclear Insurance Association of Canada--and it has received broad support.

I know that some nuclear operators may be concerned about cost implications for higher insurance premiums, but they also recognize that they have been sheltered from these costs for some time. Suppliers welcome the changes, as they provide more certainty for the industry. Nuclear insurers appreciate the clarity provided in the new legislation and the resolution of some long-standing concerns. Provinces and municipalities with nuclear facilities have also been supportive of the proposed changes.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, Canada's nuclear safety record is second to none in the world. The Nuclear Safety and Control Act and the Nuclear Liability Act provide a solid legislative framework for regulating the industry, and have done so since Canada's industry emerged as a world player: the former seeks to prevent and minimize nuclear incidents, while the latter applies should an incident occur. However, unlikely as it may be, we must be prepared for the possibility of a serious nuclear incident that could result in significant compensation costs. For these and other sound reasons, I would ask the honourable members to support this legislation, and I stand open for questions.

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Minister of Natural Resources]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the time of the committee.

Let me start by thanking the committee for the opportunity to be here to talk about the state of the nuclear industry here in Canada. I do appreciate the value of the work the committee has undertaken on nuclear issues, particularly in the past number of weeks.

The industry, as you know, is very important to the country and it's something we do well. We have a strong and proud history in the nuclear field, and we've been technological pioneers within the industry for decades, literally since the infancy of the nuclear era.

The nuclear industry and its place in our society today is I think perhaps often underestimated, and it's improperly associated with some negative connotations. The reality is that the nuclear industry employs more than 30,000 Canadians, and many of these jobs are highly skilled and high-paying employment opportunities. About 15% of Canada's electricity, and fully half of Ontario's, comes from nuclear power. The industry as a whole has an annual power output valued at approximately $6 billion.

With nuclear power set to play an increasingly important role in balancing the need for power with a desire to reduce greenhouse gas emissions not just here at home but around the world, this industry clearly has tremendous opportunity for growth in the coming years and decades. The Canadian industry needs to be positioned to take advantage of these global opportunities.

I recently met with my international counterparts at the International Energy Agency ministerial meeting in Paris. One of the key priorities that many of the energy ministers highlighted was the need to continue allowing, as well as promoting, nuclear power into the global energy mix. And indeed, this past summer that was part of the G-8 communiqué.

Nobu Tanaka, who is the executive director of the IEA, has advised that to achieve the greenhouse gas reduction goals, 32 nuclear power plants will need to be built every year between now and 2050.

The Government of Canada has a critical role in fostering the conditions for this industry to be able to take full advantage of those opportunities and for the safe, secure, and environmentally sound development of the nuclear industry. So we have set out our policy, based on three clear objectives. First, meet Canada's clean energy needs economically, safely, and reliably; second, maximize return on Canada's already great investment in nuclear energy; and third, position our nuclear industry for growth in both the domestic and the global market.

We have been acting on these objectives to deliver results for Canadians. We've extended the funding for both AECL and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to carry out their mandates. We brought in Bill C-20, which was referred to committee in June of this year and which is today to be considered by this committee and which will be further studied in the coming weeks.

Bill C-20 has been drafted to modernize the framework for nuclear liability. We've also made the decisions that needed to be made to advance the framework for managing nuclear waste. We have a program under way to begin the cleanup of nuclear legacy liabilities at Chalk River. And the Port Hope area initiative has recently received a five-year licence from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to move forward on the design of the Port Hope project.

As you know, this government has endorsed the adaptive phased management approach recommended by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization for dealing with nuclear fuel waste. A consultation process designed to identify a willing host community has commenced and is expected to continue for several years under government oversight in accordance with the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act.

These are all necessary actions that are vitally important to bolstering and building public confidence in what is a very important industry for Canada and for Canadian workers.

So there's a great deal of action and progress under way in all things nuclear in the country, but I think there are two clear priority areas where we all want to see some concrete progress in the coming months and years. And while I'm going to keep my comments brief today, I want to talk about these two priority areas: isotope production and the restructuring of AECL.

On isotopes, due to the comprehensive work this committee has already undertaken on behalf of all Canadians, more specifically by focusing your attention on the issue of the supply of medical isotopes, you have performed an important service for Canadians.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to reiterate my personal thanks and those of the government to the medical community for their tremendous work to ensure we have been able to cope with the supply issues of recent months.

I have been clear that going forward, AECL's top priority must be the NRU's return to service as expeditiously and safely as possible. AECL officials continue to inform the Canadian public that they believe the NRU reactor will return to service in the first quarter of 2010. I've been meeting weekly with the CEO and chair of AECL to hold them accountable to the schedule. AECL, at the end of the day, is accountable to the taxpayers of Canada, and we shall continue to insist that AECL meets the expectations of all Canadians.

My department and I have also been taking a leadership role in mobilizing international collaboration to maximize the global isotope supply, and we will continue to do this. We shall continue to consider the medium- and long-term options for isotope production as well. These considerations and decisions will be vital to our formulating plans and policies for the coming years.

Turning to AECL restructuring, the second priority, it will begin to take clearer shape as the review team continues to work through the many submissions received. The review team will assist us in paving the path forward. I am confident in our ability to make the necessary steps to strengthen Canada's nuclear industry and put us in a better position to access business and construction opportunities, both at home and abroad.

My special advisor, Serge Dupont, is here today. He went into detail earlier this month as to why we are intent upon restructuring AECL, so I'll try not to be too repetitive.

In short, AECL's structure and its business model need to change, and AECL needs to be in a position to have access to new business and investment partners if it's going to be truly competitive on a global scale. If we're going to protect, and hopefully grow, tens of thousands of jobs, AECL needs to be restructured in a thoughtful and considered fashion. It also needs to change if we are going to protect the taxpayer by bringing in risk capital up front to share some of the risks while increasing the potential for success. As it stands today, the Canadian taxpayer shoulders both the front-end investment costs and the downside risks of the business. This can be a particularly heavy load to bear, and we've seen an example of this in the first-of-a-kind refurbishment projects.

We are working to position the Canadian nuclear industry to retain and create skilled jobs. We recognize and value the contributions the hard-working employees in this industry are making to nuclear science, to technology, to our economy, and to our international reputation as a world leader and a technological pioneer.

Without a doubt, the nuclear industry's employees, the engineers and scientists, are world class. We as a government are very thankful for these contributions, and we need to highlight the employees' successes and the expertise on the world stage. Quite frankly, some of the world's biggest and brightest thinkers in the nuclear industry live and work here in Canada. Our government is acting now to ensure that these highly skilled employees will have every opportunity to actively participate in high-value projects, designing, building, and servicing nuclear energy technology in Canada and abroad.

Similarly, we need to act to improve AECL's R and D activities. The Chalk River labs and the company's R and D infrastructure as a whole need to be part of a culture that promotes innovation and excellence, feeding the industry at large, not just a reactor business. We need to be looking at new models of management. A government-owned, company-operated structure, for example, is one alternative possibility that we're taking a serious look at.

On that note, Mr. Chairman, I'm going to end my remarks simply by saying that I am committed and this government is committed to seeing the nuclear industry in Canada overcome some serious challenges to become a stronger, better, and more successful industry than ever. This is an industry that, given the conditions to grow properly, has a very, very bright future. It's a source of growth, innovation, jobs, and clean energy, things we all agree are critical to this country's future success.

Thank you very much, and I'd be happy to take questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome. It's good to be back here at our Monday committee meeting.

We have with us today the Minister of Natural Resources. She will be here for two 45-minute segments, the first dealing with the state of the nuclear industry in Canada and abroad, which of course is the issue we've been dealing with at this committee for the past several meetings.

In the second part of the meeting, the minister will be dealing with Bill C-20, the bill we've had before this committee before. It is an act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident.

A point of order, Mr. Regan.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

We have to leave right now anyway, Mr. Shory.

There's one other thing. For Bill C-20, which witnesses would the members like? I'd like you to have a prioritized list by Friday. It is very important for you to give a prioritized list to the clerk by Friday.

Thank you all very much for coming, gentlemen, and for your video conference, Mr. Schneider.

Again, everyone, I do appreciate your input. There were excellent questions and excellent presentations.

We have no further business. The meeting is adjourned.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Well, the thing is, we're dealing with this issue of the nuclear industry, both domestic and international, and then we also are going to be dealing with Bill C-20. The minister wants to deal with both issues.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Good afternoon, everyone.

We're here today to continue our review of the state of the nuclear industry in Canada and abroad. This review leads up to our study of Bill C-20.

We have six groups represented here today. We will allow them to give their presentations in the order laid out in the agenda.

However, first I want to mention that we have to pass a budget to cover the expenses of people who have expenses that qualify. We'll do that at the end of the meeting. It shouldn't take long, but we want to leave a few minutes in case there is any discussion. We have it scheduled at 5:15; if you think we can do it in less time, we can go a little bit later.

Go ahead, Mr. Regan.

[Serge Dupont, Special Advisor on Nuclear Energy Policy to the Minister of Natural Resources, Department of Natural Resources]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I thank the committee for the opportunity to outline the government's perspective and agenda in respect of the Canadian nuclear industry. My intervention will be brief and organized along the following key messages.

First, there is an important role for the nuclear industry in meeting energy and environmental needs in Canada and abroad. Moreover, Canada's industry has the track record, the resources, the know-how and the technology to participate in this global market.

Second, the Government of Canada has a critical role in establishing the conditions for the safe, secure and environmentally sound development of this industry in Canada and is ensuring that its regulatory framework fosters such conditions.

Third, the investment and sharing of risks in individual projects and technologies must be founded on merits and developed under solid business cases. Where there is scope to do so, the private sector can bring key resources—risk capital and entrepreneurship—to support the development of the sector on a competitive basis.

Fourth, the restructuring of Atomic Energy of Canada is a key, necessary step toward strengthening Canada's nuclear industry and putting it in a better position to access opportunities at home and abroad.

I would hope that members will find this overview helpful as a backdrop to your meetings and I would of course be pleased to take questions after the presentation.

Briefly again on the role of nuclear energy in Canada and the world, obviously it's a very important industry to Canada and we have a track record to demonstrate this. Our presence in this industry spans uranium mining and refining, fuel fabrication, the generation of nuclear power, the production of medical isotopes, the management of nuclear waste, and research and development. Our industry has developed this presence successfully in Canada and in the export markets.

We are the world's largest uranium producer. It all comes from Saskatchewan at the present time, but there are other promising resources in other parts of the country, notably Nunavut. Our high-grade reserves are the richest in the world--by far.

Nuclear energy provides about 15% of Canada's electricity and 50% in Ontario.

There are nine CANDU 6 reactors operating safely and successfully in Argentina, Korea, China, and Romania. They represent a showcase of Canada as a high-technology country. In fact, there are 48 reactors based on CANDU technology in the world today.

Countries around the world are continuing to look to nuclear as a key source of clean energy for the future. This was reinforced last week at the International Energy Agency meetings, which the Minister of Natural Resources attended. Leaders from around the world restated that without a significant increase in nuclear power, the world will be unable to meet its greenhouse gas reduction targets.

In short, the nuclear industry is an important one for Canada and reflects over 60 years of Canadian leadership in nuclear industries.

Approximately 30,000 people are directly or indirectly employed in this industry and many of them are highly skilled and highly paid.

The annual output of the industry is approximately $6 billion.

It's important to mention as well that nuclear energy in Canada displaces between 40 million and 80 million tonnes of GHG annually relative to producing the same quantity of electricity from gas or coal.

I will now talk about the Government of Canada's role in the nuclear sector.

Of course, decisions respecting uranium mining and exploration and investments in power generation rest with the provinces.

The federal government, however, plays a very important role and has broader responsibilities in terms of nuclear energy, much more so than for other energy sources. The federal government is responsible for the broad policy framework, including policies respecting waste management and exports of nuclear materials and technology. To that end, Canada has put in place a strong and modern legislative framework, which includes the Nuclear Safety and Control Act, the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

And, as you are aware, the government has introduced Bill C-20 to modernize the 1975 Nuclear Liability Act. I understand that the committee plans to continue its review of this bill this fall.

Through the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the federal government regulates all nuclear activities to ensure health, safety, security and environmental protection.

In addition, the government is taking action to remediate waste issues that date back over several decades. I could go over some examples later, but we'll move on in the interest of time.

On the role in the industry of business cases and business merits, including the private sector, nuclear energy is a technology-intensive, capital-intensive, and risk-intensive business. As such, individual projects and investments, whether a mine, a processing plant, a new reactor, or a refurbishment of an existing reactor, will need to be based on a careful assessment of benefits, costs, and risks. Sound business cases will also be the foundation of a globally competitive industry. In this environment the private sector can make, and is making, an important contribution by providing risk capital, entrepreneurship, the pursuit of commercial opportunities, and the creation of jobs.

The Canadian industry includes private sector companies in uranium mining and processing as well as in the operation of nuclear reactors in Ontario. The supply industry also includes more than 150 Canadian firms supplying equipment and engineering services to this industry.

Fifth, in this context the Government of Canada is moving forward with the restructuring of AECL, as announced by the Minister of Natural Resources on May 28.

The restructuring is guided by the following three key objectives: meeting Canada's energy and environmental needs economically, safely, and reliably; maximizing the return on Canada's substantial investment in nuclear energy over the years; and positioning our nuclear energy for growth in domestic and global markets at a time when this industry, worldwide, is expanding.

As you are aware, the initiative followed a study undertaken by Natural Resources Canada with the assistance of outside advisors. The summary report of the review was made public in May, at the same time as the minister's announcement. I have asked that it be distributed to the committee to help with its deliberations.

The review concluded that the current mandate and structure of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited hampers both its success and the development of the nuclear industry in Canada. The review found that the CANDU Reactor Division did not have the critical size to establish a strong presence in high-growth markets.

The structure and business model of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited need to change to provide more opportunities to partner and acquire global scale to leverage AECL's technology, skills, experience and capabilities.

The review also concluded that Chalk River laboratories would benefit from a strong partner to drive innovation and renewal, and that a government-owned, company-operated approach, such as prevails in the U.S. and the U.K. notably, should be considered. Under this model, which is the basis on which many nuclear labs around the world are managed, policy mandate and funding would rest with the government. The operation of facilities would be contracted to one or more third parties through a competitive process.

The government has engaged N M Rothschild & Sons Canada Limited, through a competitive process, to provide advice on the next stage of restructuring. The report from Rothschild will guide the next steps. The minister has also engaged David Leith, former deputy chairman of CIBC World Markets, to act as her adviser on restructuring. I would note that the board of AECL is also actively engaged in the restructuring process.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I hope I have been helpful in providing some context for the role that nuclear energy plays in Canada and in situating recent initiatives. I would be pleased to take questions from the committee.

[Serge Dupont]

Bill C-20 is about updating our nuclear liability regime in Canada. Currently, operators of nuclear facilities have a maximum liability, in the event of a disruption or an accident of any kind, of up to $75 million. That is outside of the realm of the global standard. The limit will be raised to $650 million, which is also roughly equivalent to the amount that may reasonably be purchased in the market by way of insurance. So it provides an environment whereby we both hold entities to account and, at the same time, provide that we may build a viable and vibrant nuclear industry in Canada.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

I want to shift to a completely different subject, one that I think should be important to this committee, and it's that despite some of the announcements made recently about new builds being postponed, nuclear power is obviously still a part of our energy mix, and Canadians want it to be that way. These new builds will require some sense of stability.

I want you to talk a little about what Bill C-20—which has been sent to the committee—will do in terms of providing that stability, because I think that's something the committee should be moving forward on if it really wants to deal seriously with the nuclear issue in Canada.

Extension of Sitting Hours

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as I said, we are open to talking about it.

That does not mean that we will automatically agree to any request the government might make to extend sitting hours, but if debate on a certain bill were about to end and we still needed a few more hours, of course we would give that careful thought.

I want to add something else. I took a look at what was tabled every Tuesday for the past month. We have covered nearly everything the Leader of the Government wanted us to, as I said. He wanted bills in the House to be ready for royal assent; he got all but one of them—Bill C-6—and that is expected to happen around June 10. He wanted four bills to be sent to the Senate. Two of them are in the Senate. There are two more to go. So that makes three. Bill C-20 is in committee and should be back here soon. The parliamentary leader wanted the committee's report to be done by June, and that is likely to happen.

We have a problem with Bill C-19. I would remind the House that Bill C-8 and Bill C-23 were not included in the government's agenda that ends June 23. I therefore assume that the government does not plan to address those bills before the fall. We will debate them in the fall.

I therefore do not believe there is enough material to keep the House busy for 11 days from now until June 23. Once again, if we need to extend the sitting hours occasionally, the government can rest assured that the Bloc Québécois will be open to discussion.

The House resumed from May 28 consideration of the motion that Bill C-20, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

First, I would like to thank the witnesses and to apologize to them for eating in their presence. I've always been told that's impolite.

Mr. Burns, you addressed a very interesting topic concerning Bill C-20. Your talk referred to an adequate number of inspectors, a question we've discussed very little since we've been studying Bill C-6.

If we pass a new bill under which more inspections will be conducted, it goes without saying that we'll have to increase the number of inspectors. However, we'll have to ensure that's not just a pious hope. An act without sufficient resources to administer it doesn't produce much of a result. I have a few fears on that subject.

In another file, the Conservative government has cut the number of inspectors, which has jeopardized certain inspections and resulted in a very unfortunate situation. I'm referring to the listeriosis affair. The government boasted of having increased the number of inspectors, whereas, in the field, clearly no inspections had been done. That resulted in some abuses. I find that paradoxical. They say they want to implement an act under which the number of inspections must be increased to protect the lives of Canadians. However, we must definitely ensure that, to do that, the government indeed intends to provide the necessary funding and resources.

I would like you to comment on what I've just said and to provide us with some details on what you consider an adequate number of inspectors. We'll have to manage the increased obligations resulting from the fact that we want to guarantee food safety. I would like you to tell us how many inspectors will be necessary, in your opinion, and how much that might cost. Perhaps you could give us a figure to facilitate the government's thinking. I would also like to know where you think those inspectors should be deployed.

Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Madam Chair, I would like to address the House for a few minutes to discuss Bill C-20, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident.

One of the reasons why it is important to take the time to study this bill is of course the fact that the act goes back to 1976. You will understand that I was only three years old at that time. The whole nuclear movement has changed and evolved over time. The time has certainly come, 33 years later, to ensure that provisions are updated and to improve the act which has been in effect since then.

Updating means ensuring that the act reflects what is going on today, but also ensuring that we go a little further by being proactive and instituting measures so that the population feels better protected. We also want to see those who will be dealing with nuclear material and facilities take on some responsibility.

We all know that we need energy if we are to function. Whatever type of energy we use, have to have it to power our cars and heat our homes. That is reality, in this country and throughout the world. We are not unique in this. We most certainly live in a climate where the population has to heat their homes in the winter. We have to find a way. Some feel that certain energy solutions are less polluting than others. If we want to take the environment into account and pollute less, this may mean putting the emphasis on wind power and hydroelectric power.

However, we must also examine sources of energy that are extremely polluting, be it coal-generated energy or electricity produced by burning oil.

Nuclear energy also exists and must not be set aside. I heard certain members oppose Bill C-20, which seems a bit bizarre to me. As I mentioned earlier, when an act goes back to 1976, sooner or later we have to ensure that we update that legislation, especially when we are talking about nuclear energy.

Some members may be against nuclear energy and speak against it. However, we also have to look at the whole matter of the use of nuclear matter for worthwhile medical purposes. The crisis we are experiencing currently seems worse to me than the one in 2007. This year, in 2009, we are going to experience what appears to be an insurmountable isotope crisis. Indeed, from one day to the next or from one week to the next, we see that the government is introducing and adding amendments stating that medical isotopes will not be available before a given time.

The reality is that everyone in our country and elsewhere needs medical care. We have to be able to find solutions and identify people's illnesses. We may then see that there is no disease; that can happen. In that sense, medical isotopes allow us to move forward. They make it possible to find health-related, medical solutions for our fellow citizens.

If we want to be able to move forward in this area we have to be able to develop isotopes and this is done in a nuclear environment. It cannot be done with thin air, nor with wind turbines. We cannot make isotopes with hydroelectric energy, even if some people would like that. That is the reality we have to deal with.

If we want to continue to ensure a better quality of life where the health of our population is concerned, we must also be able to take steps to provide a safe nuclear environment. I was talking about protection earlier, and I may have an opportunity to get back to that.

When we speak in the House, it is good to have people listen to us, and not have them be talking to each other instead. Sometimes that can be distracting. It seems that some people are not interested in this very current and important matter, important for the health and safety of our populations.

I was talking about isotopes. Who can be against the obvious virtues of nuclear energy? Nuclear energy will be used to create medical isotopes. We must not forget that Canada produces 50% of the world's medical isotopes and 70% of the isotopes used in North America. It is all well and good to look at what we provide to other countries, but when the time comes to make a decision and vote on this bill, we will also have to take into account the fact that we use medical isotopes for the citizens we represent, Canadian citizens. How then can we be against the clear advantages of nuclear energy in that regard?

We cannot oppose it. I hope that some of the members who say they are against nuclear power will take a few extra minutes to think this through and think about their fellow citizens, the members of their family as well as themselves; they may at one time or another have had to undergo medical tests that involved the use of isotopes. It is almost impossible to be against the virtues of nuclear power in this regard. We cannot tell our fellow citizens that we will just stop producing isotopes because their production involves nuclear power. It would be like telling them that we will no longer be able to diagnose their diseases because we do not want to produce medical isotopes anymore. We really have to think about this with great care.

Once certain members have thought about this, I want them also to think about how anyone can be against updating and improving an act that has been around from 1976 to 2009. It is impossible to think that a member could oppose that and vote against this bill because he or she is against nuclear energy. That is missing the point. The point is that we have to be in favour of the bill because we are going to need nuclear energy in order to be able to provide medical care to Canadian citizens and to identify certain diseases or certain problems. Let us at least update the bill. Why run an additional risk? As parliamentarians, why not ensure that those who work with nuclear power be made more liable? We cannot be against that idea either.

Earlier, I mentioned protecting our citizens. There is no doubt that nuclear energy is not like water. We can drink water, even if it may sometimes be polluted, but not nuclear substances. So we have to be careful. Certain steps have to be taken. However, citizens must also feel that they are in a realistic environment. They must feel that parliamentarians have considered all aspects and that the government and the various government agencies have taken the necessary steps to ensure that the population is well protected, especially when we are dealing with nuclear power. It has to be said that this is an environment that can be unstable in some respects. No one will deny that. However, if we want to ensure that we are giving our citizens greater protection, one of the ways of doing that is to update this law in order to make sure that we will have much better regulation.

The other point concerns liability. We want to make sure that we are increasing the liability of nuclear power plant operators. One of the important things to point out in this regard is that the bill will increase liability from $75 million as it is currently to $650 million. Increasing these liability levels will ensure that people will not be able to take their work lightly. In addition to ensuring the protection of the environment and of our citizens, we will be making those who operate nuclear facilities more accountable, and raising the liability level from $75 million to $650 million is one proof of that.

Generally, it is when there are no limits that people do things in a somewhat more negligent way. If you increase liability to such a level, this clearly demonstrates that we want to attain an objective: that of ensuring that operators are doing their work seriously, so as to provide greater protection to our citizens.

As everyone will have understood, I will indeed be voting in favour of this bill. We will never be able to eliminate nuclear power, except perhaps in 100 or 150 years. This is not just about energy, but about medical treatment. Some of us may not agree with one or another of these matters, but it is very difficult to be against the medical aspect. If we cannot be against nuclear energy as it relates to medical matters, clearly we have to improve the act if we want to increase the protection we afford our citizens, and if we want operators to be more liable.

I will conclude here. If members have questions for me, I am ready to answer them.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak today to Bill C-20, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident.

As a short summary, the bill is designed to replace the 1976 Nuclear Liability Act and would establish a clear regime in the event of a nuclear accident, which are laudable goals.

The bill would establish the compensation and civil liability regime to adjust damages resulting from radiation in the event of a radioactive release from a Canadian nuclear installation. The bill would also increase liability limits from $75 million to $650 million and would put Canada on par with internationally standards.

The Liberal Party supports the bill in principle. We are looking forward to getting the bill to committee so expert witnesses can be brought in and our team can ask the pointed questions to ensure the bill will be respectful of and protective of the interests of Canadians.

The principles of the bill are in many ways similar to the principles of the previous bill that it will replace, in that operators are exclusively liable for damages. The operators must carry insurance. The liability is limited in time and amount and suppliers and contractors are effectively indemnified.

I am sure this question will be asked during the committee hearings. Should there be some liability for suppliers and contractors? If contractors are building a new reactor or doing work on an existing one and that work is shoddy, surely there should be some element of responsibility on the shoulders of the contractors. I am sure this issue will be delved into during the questions that will come before the committee.

The bill addresses foreseeable risks and reflects the insurance capacity of companies to pay. If a nuclear event were to take place, then the costs could be quite large. We want to ensure that the liability will be somewhat limited on the part of the companies, otherwise no insurance policy could be purchased. If possible damages to be paid out by an insurance company were to be so large, it would destroy the ability of a company to continue to exist.

I want to talk about a couple of other important issues in this area. It goes to the heart of AECL. A review of AECL found that the structure of the corporation was impacting its effectiveness, that AECL needed significant review and that review should get to the heart of structural changes that would have to take place in AECL and its two divisions, the CANDU division and the research and development division. Both are in desperate need of specific restructuring. We know process has started and we would like to see the outcome of that assessment. All Canadians need to see that.

Nuclear power is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it can provide enormous benefits in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, in using an energy source that will be needed by large industrial countries such as ours. On the other hand, there is a risk, albeit a tiny one, that has to be managed quite carefully. Therefore, the outcome of these assessments of AECL should be made known to the House and to the public.

We have some extraordinary nuclear scientists in our country and, as a nation, we should be a leader in this field. Some would argue that we should not deal with this issue at all, that nuclear power is bad and we should somehow go down the road of other non-fossil based fuels. However, given the power needs of our country, can we derive enough energy from other non-nuclear, non-fossil based sources? I do not think so.

Hydro power, geo-thermal power and solar power are very important alternate sources of energy and they will be useful to decrease our dependence on fossil fuels, but they are not the only answer. The fact is nuclear power, whether we like it or not, is and will be an important part of our strong need to wean ourselves off carbon-based fuels.

France, for example, does a very good job. A significant part of its power comes from nuclear power. Canada should also follow suit to some degree. We have other assets, particularly hydro power. On the other hand, we should be able to integrate nuclear power as one of the options in order to wean our country off fossil fuels.

Why is this issue critically important? My very famous colleague, our former minister of the environment and the former leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, has done, and continues to do, an extraordinary amount of work on the environment. He has been one of the top leaders in the world in dealing with climate change. He has said many times that a 2° Celsius increase in temperature will have potentially catastrophic effects for the world. Right now we are about 1.4°, if we factor in all of the elements. We are getting fairly close to that tipping point. Once that tipping point occurs, we will be faced with the following problems.

We could get into the feedback loop mechanisms. As the temperature of the earth rises above a certain degree, the temperature of the oceans increases. We have removed a lot of the polar ice, as the permafrost has melted, which contains methane and that has 25 times the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide. For example, Siberia has a very large capacity of methane that is stored in the permafrost and that is being released. As the temperature of the oceans increases, the oceans become more acidic. Those two factors reduce the ability of the oceans to absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen, photosynthesis.

After a certain point, we get to a place where we have passed the tipping point, where we are getting into a feedback loop that cannot be reversed. The impact of that, as I said before, will be catastrophic, not only for our country but for developing countries in the world. It will produce not only environmental calamities but security and economic calamities as well.

This is why it is very important that we do not dismiss the use of nuclear power because of visions of Chernobyl. The responsible thing to do is to see how we can integrate nuclear power in a way that will be an addition to the tools we use to get us off greenhouse gases. A failure to do that means countries like China, which produces an absolutely appalling number of coal-based plants every year, will continue to rely on those carbon-based fuels such as coal. In the process of doing that, it is going to be releasing more greenhouse gases, which is going to have a catastrophic effect on our world.

When we manage risk, is it better to allow that to occur and dismiss nuclear power, or is it wiser to embrace nuclear power plants if we are to decrease the building of coal power plants? I would argue that the responsible thing to do is to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and use an assortment of other tools.

Another area is the issue of Chalk River. About a year and a half ago the Chalk River nuclear power plant close, and that has happened again. The Chalk River nuclear facility is facing a three month shutdown. Why is this important for patients who need those isotopes? Isotopes only last hours, not several days, so we cannot stockpile them. Isotopes are critically important in diagnostics for cardiovascular problems and various cancers. If we cannot produce those, thousands of patients, with a particular disease, will suffer the uncertainty, the unknown, which will potentially affect them.

Do we have options? No. Why did the government, knowing the failure of Chalk River and knowing that it was a 52 year old power plant, not understand that it was absolutely urgent to find new sources of isotopes? I cannot understand that. We are missing an extraordinary opportunity. We have amazing scientists in this area. It is a technically difficult area, yet we are losing this scientific excellence.

Canada could be a leader in the production of radio isotopes, in diagnostics and treatment in medicine, yet we are not. This deprives not only our patients, but patients around the world access to these materials.

This matter will be made even worse. The Petten reactor in Europe will be down for two to three months for a normal overhaul. I believe the reactor in Europe produces about 34% of the world's isotopes. The Chalk River reactor produces over 50% of the world's radio isotopes. Both of those reactors will be out of commission. What is going to patients who are relying on the radio isotopes for their diagnostics? This is a medical catastrophe.

I am flabbergasted. Why on earth did the government not plan to capitalize on Canada's excellence in this area and commission a new reactor to produce these radio isotopes and build redundancy into the system worldwide? We need to have that. The medical system and our patients need this in the production of radio isotopes. AECL scrapped two MAPLE reactors due to design flaws, and they were massively over budget.

People have asked this question. Why on earth can Canada not build a reactor in under a decade? Why does it take more than 10 years to build one? We have the scientists. We have the capability. We have the knowledge. Where are things going wrong? That is why a public review of AECL would be very important. Canadians could have the answer to these important questions. It is not simply an academic exercise. It is a matter of life and death.

The other issue is that the government has lost control of the public purse. A few months ago the Minister of Finance said that the deficit would be $34 billion. Now he has said it will be $50 billion.

At the end of last year, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance said that our economy was in top-notch shape and that we would not face any kind of deficit. There are two scenarios. Either the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance did not know we were heading into a deficit when everyone else was telling them we would have one, in which case they are incompetent, or they knew about it and did not tell the truth. People will determine which of those two scenarios it is. Either one is not appealing for the Prime Minister of our country. All Canadians should ask themselves if the Prime Minister and his cabinet are fit to lead our country, since they have messed up so often in so many areas, areas that are so important to them as well as the country.

In order to generate some money, the government will try to sell off AECL. If we sell off AECL to private interests, what will be the checks and balances and oversight to ensure that our nuclear reactors will be managed properly? The public safety factor has to override all other considerations? Where is the public right to know and Parliament's right to know if AECL will be sold to private owners? This fundamental question has to be answered by the government before any kind of tender is put out. That has to be part of the process and it is critically important.

The other area I want to discuss is the fact that Canada has exported our nuclear capabilities to other countries. Right now, Canada and India are poised to potentially sign a deal where India would buy Canadian nuclear capabilities. It is a good thing in principle but there must be checks and balances to ensure these reactors cannot produce fissile materials. We know that India and Pakistan have nuclear capabilities. We also know there is significant, to put a fine point on it, antipathy between both India and Pakistan and we are seeing the consequences of this in Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, where our troops are bravely working, people are paying the price in blood and our nation is paying a price in treasure for our mission there. However, the mission in Afghanistan will not be successful and the people of Afghanistan will not have the peace they so justly deserve unless the issue of Pakistan is dealt with. Pakistan can only be dealt with if its own concerns and fears are dealt with about India.

Would it not be a great opportunity for Canada to play a diplomatic role in trying to bring India and Pakistan together to deal with the issue of the insurgency going into Pakistan? It would also help Pakistan to deal with the internal insurgency that it has that has killed thousands of people. Surely, this could be an innovative and diplomatic endeavour for our country.

Unfortunately, the government has eviscerated the Department of Foreign Affairs, cutting more than 20% of its funds just in the last couple of years. How can the government profess that Canada should have a strong diplomatic force in the world and then eviscerate the very diplomats and resources they have to do their job? It cannot.

Herein lies an opportunity and I would strongly advise the government, for the sake of Afghanistan, the Afghan people, our troops and their families in particular, that it act innovatively to address this issue. A failure to do this will simply not allow us to deal effectively with the pressing challenges within the country.

I also want to talk about an issue that deeply concerns all of us and our neighbours south of the border, and that is the loss of control of fissile materials. We talk about fissile materials getting into the hands of organized crime or terrorist groups, and it is a very real concern. Initiatives have been established to control these materials coming from eastern Europe and the former U.S.S.R. However, the reality is that Canada should be taking a role with its partners, which would improve our relations with our allies, to deal with the lost nuke problem. It is not a tiny problem but a large problem. The failure to grapple with this issue is an international security threat. This is another area where I strongly advise the Government of Canada to use its diplomatic capabilities to deal with this issue.

We know about the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the proliferation in countries that are hardly democratic, law-abiding states, such as North Korea, and it is a very serious problem that requires a multinational effort. Canada, as a country with some extraordinary diplomats within its borders, should utilize its diplomatic capabilities, fund the Department of Foreign Affairs and work with its allies to deal with the great challenges of the 21st century, and certainly the proliferation of nuclear weapons is one of those.

We in the Liberal Party will support this bill to get it to committee. We have raised many issues in the House relating to the bill and to the larger issues of nuclear power, nuclear weapons and fissile materials. We are willing to work with the government to ensure these issues are resolved in the best interests of our country.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to continue my remarks on Bill C-20, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident.

As I spoke before the question period portion of today's proceedings, I raised the concerns that by raising the amount of limitation of liability, we are still leaving to the public of Canada or individuals the rest of the liability for what could be extremely expensive nuclear accidents.

What we are also learning today and what we believed all along is that this is all part of the effort to privatize or sell-off and make available Canada's nuclear industry.

What is ironic though is that if the bill were not brought before the House at all and American corporations who we understand have some interest in purchasing nuclear facilities or starting nuclear facilities in Canada, they would be bound by American law and lo and behold they would be subject to a compensation limit of $10 billion.

What we are effectively doing is raising our limitation of liability to what is known as an international minimum standard. If that is available in the case of $650 million, then the American law which requires $10 billion would not apply.

What we are effectively doing is making it easier for American corporations to operate nuclear plants or purchase nuclear plants in Canada in the private sector in a cheaper way without the same kind of responsibility that they would have under their own law in their own country or even in this country under existing law.

What is being presented as a significant increase in the requirements, by increasing compensation limits from $75 million to $650 million, in fact is a disguise for lowering the limits for foreign buyers such as the Americans. That may sound complex, but that is a function of how American law operates to protect its own citizens.

My question is this. If we are going to change the law and allow this to happen, why would we not adopt the same standard of $10 billion? Why would we not do that?

The government has deemed fit to continue to have public liability for damages from any nuclear plants, whether it be the liability for an accident, for decommissioning or for public liability of any sort. It will either be falling on the public as the taxpayer, that is the government, or the damages will lie where they fall, just as, for example, the victims of the bankruptcy or insolvency of Abitibi-Consolidated and the pensioners of AbitibiBowater who are losing their promised pensions, severance pay and other things. They are not covered by the insolvency law and therefore the severance payments that they were supposed to get contractually are not available to them. The additional pension payments that had been agreed to are not available to them. The Federal Court of Canada has decided that that is the case under our law. In other words, the loss in a bankruptcy falls on the victims. The public is not stepping up to the plate in that situation.

However, if we had a nuclear accident or a nuclear decommissioning in a bankrupt company for whatever reason, I foresee very easily that the company's ability to look after the cost of the damages would very soon be exhausted and the $650 million is not going to do the job. Therefore, I am assuming that there would be a public outcry and an expectation that the Government of Canada, under whose jurisdiction this falls and who allowed this industry to develop in the way that it was planning, would have to assume responsibility for the damages that were done to individuals financially, physically, health-wise or whatever long into the future.

That is what this bill is about. It is bringing about a situation which takes the direct control of the nuclear industry out of the hands of government and is designed to put it into the hands of the private sector with a special arrangement that says that the nuclear industry will only be expected to have a compensation limit of $650 million. That is wrong and we in the NDP oppose it.

The development of the nuclear industry has been very controversial in Canada and elsewhere. We have seen, as previous speakers from my party have noted, a series of nuclear accidents over the years, which have been very expensive not only in terms of the health costs, the lives lost and the environmental and health damages for many years to come but also obviously in terms of dollars.

Let us look at the enormity of some of the costs of damages. For example, the cost of cleaning up the Three Mile Island nuclear incident a number of years ago in the United States would equal the cost of developing over 1.1 million 100-watt solar panels. We know that solar panels are rather expensive ways to produce electricity. The cost of cleanup alone, not the cost of operating or building, could have produced 1.1 million 100-watt solar panels.

We have the absolute cost of building nuclear plants too, which are very expensive. We have not had examples in Canada of this yet but we have long-term costs and expenses associated with finding a way to look after nuclear waste for many years to come.

We have seen an example of the mining industry running into financial difficulty. It was unable to clean up its environmental waste because it went bankrupt and the public had to step in. There is the example in my own province of the Hope Brook Gold Mine on the southwest coast, which was operated for a number of years. It did not operate for many years, just a handful, during which it made some money. It left a toxic waste situation that required millions and millions of public funds to clean up because the company itself was bankrupt.

That is the kind of situation we would be facing when the liability issue would be brought into question. It would be brought into question when something drastic and dramatic happened. It is not something that is so far beyond the realm of possibility that it ought not to be accounted for. If that were the case, the American government would not be insisting that nuclear plants and developments inside its borders have a minimum of $10 billion liability.

Other legislators and governments have decided that this is an extremely serious matter. The amount of liability that we are exposed to when it comes to the nuclear industry are enormous and must be accounted for.

We see the very mundane example of people who drive motor vehicles, which is provincially regulated, being required to have certain levels of insurance. In some provinces it is $100,000 public liability, in some cases it is $200,000. Some people get $1 million or $2 million public liability, and they do it because they want to protect themselves if there is an accident where the costs are greater than the statutory minimum of, say, $100,000.

There are many examples of car accidents which have incurred costs for recovery, rehabilitation and long-term care in excess of $100,000. Some are in excess of $1 million. Drivers of motor vehicles must protect themselves by law to the minimum but by common sense higher.

The same thing is at work here. If individuals with $100,000 liability insurance have a car accident that they are responsible for which ends up costing $300,000 in damages to an injured party, the $100,000 comes from the policy, but the $200,000 comes from the individuals, from their assets, their homes and their properties. So people protect themselves.

By the same token, in the nuclear industry, where we are talking about the kinds of damages that would be incurred, we are talking about an enormous amount of money, hundreds of millions of dollars and into the billions of dollars. Our American friends have decided in their wisdom that a minimum of $10 billion of liability is required to provide for the safety of the public in the United States of America.

That does two things. If the liability were $10 billion, that requires a very strict level of activity by anyone engaged in the nuclear industry, first of all, to get the insurance and, second, to abide by whatever rules, regulations and activities are insisted upon by these insurers with respect to safety. If I were an insurance company and on the hook for $10 billion of liability, I would be acting extremely vigilantly in ensuring that any activity going on under my policy was going to be strictly looked after.

We see that in the offshore oil industry and in other industries where a lot of damages can be incurred. As a result, of course, there are very strict guidelines and international standards organizations actually monitoring, in the case of the offshore, the construction of offshore oil platforms, drilling rigs and all of these things. They get involved because they have the ultimate liability in ensuring that the rules are followed. The same thing would happen in the nuclear industry if it were to be privatized, as the government seems to be hell-bent on doing.

It is a very expensive industry and the biggest problem is that the costs are almost unknown. The additional costs can balloon by millions and billions of dollars fairly readily. With the nuclear system such as the one in New Brunswick, the cost of repairs to keep it going are in the billions of dollars. Where does all that money come from? It has to either come from the public or private enterprise, or the industry has to shut down.

These are enormous costs that are thrown upon the industry and the public without any real control. That is why we in the New Democratic Party prefer other methods of energy generation, for example, electricity generation. Some of my colleagues have talked about wind power, solar power and hydro power.

We have enormous potential in hydro power that has not yet been developed. My colleague from Manitoba spoke about the 5,000 megawatts of power in Manitoba that is yet untapped. We have a huge power potential in Lower Churchill, Labrador, that has not yet been developed.

These are the kinds of first choice developments for energy needs that we would want to see promoted and encouraged by the Government of Canada. It can do that in a number of ways. There is a lot of talk about an east-west power grid where we can provide, within our own country, for our power needs by being able to trade and transport electricity from one province to the other.

We saw an example recently, and it is a model example, where Newfoundland and Labrador is selling power not to Ontario but in this case to the United States through Hydro-Québec's power grid, under the wheeling rights provisions that Quebec is party to.

We should have similar rules in Canada with respect to allowing the transport of electricity so that one province can generate and another province can use. This requires a bit of cooperation and it requires a bit of help from the Government of Canada, for example, a loan guarantee for the province of Manitoba's power corporation or Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro in the case of Lower Churchill.

These are the ways in which the Government of Canada could make these projects more viable. It could allow access to capital at an easier rate for what is essentially a green technology that is renewable, sustainable and will be available for decades to come.

In the case of nuclear, the shelf life of nuclear plants inevitably results in the deterioration of the plants and the need for decommissioning in some cases. My colleague from Burnaby—Douglas talked about the project in Washington State in the United States costing $2 billion a year. Those costs will go on for decades in order to decommission a nuclear facility that is not producing any power.

These are the kinds of long-term costs that are very difficult to predict. What we can predict is uncertainty. We can predict uncertainty and a certain amount of certainty that many of these costs ultimately will be passed on to the taxpayer.

We do not see this as the way to go when it comes to the development of power in this country. We see a lot of other alternatives that are better for the environment, produce more jobs, have less risks and less danger and will not contribute to the proliferation of nuclear technology and weapons in the world.

There has been some talk about the changes that are taking place, for example, with India and the sale of nuclear plants and the transfer of nuclear technology. Now India, which did not sign the nuclear non-proliferation agreement, is a nuclear power. Pakistan is in the same boat. There is some hope that a new round of nuclear disarmament may take place. I look forward to a government in Canada that can provide some leadership on that. We have not had it from the current government. I guarantee that we would have it from an NDP government.

We are seeing signs that one of the largest nuclear powers in the world, the United States, is ready to embark on a policy of nuclear disarmament. That is a very positive sign. We cannot have a situation where they are the ones holding nuclear weapons and they do not want anyone else to have them. However, if they are saying that they believe in world nuclear disarmament and are prepared to play a part in that, that is a different story. That is a recipe for possible future progress and peace. It is something that I would like to see happen.

This bill is not a step in the right direction. We cannot support it in the form that is before the House.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-20, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Business of the House

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to respond to my colleague's questions. Before I get to his specific questions, perhaps we will revert to the more traditional response, which is to lay out the anticipated business for the week ahead.

As members know, today we completed debate at third reading stage of Bill S-2, the customs act. We will continue and hopefully complete the second reading stage of Bill C-20, Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act. Following Bill C-20, we will call at second reading, Bill C-30, Senate Ethics Act.

Tonight the House will go into committee of the whole to consider the main estimates of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Tomorrow we will begin debate on Bill C-24, Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act. The back-up bills for tomorrow will be any unfinished business left over from today.

Next week we will continue with any unfinished business from this week, with the addition of Bill C-15, drug offences, which is at report stage and third reading stage.

We will also consider Bill C-32, the bill that will crack down on tobacco marketing aimed at our youth, and Bill C-19, investigative hearings and recognizance with conditions. These bills are at second reading.

As I have been doing, I will also give priority consideration to any bills that are reported back from our standing committees.

Finally, I would like to note that on Monday, June 1, at 10 a.m., there will be a memorial service in the Senate chamber to honour the memory of parliamentarians who have passed away since April 30, 2008.

As well, in response to the specific questions, the hon. opposition House leader would know full well that we just had our House leaders meeting of all four parties and their whips. I thought I took extraordinary steps to inform my colleagues about the anticipated business that I intend to call between now and the House rising on June 23. He has all of that information. He knows as well that much of this is tentative and subject to change because we do not know exactly how fast committees will move and how long debate will take in this place. Having said that, I have tried to be as transparent and as open with my colleagues as possible.

As far as specific questions about the three remaining supply days, I will be designating them in the future, although I did indicate tentative dates for all three, and the member is well aware of that information; in fact, I think it has been made public.

Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act

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

Madam Speaker, I do not have an exact answer to my colleague's question, but I believe that significant government funding is involved in the decommissioning and cleanup of the Hanford site in Washington State. It is $2 billion a year for decades, not just for a decade, not just for a couple of years, but for decades, to clean up that site. It also requires other kinds of specialized facilities, such as the vitrification plant, which is an additional $12 billion.

None of these costs are insignificant. They are huge costs. Whether they are costs to industry, to the taxpayer or to government, they are huge costs. It goes to show that we do not fully appreciate the true costs of this industry when we do not understand how much it could potentially cost to deal with an accident and when we do not understand how much it truly costs to deal with the remediation of a retired nuclear facility of any kind.

We could look at the kind of remediation effort that has to happen at a gasoline filling station that has been closed. We often see the structure being torn down and the tanks being removed, but then the fence goes up and testing goes on for biohazards that continue. That site stays vacant for some period of time while that remediation goes on. We are talking about a gasoline filling station and not a nuclear facility with all of the extra, and more serious perhaps, concerns about waste, leakages and other problems that may have occurred on that nuclear facility site.

When I compare the process of remediating a filling station site to what is required of the nuclear industry in the event of the retirement of a facility or an accident, it behooves us to make sure that we have in place the best possible regime to deal with liability and compensation that we can possibly construct.

Bill C-20 falls far short of that, especially when we look at the costs associated, and when we look at the examples from other nations around the world. Some of the countries that we look to, for example, on how to deal with various issues, countries like Germany and Japan and even in this case, countries like the United States, have set far higher and even unlimited in the case of Germany and Japan, compensation limits in the event of an accident at a nuclear facility.

We need to look at that very carefully and try to find ways to avoid passing that cost on to the taxpayers, should there be an accident or should there be a retirement of a facility.

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

Madam Speaker, I appreciate having the opportunity to participate in the debate on Bill C-20, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident, also known as the nuclear liability compensation act. I had the pleasure of speaking to the bill in the previous Parliament when it was known as Bill C-5. This is at least the third attempt to bring forward this legislation.

Unfortunately, it is the same legislation all over again. We had serious problems with it as New Democrats in the last Parliament and none of our concerns have been addressed with the new legislation that has been tabled by the government in this Parliament. Bill C-20 still has the failings we were concerned about last time around and we continue to oppose this legislation because of its very serious shortcomings.

With respect to some of those shortcomings, when we put it all together, some of my colleagues have called this the “worst nuclear practices act” to really give voice to our concerns about its very serious problems and why we are taking it so seriously in this new Parliament as well. We are very opposed to the legislation. We thought that it needed significant improvement before we could ever support it. We are very disappointed that the government did not see fit to strengthen the bill before it tabled it again, but we will work hard in Parliament and at committee to try to change it, to improve it and make further judgments of it as it comes forward. The fact that we have to do that, that those concerns that were raised in debate in other Parliaments have not been addressed by the government, should be very disappointing for most Canadians.

We know that Canadians have very serious concerns about nuclear energy. Most Canadians understand that nuclear energy is not green energy, that there are very serious problems associated with it, including the potential for accidents and other safety concerns, including concerns about the disposal of waste from the nuclear power process which we have not been able to solve over many, many years. Most of those issues continue. We have not found good, long-term solutions to the question of nuclear waste. There remain many serious issues about nuclear power in and of itself and ones that most Canadians would share.

We have heard from members of our caucus who raised issues related to the nuclear power process. The member for Timmins—James Bay in the last Parliament made it very clear that attempts to deposit waste from nuclear plants in northern Ontario would be resisted by the people of northern Ontario again and again because of problems related to that process of storage and disposal and to the waste itself. The folks in northern Ontario have time and time again spoken out against other parts of the country depositing their waste and their problems in the neighbourhoods in northern Ontario. We need to be very cognizant of the fact that this remains a very serious and unresolved problem of the nuclear energy industry.

The member for Ottawa Centre remarked about ongoing issues related to Chalk River and the presence of tritium in the water of the Ottawa River to this very day. It will continue to be there because we cannot get rid of it. There are problems when there is a release at Chalk River. It is contained and then diluted and released into the Ottawa River. There should be better processes in place for that kind of release. It should be treated. The radioactive material should be removed and then stored. But we are still back at that same problem of what to do with waste and storage issues related to that. The whole issue of how it is eventually released into the atmosphere, into the environment is a very serious question and an ongoing problem with the nuclear industry here in Canada.

The legislation before us 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 fuel processors. Unfortunately, those are not the only places where nuclear material is used and where there is potential for an accident that might cause a claim for liability and compensation. There is a limitation to this legislation in regard to its scope and what industries, what processors, what is exactly covered by the legislation.

This legislation is very old. It dates from the 1970s. That also makes it very inadequate. Even those of us who oppose the bill before us appreciate that changes are needed to the legislation. Under the existing legislation, the liability limit is only $75 million, which is incredibly insignificant when one considers the kinds of accidents and liability claims that might come about as a result of a nuclear accident.

We heard the previous speaker talk about Chernobyl, the disaster that that represented and the huge costs associated with cleaning up that accident and the ongoing problems associated with it. Certainly the current liability limit of $75 million or even the one that is proposed in this legislation of $650 million would go nowhere near dealing with the kinds of compensation and liability claims that would arise out of an accident like Chernobyl. We need to be very cognizant of that experience because it is a serious question related to the nuclear power industry.

The bill before us, as I said, only considers raising the liability limit to $650 million, which is the absolute low limit of the international average on this kind of legislation around the world. We have gone for the bottom line, the very lowest level of liability that we could possibly contemplate when looking at this legislation in the current day.

We know, for instance, that in Japan the liability is unlimited and that each operator has to carry private insurance of $30 million. Germany is another country where the liability is also unlimited. There is an exception, as there is in this legislation, for accidents caused by war, but in Germany each nuclear operator has to have $500 million in private insurance, almost equalling what the liability limits set in this legislation would be. That is a far different approach than is taken by the current legislation or what is proposed here in Canada. Even in the United States there is a limit of $10 billion, with each operator needing up to $200 million in private insurance.

This legislation, by any consideration of what is done around world, falls very short. The liability limit of $650 million that is proposed in the current legislation does not come anywhere close to what should be in place. When we look at other countries from which we would take advice on this particular question, it is not near to what they themselves are doing.

We have to be very cognizant that $650 million just does not cut it, especially when for any costs beyond that $650 million it is the taxpayers who are on the hook to deal with the fallout of any accident or problem that arises in a nuclear facility. The nuclear operator would only have to pay out a maximum of $650 million and then it would be up to Canadians to cover the rest. There is a provision in this legislation for a special tribunal set up by the Minister of Natural Resources to look at liability beyond $650 million, but again that liability is paid out of the public purse. I do not think this establishes an appropriate level.

I suspect that Canadians, should there be a serious problem, incident or accident, would want to be part of the solution to the problems that arise from that, but I do not think they want to do that with the alternative being the protection of the operators or the nuclear industry itself from that liability. I do not think this sets up any reasonable standard for a level of liability. I do not think that Canadian taxpayers should be put on the hook because of the failure of this legislation to find that reasonable level.

This goes to the whole question of establishing the true cost of the nuclear industry. When we fail to establish a reasonable limit for liability and compensation, we underestimate the cost of this industry. I think this is one way where we have downplayed the true cost of nuclear energy, the true cost of the nuclear industry, here in Canada and perhaps around the world.

This is a very serious process. Things can go wrong and when things do go wrong, the consequences are very serious. I think it is high time we took into account the true cost and the potential of the problems when we are looking at this industry.

In this corner of the House, New Democrats have said that establishing such a low liability limit is perhaps related to the government's interest in getting rid of this national asset, of selling off our interests in nuclear energy, and making it more attractive to potential investors who would see it as a real bargain to get into a nuclear industry that has such a low level of liability attached to it by government statute.

Again, that is an irresponsible approach to dealing with a resource, as something that Canadians own, that is an appropriate thing for Canadians to own, for government to own, but also is an inappropriate approach to establishing the true cost of doing that kind of business. I think we have to bear that in mind when we are looking at this legislation.

We should not be supporting legislation that will contribute to a fire sale of the assets of Canada. We want to make sure that what we do in this place establishes a reasonable price, a reasonable cost for this industry.

I am pleased as a British Colombian that British Columbia has made decisions over the years not to engage in nuclear power generation. I think most British Columbians are relieved by that fact, and I suspect, Madam Speaker, that you share that relief that our province has not gone that route.

We have, however, been concerned as British Columbians about the nuclear station in Washington State, just south of the Canadian border, at Hanford. For many years that has been a source of real concern to British Columbians. We know that Hanford had nine nuclear reactors and five massive plutonium processing complexes, and that they did release nuclear radioactive contamination into the air and into the water of the Columbia River.

We also know that it has leaked, and the storage facilities have leaked, into the ground surrounding the Hanford station site in Washington State. For many years, when we talk about concerns around the nuclear industry, when we talk to British Columbians about it, it is Hanford that comes first to mind. We have often talked about the concerns we had with that particular facility.

Thankfully, Hanford has been decommissioned and it is now in the process of cleanup. That process of cleanup, I think, again draws our attention to the need to establish reasonable liability and compensation limits for this industry. The decommissioning and cleanup of Hanford is not a cheap prospect. It is not a matter of turning off a switch and mopping out the room, putting a lock on the gate and walking away.

The estimated cost of cleanup is $2 billion a year, and the cleanup will go on for decades, not just a couple of years, not just a decade but decades. It is $2 billion a year for decades to clean up this decommissioned facility in Washington State.

Part of the cleanup involves the establishment of very specialized facilities, like a vitrification plant, which is one method of combining dangerous waste with glass to render it stable. The vitrification facility alone costs $12 billion to be established at Hanford to be part of this decommissioning and cleanup operation.

The costs involved with just decommissioning and cleaning up an existing nuclear site, let alone contemplating any accident or any release of radioactive material is hugely expensive, hugely significant. Unfortunately, I think we are all concerned that the timelines for the cleanup of Hanford have been delayed and put off time and time again.

The timelines which were originally established are not being met and it means that the ongoing concerns we have about this facility are not relieved to any great extent. It is still leaking and leaching radioactive waste into the groundwater in the surrounding area. It will take many decades to complete this process and many billions of dollars to actually see this plant decommissioned.

I think it is an example of the huge costs associated with this industry. It drives home for me the importance of ensuring that we have liability and compensation limits that are adequate to the task that may arise from a nuclear accident. It again points out the inadequacy of Bill C-20 before us.

A liability limit of $650 million just does not come anywhere close to dealing with the true cost of what an accident could render here in Canada. We need to follow the example of countries that we respect around the world that have made choices around nuclear energy like Japan and Germany, that have set unlimited liability for nuclear accidents.

We should take a very close look at establishing that kind of liability here in Canada because we know the dangers associated with this industry are so significant and ongoing. They do not just disappear. The question of waste will be with us for many generations and we have to make sure that we solve those problems, that we put the money into understanding those problems and solving them in a permanent kind of way, and not just leave them for a future generation to deal with.

It is irresponsible of us to go down that road without making sure that all of those arrangements and due caution is taken to make sure that we are not leaving a mess for someone else down the road. I think that is exactly what we are doing now.

We have to make sure too that we are not sticking taxpayers yet again with the bill for an accident and that we put the true costs before the industry to make sure it appreciates the true value of safety, health and security for Canadians who live near these installations, near these facilities, and who want to make sure that they do not suffer the consequences of an accident in these cases.

I think it is a very important piece of legislation. It is absolutely clearly a bill that needs to be updated and needs to see a review. However, as it stands, it is wholly inadequate to that task. We need to make sure that a reasonable liability limit is established. The liability limit of $650 million just does not cut it.

I hope the bill will be significantly amended or if not, defeated because it is just not up to the task.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Madam Speaker, ballet slippers for little feet, cardboard pictures of Lenin and dolls in various states of dress and dismemberment provide a glimpse into kindergarten life before it came to a standstill in April 1986, when Chernobyl's reactor 4 exploded.

The fire burned for 10 days, contaminating tens of thousands of square miles, and the fallout was 400 times greater than that of Hiroshima. Thirty people died in the blast, four thousand died of cancer, a third of a million people were driven from their homes and six hundred thousand registered as cleanup workers or liquidators. Of these, 240,000 received the highest radiation doses.

Over the years, the compensation costs, economic losses, health and cleanup expenditures and lost productivity mounted into the hundreds of billions of dollars. Today Chernobyl remains the world's worst nuclear disaster.

Growing up, our high school teachers and our professors taught us to be concerned about nuclear accidents, nuclear waste, nuclear weapons proliferation and pollution from uranium mining. Unfortunately these problems have not gone away. For example, we continue to bury waste, a policy of “out of sight, out of mind”, despite not knowing the full environmental and health consequences.

Bill C-20 is however a positive step to managing and minimizing the risks involved in the use of nuclear material, namely through preparation, response and reparation. Specifically, Bill C-20 establishes the civil liability regime and compensation to address damages resulting from radiation in the event of a radioactive release from a Canadian nuclear installation, or from nuclear materials being transported to or from the installation. Compensable damage includes bodily injury, damage to property, economic and property losses and psychological trauma resulting from such injury or damage.

It is important that the bill address psychological trauma. The Chernobyl accident impacted economic prosperity, personal health and social well-being. Victims reported high levels of anxiety, stress, medically unexplained physical symptoms and reckless behaviour, including alcohol and tobacco abuse and consumption of game from areas heavily contaminated with high levels of radioactive cesium.

Bill C-20 increases operator liability from $75 million to $650 million and would put Canada on par with liability limits in many other countries, as well as responding to the recommendations of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources. The latter is important, as private insurers have consistently and systematically refused to provide coverage for damage resulting from nuclear incidents.

When discussing nuclear accidents, bodily injury may range from radiation sickness through to leukemia and other cancers. Radiation sickness is a serious illness that occurs when the entire body receives a high dose of radiation, usually over a short period of time. Many survivors of Chernobyl, Hiroshima and Nagasaki became ill with radiation sickness, which often began with nausea, diarrhea, skin damage and vomiting and progress to seizures and coma.

Most people who did not recover from radiation illness died within several months of exposure, usually from the destruction of bone marrow, which led to infections and internal bleeding. Unborn babies can also be exposed to radiation and they are especially vulnerable between two and fifteen weeks of pregnancy. The health consequences can be severe, including abnormal brain function, cancer, deformities and stunted growth.

Ionizing radiation can also cause certain types of leukemia. An elevated risk of blood cancer was first found among the survivors of the atomic bombings in Japan two to five years after exposure. Recent investigations suggest a doubling of the incidence of leukemia among the most highly exposed Chernobyl liquidators.

Unfortunately, time does not permit me to describe all potential health impacts such as cardiovascular problems, cataract and thyroid cancer.

Neither Bill C-20 nor its predecessors Bill C-63 and Bill C-5 have been the subject of lengthy public debate outside Parliament or have they attracted much media attention.

Members of the Canadian Nuclear Association have commented that the bill responds to society's needs and represents a balanced approach. The association further reports that the bill provides protection of the public under a coherent, explicit and stable framework.

Before putting forth questions that might be asked at committee, it is important to remind the House that while the government puts forth the bill, it is also responding to the leak at the Chalk River nuclear reactor, which provides a third of the world's medical isotopes.

The general manager of the Association of Imaging Producers and Equipment Suppliers points out that there have been at least five crises of medical isotope production in the last eighteen months. What makes the present crisis so challenging, however, is that three out of the four other reactors in the world that supply medical isotopes, in Belgium, France and South Africa, are also shut down.

While I support the bill in principle, it requires study at committee and careful questioning. For example, what are the projected economic, environmental and health costs of a nuclear release in Canada and possible impacts farther afield? Does the proposed compensation address those impacts?

We must remember that the Chernobyl fallout had far-reaching effects, spreading radionuclides as far away as Lapland in northern Scandinavia. The Arctic's Sami people are reindeer herders and face significant problems from the accident because of the high transfer rate of radioactive material from contaminated lichen to the reindeer. Many herds had to be slaughtered to avoid consumption of the meat. Scientists estimate that it will take another 20 years for radioactive levels in reindeer to fall to pre-Chernobyl levels.

The executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada reported:

A nuclear accident on the scale of the Chernobyl disaster would cost hundreds of billions of dollars in cleanup costs—conceivably 100 times more than the maximum liability industry would face under Bill C-63.

Belarus and the Ukraine are paying approximately $460 billion over 30 years to clean up Chernobyl. Twenty years after the accident, these countries still pay 5% to 7% of their budgets toward the cost of the catastrophe.

The bill is only a small part of a web of protection needed to make Canada more nuclear safe as well as providing life-saving medications to those in need.

We have had multiple wake-up calls. In August 1945, an American war plane dropped a nuclear bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. An estimated 80,000 people were incinerated and in the months that followed, another 60,000 died from the effects of radiation.

A few days later was Nagasaki. About 30% of the city, including almost all of the industrial district, was destroyed by the bomb and nearly 74,000 were killed and a similar number injured.

In 1979 radioactive steam leaked into the atmosphere in Pennsylvania when a water pump broke down at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. There were fears that some of the plant's 500 workers had been contaminated.

Complacency cannot be an option when it comes to nuclear safety. Today we know the tremendous costs and we must take action.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

The Conservative member says it is up to us. I think the member should understand that it is a two-way street. The government members have a big role to play in the reason that the House gets off the rails so often.

Though I had not been elected at the last Parliament, I remember when the Conservatives were torching their own committees.The whole place was shut down and things were not getting done. They say one cannot teach an old dog new tricks. I think we seeing some evidence that one can, because we do have a couple of committees in the House now that are working very well. We see some possibly positive signs of some future improvements and cooperation.

That said, the NDP is on record as opposing Bill C-20, the Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act. We do so for a number of reasons. In particular, this bill covers liability of only $650 million. That may seem like a lot because the current legislation allows for only $75 million. It is hard to believe that here we are in 2009 with limits on liability for nuclear reactors of only $75 million. That is extremely small.

Clearly, this law has to be updated. It is time to get it updated. The government has decided to raise the bar to $650 million.

We say that $650 million is far too low. If we look at our largest trading partner, the United States, they have a $10 billion limit. We know that when nuclear reactors are built, whether they are in Canada or the United States, they are likely going to be built in populated areas, near cities. So I cannot, for the life of me, see why we should somehow have only a $650 million liability limit in Canada and a $10 billion liability limit in the United States when the reactors are in proximity to the same sorts of risk and exposure.

That is one area I see as a problem. Certainly, if there is damage with a reactor in Canada, there is likely to be as much damage out of a reactor that melts down in the United States. There is a consistency there between the companies.

U.S. nuclear companies want to buy Canadian nuclear facilities. They require this change, so the U.S. companies want this legislation before they buy in. Today in the paper we have an article regarding the sale of our nuclear facilities to a private interest. That gets back to the budget, when the government announced that it was going to raise $6 billion selling government assets. There is no worse time to be selling government assets than when we are in a recession.

What is the government doing? We were trying to determine what sort of assets it would be selling off. Clearly, this is one area where it is looking at selling off assets. It seems to me that to the extent that we have to be involved in nuclear, and I do not really like to see us too heavily involved in nuclear, certainly not building any more new plants, but dealing with the plants we have, we should be at least keeping the ownership of the facilities within the purview of the government.

At the end of the day, if we are going to privatize nuclear facilities and require liability limits from these same facilities where there were 81 nuclear accidents in the last 50 years, we know that the risks involved are sufficient that we would not find insurance companies wanting to cover it, and if we do, it is going to be at very excessive rates. What will happen after a loss is that the taxpayers end up picking up the shortfall anyway. So why would we allow private entrepreneurs to own nuclear facilities, and after they construct their facility, they come to us after a couple of years and say they were not able to obtain high enough levels of liability insurance? What are we going to do at that point? Are we going to dismantle the plant? No, the government is going to backstop. The bottom line is that we know, at the end of the day, when the insurance policies run out, the government is going to backstop the whole process anyway.

We are dealing with an industry that has a very spotty safety record. I have a list of 81 nuclear accidents since 1950. Certainly within my lifetime, on December 12, 1952, Chalk River, which is seemingly always in the news, had a reactor core damaged. Approximately 30 kilograms of uranium was released through the reactor stack. There was a huge problem involving that incident in 1952.

On May 24, 1958, once again at Chalk River, just a few years later, over 600 people were employed in the cleanup of the spill at that time.

When we juxtapose 81 nuclear accidents with, say, a more friendly source of energy such as hydroelectricity, I am not aware in Manitoba or in terms of Hydro-Québec, or any hydro producer in North America, of these utilities having any incidents at all. If we do have a hydro failure, the worst that happens is that we have a blackout, which we had a couple of years ago. We had rolling blackouts through the United States and parts of Canada, but we do not see huge contamination. We do not see people being poisoned, cancer rates going up, or the cleanup problems we have with nuclear.

Also a big area of concern is the storage. We have a big issue in Manitoba with the Pinawa area and the desire to store the waste in a mine shaft. All the studies that have been done and the opposition to the idea have eaten up a lot of time and money to try to determine how stable the rock is in the mine to enable storage of the nuclear material.

We have examples, as I mentioned yesterday, of certainly the Russians, but probably the Americans too, dumping nuclear waste into the ocean. Who is to know where that material is and whether those barrels are leaking? It seems to me that eventually it is going to happen and we have just contaminated our environment for the last 50 years using this approach. Why do we keep doing the same things when we know they do not work?

I mentioned yesterday the asbestos situation. There was a time when we did not know the effects of asbestos and we spent billions of dollars installing it in government buildings and other buildings. Then at a certain point we found out the medical evidence was that it is not safe. Now we are spending billions having it removed from government buildings.

There is the whole issue with trans fats and DDT. We have had long experience with nuclear power and we see the government trying to kickstart the process, privatize the nuclear industry, basically selling it to the Americans at cut-rate prices, and trying to facilitate more development, particularly in places like India.

There is an article in the paper today talking about how contracts are contemplated with India and all the provisos we have to make sure that country does not use it to build nuclear bombs. That is nice. How well did that work in the past? We started out with only two nuclear powers, and there are so many right now that I do not even know what the final count is. Dozens of countries are in the process of trying to obtain a nuclear bomb, and one way they are doing that is starting out with nuclear power plants.

This could be an overpowering issue, a supported issue, if we did not have alternatives available. We have hydro power. There is Hydro-Québec in Quebec and Manitoba Hydro in Manitoba. Manitoba has developed 5,000 megawatts of power and there is another 5,000 megawatts that can be developed.

What we should be doing is building an east-west power grid. I know members of the Conservative government are supportive of that. The member for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia and Minister of State (Democratic Reform) is a strong supporter of the idea of building an east-west power grid. What happened? The federal government wrote a cheque for $500 million or so to the Ontario government a year and a half ago, and nothing has been done as far as an east-west power grid is concerned. I think the money is being used to develop nuclear plants.

If we could build a power grid to Manitoba and beyond, we could develop our final power plants and provide the power to Ontario so that it could get rid of the coal plants it is using now. It would stop the need for developing more nuclear power.

How long is it going to take Ontario, Saskatchewan or Alberta, all interested in nuclear power plants, to develop them? They are never going to get done. I do not know of any politician who would go out door-knocking and campaigning in favour of nuclear power. I may be wrong, but certainly none in Manitoba will. This industry is still very tarnished and I cannot see members of any party campaigning on nuclear energy.

A member from Saskatchewan stood yesterday and talked about that very issue. I suggested to him that if Brad Wall and his Conservative government in Saskatchewan think they are going to be re-elected in two or three years after campaigning that nuclear power plants are going to be built, I say good luck to them. It does not matter who the NDP nominates at next week's leadership convention; he or she is going to be the next premier of Saskatchewan if the Conservatives run on that issue.

We have dealt with the hydro situation. Let us deal with wind power. Wind power was not a going concern. Even though Holland had windmills for hundreds of years, wind power has not been a going concern over the years. If people go to Pincher Creek, Alberta, as I have, they will see wind farms that were built in 1990-91, sort of at the beginning of the wind farm development in Canada. It is amazing. It is almost like a museum of wind farm development. We see small turbines from those days and compare them to the huge turbines we see now, and the cost of production of those wind turbines has dropped substantially.

Wind power is clearly the way to go. Gull Lake in Saskatchewan has 99 megawatts of wind power. We have the St. Leon wind farm in Manitoba and a new one is coming up that will be the largest in Canada. This country's potential for wind development has no end. We only need to look at what Germany has done in turning the whole equation around, away from the focus on nuclear and oil, and over to wind development and solar panel development.

A program on CBC or CTV the other day described how Canada lost a cutting edge solar panel developer who took his plant and built it in Germany. He is thriving there all because the government did not have the foresight to look ahead, plan ahead and try to get him to locate that plant here.

This country needs to start catching up in the process. It is falling behind. We need to look at countries like Germany that are leading the way. A German politician has made a career of trying to turn around this slavish loyalty toward the old ways of doing things. We need to get moving forward. I know we have allies in the Liberal Party and in the Bloc in this area. We just need to pull the Neanderthal Conservatives along and we can get things done.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate having the opportunity to finish my remarks today, having started yesterday.

Bill C-20 has been before the House previously under a different number. With the perpetual election process we have around here, it appears that every two years we go into an election. As with a lot of the bills we are speaking to these days, it seems we get these bills through to the committee stage and then an election gets called and we have to start the whole process over. I am hoping that this Parliament survives long enough to finally clear off all these bills that have been in the hopper for two, four and six years, so that we can start with a fresh, new group.

The House resumed from May 27 consideration of the motion that Bill C-20, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today and join my NDP colleagues in speaking against Bill C-20, the nuclear liability and compensation act. In fact, we are the only party in this House that refuses to give the government a blank cheque on this inadequate reform to the limits of nuclear liability.

Simply put, I oppose this bill because it does not keep pace with the rest of the world's measures to provide safe use of nuclear energy. Nonetheless, there is no doubt about the need for modernizing the act. The liability limits were initially set in the early 1970s by the Liberals, but the limits were inadequate even then and certainly by today's standards are even worse.

To its credit, this bill does propose to increase the maximum liability for operators of nuclear installations for damage resulting from a nuclear accident from $75 million to $650 million per nuclear installation, but this limit remains shamefully low when we consider the consequences of a nuclear accident.

This bill seems designed to protect corporations rather than citizens. The total liability is way too low and will not be able to cover a medium-sized accident, never mind a catastrophic one. It has been estimated that a nuclear accident would cause billions of dollars in damage in personal injuries, death and contamination of the surrounding areas. According to the director of environmental governance for the Pembina Institute, a major accident at the Darlington, Ontario nuclear plant east of Toronto, and very near to my own riding of Hamilton Mountain, could cause damages in the range of an estimated $1 trillion.

Six hundred and fifty million dollars does not even come close to being adequate and taxpayers will be on the hook for the difference. Does the government and its friends in the Liberal Party and the Bloc Québécois really believe that $650 million would be sufficient to clean up and rebuild after such a disaster? Apparently so.

The U.S., on the other hand, has a cap of $10 billion. Germany, which has experienced the fallout of the Chernobyl meltdown, has an unlimited amount. Many other countries are also moving in that direction toward an unlimited amount of liability. Does the government really believe that Canadian lives, properties and communities are worth less than those of our U.S. and European counterparts? Again, judging by this legislation, one would think so.

Even relatively minor nuclear accidents can have huge costs. In the 1960s, a minor issue in a reactor in Michigan cost an estimated $132 million and that was over 40 years ago, but the government, propped up again by its partners in the Liberal Party and the Bloc Québécois, believes this bill goes far enough.

One of my big concerns is that this bill really is not about protecting Canadians but is all about the Conservative government laying the groundwork to sell Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. Privatization should never be acceptable and particularly not during tough economic times when the value is at its lowest and the Conservatives are contemplating a fire sale.

Perhaps more than anything else, this bill and the debate around it highlight the outrageous costs and potentially devastating risks of nuclear energy, particularly when we compare it to greener, more sustainable alternatives.

For example, the Three Mile Island incident outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1979, which my colleagues have already talked about, was a relatively minor nuclear accident, but it cost an estimated $975 million for the cleanup and investigation. To put the absolute enormity of these costs into context, for the cost of cleaning up Three Mile Island, 1,147,058 100-watt solar panels could have been bought and assembled.

The total subsidies for Canada's state-owned nuclear company, AECL, from 1952 to 2000, were approximately $16 billion. This is money that could be spent investigating safer methods of energy. But the enormous costs do not just apply when things go bad. The planned construction costs for the third Fermi plant in Michigan will cost an estimated $10 billion U.S. and take approximately six years to complete. The price of wind power, on the other hand, is dropping fast and can even be had for as low as 16¢ per kilowatt hour right now. Imagine the cost savings to taxpayers and the lower electricity bills for seniors and hard-working families if we could shift to cheaper, safer and more sustainable power. On top of the financial expenses, nuclear energy in general is extremely unsafe, both to the environment and to human life.

There can be no doubt that Canada needs a greener approach in terms of power. Statistics show that Canada ranked 11th in 2008 in a poll measuring wind power capacity. If Canada expects to be seen as a leader in the world, we need to compete in the field of clean renewable energy.

This pressing need is why we in the NDP launched a task force on the economic recovery which I have been proud to co-chair with my colleague, the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley, who has done incredible work on environmental issues over the years.

As we confront the current economic crisis, we must be looking toward the future. We must ensure that the economy of the 21st century is green, sustainable and affordable for ordinary Canadians.

In my hometown of Hamilton, community organizations, environmentalists and ordinary citizens are coming together to imagine and realize that kind of green future. Green Venture, for example, has been doing home energy evaluation since 1997.

Environment Hamilton recently received a Trillium Foundation grant in support of its work on a green economic recovery for Hamilton. Environment Hamilton understands that fighting climate change and creating green jobs go hand in hand. I want to congratulate Lynda Lukasik, who is the executive director of Environment Hamilton, her staff and the board at Environment Hamilton for securing this important multi-year grant for advancing the future of our city.

Environment Hamilton has also launched an innovative project aimed at helping Hamilton area faith groups to conserve energy both at home and in their places of worship.

I recognize that nuclear energy provides jobs for a large number of Canadians and has been a part of our economy since 1949. The industry cannot and will not disappear overnight, but the real issue is that Bill C-20 just does not do enough to bring safety to a naturally unsafe and volatile substance. The compensation process would remain cumbersome and force victims of nuclear accidents to go through the courts. We know how costly and inaccessible the courts are as a remedy for this kind of situation.

Furthermore, the bill does not cover any accidents outside of the plant setting. Oil and mining companies and medical facilities use radioactive materials that can be dangerous, but they are not liable for any accidents related to their use or disposal.

It is as clear as it is unfortunate that only the NDP is serious about protecting the interests of ordinary Canadians while the other parties take a rather cavalier attitude to nuclear safety.

I can only hope that this debate will give the government, members of the Liberal Party and the Bloc Québécois pause. We need to protect families and communities from the devastating potential of nuclear disasters and this bill simply does not do that.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague for Hamilton Mountain.

I rise with deep regret to speak to Bill C-20, the nuclear liability and compensation act, because I believe all members of good conscience should oppose this bill. It leaves Canadians and our communities woefully under-compensated in the event of a nuclear accident.

Communities, like Kincardine near the Bruce nuclear facility; Whitby, Oshawa and Toronto adjacent to Darlington; Bécancour near Gentilly in Quebec; and Point Lepreau in New Brunswick, are all in jeopardy if a major accident were to occur. We know that a major accident at the Darlington nuclear plant would cause damages in the range of $1 trillion. Clearly, $650 million or even $10 billion are insufficient in terms of liability coverage.

Interestingly enough, there are no nuclear facilities in British Columbia. Madam Speaker, I am sure you are well aware of that and perhaps a little bit grateful. This could be because of the mess at Hanford in Washington state. It has cost taxpayers billions because of the expensive remediation that has been going on there for years with no end in sight. Today, Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States and the focus of the largest environmental cleanup in U.S. history. It is hugely expensive. It is certainly more than $650 million. It is in the range of several billion dollars or perhaps a trillion dollars.

Hence, we have the $10 billion liability demanded in the United States, which is far less than the unlimited liability required in Japan and China, because, quite simply, the cost to a community and the people who live there is without limit in the case of a nuclear accident.

As we all know, this bill is being reintroduced by the government despite its many deficiencies. In the last Parliament, New Democrats were the only opponents to this bill, and with good reason. No private insurer will cover an individual for compensation from damage caused by a nuclear accident.

While Bill C-20 updates legislation from the 1970s, as has been pointed out, it only increases compensation levels to the absolute minimum international standard. The existing compensation limit of $75 million and the new limit of $650 million is simply not acceptable. What on earth is the government doing? Why is it so prepared to ignore the reality of this situation?

American nuclear companies are interested in purchasing significant sections of Canada's nuclear industry. Under the current legislation, they would be subjected to American rules because Canadian laws do not even meet the international base line. Under American law, the parent company of the subsidiary can be sued for compensation due to the actions of its foreign subsidiary if the law governing that subsidiary is below international standards.

These American corporations are reluctant to invest in the Canadian industry, that is until Bill C-20 is passed. Sadly, the government does not seem to understand the irresponsible nature of this legislation. However, the nuclear industry has the attention of the Canadian public and this issue has strong political resonance with all Canadians. They are, quite simply, concerned about nuclear safety.

The NDP is the only party that is taking the health of Canadians seriously, so seriously that we have been asking the difficult questions, such as why is the liability limit $10 billion in the United States and only the proposed $650 million in Canada? There is no reason for that. It is not rational. The American limit is a whopping 1,540% higher than the limit that is proposed by this bill.

I have another question. Is the imminent sale of AECL to an American company making the government eager to make Canadian nuclear legislation more American-friendly?

Those are important questions but so far we have heard no acceptable answers.

It is more than clear that only New Democrats are serious about protecting the interests of ordinary Canadians while the government takes a cavalier attitude toward nuclear safety.

The Conservatives certainly seem to be laying the groundwork to sell AECL during tough economic times when the value is so very low. We, as Canadians, need to be profoundly concerned about the possibility of the privatization of nuclear facilities. These facilities must be properly managed, and there is no question about that, and that is in the public interest. I, for one, would feel far more comfortable if they remained in public hands. I do not see much evidence that the government has the public interest at the centre of its many questionable policies.

Quite simply, the Conservatives are failing to protect Canadians in the event of a nuclear spill. This level of compensation, the $650 million, would mean only a handful of dollars for the loss of a home, a business or the loss of a life. It is far below that which is required by the international community. For Canadians, and particularly those who live near nuclear power plants or other nuclear installations, this is unacceptable. Their government has sold them out to vested interests.

New Democrats will not be supporting this limited level of liability, nor will we be supporting the bill. It does not even begin to touch on the real cost of a nuclear accident, and that is a betrayal. It is a betrayal of Canadians and of our communities. It is simply not the kind of behaviour that I believe many Canadians expect of our government and should demand of their government.

This is nothing less than a corporate subsidy to the nuclear industry to make it possible for it to move in, take over and privatize the industry that Canadians built. We on this side of the House simply will not bow to that kind of corporate subsidy. We will not allow the government to get away with that without a great deal of discussion and raising our voices on this side of the House.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Madam Speaker, as I was saying, the United States has a compensation limit of $10 billion. If we look at other countries that have had quite a few nuclear accidents, whether it be Germany or Japan, we will notice that they do not have an upper limit at all, that if there is an accident, the company must pay all the costs of cleaning it up.

This bill used to be called Bill C-63, then it was called Bill C-5 in the last Parliament, and now it is Bill C-20 and the number remains the same. New Democrats said back then that we do not support $650 million as the existing compensation limit because it is way too low. We said it then. We say it now. Why are we seeing this number again?

I believe one of the reasons we are seeing this bill reintroduced today is because American nuclear companies are really interested in purchasing significant sections of Canada's nuclear industry.

Under the current legislation, they would subjected to the American rules as Canadian law does not meet the international baseline. We know the international minimum, according to the two international agreements, the Paris and Vienna conventions, requires a bare minimum of $600 million. Because of that, under American law, the parent company of a subsidiary can be sued for compensation due to the actions of, say, a Canadian subsidiary of an American company if the law governing that subsidiary is below the international standards, as it is now. If this bill were passed, then the American corporations could pick up any number of nuclear companies.

What concerns me most is what is happening at Chalk River. We have a reactor shutdown. We have at least 30,000 patients per week who need the precious medical isotopes the reactor produces and we know that these isotopes will run out in a week. We also know that the reactor has had a heavy water spill and we also know that it will be shut down at least until mid-June, and maybe even longer.

Now, people who have cancer or who need heart scans cannot get the scans done. People who have thyroid cancer, as I have had, after the thyroid has been removed, need to ingest a medical iodine isotope, pill I-131, which I remember taking. It would then destroy the cancer cells in the thyroid area as the thyroid attracts these nuclear iodines made by the isotopes. If people do not get it treated, if they do not take that iodine pill, which is called a seed, then the thyroid cancer cells could spread.

I am glad that when I was diagnosed with that cancer, I was able to have it removed and then, at that time, able to have access to this iodine I-131 pill. I cannot imagine what will happen to these thyroid cancer patients who need this treatment, and then to have them hear that we are going to be running out of these isotopes in a week. What is going to happen to them?

Instead of focusing on a plan B, instead of looking at whether to build a new reactor that is supposed to be on line, we are discussing this bill that certainly does not really make sense because the liability of $10 billion is 1,540% higher than the limit proposed by this bill.

Is it because our reactor is that much safer than what the Americans have? Is it because Canadian taxpayers have far more money, that if there were a big accident, certainly the Canadian government could do the cleanup? I just heard that we have at least a $50 billion deficit. Where are we going to find the money to do the cleanup if the company is not liable?

Is the imminent sale of AECL to an American company that has the government so eager to make the Canadian nuclear legislation more American-friendly? That perhaps is one of the reasons. We are quite concerned because right now in tough economic times, the value is the lowest, which means that AECL can easily be picked up if there are interested buyers once this bill has passed.

We believe that this is bad legislation. We do not think that it can be amended, especially the dollar amount of $650 million, through the committee. I have already heard that such an amendment would be ruled out of order when it is referred to committee, which means that we are stuck with this dollar amount of $650 million. In the speeches I have heard today, whether from the Liberals or the Bloc, there is concern that $650 million is too low. This bill cannot be passed at second reading because it is just not good enough.

If we think of forecasting costs of possible accidents, a major accident at the Ontario Darlington nuclear plant, God forbid, east of Toronto, which is not far from where I am, could cause damages estimated in the range of $1 trillion, not $1 billion but $1 trillion. No wonder the Japanese and the Germans do not have an upper limit.

There are statistics of the costs of past accidents. On October 5, 1966, the Enrico Power Plant, Unit 1, outside Detroit, Michigan, not far from our border, suffered a minor issue in its reactor. The public and the environment did not experience any tragedy. The minor repairs of the entire accident, which were not entirely fixed until 1970, were $132 million in 1970 dollars. This amount would be covered, but that was a 1970s figure and it was for minor damage.

If we look at Three Mile Island, which I think everyone is familiar with, in 1979 in Harrisburg, again there was a minor nuclear incident. It caused one to two cases of cancer per year and the cleanup and investigation of the incident cost an estimated $975 million U.S. That is over the Canadian limit already and again we are talking about seventies and eighties dollars.

It is troubling that we have such a low limit of $650 million. We know that nuclear energy is extremely unsafe if it is exposed. I remember when I had to take a radioactive iodine pill, I was in a secure room. No one could come anywhere near me for at least three days. The food was put in through a secure passageway. It was extremely radioactive. No one would want to sit beside me when I was taking that pill.

If we look at the world's foremost expert on nuclear liability, Norbert Pelzer, he is saying that the upper limit should be unlimited and that even the $10 billion in the United States is insufficient to cover a huge nuclear incident. Our amount is not even enough for a minor issue, never mind a major problem.

The other part of the bill that is problematic is the compensation process is cumbersome. It should be like an insurance claim. Instead, right now victims of nuclear accidents have to go through court. Going through the legal system is extremely costly and not everyone has access to it.

The other problem is the bill does not cover any accidents outside the plant setting. For example, if oil and mining companies use radioactive materials and a mistake is made, such as a spill or something takes place, this insurance would not cover that at all and the victims would be left high and dry.

When we calculate the cost of cleaning up Three Mile Island, if that dollar amount did not come from the nuclear industry itself but directly from taxpayers, we could have built 1.15 million hundred watt solar panels. We should think of the possibility of the green jobs we would be missing if the taxpayers have to pick up the tab if there are any accidents. We certainly need to have more green jobs.

Canada ranked 11th in last year's poll, measuring wind power and in the last budget, the government cut off the grants for wind energy, which will make it even worse. The bill is really not helpful.

I want to point out various accidents. For example, East Germany had an accident in 1975. On May 4, 1986, again in Germany, there was fuel damage. What happened was attempts by an operator to dislodge a fuel pebble damaged its cladding, releasing radiation, detectable up to two kilometres from the reactor.

In June 1999 Japan had a control rod malfunction. The operators, attempting to insert one control rod during an inspection, neglected the procedure and instead withdrew three, causing a 15 minute uncontrolled sustained reaction at the number one reactor of the Shika Nuclear Power Plant. The electric company that owned the reactor did not report this incident and falsified records, covering it up until March, 2007.

Also in September 1999, a few months later in Japan, workers did something wrong, which exceeded the critical mass, and, as a result, three workers were exposed to radiation doses in excess of allowable limits. Two of these workers died and 116 other workers received lesser doses, but still have a great many problems. In March 2006 Tennessee had a big problem.

These countries that have had problems have set either no upper limit or a limit in the billions. In Canada setting the limit at $650 million is really not at all useful. That is why the New Democrats will not support the bill.

We would hope the government would take it back, consider the upper limit, either make it similar to the U.S. or, even better, do not set an upper limit. That would be a new nuclear liability and compensation act, which is overdue, and it would certainly get the support of New Democrats.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am speaking against Bill C-20, the nuclear liability and compensation bill.

We do need a new nuclear liability and compensation act, and we have needed it for at least 20 years. As a liability limit, $650 million is nowhere near enough. The Auditor General has said that we need a new act as have various organizations. However, to set the limit at $650 million is nowhere near enough.

The United States has a compensation--

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am really interested in this debate as I know are most of my constituents in Hamilton Mountain.

It seems to me that what this issue is about is protecting Canadians in the case of a nuclear accident and tragedy. I wonder if the member could speak a bit about where the number $650 million of liability comes from. Why does he believe that number is adequate? I think all of the evidence from the experts speaks to the contrary.

We know, for example, that when the Pembina Institute did a study on what the cost would be of a potential major accident at the Darlington nuclear plant, which is not all that far away from my riding of Hamilton Mountain, it estimated the cost to be $1 trillion. Bill C-20 does not even provide for liability of $1 billion. We are talking about $650 million. The reality is, as the member will know, that taxpayers will be on the hook for the difference, and that difference is far from insignificant.

We are talking in the House about the deplorable state of the deficit now, which is 50% higher today than it was estimated to be just four months ago, but those numbers pale in comparison when we are talking about a potential $1 trillion liability as a result of just one nuclear accident.

I wonder if the member could just explain to the House why he believes that $650 million is adequate.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-20, because the Bloc Québécois believes that this legislation is absolutely necessary. The previous maximum compensation of $75 million in the event of an incident had been established quite some time ago, in 1976, and needed to be increased.

But before I go any further, I would like to respond to the member for Halifax West, who said earlier that he did not understand my question, because he thought I did not know who had jurisdiction over nuclear power plant construction. That was not my question. What I was asking was whether the Liberal Party wanted to develop the nuclear industry. When you invest $800 million in nuclear research and development, you are promoting it. The federal government is not saying it is going to build nuclear facilities, but it is promoting them.

Once again, the Liberals have no clear policy, and the member could not give a clear answer to my question, which is why he changed the subject. It is always the same thing with the Liberals at present: they do not know where they are going.

I will come back to the initial topic. Bill C-20 seeks to establish a liability regime applicable in the event of a nuclear incident. The bill clearly says “in the event of a nuclear incident”. It makes operators of nuclear installations absolutely and exclusively liable for damages up to a maximum of $650 million. It is hard to imagine that the company that owns a nuclear facility will be solely liable. In fact, even a minor nuclear incident will cost more than $650 million. Damages will easily run to billions of dollars. Who will pay for that? The provinces and the federal government.

Bill C-20 is a reincarnation of Bill C-5. We had studied that bill in committee and had had the opportunity to ask insurance companies whether they were ready for such legislation. Naturally, insurance companies are generally rather cautious, and they were not necessarily willing to pay much more than $650 million. They might have gone as far as $1 billion if we had forced them, but I had and still have the feeling that they cannot go any farther.

So we cannot compare the Canadian system to the American system as some people do, since we do not have many plants. American plants pool their money. It is not a $10 billion pool, but it varies from $9 billion to $11 billion. This pool also varies based on those giving guarantees. We agree that this would certainly be much closer to what a nuclear accident would cost.

The Bloc Québécois believes that this would still be an improvement over the previous legislation that provided for only $75 million in compensation, even though it is proving to be difficult to obtain insurance above the amount set out in Bill C-20. However, we realize that governments will be required to pay out the rest of the amount.

We are very concerned about a nuclear accident. There are several incidents each year at every nuclear plant. We call them incidents because they are contained. One of the most dangerous activities is changing the bundles of uranium-235 and uranium-239. They are changed by robots when all of their energy has been used up. When they are moved, there can be radiation in the room, and also outside the room where the reactors are located.

There is always some danger. We are well aware of that.

Last year, between November 5 and November 9, such an incident took place at Gentilly-2 in Quebec. I am not mentioning this just because it is Gentilly, since these kinds of accidents happen all over the place, for example in Burlington.

We are well aware that there can be problems with aging plants. The CANDU system is not internationally recognized as a safe system. It was possible to sell it abroad, but that was more under the Liberals, because it was practically a gift. The reactors were delivered and no payments were ever requested. So it was not because of the quality of the CANDU.

Earlier, the hon. member for Halifax West said that the government was not taking responsibility regarding the production of isotopes. That is true, and he is correct in saying so. Last year, we were forced to pass special legislation to get the plant running again, without any assurance that it would last. It was 55 years old last year, and this year it is 56. It is clear that this plant is past its prime.

However, the MAPLE, which was developed with taxpayer money over 15 years, is still not functional. We have even stopped hearing that this project would be completed. One of the reasons was that the engineers who might have done so have left, because the work was not moving along quickly enough and they could not see an end to the project. All of the top minds left the country under the Liberals and moved elsewhere. Our nuclear scientists and engineers are no longer here. That is one reason why the MAPLE was stalled, and why the government decided to scrap it after spending billions of dollars on its development.

Quebeckers have a hard time with this, since they contribute by paying taxes. Only 6% of all of Canada's nuclear energy is produced in Quebec, while Quebeckers pay 23% of all nuclear research and nuclear-plant promotion. Furthermore, this energy is not necessary. It can make people rich, but it is not necessary. We prefer green energies. In Quebec, we focus particularly on hydroelectricity.

All of Canada could also develop power plants run by deep geothermal energy, a sector that is completely ignored in this country, even though 24 countries have developed it. By drilling two to five kilometres underground, we can extract heat to generate decentralized electricity. This would be much better than a Canadian network that Quebec would not go along with, since it interferes with our jurisdictions. We will never accept it.

So, we are in favour of Bill C-20 in principle. As I said earlier, it is certainly not enough, but it must be said that nuclear power costs the government a lot of money. Even if the companies pay for the insurance, the government still establishes systems so that, for example, field hospitals can be set up quickly. The RCMP spends a lot of money to make checks and prevent terrorist attacks from taking place at nuclear plants. Security of nuclear plants costs the government money, and this money comes from taxpayers. So this is not a necessary energy source, nor is it a green one, that we could support.

Furthermore, the issue of nuclear waste has never been settled. This is a matter of great importance. To date, nuclear plants in Canada have produced over 2 million irradiated fuel bundles and they do not know what to do with them. That number will double if our existing reactors operate until the end of their predicted life spans.

So we are talking about 4 million bundles that need to be put somewhere. At the moment, consultations are under way all across Canada to find out where to put these things for the next 1,000 years. There has been research to see if this uranium might not be used to produce a depleted but still usable uranium. They came to realize, after fortunes were spent on it in France and after the Americans bought the rights to carry out this research, which incidentally they too gave up on about a year or a year and half ago, that there is no future to reusing uranium in this way.

So a place has to be found to put the bundles. They can be reused—this is possible—to make nuclear weapons. We know just how dangerous that is.

As long as nowhere is found for storage, stable storage if possible, of these bundles, we will not be able to develop nuclear energy and we will not be able to keep on thinking that it is a green energy and not a hazard to human health. It is a hazard to health because nuclear waste is a hazardous substance. What is more, the mining of uranium is dangerous as well.

I have consulted experts, and pure uranium could be used in nuclear facilities. I know that the present government wants to promote its use for extracting the oil from oil sands. Heat is needed to produce electricity and to extract as much oil as possible from oil sands. Then those nuclear plants will have to have a location for secure storage of their waste.

It is not just a matter of individuals deciding to accept or not to accept nuclear waste being stored in some location, but there is a whole context, a whole province, a whole part of a country, that has to agree to it. When this hazardous waste is being transported by truck or train, accidents or thefts can occur, as well as terrorism or sabotage, and they can occur just about anywhere. So it is not the responsibility of a small community, but the responsibility of a very large area.

In terms of such incidents, Bill C-20 does include some sensible provisions. We all hope that nothing will ever happen, but Bill C-20 is the very least the government can do. However, we are concerned that increasing insurance will cause a change of course resulting in the promotion of nuclear energy and CANDU reactors, which are not very safe as far as thermal and nuclear plants go, not to mention completely unnecessary.

As I said earlier, we can produce electricity using green energy. I went on at length about geothermal energy because, according to a study done in the United States, it can meet the needs of the entire United States and render coal-fired and nuclear plants obsolete. By 2050, geothermal energy alone can meet Americans' energy needs. There will be nine billion people on the planet in 2050.

We will need a lot of energy. Nuclear energy will not be able to supply that demand, and the prospect of plants melting down will always be a sword of Damocles hanging over our heads. Bill C-20 would never have been drafted if nuclear power were not dangerous. We are stuck in a vicious circle. We have this bill because nuclear energy is dangerous, but if we were not doing dangerous things, we would not need bills like Bill C-20 to protect people in case of an incident. Once again, I agree that $650 million is not going to protect us.

Suppose an incident were to occur at Chalk River. The fallout would go beyond Chalk River to Ottawa and Quebec. So $650 million would not be nearly enough to compensate people, rebuild houses, and clean up and decontaminate areas. It would certainly cost much more than that.

So the government must think instead of investing more, and that is what we are calling on the government to do. We want the government to put money towards developing green energies, instead of investing in research limited almost exclusively to nuclear plants and the sequestration of the CO₂ gases produced by the oil sands. As I mentioned earlier, there is geothermal energy, but also solar energy. We know that great strides have been made in terms of generating electricity with solar energy. Spain has some examples of it working very well. We know that wind energy is already going well. So the government could spend more money and do more to develop the hydroelectricity we are capable of generating.

There is also biomass energy. Right now, we do not know what to do with our forestry workers. Biomass energy was used especially for heating, but it can also be used to generate electricity. Digesters can also be used on farms. Instead of letting animal excrement create methane and make greenhouse gases even worse, we could use digesters. The government should help farmers create electricity with these systems. They are on the market. It is just a matter of cost-effectiveness.

If we looked at the overall cost of nuclear energy per kilowatt-hour, we obviously would not even think about developing it. If we look at just the cost of production and not how much it will cost to dismantle the plants that will still be there even when they are not in use, even 40 years after they have stopped producing. Those areas will be radioactive. We will have a hard time closing those plants.

In any case, the cost of insurance will be included in the price per kilowatt-hour. That is what I wanted to mention as well. Even if we had requested much higher insurance, ultimately, the customer would always be the one to pay, because the price per kilowatt-hour would increase.

So I agree with a bill like Bill C-20. It is a minimum, but at least we are in favour of that minimum. However, we need to invest in green energies, and we need to do it now. The price per kilowatt-hour will be much lower and the risk of danger greatly reduced since it will be much easier to provide security. A wind turbine or a geothermal power plant is not at risk of being blown up. No terrorists are interested in doing that. But someone could be interested in blowing up a nuclear power plant if there was ever a conflict somewhere.

So, a green energy that is not dangerous is not the same thing as a green energy that is dangerous. Bill C-20 has to do with the health of the people and how to respond to a potential accident. That is the minimum.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-20 is about limiting liability in the case of a nuclear accident. It is something that needs modernization, but I have a curiosity about one of the points the member raised. The Liberal Party has concerns about whether this is the right amount of liability to apply to the nuclear industry. For Canadians to follow this, a cap is placed on the amount of compensation that can be paid out to individuals or communities in the event of an accident.

He has expressed concerns about whether the limit of $650 million is the right limit. We have seen a number of nuclear accidents happen over the years. I am not talking about Chernobyl, but relatively small ones have gone through $1 billion or more in compensation with a start. The Americans have a $10 billion pool. The Japanese and Europeans have unlimited liability in their nuclear facilities in terms of compensation. Canada is putting in $650 million in liability.

If the member is concerned about the level of liability that is placed in the bill, is he aware, from all of the advice that we have received, that it cannot be amended at the committee stage? If the Liberal Party votes for the bill at second reading and puts it to committee, it is also endorses and votes for the liability level set out in the bill. He must be comfortable with that liability level. This is something I hope my colleague will be clear about with us today.

If he is comfortable with that, then great. That is his choice and his party's decision. However, he cannot raise concerns about it not being enough money and then say we might fix it later. This cannot be fixed later. It either is this amount or it is not.

I would like a clarification on what my colleague has expressed as a concern so far.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Madam Speaker, unfortunately I must apologize to my colleague from Halifax West because I did not hear the first part of his speech.

I was unable to determine in his speech if his party, the Liberal Party, and he support an increase in the number of nuclear plants. Bill C-20 will protect nuclear plants in the event of an accident.

Does the Liberal Party agree with promoting nuclear power plants and building more of them?

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Madam Speaker, clearly the bill is about nuclear liability and I am certainly talking about the nuclear industry. I think the points I have been making are very relevant to the debate before the House and it is important we consider these issues.

When we talk about the crisis situation we are in, it is clear the government has no plan whatsoever to deal with it. I guess the Conservatives will look for another scapegoat to blame for their incompetence. We can see why Canadians have a lack of trust in the government and why the opposition has it on probation.

With respect to Bill C-20, while we support the principles of the legislation, it is important that we hear from witnesses in committee on important issues, issues like concerns the industry may have about how this bill will impact the competitiveness of the nuclear industry. It is important to assess the level of support for the bill within industry and whether this is the right liability limit.

I very much look forward to the future study of Bill C-20, with an eye to improving the legislation where it is needed.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday I was speaking to Bill C-20, the nuclear liability and compensation bill, which is a bill that has been in the House before. We studied essentially the same bill in the previous Parliament and now it is back before us.

I was saying yesterday that one of the concerns I have about the situation with this is the role of the minister in reviewing the liability limit every five years. The idea that this needs to be reviewed is valid, but my concern stems from the lack of a coherent nuclear energy policy from the government. It raises the question of how it will deal with the liability issue when it cannot competently manage this file.

We have not seen competent management. If we look at the history of what has occurred over the past year and a half, there was the closure of Chalk River and the decision of the government to try to scapegoat the nuclear regulator and blame Linda Keen for the problems which, as we can see now, clearly were not simply problems with the regulator, but there was a fundamental problem at Chalk River, which I am sure we are going to hear more about in the coming days.

There are concerns, indeed, about the future of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited and the lack of leadership from the government in that regard. We are all anxious to see the direction in which the government wants to go.

Recently, we have seen media reports where a professor from the University of Calgary actually asked if AECL was about to follow the path of the Avro Arrow and be sold away from Canada, with the loss of many scientists and so forth. The professor detailed the history of neglect for the nuclear sector under the Conservative government over the past three years.

The fact is that internationally over 200 nuclear plants are planned, involving billions of dollars and thousands of jobs. It is an industry in which Canada has been a true leader internationally. We all know the lack of value that this neo-conservative government puts on science. It seems to me at times that it really does not believe in empirical evidence but only in anecdotal evidence. The Conservatives do not believe in science, so to speak.

In fact, one of my colleagues suggested the other day that Barney the Dinosaur should be the official Conservative Party mascot. The Conservatives probably would not like that. They would want him to wear blue instead of purple, I suppose, because purple is too close to red, but I digress.

There is a serious lack of clarity by the Conservatives when it comes to the question of AECL's privatization. They will not tell us if it is on the garage sale list with the CN Tower, for example. The budget documents this year muddied the waters further in their reference to some obscure partnership in stating that the minister is reviewing AECL's structure involving private sector participation in the commercial operations of the corporation. We do not know what that means.

It is distressing to know that since last August there has been on the minister's desk a report from the National Bank done on the future of AECL, which has not been publicly released, even though the government has had since last August to review it. Of course, the minister has had since November, when she was appointed, to review it. It has still not been made public. We still have no idea where the government is going with AECL. One wonders why the government has sat on the report since August. It raises the question of what the government is hiding in this regard.

Is the government going to accept a recommendation to privatize more than 51% of AECL's design service departments, for example, or what is it going to do? Would the minister sell AECL to France or would it go to Canadian interests? What is it going to do? What is the value of AECL during a period of recession?

That is the problem with the government's theory of having a garage sale and selling major government assets worth billions and billions of dollars at a time when their prices obviously are reduced by the recession. We all see how the prices of things are down across the country, perhaps not enough things in some cases for families, but the fact of the matter is for items like government owned buildings and major items like that these days, clearly the dollars one can get for those sales are dramatically reduced. It makes it a terrible and unwise time to unload those kinds of things in a garage sale.

AECL is another example, and there are a lot of questions about AECL's future and no answers.

There is also the issue of the government's lack of support for AECL's bid to build nuclear plants in Ontario. Ontario is going the route of building more nuclear plants. It is making a choice about who the builder is going to be, and AECL is one of the bidders.

Many industry observers see this question of where the government stands as critical to the future success of AECL. They consider the question of whether it wins its bid as critical as well. The government appears to have abandoned AECL on this front.

Unlike the Conservative government, Canadians understand the value of a Canadian nuclear industry. A recent survey of attitude toward nuclear power found that 75% of Canadians are “not comfortable with the presence of non-Canadian nuclear plant manufacturers and plant operators in Canada”. The study also found that the contribution to the local economy and the use of Canadian technology were rated most important for nuclear projects by Canadians. We can see why. Imagine how many jobs this involves in Canada, how many scientists and our top minds are engaged in the work of AECL.

As that professor from Calgary noted in a recent media story, when the Diefenbaker government killed the Avro Arrow project in 1959, the result was the demise of a unique Canadian high-tech invention, an innovative process where Canadian minds were very much engaged. It forced thousands of world-class scientists and engineers to leave our country. This is the same kind of issue, where the Conservative government is talking about the possibility of giving AECL away, or not supporting it and allowing it to fail.

Hopefully, we are not about to witness a repeat of the Avro Arrow. With the Conservative government's neglect and incompetence in this sector, Canadians are understandably worried.

It is not surprising that there are serious questions being raised about the future of CANDU reactors and the fate of the thousands of dedicated scientists and engineers who work for AECL and about what the government intends to do about the production and supply of medical isotopes. It is hard to tell. There seems to be no clarity or no plan from the government.

When there was a shutdown of the NRU in Chalk River in December 2006, we would have thought the government would have started then to produce a plan to replace Chalk River, to come up with some other way to produce medical isotopes. There is no apparent evidence of efforts being made by the government to produce a plan and to move forward with solving that problem.

What was the government's answer? It blamed Linda Keen. She was the scapegoat. The government took no responsibility. It is like we see so often in question period. Whatever questions we ask, it seems the government wants to go back more than three years ago when the Liberals were in power and blame the Liberals for everything. The Conservatives do not take any responsibility for the fact that they are now government.

We would think they were still in opposition. They have not really made the transition. They have not adjusted to the fact that they are government. The Conservatives have been in government for three years. It is time to be responsible. It is time to take responsibility for the job they have to do. Their duty to Canadians is to take action and take responsibility on a matter like dealing with medical isotopes, which is so important to Canadians.

There have been at least three radioactive leaks at the Chalk River site in the past few months, and now we have the indefinite shutdown of the laboratory there. The fact that the government still does not have a plan to ensure the security of our isotope supply is shocking. Canadians were exposed to the situation in 2007, so it is no wonder, after all this period of not seeing any action, they do not trust the Conservative government.

The Conservative government's answer in 2007 was not to find a long-term solution to secure the supply of medical isotopes. Instead, it was to fire the nuclear safety regulator for doing her job. It is even more clear now that she was doing her job. And the government did it in the middle of the night, not even in broad daylight, which was amazing.

A few weeks ago, Canadian Medical Association representatives were on the Hill and I spoke with a few of them, including a nuclear medicine doctor from Halifax, Dr. Andrew Ross, who is an outstanding physician and researcher. He told me that the nuclear medical community was very worried at that time about the isotope supply. That was before this shutdown and before the current crisis. He said that one major incident with a closure would create a crisis.

We had a situation already where the reactor in the Netherlands, which is a major producer of isotopes, was shut down over a long period. I gather it is now back up, but Canada was supplying over half of the world's isotope needs and the closure of Chalk River was going to cause a crisis regardless. Therefore, that has been a very big concern for the CMA—

The House resumed from May 26 consideration of the motion that Bill C-20, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in debate on Bill C-20.

Let me begin by talking about the highlights of Bill C-20 on nuclear liability. Like much of what the government does, there is not much new here. Bill C-20 is a culmination of discussions that begun under the previous Liberal government. In fact, it replaces the 1976 Nuclear Liability Act. It establishes a clear regime in the event of a nuclear accident. Thank goodness there has never been one in Canada.

The key element of the bill is to increase operator liability from $75 million to $650 million. It is important that my hon. colleagues from the NDP keep that in mind, that the bill is about increasing the liability limit not decreasing it.

This is in response to recommendations from the Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources. It is interesting to see the government taking its lead from the Senate, which it was so busy stacking just a few months ago. Obviously their overzealous rhetoric about the other chamber is more for show than anything else.

As I have stated, there is not a lot new in this bill. In fact, the same bill was introduced in the last Parliament, and probably would have been on the books by now if not for the fact that the Prime Minister broke his own fixed date election law last fall and called an election.

In the last Parliament, the natural resources committee conducted a comprehensive study of the bill, as it then was, and some amendments were considered, including the possibility of raising the liability limit.

I look forward to hearing from expert witnesses when the bill goes back to committee, as I think it will. I certainly will support having it do that. I am looking forward to hearing ways it may be possible to improve the legislation.

One issue that ought to be addressed would be a possible amendment that would allow for the industry to look for insurance outside of Canada if it would be a problem to be limited. It is important that we at least hear the arguments on that. It is certainly an issue that has been raised by representatives of the industry. Clearly we would prefer that they shop in Canada for things like this, but let us hear what they have to say about the argument for broadening that if there is some limitation or lack of competition for this kind of liability insurance.

We know there are some kinds of insurance that very few insurers will offer. We think of a group like Lloyd's of London as being famous for insuring things that nobody else will. If there is only one insurer in the country that will insure what the industry does, it may be stuck with that price. We have to at least hear what the industry has to say about that.

Other than that, it does not seem to be a particularly controversial bill. As we read through the bill, a few questions come to mind. We could ask why the operators liability should be limited to $650 million, which is a tremendous increase from what it has been. The answer is that if it were higher than that, they would be unable to get liability insurance. It is not available, as I understand it, for amounts higher than that, therefore no new plants will be built. That is an important consideration.

Another question is, are there to be no qualifications for appointment to the tribunal that is set up in the legislation? This is something we ought to consider at committee, considering the views of expert witnesses on what kinds of qualifications the members of the tribunal ought to have and what kind of people we are looking for on the tribunal.

Overall the bill is a good example of civil servants doing their work well, as it probably emanates from them. I thank them for their work.

However, one thing that already concerns me with Bill C-20 is the role of the minister in reviewing the liability amount every five years. My concern on this question of the review of liability stems from the lack of a coherent nuclear energy policy coming from the government. How will the government deal with this liability issue when it does not seem to be able to competently manage this file in its entirety? I have concerns, as many members do on this side—

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to continue this discourse that was interrupted some weeks ago before the House rose.

I want to remind the folks in the House and at home that we are dealing with Bill C-20, the Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act. This is an attempt to reform a very old piece of legislation that has been sitting on the government's books for a number of years. It does require some modernization but the government has gone about it in such a way as to leave very few, outside of the very narrow band of the industry, satisfied, and has allowed no real sense of security or knowledge that communities will be properly compensated in the event of a nuclear accident.

The bill would limit the liability that a nuclear provider will be exposed to in the event of a nuclear accident to $650 million. On a number of fronts this raises concerns for New Democrats and for Canadians across the country, whether they live in a community that has a nuclear reactor in it, adjacent to a community or just on the broad principle of how this country goes about dealing with the very sensitive and controversial issue of nuclear energy.

This is all happening within the context that is not exactly ideal for the nuclear industry. We hear in the House, day after day, questions put to the Minister of Natural Resources about Chalk River, which is a nuclear facility here in Canada owned by the government that seems to go through problems every 18 months or so, in which it leaks, contaminates and then shuts down. In the shutting down, this facility provides isotopes that are used in diagnostic testing for cancer patients and provides 80% of the Canadian supply and more than 50% of the world supply, throwing the world into all sorts of concern that Canada is becoming an increasingly unreliable partner in this field.

It also falls into the context of Ontario putting many billions of dollars forward foreseeing that it is running out of viable energy supplies and deciding not to put the economy on a green track but deciding to invest in nuclear instead.

Obviously the CANDU reactor, the AECL is one of those bidders, as is the French and some other interests. This is an extraordinarily important file for the government, obviously, because it seems to want to sell AECL, a Canadian subsidized company, an arm's length crown corporation into which the Canadian taxpayer has put more than $20 billion over time.

No other energy sector outside of the oil and gas sector has received the kind of subsidies and special treatment that the nuclear industry has, and that is continued under Bill C-20. We do not offer limited liability to other sectors in the Canadian economy. We do not say to the auto sector, the manufacturing sector or the resort and tourism sector that the Government of Canada will backstop major accidents.

To understand why we feel that the bill falls short at $650 million, one has only to go back to when there have been nuclear accidents and look at the costs to clean it up and the costs to compensate people. What do other countries do when they are faced with the question of liability? There is a variance of degrees in ways that this industry is treated but we cannot find any cases where the limited liability is set at such a small amount.

For example, all nuclear providers in the U.S. contribute to a common pool that approaches upward of $10 billion in the event of a nuclear accident; that is $10 billion to $650 million. It does not matter when we are taking the size and scale in terms of our country being smaller than the U.S. because a nuclear accident is a nuclear accident and a community affected is a community affected. We can take the case of Japan and Germany which are advocating and putting in position unlimited liability.

One needs to ask how viable this technology and industry is if it requires not only $20 billion in government subsidies and subsidies every year, because we just kicked in another few hundred million dollars, but it also requires the government to backstop the liability of the industry. The risks are so great, as acknowledged by the government, that the taxpayer will either be backstopping any large insurance claims or it will just prevent Canadians from suing the government beyond a certain amount.

One needs to wonder how the government comes to the point of saying that if, in the event of a nuclear accident of some scale in Pickering or in any of the other communities associated with these nuclear facilities are seriously harmed or destroyed, that it will set a figure as to how much they can be compensated for the loss of life, industry, home, community, and then we need to imagine that over time.

How would $650 million compensate a community with nuclear toxicity in its soil and water? We know the half-life of some isotopes could be many thousands of years, and taking that over time means hundreds of thousands of years of contamination.

This is the challenge with nuclear that has been described as the saving grace under the carbon constrained economies that we are looking at right now. The liability component is serious and significant and it has to be curtailed by government. The special treatment that is afforded to nuclear is not afforded to other industries.

The government often talks about not wanting to pick winners and losers, about letting the invisible hand of the marketplace dictate what will or will not happen, but then we see bills like Bill C-20. This is not an Adam Smith bill in design or designation. This is not a free market, free capital principled bill. This legislation would have us enter the marketplace, decide, and then tip the scales one way or the other.

That is the debate required here. That is what the government must defend in bringing the bill forward. The Liberals support the bill overwhelmingly, but I am not sure if any of the Liberal members will stand up with conviction.

Many representatives of the nuclear industry appeared before committee when the Chalk River spill and contamination occurred. Canadians heard that there was no leak at Chalk River and that contamination was contained. These words are used in common parlance as meaning to contain something or to withhold it. What in fact happens is that nuclear radiation leaks out of the facility, is held in a pool for a certain amount of time and then released into the Ottawa River. The nuclear industry defines that as containment. A leak is not a leak if it goes into the air. That is something else entirely. Another word is used for that. The government said there was no leak and anything that did happen was contained.

We have all heard in Parliament and in committee folks using words that in common usage mean one thing, but in a specific application mean something entirely different. People are led astray.

The nuclear industry is very nervous because at this moment it is trying to sell a bunch of Candu reactors. It is trying to sell them to Ontario, then maybe to other countries, and then maybe sell off all of AECL. Moving the limited liability act through the House is critical to the government's hope of eventually selling off this public asset.

If we are talking about competitiveness for the nuclear industry, then for heaven's sake, one would imagine the government would look to our competitors, primarily Europe, Japan and the United States, to find out what they are doing for their industries. What kind of compensation regime have they set up? What kind of limited liability have they set up to allow the Canadian product to compete fairly?

From all of our reading of this, and we have yet to see it corrected by the government or anybody else, that has yet to be proven. That is not what our competitors use. Our competitors allow for something that would seek a bit more compensation.

Even undercutting that entire argument, what is proper compensation after a nuclear accident? The industry said the Three Mile Island incident did not typify a major accident in the sense that it did not go through a full nuclear meltdown. The cost in those days was just shy of $1 billion. This legislation limits liability to $650 million.

The Chernobyl accident stands alone in its own rarefied air of when something really goes wrong. The compensation amounts that would be required if a Chernobyl incident happened obviously would exceed anything close to the limited liability act.

As Ontario muses as to whether it will go with the Candu system or the European or some other model, the liability question stands front and centre. This is all meshed into one.

There are the incidents at Chalk River where we have a reactor that is 50-some years old. It leaks from time to time. It contaminates the Ottawa River from time to time. It leaks out the smoke stacks and out the pipe itself. They call them pinhole pricks, but I suppose it does not take much in terms of a nuclear leak to really matter. It throws into question the whole nature, orientation and management of the nuclear industry by the current government and previous governments.

One has to take this all into consideration with the other choices that are available when it comes to producing energy. We have seen the government apply the blinkers when it comes to the tar sands, continuing a $1.3 billion to $1.4 billion tax subsidy into northern Alberta every year, whether or not the market is roaring hot, too hot according to the people who live there, subsidizing an industry that did not need subsidizing.

The government has shown itself to be incapable of properly measuring its own greenhouse gas emissions. It challenges every bill the opposition puts forth. The NDP has proposed a bill for the next round of climate change commitments in Copenhagen and the government's number one criticism has been, “We are not sure that you can properly account for things here, here and here”.

The Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, the auditor of all things environmental came before committee this morning and confirmed to government and opposition members who were there that the government has no capacity to measure its own greenhouse gas numbers and the effectiveness of any of the programs that it runs. Yet the government feels completely comfortable in taking credit for all sorts of reductions it is going to have in the future when it cannot actually measure what it has already done.

The whole thing is thrown into suspicion, and into this walks so much certainty from the government with respect to nuclear. Is nuclear part of the debate? Absolutely. Should it be put on the table with the alternatives? Absolutely. But the government is not creating a level playing field. We have seen that with the recent budget that came from the government when we compare it to what came out of Washington. In terms of the alternative resources, in terms of the alternative generation of energy, it is the game. Everyone who has studied this, everyone who has looked at economic recoveries around the world knows that energy has been and will be the central question for economies.

The government is spending on a ratio of one to fourteen per capita to the Americans right now. On the alternative energies--we are not talking nuclear or the fictitious carbon capture and sequestration the government keeps pandering and no one is listening to and certainly no one in industry is interested in investing in--but the true alternatives, the solar, the wind, the tidal and run a river on those fronts that have an extremely high job creation potential, the government is doing one-fourteenth on a per person basis compared to our American counterparts.

What happens to an industry, especially a nascent industry, when it is looking to locate itself on one side of a border or another? Industry representatives from wind, from solar, from tidal, from all of these groups, Canadian firms, have come to us time and time again to say that they are leaving. They want to operate here and they want to create the jobs here, but the investment climate is terrible.

Take wind for example. The government has a program that was meant to run out in year 2011. It was successful. The provinces actually filled in the void and they subscribed to it. This is a program that started a number of years ago. The government should realize there is success to be had in creating wind energy in Canada and perhaps even manufacturing in Canada. It could be helping out those communities such as the one we visited in Welland the other day, where a former auto parts plant is now making components for the wind industry. The government should be magnifying that, making that greater. It should have a vision that Canadians can get excited about and enthralled with. Rather than realizing that, still we see a government tinkering at the edges, putting up fictitious ideas that no one supports. It has yet to present a credible environmental plan that anyone, right wing, left wing, environmental, industry will validate. Not one has said that the numbers the government pretends to have in dealing with climate change can be validated. That was confirmed again by the auditor.

This liability act raises many questions for Canadians who are faced with concerns around nuclear liability and they are given no assurances. They are told that we will have a limited liability and nothing else.

Government members time and time again remain silent on this. Members of the official opposition, the Liberals, seem to give this a wink and a nod and off it goes. It feels more and more like an inside job. It feels like a job where Canadians are not allowed to participate in the conversation, saying that if we are going to support this industry for another $20 billion and another 50 years at cost overruns, leaks and melts and all the rest of that, then for heaven's sake there will be something that will allow--

The House resumed from May 15 consideration of the motion that Bill C-20, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure today to speak to Bill C-20, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident.

I live near a nuclear plant, so I understand how important it is to review the existing legislation because it does not meet current international requirements respecting liability in the case of a nuclear incident. Given the Conservative government's enthusiasm for nuclear energy—which, contrary to what it believes, is not clean energy—we must update this legislation, which is over 30 years old.

Ontario and Alberta are about to embark on this dangerous adventure with federal support, so we owe it to ourselves to clarify what nuclear plant operators are liable for, define the financial terms of that liability, and create an administrative process that will ensure that citizens affected by a nuclear incident are spared delays due to a high number of financial compensation claims.

The primary purpose of Bill C-20 is to set up a liability regime in the event of a nuclear incident. Though the bill is far-reaching and complex, like the sector it governs, it does three things. First, it defines the liability of facility operators. Second, it defines the financial terms and limits of that liability. Third, it creates a process or administrative tribunal to hear claims in case of a major incident.

This bill is flawed, and I will explain why. Nevertheless, we must study it rationally. It does improve the existing act, and if we do nothing, the financial liability of a nuclear plant operator will not increase above the amount set 33 years ago in 1976. Bill C-20 redefines nuclear damage. The new definition is clearer and more complete, and it is more in line with the international standard.

The bill clarifies the liability of nuclear facility operators. It clearly defines what kind of damage is compensable and what kind is not. One of the most important clauses is clause 9, which provides that the operator's liability is absolute and applies automatically the moment radiation is emitted because proof of fault is not required.

Clause 9 reads as follows:

(1) The liability of an operator for damage caused by a nuclear incident is absolute.

(2) For the purposes of subsection (1), no proof of tort or of fault within the meaning of the Civil Code of Québec is required.

In short, this means that if there is a nuclear incident, regardless of the cause, with the exception, of course, of an act of war, civil war, insurrection and, now, terrorist activities, the operator is responsible and must compensate those affected.

Sections 13 to 30 of this bill list all of the compensable damages, such as bodily injury or damage to property; economic losses, or revenue losses; loss of use of property; and the costs associated with taking preventive measures and precautions, if the measures were ordered by an authority acting under federal or provincial legislation relating to environmental protection.

The financial limitations of this bill are very important. The government considers nuclear energy to be a clean energy. We disagree. The government would not be obligated to regulate and define the legal and financial liabilities of nuclear plant operators to such a degree if this were truly the case. We believe that nuclear energy is a dirty energy. That is why this bill provides for a liability framework in case of a nuclear incident.

That is why Bill C-20 establishes a compensation and civil liability regime to address damages resulting from radiation in the unlikely event of a radioactive release from a Canadian nuclear installation.

I used the word unlikely, but an incident is still possible, since it is covered by legislation. I am not sure that, in the case of biomass boilers, a truly clean energy, and a renewable one, I would add, we would need a bill like Bill C-20 to regulate operations.

To my way of thinking, this shows that nuclear energy is not clean.

There is a real and constant level of danger associated with nuclear energy. I live very close to a nuclear power plant, and I know that there are emergency measures in place for that plant. The local people know the evacuation procedures. We have iodine capsules, which means that there is a very real danger.

Really clean energies such as wind power, geothermal energy and hydroelectricity do not threaten people's health and safety as nuclear energy does.

In our opinion, the government should focus on these emerging alternative energies instead of putting all its eggs in the nuclear basket. That is why we will support this bill, which creates a real framework for nuclear practice, provides for compensation and protects people.

As I said, the current legislation is more than 30 years old, which means that people living close and not so close to nuclear facilities are “protected” by legislation that has not been reviewed in three decades. That is incredible.

The Bloc Québécois is in favour of strict control over the nuclear industry. A number of provisions of the current legislation no longer meet today's criteria. I am thinking particularly of the amounts of compensation and civil liability.

If a nuclear incident were to take place in a facility today, the limit on damages would be $75 million.

This is ridiculously low. To date, the liability of operators of nuclear facilities has been limited to $75 million.

With this bill, the limit on the operator's liability would increase from $75 million to $650 million.

The main clause in the bill is clause 21(1), which stipulates that the liability of an operator for damage resulting from a nuclear incident is $650 million.

Yet this amount can be increased by regulation, which is an important plus. Given how much time it has taken to get back to this bill, which was introduced during previous sessions, it is important to be able to use regulations.

Members may ask, why is the limit $650 million?

In my opinion, we have to be practical. This limit reflects a balance between risk, insurance and international rules. It was not determined randomly, and obviously we have to look at what is done around the world. There are limits to insurance and to what operators can pay, because no insurer will want to assume a risk that is higher than what we see in other countries. We therefore cannot impose unlimited financial liability, because operators may not be able to find an insurer willing to insure such a risk.

This amount therefore seems to be a compromise between the theory, whereby the financial responsibility of the nuclear power plant operator is absolute or unlimited, and practice, which prevents operators from insuring themselves for such an amount.

Bill C-20 establishes the specific liabilities of nuclear power plant operators and raises the amount of insurance those operators must have.

In fact, the new limit will increase operators' insurance premiums sixfold. Mandatory financial guarantees will be gradually imposed, and regulations will set out the period during which a nuclear installation can be reinsured by the government.

Thus, it provides $400 million in reinsurance at the time of proclamation, to be gradually reduced to $0 over the next four years. As we can see, this is to prevent too much pressure from being put on nuclear power plant operators.

Since the amount of $650 million, which for now, is much better than the status quo at only $75 million, is up for debate, the amount of liability held by operators will be examined by the minister at least every five years.

We say, “at least every five years”, but it is important that the limit be reviewed every year to really assess the risks and make international comparisons.

The 1976 Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act provided for an adjustment over the years, but nothing has been done in that regard for 33 years. As we can see, it is easy to forget our responsibilities. It is up to this House to ensure that the government reviews those amounts and revises them every year.

Clearly, something needs to be done. In that regard, in his 2005 report, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development specifically addressed the issue of insurance for nuclear installation operators after two petitions were presented. One petition reads:

...the $75 million coverage required under the NLA is woefully inadequate by international standards. Officials from Natural Resources Canada [said] that today, $250 million would be an equivalent amount [equivalent to the amount set out in the legislation when it was passed in 1976], accounting for inflation, while the international standard is approximately $650 million Canadian.

The statement by the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development is clear. Insurance coverage for nuclear installations is not up to international standards. We must intervene. Canadian insurance requirements have not changed or been adjusted for inflation since the law came into effect almost 30 years ago. In Canada, the liability of operators of nuclear facilities is lower than that in 12 other industrialized countries with nuclear installations. These countries have in place a combination of operator insurance, a public fund and an industry reserve, which far exceeds the amount of insurance required of Canadian operators.

We support this bill because it will substantially increase the maximum financial liability to $650 million. This is important, and so are the administrative process and the tribunal to deal with claims in the event of a major incident. The bill establishes a special tribunal to hear claims when the Governor in Council deems it is in the public interest to do so.

The law thus provides an administrative process for dealing with claims in the event of a major incident. It clarifies the role and the scope of a claims tribunal. This process would be used instead of the courts and would allow claims to be handled more efficiently and equitably. It is not difficult to imagine that the high volume of claims by victims would tie up the courts and result in delays that would be far too long for the victims. It is imperative that the victims of a nuclear incident not be subjected to a cumbersome legal process that would quickly become bogged down by too many claims. This bill would allow victims to be dealt with more quickly and, we hope, more equitably.

In closing, Bill C-20 is necessary given that, in the next few years, the Conservative government will support an increase in nuclear power plants. We completely disagree with this government's enthusiasm for nuclear energy, which is not a clean energy, contrary to what the Human Resources minister believes.

At present, there is no satisfactory way to manage nuclear waste. Furthermore, we now have many options in terms of clean, renewable energies, such as hydroelectricity, geothermal energy, wind energy and forest biomass. But this government does not believe in these energy sources of the future, and would rather leave future generations—our children and grandchildren—with the environmental burden left by the nuclear industry.

Given the high level of danger of these nuclear plants, the Bloc Québécois recommends strict and efficient monitoring at all stages of the process: extraction, transportation, heat and electricity production, and so on.

That is why we are in favour of this bill, which not only updates the responsibilities of nuclear plant operators, but also significantly increases the financial limit of this responsibility from $75 million to $650 million, a limit that the federal government has not reviewed since 1976.

This bill will also ensure fairer and more efficient treatment for people who could be affected and who would be submitting compensation claims.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-20, which deals with the important issue of civil liability and compensation in the event of a nuclear accident at a Canadian facility.

The Liberal Party supports this bill in principle but will use the natural resources committee to give it careful consideration in assessing whether it should be a mandate. We believe this legislation seeks to replace the outdated Nuclear Liability Act of 1976.

The bill has had a long history, the result of a decade of discussions that I am proud to say began under previous Liberal governments.These issues are complex, which is why we will be studying this bill and listening to expert testimony of individuals who understand these very complex issues. This bill deals with the fundamental aspect of Canadian nuclear safety by seeking to establish a clear regime in the event of a nuclear accident. It lays out rules for compensation and civil liability in the event of a radioactive release from a Canadian nuclear installation.

The bill retains the basic principles of the 1976 act by ensuring that nuclear operators remain absolutely and exclusively liable for damage. It requires that they carry insurance but limits the liability in time and money. The bill also ensures that suppliers and contractors are effectively indemnified.

The key aspect of this bill is that it increases the operator liability limit from $75 million to $650 million. That is the core issue. I would like to talk more about that and then ask some questions.

The Department of Natural Resources tells us that the increase reflects a balance of considerations. What we have heard from it so far is that it addresses foreseeable rather than catastrophic risks, that it reflects the insurance capacity that is available in the market at a reasonable cost and that it would put Canada on par with liability limits of many other countries. However, there are still some exceptions and we want to know why.

By putting this legislation forward, the government is responding to the explicit recommendations of the Senate committee on energy, the environment and natural resources that require this type of revision. These issues do not get a lot of media attention. They are not headlines that we see in the newspaper but they are, nevertheless, critical to the safety and security of Canadian nuclear facilities.

The need for a specific regime governing civil liability in compensation in case of a nuclear incident is based on the fact that private insurers have systematically and consistently refused to provide coverage for damage resulting from nuclear incidents. Over time, technology and innovation, coupled with a changing understanding of nuclear science, has meant that the current legislation no longer reflects the needs of Canadians. This threatens the security of the nuclear industry.

In the age of climate change, nuclear technology is critically important to our efforts to build a stable supply of clean energy. Also in a time of recession, the nuclear industry provides high-paying, high tech jobs to thousands of Canadians across the country.

The bill addresses two key aspects. First, it helps us in terms of dealing with the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and also the preservation and creation of jobs in the high tech industry.

In fact, a number of my constituents in Mississauga—Brampton South depend on this industry for their livelihoods. They work at the head offices of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, which is in the riding of my very well respected colleague from Mississauga South. That organization alone has provided jobs to thousands of Canadians and has shared its unique expertise and knowledge in 14 offices spread across seven different countries.

Intelligent Canadians going abroad, sharing our expertise and making a name for their country in the process makes us proud of what we as Canadians can achieve abroad. It is in sharp contrast, and I digress a bit, to the silly, unnecessary, unwarranted attacks by the Conservatives on the leader of the official opposition simply because he has taken Canadian experiences abroad. Many Canadians have worked abroad and have returned to Canada and it is unfortunate that those people are viewed negatively by the government.

These are the types of highly-skilled, well-paying jobs that the Conservatives are supposed to be creating for Canadians, jobs that will help us to maintain our global competitive advantage and our high standard of living.

Therefore, one would expect that a bill dealing with such an important issue for such an important industry would rate as a priority for a Conservative government that claims to have the best interests of Canadians at heart. I am sorry to say that the government has failed to act time and time again and, in some cases, actually worked against itself on this issue.

Various other versions of the bill have sprung up under the Conservatives but were shamefully allowed to lapse. In fact, Bill C-5, the bill's immediate predecessor, was being debated at third reading when the Prime Minister broke his own promise for fixed election dates and dissolved the House, killing the bill in the process.

This legislation has not been a priority, which speaks to the lack of trust that I and many others have regarding the Conservative record on nuclear safety.

The Canadian nuclear industry is at a critical crossroads. Its future is uncertain and yet the government continues to delay this important work. What kind of message does that send to nuclear workers and the industry? I suppose I should not be surprised. This is, after all, the government that fired Linda Keen from her position at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, blaming the regulator when it was the minister who should have taken the responsibility.

Before this firing, the Office of the Auditor General submitted a special examination report to the AECL board of directors, pinpointing serious funding deficiencies that were holding back the necessary expansion and upgrading. It would be nice to know where the government stands on this matter but the minister and her government refuse to share their future plans for the crown corporation.

We know, through committee testimony, that the National Bank report, looking at the future of AECL, is in the hands of the minister. The problem is that the last we heard the minister has not even had an opportunity to read it. It is somehow in her department, maybe with some staff, but she does not have the time in her busy schedule to really look at this very important issue.

Again, this an important industry with thousands of Canadian jobs and yet the minister and the government refuse to show any leadership. They prefer to allow uncertainty and mystery to continue and wear the industry down through their inaction.

AECL is banking its future on a bid currently before the Ontario government to sell its next generation of Candu reactors. Candu technology is currently in use at over 40 plants around the world and the future expansion of that business depends on this.

I invite the minister to table the National Bank report today in the House and come clean on her plans for the future of AECL. Too many jobs and the industry depend on it.

Worse than endangering jobs are the lives that we put at risk because the government has not sought to find a way to a stable, long-term supply of medical isotopes, a direct result of the Conservative record on nuclear safety. This year alone there has been three radioactive leaks on the Chalk River site. How can Canadians possibly have trust in a government that refuses to take responsibility for upgrading and ensuring the security of our nuclear facilities?

We need to do what we can to ensure that we have a safe, stable and prosperous nuclear industry. In committee, we will take up that responsibility as we begin and conduct our studies.

A number of vital questions need to be answered before the bill is passed into law. I had the opportunity just a few moments ago to ask questions of the parliamentary secretary and I hope these questions are addressed in committee. Should this legislation allow the industry to shop for insurance outside of Canada? Will they allow for such openness and flexibility? Does the operator liability of $650 million address the needs of all stakeholders? Is it a sufficient level and how was that amount determined? Is that amount comparable to other jurisdictions around the world? What, if any, terms exist for qualification for appointment to the nuclear claims tribunal? What is that criteria? Is that criteria sufficient? In addition, I would seek witness testimony on the definition of nuclear damage laid out in the bill, and whether it is too narrow.

Those are the kinds of questions that need to be addressed but, most important, my colleagues and I will seek to examine in committee powers given to the Minister of Natural Resources to review the liability amount. It is absolutely critical that proper checks and balances are in place.

I look forward to working with my colleagues in committee to tackle these very important issues.

I ask the government to change its approach to the nuclear industry. We need the minister to fight for the health, safety and economic security of all Canadians. If we continue down the same path, the future of the Canadian nuclear industry looks very dim.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, the Canadian nuclear industry has an outstanding safety record. The member for Tobique—Mactaquac has worked with me and the government side on this issue for some time now. He was on the natural resources committee last time and did an outstanding job as we tried to bring Bill C-5 through the legislative process. He is working on that same committee this time on Bill C-20. We rely on him for his memory and contributions and we appreciate them.

Our industry in Canada has been safe and has had a tremendous record in that matter. When we came to put this new legislation together, we needed to decide how high the level of insurance needed to be. There needs to be a level of insurance that is adequate in the case of an incident but it also needs to protect Canadian citizens and it cannot be so high that it is impossible for the operators to even get insurance.

The limit they came up with was $650 million and we feel it really fits the public's need for adequate compensation in the event of any foreseeable incident at a Canadian nuclear facility. As I mentioned, we need to balance the need to ensure adequate victim compensation without burdening operators with costs that are completely unrealistic. We could have taken a number of different avenues but we made this choice for a number of reasons.

As I need to wrap up, maybe I can get into the reasons as to why we chose $650 million on my next answer. Others will speak to that as well.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know if the member understands the process we went through. This bill is actually in its third reincarnation. It came in as Bill C-63. It was Bill C-5 in the last Parliament, and now it is Bill C-20.

He was not at committee last time, but we did have extensive consultations. We had open committee meetings. We had the communities come in. We had the interested parties come to speak to us. Obviously, we have talked to the industry as well. There have been broad consultations at least twice on this bill. We bring it forward with the support of the communities, the support of the industry, and we believe with the support of Canadians as well. The NDP members were the only ones who were opposing this bill last time, and we understand they will likely do that again.

However, the reality is that this bill has been put together. It has been crafted with input from a lot of different Canadians and with the industry as well. We certainly look forward to support from the other parties in this House, because this bill is long overdue. We need to raise the liability limits. It is something that everyone acknowledges. Certainly we hope the NDP members will not stand in the way of protecting Canadians, as they did last time.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-20, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources and for the Canadian Wheat Board]

Mr. Speaker, it is good to be back again speaking about nuclear safety.

I am pleased to speak to Bill C-20, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident. Members may be familiar with this bill. It was introduced in the last Parliament as Bill C-5. It is a bill that has had a long history of consultation. It also has a history of good support in the House.

The last time we brought the bill forward both the official opposition and the Bloc supported the bill. We were able to bring it through committee and into third reading without amendment. We look forward to working with the members on the other side of the House to get this bill through as quickly as possible.

Later, I think we will hear the member for Mississauga—Brampton South speak for the official opposition and the member for Trois-Rivières speak for the Bloc. We look forward to working with them at committee to bring this bill through to conclusion as quickly as possible.

The history of nuclear energy in Canada goes back some 75 years. For the past 30 years, it has been a part of Canada's energy mix. It has benefited this country and the citizens of this country in numerous ways.

As members know, a strong nuclear industry brings great economic and environmental benefits. However in order to encourage investments in nuclear facilities, liability rules are needed to provide legal and insurance certainty for suppliers and operators. Without the certainty of the rules concerning liability, insurers would not provide coverage to nuclear facilities, and no one would participate in nuclear development.

At the same time, it is important to ensure that Canadians have access to reasonable compensation in the unlikely event there is a nuclear incident. The health and safety of Canadians is a top priority of the Government of Canada. Canada's nuclear safety record is second to none in the world. We have a robust technology, a well-trained workforce and stringent regulatory requirements.

There are two pieces of legislation that provide a solid framework for regulating the industry. They are the Nuclear Safety and Control Act and the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act. Nevertheless, we must be prepared for the possibility of a nuclear incident, which could result in civil damages.

The responsibility for providing an insurance framework to protect Canadians and provide stability to this important industry falls under federal jurisdiction. The Government of Canada has a duty to assume its responsibilities in this area, and we are doing that.

Traditional insurance is not appropriate for dealing with this kind of liability. It is difficult to determine levels of risk. Canada, like virtually all other nuclear countries, has addressed this void with the enactment of special legislation.

In Canada we put in place the Nuclear Liability Act. This legislation established a comprehensive liability framework in case of a nuclear incident. It is the framework that is in existence today. Both this earlier legislation and Bill C-20 apply to things like nuclear power plants, nuclear research reactors, fuel fabrication facilities and facilities for managing used nuclear fuel.

The framework established under the initial Nuclear Liability Act is based on several principles. Those principles include the absolute and exclusive liability of the operator, mandatory insurance, and limitations in time and amount. These principles are common to nuclear legislation in most other countries, such as the United States, France and the United Kingdom. The principles that were put in place years ago are just as relevant today.

Let me quickly explain these principles. Absolute liability means the injured party does not have to prove that a nuclear reactor was at fault in an incident, only that injury or damages were caused by that incident. As well, the Nuclear Liability Act holds the operator of a nuclear facility to be exclusively liable for civil damages caused by a nuclear incident. In other words, no other business, organization, supplier or contractor can be sued for these damages. The operator is responsible.

This has two advantages. First, it makes it very easy for individuals to make a claim. They know who is liable and they do not need to prove fault or negligence. The other advantage is that exclusive liability allows the insurance industry to direct all of its insurance capacity to the operators.

The principle of mandatory insurance is straightforward. All nuclear operators must carry a prescribed amount of liability insurance in order to be licensed to operate the facility. This is a widely accepted practice in countries generating nuclear power.

The Canadian regime also places limitations on liability in time and amount. In terms of amount, the maximum that has been payable under the Nuclear Liability Act is currently $75 million. As well, injury claims must be made within 10 years of the incident.

These underlying principles of Canada's existing nuclear liability framework address the needs of Canadians while permitting our country to develop nuclear capabilities.

The Nuclear Liability Act made it easier for injured parties to make claims. It guaranteed that funds would be made available to compensate individuals in the unlikely event that there is an incident.

It is a tribute to Canada's nuclear industry that there have been no claims paid out under the act. Still it has served as an important safety net for Canadians and it has provided stability and security that is needed to support the continued development of Canada's nuclear power industry.

Although the basic principles underlining Canada's nuclear liability legislation remain valid, this act is over 30 years old and it needs updating. If we consider the possibility of new investments in nuclear reactors in Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick or Ontario, we can see why this legislation must be made as robust as we can make it. We also have to keep pace with international developments in the field over the years.

As a result of this, the Government of Canada has conducted a comprehensive review of the Nuclear Liability Act and is proposing the new legislation that is before the House today. This has been done with extensive consultation across the country with the industry and with Canadians.

The bill is intended to strengthen and modernize Canada's nuclear liability regime through an all-encompassing package of amendments. Bill C-20 is a major step forward in modernizing the act. It puts Canada in line with internationally accepted compensation levels. It clarifies definitions for compensation and what is covered in the process for claiming compensation.

The bill is a culmination of many years of consultation, involving extensive discussions with major stakeholders, including nuclear utilities, the governments of nuclear power generating provinces and the Nuclear Insurance Association of Canada.

I would like to talk a little about the key changes in this legislation. The main change proposed in Bill C-20 is an increase in the amount of operator's liability from $75 million to $650 million. This balances the need for operators to provide compensation, without imposing high costs for unrealistic insurance amounts, amounts for events highly unlikely to occur in this country. This increase will put Canada on a par with most western nuclear countries.

It is important also that Canada's legislation is consistent with international conventions, not only on financial issues but also with regard to what constitutes a nuclear incident, what qualifies for compensation, and so on. Accordingly, the bill makes Canada's legislation more consistent with international conventions. These enhancements will establish a level playing field for Canadian nuclear companies, who will welcome the certainty of operating in a country that acknowledges these international conventions.

Both the current liability framework and Bill C-20 contain limitation periods restricting the time period for making claims. Under the current act, claims must be brought within 10 years of the incident. However, since we know today that some radiation-related injuries have long latency periods, this limitation period has been extended under Bill C-20 to 30 years for injury claims, while maintaining the 10 year limit for other claims.

Both the current legislation and Bill C-20 provide for an administrative process to replace the courts in the adjudication of claims arising from a large nuclear incident. The new legislation clarifies the arrangements for a quasi-judicial tribunal to hear claims. The new claims process will ensure that claims are handled equitably and efficiently. I think that is an important amendment that people need to pay attention to.

The challenge for the government in developing this legislation was to be fair to all stakeholders and to strike an effective balance in the public interest. I firmly believe the proposed legislation fully meets that challenge. This is supported by the initial reactions that we received with Bill C-5, as well as the reactions we have received with Bill C-20.

We have consulted with nuclear operators, suppliers, insurance and provinces with nuclear installations, and they generally support the changes I have described. I know that some nuclear operators may be concerned about the cost implications of higher insurance premiums, but they also recognize that they have been sheltered from these costs for quite some time.

Suppliers welcome the changes, as they would provide more certainty for the industry. Nuclear insurers appreciate the clarity that would be provided in the new legislation and the resolution of some of their long-standing concerns.

Provinces with nuclear facilities have been supportive of the proposed revisions to the current legislation. Municipalities that host nuclear facilities have been advocating revisions to the Nuclear Liability Act. They are supportive of the increased levels of operator liability and the improved approaches to victims' compensation.

In short, Bill C-20 was not developed in isolation. The evolution of policy was guided by consultation with key stakeholders over several years and by the experience that has been gained in other countries.

Let me now turn to another aspect of our involvement with nuclear technology. There are three other aspects that I would like to point out quickly today.

The first is the safety record of our nuclear industry. Our CANDU reactor is arguably the safest reactor in the world and has all kinds of built-in systems to protect workers and the public.

I would also like to point out Canada's involvement in the nuclear industry and in research and development that has been exclusively for peaceful purposes.

Third, I would like to highlight the fact that Canada's nuclear industry is among the highest tech industries. It spurs innovation, which is the cornerstone of a competitive economy, generating more than $5 billion a year in economic activity. Canada's nuclear industry employs more than 30,000 people. Many Canadians probably do not realize that. Many of those are highly skilled people in well-paying jobs.

It must be recognized that the development of Canada's nuclear industry has been made possible by the civil liability rules provided by the initial Nuclear Liability Act. The improvements by Bill C-20 are now necessary for Canada to remain a leading player in the nuclear industry.

There is an additional aspect to Canada's involvement with nuclear energy. Much of our work in the nuclear industry has been to produce electricity, electricity to provide home comforts and to drive industry and promote jobs across the country. Electricity has contributed to a healthy environment through cheap and clean energy.

In this country we have made a commitment to achieve an absolute reduction of 20% in greenhouse gas emissions from 2006 levels by 2020. We are also committed to meeting 90% of our electricity demand from low-emitting sources by that same year.

As part of reaching these targets, our government is making substantial investments in measures to increase our supply of renewable energy, including wind, solar, small hydro and tidal energy. We also see nuclear energy as part of the clean energy mix that will advance Canada as a clean energy superpower. However, in order for us to advance in clean energy production, we need the certainty provided by an appropriate and up-to-date nuclear liability framework in order to protect Canadians and provide stability to this important industry.

In conclusion, Canada's nuclear safety record is second to none in the world. The Nuclear Safety and Control Act and the Nuclear Liability Act provide a solid legislative framework for regulating the industry and have done so since Canada's industry emerged as a world player. The former seeks to prevent and minimize nuclear incidents, while the latter applies should an incident occur. However unlikely as it may be, we must be prepared for the possibility of a nuclear incident that could result in significant costs.

For these and other sound reasons, I would ask members to support this legislation.

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

moved that Bill C-20, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Business of the House

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, one thing that will not be on the agenda is what the Liberal leader is always asking for and that is tax increases. That certainly will not be on the government's agenda.

Today we are going to continue debate on Bill C-8, the matrimonial real property legislation. Earlier today the Liberal Party moved a six months hoist motion with respect to Bill C-8. The term “six months hoist” is a bit of a misnomer. In modern terms, the adoption of a six months hoist motion would essentially kill the bill. I am surprised at the Liberal Party. The Liberals are always saying they advocate for women's rights. This legislation is about aboriginal women's and children's rights on reserve, and yet they are trying to kill the bill.

Following Bill C-8, we will call Bill C-20, the nuclear liability legislation, and Bill C-30, the Senate ethics legislation. All of these bills are at second reading.

Tonight, pursuant to Standing Order 81(4), the main estimates for the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food will be considered in committee of the whole.

As was noted, next week is a constituency work week for members of Parliament when they will be returning to their constituencies to work hard.

When the House returns on May 25, we will continue with business from this week, with the addition of any bills that are reported back from the standing committees.

Added to the list of business is Bill C-23, the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement, and Bill C-19, the investigative hearings and recognizance with conditions legislation.

Pursuant to Standing Order 81(4) I would like to designate May 28, 2009 as the date for consideration in committee of the whole of the main estimates for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the questions and the suggestion from my hon. colleague, the House leader for the official opposition.

For today and tomorrow, we will continue debate on Bill C-27, the anti-spam bill, which is at second reading. If we complete Bill C-27, it is my intention to call Bill C-20, the nuclear liability bill and Bill C-8, the matrimonial real property bill. All of these bills are at second reading.

On Monday, we will begin debate at the second reading stage of Bill C-29, the agricultural loans bill, to which the member just referred. Once that bill is completed, we will continue with the unfinished business that I mentioned earlier plus Bill C-30, the Senate ethics bill.

It is my intention to give top priority to any legislation that is reported back from committee next week.

Finally, in response to my colleague's question about committee of the whole, I would like to designate Thursday, May 14 as the evening the estimates of the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada are considered in committee of the whole pursuant to Standing Order 81(4).

I will be announcing the date of committee of the whole study of the estimates of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans at a later date.

As to the member's suggestion about debating all stages and moving Bill C-29, which is so important for our agricultural producers heading into the spring planting season, I would note that one of the reasons we are not debating it today is because there was a request from his critic, the member for Malpeque, who will be returning to the House on Monday. Therefore, we have scheduled that for Monday.

In trying to continue in our spirit of working together with all opposition members, I would certainly be open to his suggestion. I know the Minister of Agriculture would be eager to work with the three opposition parties to try and move Bill C-29 through the House at all stages and get it down the hall to the other place as quickly as possible.

Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-20, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)