Natural Resources Committee on May 29th, 2014

[Serge Dupont]

I'd be happy to. It's all public information.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you very much.

According to the main estimates, AECL's planned expenditures for 2014-15 will be $102 million.

How much of that will be spent on maintaining and operating the NRU reactor in Chalk River, and what portion, if any, will be earmarked from budget 2014 to transition the nuclear laboratories to government-owned, contractor-operated—that model?

[Serge Dupont]

Thank you for the question.

To ensure completeness in the answer, you're quite right, there is $102 million in the main estimates. I should add that budget 2014 announced supplemental funding for AECL, which will essentially go to the Chalk River laboratories. That's for $117 million, over two years, on an accrual basis. So additional moneys have been provided in the budget.

I don't have the breakdown here as between the National Research Universal reactor and other components of the research mission at the Chalk River laboratories, and indeed other laboratories. Clearly the NRU, as we call it, is a major piece of infrastructure, a major piece of equipment, that does require a fair amount of expenditures to operate. My understanding is that there's roughly 300 people whose work at Chalk River is principally focused on the reactor. That's about 300 of the roughly 3,300 who are actually involved in nuclear laboratories.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Are you aware of the concerns of the Canadian Association of Nuclear Medicine, who warn that shutting down the NRU in 2016 would put the supply of medical isotopes in serious danger and that an alternative might not be available?

In fact, they have said:

The potential "doomsday" scenario of simultaneous closures/shutdowns/maintenance of the NRU and other reactors in Europe or elsewhere in the following 2 to 4 years could be postponed or cancelled if the NRU was allowed to operate for a few more years.

[Serge Dupont]

Under any scenario, the supply of radio-medical isotopes will be an issue of attention for the government and, indeed, for global partners and for the supply chain. As the committee will know, the NRU, for example, was offline for a period of 15 months about two years ago. There have been stepped-up efforts in the international community to coordinate reactor outages and reactor supply. There have also been efforts on the demand side to ensure that the available quantities of radioisotopes at any point in time are properly utilized.

The government has reinvested in sustained supply from the NRU until 2016. It is also, as you know, promoting alternative sources of supply. So there's a range of initiatives that together are intended to assure under any scenario a better security supply for medical radioisotopes.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

The main estimates—

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Regan, your time is up.

Before we go to the votes, I'd just like to thank very much our departmental officials for being here today, deputy minister Dupont for being here for the whole meeting and Kami Ramcharan, assistant deputy minister and chief financial officer, corporate management and services sector, for being here for the second hour. Thank you both very much.

Before we go in camera for future business, I want to go through the votes so we can report the main estimates to the House. There are seven votes, the choices of the committee are either to carry, to defeat the motions, or to reduce the amounts in the votes.

So we'll start with the first vote.

ATOMIC ENERGY OF CANADA LIMITED

Vote 1—Operating and capital expenditures..........$102,143,000

(Vote 1 agreed to on division)

CANADIAN NUCLEAR SAFETY COMMISSION

Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$36,578,266

(Vote 1 agreed to on division)

NATIONAL ENERGY BOARD

Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$64,555,107

(Vote 1 agreed to on division)

NATURAL RESOURCES

Vote 1—Operating expenditures.........$649,823,365

Vote 5—Capital expenditures.........$12,777,080

Vote 10—Grants and contributions.........$444,039,000

(Votes 1, 5, and 10 agreed to on division)

NORTHERN PIPELINE AGENCY

Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$701,325

(Vote 1 agreed to on division)

Finally, shall the chair report the main estimates for 2014, less the amount voted in interim supply, to the House?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

On division.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you all very much for your cooperation. We'll now suspend very briefly and go in camera for a very short meeting on future business.

[Proceedings continue in camera]