Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the bill once more.
I had the opportunity to speak to many amendments that my colleague, the member for Western Arctic, made at the natural resources committee on Bill C-5. I think about 35 amendments were moved, which, unfortunately, were not passed, that would have improved the bill and made it a bill we could support. Sadly, the NDP cannot support the bill in its present form.
The bill was introduced last year, sent to committee, where it was quickly shuffled through with no amendments, and now we have it before the House today.
The bill, in our estimation, was introduced to facilitate the development of the nuclear industry in Canada. The federal government developed the legislation to limit the amount of damages a nuclear power plant operator would have to pay out should there be an accident causing radiological contamination to property outside the plant area itself. Such legislation is deemed necessary, as private insurers refuse to compensate for damage due to a nuclear accident or incident.
As I said, we had many problems with the bill but the biggest one for us was the limit on the liability. The current legislation, as we know, dates from the 1970s. It is woefully inadequate, and we agree with that, with a liability limit of only $75 million. By comparison, a new mine usually has to post an environmental bond of approximately $50 million, and it does not have radiological contamination to worry about.
This low level of liability is creating an impediment for foreign private industry purchasing Canadian nuclear industries. Under U.S. law, a foreign victim of an accident caused by an American headquartered company can sue for damages under American law if the foreign law is insufficient by international standards. These changes bring the legislation in line with minimum international standards, which is $650 million. We know the government brought this to the minimum international standards, the bottom of the international average.
For amounts above the $650 million, a special tribunal would be set up by the Minister of Natural Resources and further funds would come out of the public purse, which is the taxpayers' pockets. What that means is that a nuclear operator would only need to pay out the maximum of $650 million, while the public would be on the hook for the rest, possibly millions or even billions of dollars in the case of a nuclear incident or accident.
My colleague and I presented amendments to the bill because we felt strongly that it was our duty as members of Parliament to look after the public good and the public interest. We do not believe taxpayers should be on the hook for billions of dollars in case of a nuclear accident.
I talked about the liability framework in the United States. Canada is moving from $75 million, a woefully inadequate liability, up to $650 million. However, in the U.S. the liability can be as high as $9 billion. In other countries, such as Germany, Japan and Switzerland, they have unlimited liability. They understand that the costs of a nuclear accident outside of a nuclear facility could be devastatingly high. We know this because many of our reactors are in populated areas.
The Pickering reactors are located in a very densely populated area. Many of the businesses, homes and schools in the area are close enough that if there were a significant accident or incident, they could be negatively impacted to the tune of more than $650 million. The price of homes in that area are quite high. The future incomes of businesses in the area could be at risk if the area were to become contaiminated because people would not go into the area for years to come. All kinds of future costs could be implicated as well.
Those are the reasons we wanted to have unlimited liability, such as those in other European countries, or to at least have a $9 billion liability, which is what it is in the U.S.
When the bill came to committee we heard from several witnesses. I would like to read what some of the witnesses had to say just to give members a sense of what we heard at the committee and why it is so difficult to support this bill in its present form.
The first witness, Professor Michel Duguay, from the electrical and computer engineering department at Laval University in Quebec City, said:
The new bill will send a signal to all stake holders and the public that nuclear power is expensive and dangerous. The U.S. commission that had investigated the nuclear accident at Three-Mile Island had found that the principal cause of the accident was the attitude held by the plant operators that the nuclear reactor was safe. In Canada, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission...has done a great deal to convince nuclear power plant operators at all levels that nuclear power must be approached with utmost precaution. In its Annual Report for 2002, page 6, Atomic Energy Canada Limited..has acknowledged that the old CANDUs’ positive coolant void reactivity coefficient...poses a grave danger that must be avoided in the new reactor designs.
Those words strike fear in the hearts of many people when we hear them because we know what grave danger means in the case of a nuclear accident.
He goes on to say:
In view of the danger posed by the old CANDU reactors, and in view of the much larger damages anticipated in the case of core-meltdown accidents, anywhere from the 10 billion-dollar US liability limit to the one trillion-dollar estimate of the Pembina Institute in Canada....
What he was saying was that $650 million was a drop in the bucket compared to the amounts of money that could be needed in the case of a major accident.
Professor Duguay continues to state:
I find that in formulating this new Bill C-5, there are two important aspects. One of them is compensation for damages suffered, and the other is the expansion of nuclear power.
What he was referencing was that the money was not enough, obviously, and that the expansion of nuclear power was an issue. We know the Minister of Natural Resources has told the committee that the government was looking at nuclear power as a clean energy source.
I find that quite interesting because that was raised during the committee's study of the tar sands. It was one of our first studies that I was on as a member of that committee.
That made me wonder whether the government was thinking of using nuclear in the oil sands to melt the tar to produce the bitumen that we are shipping daily to the U.S., using a form of energy that has its own particular problems, such as the disposal of the waste. The issue of nuclear waste has never been resolved in this country. Therefore, to call that a green, clean source of energy is a misnomer, and yet the government likes to look at nuclear as a way out of our greenhouse gas emissions.
That is something that needs to be highlighted here because we are investing, as saw in the last budget, in nuclear. The budget had quite a lot of money for nuclear but very little for real green alternatives, such as solar power, wind power, wave generation, geothermal and all kinds of things that truly are green, clean sources of energy that have very little impact and leave a much smaller footprint on our planet. The government should be supporting more of thoses sources of energy in this country.
If the passage of the bill allows the expansion of nuclear power in this country it will be a big step backward for us in our quest to have a greener and cleaner energy source in many ways. We need to ensure that it not only does not create greenhouse gases, which it does not in that respect, but we need to look at it for all other things, such as the waste, the mining that takes place and the tragedy, human and otherwise, that it could inflict if there were to be an accident. If it is not a green source of energy we should not invest in it so heavily. We should be thinking of much cleaner, greener ways to go.
Another witness who came before our committee was Gordon Edwards, the president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. He spoke to the committee and we met with him on a few occasions. In his submission to the committee, he said:
As a participant in the deliberations of both the Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning and the Select Committee on Ontario Hydro Affairs, I can assure the committee members that the rationale for this bill, C-5, is based on the potential damages of fuel melting accidents. Without fuel melting, it is not possible for a nuclear accident to have off-site property damage exceeding $10 million.
However, the consequences of core melting accidents can typically run into the tens of billions of dollars or even hundreds of billions of dollars and can make large regions of land uninhabitable for a considerable period of time.
In the case of such a catastrophe, Bill C-5 limits the liability of nuclear operators to a very modest amount. It eliminates all liability for nuclear equipment suppliers, even if they supplied defective equipment that caused the accident, yet it does not address any important measures that would limit the overall financial liability to the Canadian taxpayer or the social liability of any affected population.
To me, that paragraph outlines many things: the insufficient liability amount and the long term effect on the human population, on businesses and on the taxpayer should there be a need to pay more than $650 million in the case of an accident.
He mentioned that hundreds of billions of dollars in compensation could be required. Therefore, $650 million is woefully inadequate. We have an opportunity now, when the bill is before us, to increase that limit from $650 million, which is the base international standard, to a much higher amount so that Canadian taxpayers would not be on the hook.
Mr. Edwards further commented that:
The Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility feels that it is important for the elected representatives of the people to ensure that the nuclear industry is held publicly accountable, and to ensure that the best interests of Canadians are not compromised in order to serve the interests of the nuclear industry. We believe that the figure of $650 million has no sound scientific or financial basis, and that this arbitrary amount serves to distract the Committee from a much more important question:--
I will stop there with that paragraph. Again, I have to say that it is the members of this House who are responsible for ensuring public security and safety, and also accountability with the public's money. If we were to agree to the bill and it were to pass, and there was a nuclear accident and taxpayers were on the hook for any moneys over the $650 million, it would be on our heads. It would be because we allowed that to happen. We would be not just financially but morally responsible for making that decision. That would be a travesty. It is something that we ought not inflict on the Canadian public.
That is why for the most part we cannot support the bill. As I said earlier, the act needed to be updated. Currently, it is woefully inadequate with the amount at $75 million. We have an opportunity now to increase the liability or not to have a cap of $650 million so that the Canadian taxpayer will not be left on the hook.
The amendments we proposed at committee would have brought our country in line with countries, like Germany, where there is unlimited liability on their nuclear industries. Those amendments were important because they would encourage safety in the nuclear industry. They would make the nuclear industry more accountable. The industry would then be on the hook, not the taxpayer. Why are we putting the government's finances in jeopardy?
It is important to note that all Canadians want this Parliament to move toward cleaner, greener solutions for our energy needs. Unfortunately, this bill is going to pass, because it has Liberal and Conservative support, and it will increase nuclear power production around the country.
Instead, we could be investing much more in alternatives for our energy needs, things that would not have such an impact on the planet, things like solar power. We could help people invest in their homes to reduce their energy consumption. We do not seem to be doing much of that. There is no real program that I know of in this country that would help people invest in their own homes to reduce their energy consumption. We really need that type of program. Canadians need help with getting into things such as solar power. People need some help to make these changes to their homes, perhaps new windows and better insulation. People need help in getting rid of their old oil furnaces and converting to a greener source of energy. Ordinary families need some help with those kinds of things.
Unfortunately, the eco-energy program does not quite cut it. I have had many calls from people who have tried to get an assessment. They have found that not much of what they are trying to invest in is covered. Heat pumps and other green sources of energy are very expensive, around $18,000. When people are only getting up to $1,300 back, it is not much of an incentive to make the change.
Canada could be doing much more and investing in cleaner energy rather than going down the nuclear route.
