Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be here to talk about such an important issue. Like my colleague I am concerned as well with the process this act to amend the Nuclear Safety and Control Act is taking.
I am reminded of what happened earlier this week with regard to softwood lumber. A situation developed where debate in the House on softwood lumber actually went back to 1996 in terms of the government not really planning, processing and getting the information out to the public. An announcement was finally issued at 2:30 in the afternoon out on the west coast, as far away from the members of the House as the announcement could be taken, concerning an important package affecting Canadian families and businesses that have been moving out of our communities. We were not able to debate the announcement in the House in the way that it should have been.
I would also add that during that particular day I asked for an emergency debate on softwood, believing that it would be important to talk about it as it developed and, more important, to at least have an opportunity to address the government's package in an intelligent manner. Sadly, the NDP was chastized for making public comments about the actual proposal the government was launching to the media. We had to rely on actual leaks to get the details to ask the important questions.
The act to amend the Nuclear Safety and Control Act is very important to the Canadian public. We are concerned about this process because it will not receive the full and proper debate that it should. As my colleague from the Bloc mentioned earlier, it is about a larger issue. It is about where we want to go as a country in terms of energy products, how we actually create them, what they do to our environment and, more important, how we go about planning a nation.
The bill would cause a number of different problems. In my opinion the liability and the environment are very important issues that would be weakened.
There have been incidents that have occurred in the world. We have witnessed Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Hopefully these events will never happen again but the reality is that when we use a product like nuclear power there will be risks and problems. We must be careful before we get into a process to expand those products, especially on an industry that is unique. The devastation in terms of an accident is one that is far reaching, not only in terms of immediate health problems but death, from an incident in the geographic area where the plant is located. This type of accident could affect the whole planet. The long lasting effects are certainly there.
We know that in Chernobyl many different problems have emerged with regard to the health of the citizens who are still suffering from an industry that did not have the proper planning and support.
I feel we are going in that direction. I do not feel that we are actually deciding to go on a course of action with regard to the environment and energy, as opposed to allowing this to happen because we are desperate for funds. We are desperate for funds for an industry that has been poorly planned in Canada. In Ontario we have had a couple of cases where we have seen the effects happen right away. I think the bill will weaken the industry.
I cannot understand the scope of the liability that will be narrowed. If the government is going to invest in a product and provide some resources to it and recoup some benefit, then it should stand by it. The government should be liable. This is done in many different business practises. Normally one does not basically get the opportunity to invest and then have that guaranteed.
Nuclear energy is a product that has a high degree of risk. It also comes with a great deal of potential for profits. We have seen the increase in energy use in our communities. Large sums of funds can be recouped from the industry and the household users.
I think that narrowing the scope of liability and allowing the banks to get away with this is not the way to go about deciding on the course of actions that we are going to take.
With regard to the process I want to note that this is not a housekeeping matter. This is truly about deciding where a nation wants to go with regard to an energy source. It is important for a country to stand for something.
From coast to coast to coast we should have certain things in common. With regard to energy, its use and how we are going to build a society and be able to compete with the world, I think energy products and use should happen that way. This should not be done in a piecemeal way. We have seen that specifically with Bruce Power. This is going to potentially address its shortage of cash in the meantime, but at the same time it opens up a whole Pandora's box with regard to privatization. That is a really big concern for me and for many other people in my constituency and, I believe, across this country.
I have seen privatization affect consumers quite profoundly. In Windsor, Ontario, we were one of the municipalities that had to deal with the deregulation passed on to us from the provincial government. Feeling the burden of the poor management and the poor regulations of that industry, it passed this down to the municipalities. It was really quite sad. The government told municipalities that they had a choice on deregulation, that they had to get themselves ready but they had the choice of two options. Municipalities could either sell their local utilities or run the utilities themselves. So at that point in time the municipalities had the choice to allow the private sector to take over.
That was a real problem in Windsor. We have been able to attract investment to our area. Windsor and Essex County contribute $26 billion annually to the gross domestic product of Canada, which would make us the fifth largest contributor if we were actually a province, compared to the provincial figures. We have been able to track that by having a solid system, a public utility, decent prices and decent resources in order to be able to address and get that investment, such as the auto industry and the tourism industry through the casino. We have seen a whole development of agriculture in our community. Actually we have used other plants that are more renewable. We have actually been able to get into some more environmentally friendly energy products, but not to the degree we want to.
We have been able to use that stability to our advantage to create the environment to attract business and industry, but here is what has happened with the province moving toward privatization. We saw deregulation, and if we sell, then there we go, we allow it to go into the great unknown. On top of that, it was ironic that we had a kind of drop-dead date for the privatization, whereby the province would have taxed us a third on the asset. If we had decided to sell it, we actually would have paid back a third of the asset to the provincial government. It was another way for the province to be able to scrape its interest off the backs of the municipal ratepayers.
We looked at the process for privatization and decided as a municipal government that we could not do it. It was not to our advantage. It was not in the business interest or in the public interest. We decided to maintain it. What we had to do with that decision was prepare for deregulation. The provincial government gave us a whole kit in terms of things we would have to do for deregulation, but deregulation was not just about what it provided us with in terms of some minor direction. There were all the other things that started to evolve that the province never calculated for. We created boards. We had to get people ready on committees. We had to hire staff. We had to do a whole series of things for deregulation that cost our municipality around $13 million to $15 million to get it ready so the private sector could sell energy.
Here is the irony in all of this: The fact is that the Windsor taxpayers in that area had to pay for getting it ready for the private sector. It was shameful. It was absolutely shameful. They had to pay for it through higher rates and I can tell the House that there are many people on fixed incomes whom the government has not supported properly or enough for them to be able to pay for the rising costs of energy. There are persons with disabilities, seniors, and just other citizens in general who are working two or three jobs to be able to maintain employment and the standards and the quality of life necessary for their families. They could not continue to absorb that, so we had to do it. We had to absorb all those energy costs. I believe that this amendment is going to increase that insidious movement toward privatization and its effects.
With regard to the banks and this bill, I do not think that they are necessarily going to be able to open up in terms of providing the resources. Although this will provide some type of flexibility for them, will it get them the cash cow? What if it does not? What do we do then? We are back to square one if they decide not to. If they do not come in for the rescue, if they do not ride in with the cash, so to speak, where do we go from there? We are back to square one. We have not addressed the problem and that is energy use in our community and how we want to go about it in the future.
The Nuclear Liability Act from 1976 has a clause for only $75 million for those who would be responsible if there is an accident. That is not sufficient. I would like to see work done in this aspect. I would not want to see a narrowing scope of liability. I want to see it expanded. We do not want our children and future generations to have to deal with contaminated sites. We already have had a problem with that. We actually have had to introduce legislation for contaminated sites through brownfield projects. We have had to give tax relief and subsidies because poor decision making has allowed businesses to do the damage they have done to different environmental spots and different types of land in our communities. Again we have had to pick that up through taxpayers to clean it up. That is what will happen if we do not look at the greater expansion of the $75 million. If we narrow that scope, it will just be passed on to somebody else. That is why we need to have an intelligent debate about where we want to go with this industry.
With regard to the environment and the environmental protection in the bill, Canada now falls far behind other industrial nations in the promotion and use of renewable energy sources. That is what my hon. colleague from the Bloc mentioned earlier. Where do we want to go with this industry and where do we want to go in terms of Canada? We must have a larger debate. Instead of trying to open up a process for an industry that certainly does not have a future in terms of the renewable aspects we would like to see, we are having to deal with all the byproducts of this industry.
I know for a fact that Canada is one of the biggest developers of the byproducts from nuclear waste. We have to deal with that. It is something that is an ongoing liability as opposed to renewable energy, which is an asset. Especially with Kyoto there is an opportunity for us to debate this issue, to look at the larger picture of renewable energy and to go forward. We have that opportunity with Kyoto. We have to address it. We cannot get into the whole aspect of putting it off. We cannot wait for somebody else to do it because we do not have the courage or the intestinal fortitude to move forward. We have to champion that. That will not happen with this type of growth industry. We know that nuclear power energy is not sustainable, not environmentally friendly, and it will not be the one that we want to create as the industry for Canadians.
We in the NDP think that the government should embrace the proposal put forward by the Canadian Wind Energy Association to achieve the goals of installing more than 10,000 megawatts of wind power capacity and providing 5% of our electricity from wind power by 2010. Other nations have moved forward on that. Many European nations have been able to break into this and have used this ingenuity to develop the capacities in their communities for innovation, for different employment as well and for export across the world.
It is interesting, too, because we right now we are going through a whole innovation strategy. The minister of trade has been pushing forward an innovation strategy. We have had a summit and we have talked about these things, about where we are going with the use of the automobile, for example, with the use of power, and with regard to creating the intellectual capacity to be able to create products and services that will serve us well into the future, make us a competitor and make us a champion for the world with regard to innovation. Energy is one of those things.
This bill would bring us back to point of the same old, same old, to prop up a bad idea and make it worse. That is wrong. The government has the innovation strategy going on, so it has some tools and some initiatives available to it. I give it credit for at least trying. I do not think that it has done enough with them. The government has not put in the resources. It has not committed to that because it does not have the complete political will to push far enough just yet, but at least, and I give it credit, the government has started something. There is a spark there, potentially, but it takes more than just going around and talking to people and not doing anything. The government gets reports, puts them on the shelf and does not do anything with them.
After being in those meetings, I can tell members that people did talk about renewable energy, about wind power for one thing. It is something that will certainly be able to provide us with some target emissions for Kyoto. I believe that it will be able to provide us with ingenuity and as well it will provide us with a safer environment.
I want to touch on what I think the bill means to Canadian citizens, the final users. I also want to reinforce my concerns about what will happen to the actual users and the prices afterwards. The bill will do nothing to create security. It will do nothing to create at least a sense of stability with regard to energy use. We have seen a number of vivid examples that have caused a traumatic and very painful discourse in our communities with regard to Union Gas and other products. We have seen prices increase. We have seen people being gone after retroactively. People cannot come up with these funds. That is wrong in terms of the way we have been moving toward energy. We are still going down this same path and we will see how it works out. Hopefully somebody else will ride in, be able to provide it cheaper and competition will lower prices. That will not necessarily happen in a monopoly industry like this.
We have seen a lot of weaknesses in some of the agreements we have in terms of energy provision. There is a new plant being developed in Windsor but we still do not know if any of the energy it produces will stay in Windsor or Ontario or Canada. It will be exported to the United States. It is great that this new plant will create a few jobs but it will also create environmental issues such as pollution and a number of different things. We will not derive any benefit from it and we may not even get any of that power. If we do, we may have to pay a premium for it because we will have to buy it back from the U.S. It does not make any sense.
Consumers, the general public, want legislation that will protect the viability and, more important, the reliability of prices in their energy use. We can do that by looking at a long term strategy with regard to the environment, by looking at how we want to move forward with producing power that is more sustainable, power with a vision, power that is multifaceted. Narrowing the scope of liability and allowing people to derive a lot of profit out of this while not being at risk for anything is the wrong way to go.