Bill C-27 (Historical)

Nuclear Fuel Waste Act

An Act respecting the long-term management of nuclear fuel waste

Nuclear Fuel Waste Act

[Gurmant Grewal, Canadian Alliance, Surrey Central, BC]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the people of Surrey Central, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-27, an act respecting the long term management of nuclear fuel waste.

The bill, if passed, would require the creation of a long term management strategy for the disposal of nuclear fuel waste in an integrated, comprehensive and cost effective manner. To do this, major owners of nuclear waste would have to create a waste management organization to implement the long term strategies for handling, treatment, conditioning or transporting for the purpose of storage or disposal of nuclear fuel waste.

Nuclear fuel waste means irradiated fuel bundles removed from a nuclear fission reactor. This nuclear waste management organization has the responsibility to determine fiscally responsible and realistic options for the long term management of nuclear fuel waste. It would also direct the organization to establish trust funds to finance the above activities.

The act applies to Atomic Energy of Canada Limited or its assignees and nuclear energy corporations, which would deposit the following respective amounts to its trust fund within 10 days after the act comes into force: Ontario Power Generation, $500 million; Hydro-Quebec, $20 million; New Brunswick Power Corporation,$20 million; and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, $10 million. Then additional amounts of $100 million, $4 million, $4 million and $2 million per year respectively from all these four organizations will be deposited until the minister approves the amount of the deposit.

I have some concerns regarding the bill. The fee or cost of managing seems to be vague, unclear and perhaps unjustified. I am concerned as to how they have calculated the amounts and for how long the deposits have to be made. I have no idea and the bill does not explain anything about that.

According to Bill C-27, the governor in council would decide as to the best approach to be implemented by the organization. I am concerned that the decision should be based on management and scientific facts with no political interference.

The other concern I have, which has raised eyebrows, is that the nuclear industry has stood alone for many years and no such levies were in place within the industry for disposal of their hazardous wastes. Whereas, other industries that have to deal with the cleanup of hazardous and potentially dangerous or damaging materials have to have similar funds as a condition of their licensing,

Why has this weak Liberal government been neglecting this important safety issue since 1993? It seems to be in line with the character, culture and attitude within the Liberal government to neglect, as it has with many other important issues, such as the budget, health care, defence, organized crime, terrorism, national security, the safety and welfare of Canadians and many other issues.

The nuclear industry cannot operate without the proper checks and balances in place.

This legislation would bring the nuclear industry, which deals with this most serious and dangerous stuff, at par with other industries in providing overall safety for Canadians, which has not been a priority for the government for so many years.

The other concern I have is that the government and the waste management organization must be focused on results, not just on the process. The organization would create an advisory council to examine the study, the triennial reports that have to be submitted to the minister and comment on that study.

I am also concerned that the advisory council would be appointed by the governing body of the organization and nominated by government to include representatives of local regional governments and aboriginal organizations. Based on the track record of the Liberal government, I am afraid it will be used again as a patronage opportunity for failed Liberal candidates or their friends.

Another concern I have is highlighted in the Ottawa Sun of today. We have about 22 reactors in Canada. They were placed on enhanced security within hours after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S.A. Could any of them withstand an attack similar to the World Trade Center attack? The fear is that an airborne attack could rupture the containment buildings designed to isolate radioactive materials. The president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has assured, according to the article, that the measures in place are adequate but are under evaluation.

Atomic Energy of Canada has imposed a secure airspace of 3,000 feet, or 3.5 nautical miles, around the research campus at Chalk River. However, the industry is in denial about the threat of airborne attacks, which the reactors were never designed to withstand.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission said that there was no identified terrorist attempt against Canada. However, the crown corporation is in contact with the RCMP and CSIS on a daily basis. The interesting point is the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has conceded that its reactors are vulnerable to airline crashes, but Canadian officials are not making such admissions. Canadian officials are declining comment.

I am concerned that in such an unfortunate event how well equipped are we to handle such circumstances?

I hope and expect that the above concerns will be addressed. The bill does not yet address those concerns. The government has finally realized that a trust fund at the expense of the nuclear industry merely asks those who make the mess to clean up the mess and to pay for it.

The riding of Surrey Central, which I proudly represent, could have used something like a nuclear safety commission 25 years ago when it first became the temporary home of some 4,000 tonnes of radioactive material. For over two and a half decades, my constituents have been exposed to radioactive and toxic material in the heart of the community of Newton in Surrey.

In June 1972 a firm in Surrey was licensed by the federal government to import niobium ore containing radioactive thorium. The imported ore was used in smelting operations. Tonnes of hazardous waste was ignored and left unattended in the open until 1976. It was 1984 before the federal government accepted responsibility for it.

I heard from people in that area that children played on it. Some unconfirmed reports said that some cows from a nearby dairy farm died.

The feds forgot about the radioactive waste again until October 1989 when a special task force was appointed, on a volunteer basis, to deal with the storage, handling and disposal of the hazardous, unprotected piles of smelter slag and contaminated soil in a corner at 7800 Anvil Way in Newton. As well, there were barrels of concentrated radioactive material rusting in Thornton yard of the CN rail. I went there and took pictures. The barrels were rusted and contained concentrated radioactive material.

The slag, which was left in the open, remained there for a number of years. This material was also used as a filling when a building was constructed on that site.

The Surrey citing task force consulted with local, provincial and federal government. The federal government appointed, on a voluntary basis, an organization comprised of two people to look after this radioactive material. It stored the material in a concrete bunker for 25 years, calling it temporary storage.

The federal voluntary task force could not find a permanent solution to the problem. Communities it contacted, including remote and abandoned uranium mines, refused to accept that material. It is a crime to have kept that hazardous material in the heart of the country's fastest growing city, Surrey.

As a member of the foreign affairs committee then dealing with nuclear proliferation, I found out about this neglected storage site. After some research and consultation, I lobbied for three years and personally followed up with the Minister of Natural Resources until that 4,000 tonnes of dangerous material was finally removed from Surrey.

Some of it has gone to Chalk River, Ontario while more was finally dumped in Arlington, in Washington state.

The land slag was also excavated under the building. The building was supported and the material was excavated from under the building. The whole operation was very expensive to taxpayers and has been kept kind of secret by the federal government.

I am happy that finally my pressure had results and the Minister of Natural Resources was helpful in dealing with the issue. I thank him for that.

The longer the delay, the higher the cost and the more potential for harm and danger in the community. I knocked on doors in that area to find out how people felt, but many did not even know about it. The federal government did not educate the community members about that material.

That is a shameful story highlighting carelessness and neglect by the federal government in dealing with hazardous and radioactive waste in Surrey.

In conclusion, on behalf of the people of Surrey Central, I will be paying very close attention to the work of the proposed waste management organization to see that the travesty that occurred in my riding does not happen anywhere else.

I urge government members as well as the minister to look seriously at the issue, to look into the concerns and to make possible amendments if they can. While I support the bill because it is a step in the right direction, even though it is a baby step, I will also say that the measures such as those contained in the legislation obviously are long overdue.

[Gerald Keddy, Progressive Conservative, South Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I will preface my comments with a few remarks relating to the speech of the hon. member for Windsor--St. Clair. A few other issues need to be recognized. Many alternative forms of energy including solar and wind are being continually developed. If we had put the kinds of dollar into those industries that we put into other industries in the energy sector, perhaps we would have a reasonable alternative now. However I think we must admit the fact that it is not here today or is it likely to be here tomorrow.

Another absolute issue we have to look at is the fact that the world, not just the western world as we know it, is more dependent on nuclear energy and will become even more dependent on nuclear energy not only in 2001 but in the next decade.

The energy requirements of the Indian subcontinent of Pakistan, China and Southeast Asia will have to be met for a growing and burgeoning population. Those countries intend to build 70 to probably somewhere around 180 nuclear reactors in the next 10 to 20 years just to meet the demand for electricity.

I do not think we can pretend that we do not have a issue, not just for Canada but for the entire world, in terms of finding a way to store nuclear waste safely or to change it into a safe form.

It is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-27, the nuclear fuel waste act. Nuclear fuel waste is an issue for all Canadians, even though only three provinces have nuclear power stations. Nevertheless the implications of nuclear fuel waste have long term and widespread impacts.

It is the fear factor associated with nuclear power and nuclear waste which continues to thwart attempts to deal with the issue solely from a technological and a technical standpoint. Unless Canadians can be assured of the relative safety of nuclear power it will be difficult to reach any kind of consensus on how and where to store or to dispose of radioactive waste.

I have seen the fear associated with radioactivity and radioactive materials close up. Nova Scotia contains significant amounts of uranium. In the late 1970s some exploration was undertaken to determine the feasibility of mining uranium near my hometown of New Ross. The thought of uranium mining being undertaken in the area caused a public outcry.

Although the tests determined that the site was not economically feasible, even at the inflated rates of the time of $40 per pound compared with today's value of $8 per pound it demonstrated the fear associated with radioactive materials.

Since the early 1980s there has been a moratorium on uranium mining in Nova Scotia. We are not even talking about radioactive waste; we are just talking about uranium mining. While uranium is unlikely to be mined in Nova Scotia, Atlantic Canadians are well aware of the issue of nuclear fuel waste because of the presence of the Point Lepreau nuclear power station in New Brunswick, located in the riding of my colleague from Saint John.

Combined with the nuclear power station in Quebec and a further 20 nuclear power stations in Ontario, this brings Canada's total to 22. With the fuel waste produced by each of these power plants as they use nuclear fuel bundles to produce electricity, the issue of how to deal with the waste produced is long overdue. In fact the government has been studying the issue for decades, with the most recent report being in 1998.

It is long overdue for the federal government to introduce legislation addressing the matter. The 1998 report of the nuclear fuel waste management and disposal concept environmental assessment panel laid the groundwork for appropriate storage and disposal concepts. It was limited, however, in its examination of the waste management proposals, tasked only with the examination of Atomic Energy of Canada's limited proposal of deep geological disposal and not asked to propose other methods for long term management of nuclear fuel.

The panel, often referred to as the Seaborn panel after its chair Dr. Blair Seaborn, laid out a number of recommendations respecting the long term management of nuclear fuel waste. One of the comments in the report that has been picked up on extensively is the statement that while deep geological disposal is technically sound, it is not acceptable from a social standpoint to many people.

Senator Lois Wilson, a member of the panel at the time, stated that this observation had been misconstrued or misread. Instead of saying that such a disposal method is technically sound, the panel was trying to state that the definition of safety had both a technical and a social aspect. In this regard the method does not meet the criteria on safety. That is the way I understood Senator Wilson's comments on the matter.

We can all appreciate the fear and the questions that Canadians have regarding the issue. We all know about the nuclear bomb from World War II and remember the meltdown at Three Mile Island in the United States.

On March 28, 1979, a series of malfunctions, mistakes and misinterpretations led to the worst nuclear accident in the United States when the nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island experienced a meltdown. Although the accident did not release significant amounts of radiation into the nearby area, the consequences could have been disastrous.

The disaster at Chernobyl augmented these fears. In 1986 the reactor in Kiev, Ukraine, part of the Soviet Union at that time, ruptured the containment structure and sent radiation through the northern hemisphere. As many as 75 million people were exposed to high levels of radiation.

I mention these points not to confuse the issue of dealing with radioactive waste but to further submit the fear of general public about radioactivity and the nuclear sector. It is difficult to say whether this fear is valid and whether there are technological ways we can deal with.

Whether for war or peaceful purposes like power generation anything involving nuclear capability represents the unknown to many Canadians. However it also represents two of the reasons legislation dealing with nuclear fuel waste is important, first, to address the long term need to deal with waste so that nuclear power continues to represent a viable and productive energy source and, second, to establish a fund to ensure that if problems occur money is available.

Whether for compensation, repair or other extraneous matters, without an independent third party body to deal with waste management responsibility falls to the federal government. Already accused of conflict of interest because of the desire to augment sales of Candu reactors, the government needs to be open and transparent in its examination of nuclear fuel waste disposal proposals.

The Seaborn panel carried out public consultations throughout its study. Since then there have been discussions with aboriginal groups about possible deep geological storage within the Canadian Shield in northern Ontario. These discussions must be open and encourage debate and a thorough examination of all issues involved.

The legislation would establish a waste management organization that would report to the minister. It would collect and oversee financial contributions by the 22 nuclear power stations and Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. It would be an independent third party organization, but already I question some of the parameters or lack thereof respecting this organization.

It is important for all Canadians to be privy to information that affects their safety. This means information must be publicly reported on a timely basis. I will be expecting more detailed answers as the legislation is studied at committee stage. I hope the minister plans to live up to his commitment that no concessions would be made respecting safety or transparency.

Some experts suggest that long term storage and above ground storage containers could continue for extended periods of time, while others argue that the issue must be dealt with in the near future. Reports indicate that there are 1.3 million spent fuel bundles from nuclear power stations in temporary storage in Canada.

The waste management organization would be tasked with determining what storage method is safest. The legislation would be one step toward a long term storage initiative for nuclear fuel waste. As the world's leading supplier of uranium Canada needs to look at the overall impacts of nuclear power which includes nuclear fuel waste and its management.

I look forward to informed debate on the issue in committee. Like other members of the natural resources committee, I hope the process will be entirely clear and transparent, that we will be able to call informed and expert witnesses before the committee, and that we will take the time to study all areas and all clauses of the particular piece of legislation.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—St. Clair, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP is quite pleased to see legislation come forward on this issue, not this legislation in particular but at least some legislation.

If there is any area of the environment that speaks to the necessity of having the precautionary principle applied before an industry such as the nuclear industry is allowed to develop, this is it. It is necessary when one is considering the legislation to look at a bit of the history. As we all know the nuclear industry was an offshoot of the development of nuclear weapons flowing from research and work done during the second world war. It began to be used for non-war purposes subsequent to the second world war. We got our first small nuclear reactors in the 1950s and 1960s and in the process of doing that began to identify even back then the very serious problem of the byproduct, nuclear waste.

However identifying the level of seriousness seems to have come to the attention of governments only after the huge expansion that occurred in the 1970s, particularly in Canada with the Candu reactors. At that point there was a recognition that we would have to do something about nuclear waste.

Because we allowed the continuous development of this industry, what did not happen at that point was an economic assessment of the real cost of nuclear power. In fact, we have not even done that up to this point. That is one of the problems with the bill. However, we did allow the expansion and there was very substantial expansion through the 1970s.

At the end of the 1970s the atomic energy commission of Canada was prompted to begin to seriously look at what it would do with all the nuclear waste from the nuclear plants. Over a period of extensive research and time, it came up with a proposal which was, in simple, man on the street terms, to dump it. It put some fancy words around it and talked about deep rock burial. That is the phraseology. In essence, they wanted to dump it in the Canadian Shield.

As this proposal came forward, as I think any sensible person could imagine it got a less than overwhelming response from local communities that might have been the site of this dump. Because the reaction was so strong from the Canadian citizenry, a commission was appointed, chaired by Blair Seaborn, and it became generally known as the Seaborn commission. The commission studied this over an extensive period of time, almost 10 years, and reported in 1997 with a very damning summary of the AECL proposal.

The government, in response to that, to a great extent rejected the commission but pretends now in the legislation to allow for the implementation, or at least the potential implementation, of the recommendations from that commission.

To some significant degree the bill is a fraud if its intent is in fact to implement the Seaborn commission recommendations because it does not do that. What it does do is allow the industry to make all of the decisions, to do that in a relatively short period of time given the level of intense research required and probably using a methodology that will be relatively inexpensive for the industry but totally unsatisfying for the Canadian public.

As I said when I began my remarks we welcome the legislation coming forward because this issue has to be addressed by the House. We will be supporting the bill on second reading to have it passed on for committee review. The work in that committee hopefully will get us to a result by way of significant amendments that in fact would make the treatment of nuclear waste something in which Canada can be a leader in the world, as opposed to what we see in the bill now.

I want to deal with a few of the specifics in the bill that we will be looking at and attempting to alter at committee stage. The first, which I have already made reference to, is the composition of the decision making body. The bill provides for the establishment of a waste management organization. We welcome that. It was part of the Seaborn recommendations that a body of that nature be established. What we are opposed to and will attempt to get changed is the composition of the panel that will form that commission, because as it stands now the only people who would be on it are from the industry. Those people who need regulation would be doing the regulating.

The Seaborn commission recommended that there be experts on that panel, that it involve extensive public consultation, that it be at arm's length and independent from the utilities that provide the services and the product, from the other vested interests or offshoots of those utilities, and from government itself, in other words, that it be completely independent. We will be looking for those recommendations to be incorporated in the bill.

There is a second group that is established under the bill, advisory panels and committees. Again, that was recommended by the Seaborn commission. These would be more broadly based and somewhat localized to the areas where there are current nuclear facilities. The bill would restrict participants to being from just that area. In effect the local community would be given a chance to sit on these committees but would not be given any resources either in the form of personnel to act as secretaries or money for things like travel or hiring experts. The bill does not provide for any of this. Again, the Seaborn commission recommended all of that. In addition, any people from the outside who may be able on a volunteer basis to provide expertise would not be allowed to sit on the committees. We will be looking for some significant changes in that structure.

It is important to note that after all its research, study and consultation, one of the Seaborn commission's major conclusions was that even though deep rock burial may be technically feasible, not one community in Canada would risk accepting the nuclear waste.

The credibility of both the waste management organization and the advisory councils is extremely important. Ultimately, the only way nuclear waste will be adequately dealt with and dealt with to the satisfaction of the Canadian public, both generally and specifically in some of these communities, is for it to have absolute credibility. Bill C-27 goes in the opposite direction.

I want to spend a few moments on the funding for nuclear waste disposal. I had the opportunity to spend some time at the nuclear site in Darlington, Ontario, which has currently four reactors operating and four more that are idle. I spent the better part of a day looking at the system. The current system is simply that it is stored, first in water and then it is moved into containers, very high tech in both cases, but obviously short term in that it does not deal with the waste itself. It is strictly storage. That is the only methodology we have at this point.

The financing that is being recommended in the bill, I believe, and it is where there is some shortfall, is based on the original AECL proposal of deep rock burial. I am not entirely convinced that the proposed funding will even be sufficient to do that because of what I expect will be very strong opposition from whatever community in which the site may end up, if that ever proceeds.

However, I am convinced that it is clearly not enough money if we continue short term storage. The reason for that is that this waste has no end in terms of its lifespan. The best scientific minds in this field cannot tell us what the life expectancy is of this material.

We may be storing nuclear waste above ground or in limited, below ground facilities for centuries and millenniums, and that has not been costed into the bill at all. This is very clear from the dollars. We are not talking about peanuts. We are talking about billions and billions of dollars that are being proposed but the amount will be nowhere near adequate for long term storage. That is a matter that has to be looked at very closely.

If the government were serious about paying attention to the work done by the Seaborn commission, it would do a number of things in this legislation as opposed to the smokescreen it is creating here. If it set out the legislation along the lines of what the commission recommended, we could have a real independent agency, one that would be arm's length from the nuclear industry and from the government.

That independent agency would be entitled and authorized to look at the various options. This is another real flaw in the legislation. It really only provides for two options: the storage that is going on now, short term, or the deep rock burial.

There are other potential options. Extensive research has been going on over what is called a transmutation of the waste. It is believed there are ways of reprocessing it. This has not been done yet, I would hasten to add, but it is believed that we may be able to run the waste back through the system. At this point it would be very dangerous to do that but if it can be developed, it may reduce the volume of waste quite significantly and, subsequently, storage capacity requirements would be dramatically reduced.

The other research that has been going on has to do with using the waste as fuel repeatedly and eventually completely eliminating the issues of storage and disposal. The forecast of us ever being able to do that, either in this country or any place in the world, is long term. The point is that there are some other potential options to look at rather than just the two that the waste management organization, which will be authorized by this bill, are supposed to look at.

The other problem with the bill is that it only allows the waste management organization three years to come up with its proposal. Again, what we will be faced with is an organization that is completely dominated by the industry, which has already taken the industry's position of what it wants to do with it, and it will be given three years to come up with a recommendation. We already know what the result will. We will be going back to the original AECL proposal of deep rock burial.

As I have said, if the bill remains the way it is and is passed into law, this will be, to a great extent, a charade that the government has put us through.

I would like to talk a bit more about the options. We have heard some hair-brained ones. I thought that one of the most interesting ones, which was quite star trekkie, was to load the nuclear waste onto a spaceship and shoot it into the sun. With this option we would not only have Star Wars , we would also have all this nuclear waste that potentially could end up in our outer atmosphere. This is not an option that I think any reasonable commission would follow, but there are others.

A fair amount of research is going on in this area and it should be pursued. We are not the only ones doing it. A number of other countries are very active in this regard.

With regard to the timeframe, whatever the waste management organization eventually ends up looking like, there is no way it should be mandated to come back with a report within that timeframe. We have been working on this issue since the late seventies, although it probably should have been longer, and to mandate the organization now when we have this type of controversy, is grossly unfair however it is composed.

In conclusion, I just want to make one additional point concerning the whole issue of the phase out of the nuclear industry.

Although I think most of us are already aware of this, I want to bring to the House's attention that Germany has now moved on this issue. The German government has formerly reached an agreement with the industry that it will phase it out. A number of other countries in Europe are following suit. This waste issue with which we are dealing cries out for Canada to do the same. We have a major problem on our hands that may go on for centuries or even millenniums. We do not need to compound that by increasing the volume of this waste.

As I said earlier, we will support the bill at second reading to get it to committee and for us to make those significant changes. It is obvious from my comments that if those significant changes do not come forward we will be vigorously opposing the legislation at third reading.

Business of the House

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon we will continue debate on Bill C-15, the criminal code amendments. Time permitting, I would like to start with Bill C-6, the water export bill. If there is agreement, which I intend to seek very shortly, a take note debate would follow after 8.30 p.m., pursuant to requests made in the House by some hon. members, on the Prime Minister's forthcoming visit to the United States of America to meet the president.

On Friday, we will commence second reading of Bill S-23, the Customs Act, and if necessary, Bill C-6, the water bill.

On Monday, we will deal with Bill C-30, the courts administration bill, followed by second reading of Bill C-27, regarding nuclear waste.

Next Tuesday shall be an allotted day, in the name of the Bloc Quebecois.

Next Wednesday we will deal with the Nunavut water and surface rights bills which was introduced earlier this day.

As I mentioned earlier, I draw to the attention of House that there were some consultations earlier today. Given these consultations, I will propose a motion now to the House. However, for the benefit of House leaders, it will be slightly amended because I will have to remove some words in order to seek what I believe is the common ground. If the House leaders have the text of the motion, I will start in the second sentence, not the first. I move:

That, at 8.30 p.m. this day, the House shall continue to sit and shall resolve itself into a committee of the whole to consider a motion “That the committee take note of the planned meeting between the Prime Minister and the President of the United States” provided that, during consideration thereof: (1) the Speaker may from time to time act as Chair of the committee; (2) the Chair of the committee shall not receive any quorum call or any motion except the motion “That the committee do now rise”; (3) when no Member rises to speak, or at 12 a.m., whichever is earlier, the committee shall rise; and (4) when the committee rises the House shall immediately adjourn to the next sitting day.

Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2001

[Kevin Sorenson, Canadian Alliance, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to today to participate in the debate on Bill C-15, an act to amend the Criminal Code and other acts. I really feel as though I am standing to give two or three speeches.

This is an omnibus bill that has some very distinct different pieces of legislation within it. While there are some very good pieces of legislation in the bill, there are some very bad ones. The bill is the good, the bad and the ugly.

Bill C-15 contains a number of amendments which we would like to see and which we would be in favour. Some parts of the legislation were requested by the Canadian Alliance before the House recessed. In fact, the Canadian Alliance requested that this bill be split so we could deal with those pieces of legislation.

We asked for a split in this bill to ensure speedy passage of those amendments dealing with child luring and child pornography over the Internet, leaving the more controversial part, that is the section dealing with cruelty to animals, for further review and debate. Government members voted against our motion. As a result, this summer more children fell prey to sadistic pedophiles, hunting them down via the computer.

In late August the Canadian Security Intelligence Service released its 2001 report. Among many other findings, CSIS said that the Internet provided an easy means for sexual predators to lure potential victims through conversations in chat rooms. The report reads:

Internet chat rooms and web sites dedicated to the sexual exploitation of children enable the collection and dissemination of child pornography at a faster rate than past methods of distribution. Requests for assistance received by law enforcement concerning child pornography on the Internet continues to rise in Canada. The anonymity of the Internet provides opportunities for sexual predators and pedophiles to lure children for sexual purposes.

I will briefly point out that CSIS also found that across this country child prostitution continues to be a threat. We must take every measure possible to protect children in the country and throughout the world. I therefore fully endorse the section of Bill C-15 that makes it easier to prosecute Canadian citizens or permanent residents who sexually abuse while abroad and engage in so-called child sex tourism.

Under the new law, it will not be necessary to obtain a formal request for prosecution from the respective other country. Although I do in theory support such measures, I would be remiss if I did not question the effectiveness of this Canadian measure aimed at eliminating child prostitution throughout the world. I am skeptical about how readily and easily this attempt to bring Canadian citizens to justice can be accomplished through this legislation.

Bill C-27 introduced and passed in the House in 1997 made it an offence for Canadian citizens to engage in sexual relations with children in other countries, an offence for which perpetrators would be prosecuted in Canada. While this bill was before the House, the Canadian Bar Association as well as a number of prominent Canadian lawyers said that although Bill C-27 provided “an admirable statement of principle” it would be virtually impossible to enforce. Alan Young, a criminal law professor at Osgoode Hall said:

We've seen this before with Parliament enacting a law with very little teeth. They've shown good intent but it is just not enforceable law. Think about it. How could it be? How are Canadian authorities going to become informed of these infractions? Any extra-territorial law is going to be fraught with political infractions and be nearly impossible to enforce.

With regard to the Internet, Jay Thomson, president of the Canadian Association of Internet Providers, a group that represents about 80 of Canada's largest Internet service providers, welcomed provisions of Bill C-15 saying that it would make life a lot easier for his group by putting the onus on the judges to define what was and what was not child pornography. Once a judge ordered a site or a link deleted, it would be easy for the provider to do so, according to Mr. Thomson.

The new bill would also give judges the ability to order the confiscation of any equipment, including computers, used in the commission of child pornography offences. Judges would also be given range to prohibit convicted makers of child pornography from having contact with children.

As duly noted I am sure, I have spent half the time allotted to me to pour out accolades on this piece of legislation and to provide some bravo to the government for bringing forward some good sections of Bill C-15. I must however turn to the contentious portion of the legislation and be critical of a bill that wants to politicize parliament and be partisan in nature.

I am referring to the section of the bill regarding cruelty to animals, the part of the legislation that has made it impossible for us on this side of the House, especially those of us who represent rural agricultural ridings, to support the bill.

The Canadian Cattlemen's Association, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, the Chicken Farmers of Canada and the Alberta Farm Animal Care Association, to name just a few, have expressed reservations and concerns regarding Bill C-15.

The majority of these groups say that they support the changes made to the cruelty to animal section of the criminal code in the interests of modernizing and increasing penalties to those who would treat the animals with cruelty or undue care. However, as stated by the Alberta Farm Animal Care Association, the bill needs to specifically and clearly articulate the principle that generally accepted practices in the livestock industry fall outside the intent of the legislation.

What these groups are asking is whether the accepted practices in the cattle and chicken industries, which are generally accepted nationwide, fall outside the legislation.

The Chicken Farmers of Canada, representing close to 5,000 farmers in all provinces and in the Northwest Territories, believes it is necessary to protect animals from cruelty, but that the inadequacies found in Bill C-15 are such that they could bring into question the normal and legitimate uses of animals in agriculture. It believes that in its present form, Bill C-15 could cause some very serious consequences for animal agriculture and that there could be some nuisance charges stemming from the lack of clarity and upfront protection with the bill.

The Canadian Cattlemen's Association, an organization representing over 100,000 cattle producers in Canada, believes that Bill C-15 will create unwarranted exposure to prosecution of members, other livestock producers, hunters, fishers and medical researchers.

These agricultural organizations are asking that the government leave the animal cruelty provisions in the property section of the criminal code or provide the current upfront legal protections of lawful excuse in section 429(2) by removing the definition of animal or modify it to exclude the phrase “or any animal that can experience pain” and retain the words wilful and wilfully as they currently appear in the relevant offences.

These organizations are only asking that minor changes be made to Bill C-15, changes that will assure that ranchers, farmers and other animal owners will not be put at risk. Canadian Alliance members, particularly those of us representing large agricultural areas, will be pushing for those amendments as Bill C-15 proceeds through the justice committee and report stage.

We already have a very fragile agricultural sector. When we look at our agricultural sector today, such as grains and oilseeds, we see that it is weak. Look at the drought conditions, the grasshoppers and all the different things that have created a weakened agricultural climate. Look at what this legislation will bring in. The Canadian Cattleman's Association has said that this will jeopardize the practices of ranching and farming in Alberta and throughout Canada. Others have said that it will put at risk the ability to be prosecuted for normal practices.

We need to protect an economy that is fragile. We need to protect an agriculture that would be devastated without the cattle industry. We need to defeat the bill.

Points Of Order

[Bill Blaikie, NDP, Winnipeg—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough for raising this matter.

I would ask you, Mr. Speaker, to consider the argument that he made, particularly with respect to whether or not there is something in the nature of the way this standing order was used today that separates it out from the way it has been used in the past, the argument that the hon. member made for instance with respect to the use of this motion in respect of supply.

The government House leader argued that because it is only amendments to supply, it is not supply. However I think that was a very weak argument in itself. If it is amendments to supply, it has to do with supply, and therefore, Mr. Speaker, it merits your judgment as to whether or not the use of this standing order with respect to supply is in fact a new use of this particular standing order and one that is not in keeping either with practice or with your own understanding of that particular standing order.

Having said that, I would certainly want to indicate that I do not consider it consultation that somebody gets up to do something by unanimous consent, fails to do so and then some time later seeks to do it through this particular standing order. It may constitute some kind of notice but it does not constitute consultation.

I think it is clear that again we are meeting a Liberal deadline. There is some kind of cabinet retreat or something on Thursday and Friday, so we are faced with the use of this particular standing order.

The government has been willing to make its own sacrifices. It dropped Bill C-6. It does not want that any more. It also dropped Bill C-27. This has been one of the more unproductive sessions. Not only did we lose all the things that the government said it was going to do when it called the election, but it did not even get around to the things that were dropped, because now we are dropping them for some other Liberal deadline.

I know you want me to get to the point of order, Mr. Speaker, and I will. It seems to me that what is at stake here is the nature of this particular standing order itself. I remember when it was brought in, I believe in 1991. At that time I remember speaking to this particular change in the standing orders. If I remember correctly, I think I referred to it as a sort of parliamentary uber-menschen clause, and the way in which the government saw itself, as Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment , rising above the ordinary moral limits, as Raskolnikov did in Crime and Punishment , by killing the old lady just to show that he was not bound by ordinary morality.

Here we have the Liberals doing the same thing as the Tories did in 1991, showing that they are not bound by any kind of ordinary parliamentary morality or notion of what would be proper due process or procedure. They are quite prepared to just use whatever kind of authority they have at their disposal, which is what they did this morning.

You may say that 25 members could have stopped it. Certainly the parties that have 25 members will have to ask themselves why they did not. However this particular standing order was designed in a parliament where all parties had 25 members or more. Here again we see a kind of carryover from a previous parliament, that is to say, the parliament before 1993. I am sure when this was set up it was understood that all parties had at their disposal at least 25 members. The smallest party in the House was the NDP and we had 44 members. To say 25 members at that time was at least leaving open the possibility that if any one party objected, this would not happen.

Today we have a situation that is quite different, and certainly that standing order should have been changed by now. However, there are a number of other things in our standing orders that are still out of kilter because we have standing orders that were written to serve an entirely different parliament and entirely different political circumstances, that is to say, the political circumstances that existed prior to 1993.

I would ask you, to reflect on whether or not there is an opportunity here for you to rule, given the different nature of this parliament and of the previous parliament, that there is not something about this standing order that you might find unacceptable. Clearly it now has an effect on the rights of smaller parties which it did not have at its inception.

You, who are charged with the protection of the rights of minorities in this parliament and the rights of smaller parties, may want to consider whether you could make some ruling or give some advice to the House as to whether this particular standing order should be amended.

In doing so, Mr. Speaker, if your recommendation were to be followed, providing you make such a recommendation, we could remove from the standing orders something which is kind of a blight on our parliamentary life here: The fact that the government has this kind of power which it can use and has used on a number of occasions and which really makes a mockery of a lot of the so-called power that the opposition has.

Imagine a parliament in which no one party had 25 members except the government. Would it then be okay for the government to just deem everything to have been passed on division? I know this is a bit of a reductio ad absurdum argument but nevertheless that exists. That is a possibility within the standing orders if the Canadian public were to elect a parliament in which only the government had more than 25 members.

[John Reynolds, Canadian Alliance, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the two questions raised with respect to Bill S-15 are in regard to the need for a royal recommendation and whether the levy described in the bill is a tax.

The fundamental purpose of the requirement for a royal recommendation is to limit the authority for appropriating money from the consolidated revenue fund to the government.

In section 2 of the Financial Administration Act, appropriation is defined to mean any authority of parliament to pay money out of the consolidated revenue fund. The consolidated revenue fund is defined to mean the aggregate of all public moneys that are on the deposit of the credit of the receiver general. Only ministers can obtain the necessary approval from the governor general for a royal recommendation to appropriate these funds. The constitution stipulates that bills requiring or processing a royal recommendation must originate in the House of Commons.

With respect to Bill S-15, the money raised through the levy is to be collected by the Canadian tobacco industry. Therefore I see no requirement for a royal recommendation for the bill.

The second question has to do with whether or not the levy established through the bill constitutes a tax. In plain language of the bill, the bill speaks in terms of a levy rather than a tax. The purpose of the levy, as stated in the bill, is to meet an industry purpose beneficial to the industry, although the industry purpose also has public benefit.

The levy is imposed exclusively on tobacco products of whatever description and is to be spent in pursuit of the goals listed in the bill. Consequently, what is being proposed is a levy, not a tax.

Erskine May describes two criteria by which a bill proposing a levy is exempt from the financial procedures, including the adoption of a ways and means resolution that would normally apply to bills imposing a tax. The first criterion is that the levy must be for industry purposes. The second is that the funds collected must not form any part of government revenue.

Erskine May includes examples of bills from the United Kingdom which were regarded as levies, as well as those which failed to meet either or both of these two criteria.

There are recent Canadian experiences, as well. In this parliament we have the example of Bill C-27 which imposes a levy on the nuclear industry. The government felt it necessary to attach a royal recommendation to the bill and adopted a ways and means motion prior to its introduction.

In support of Bill S-15, we have the example of Bill C-32, an act to amend the Copyright Act, which was considered in the 35th parliament. Bill C-32 imposed a levy on the sale of blank tapes to be distributed to artists and artist groups as a form of royalty. Bill C-32 did not have a royal recommendation and the bill was not preceded by a ways and means resolution.

In Speaker Parent's ruling of December 2, 1998, regarding Bill S-13, the predecessor to Bill S-15, he cited the following:

The levy was of benefit to that industry since it permitted the audio duplication of copyright material for private use. This would enhance the market for blank audio tapes. The levy on the tapes was designated to raise funds by which owners of copyright material would be compensated for losses caused by private duplication of that material. The link between the benefit to the industry and the levy being imposed seems clear in that case.

To make a comparison of Bill C-32 to Bill S-13, the Speaker went on to say of Bill S-13:

Surely the lack of credibility referred to here is a function of our common sense understanding of the self-interest of the tobacco industry, namely, that as a commercial enterprise its primary goal is to expand its markets and thereby to increase profits. Young people would constitute the future growth potential for the industry's market. How could it be to the benefit of the industry to reduce smoking among the very people who would constitute its growth market? It is this implausible proposition that underlies the credibility problem to which the bill refers.

With all due respect to Speaker Parent, he may have been a competent school teacher and a respected speaker of the House but that did not qualify him as a director of marketing for a tobacco company.

I, myself, do not pretend to guess at the marketing strategy of those corporations. If the fate of the bill hinges on whether the levy is a benefit to the industry or not, we should get that answer from the tobacco industry itself.

The claim that the bill is not beneficial to the industry is false. The industry has been asking for this very bill. It has been running ads in support of Bill S-15. I have a copy here and I will give a copy to you, Mr. Speaker, at the end of my comments. At the end of the ad it states:

Imperial Tobacco and JTI MacDonald strongly support Bill S-15. We believe that it is consistent with our companies' view that underage people should not smoke and that the decision to do so should be an informed one made only by adults. We commend those who have worked so hard to help bring Bill S-15 towards reality and reaffirm our support for the Bill and the Foundation it would create.

There you have it, Mr. Speaker. The industry clearly supports the bill. If we go back and consider Speaker Parent's suggestion that common sense prevail, it is common sense that Bill S-15 is beneficial to the tobacco industry since it is going to great lengths and spending large sums of money on these ads promoting the bill.

The other weakness in the argument of Speaker Parent in this is when he said:

How could it be to the benefit of the industry to reduce smoking among the very people who would constitute its growth market?

Mr. Robert Parker, chairman and chief executive officer of the Canadian Tobacco Manufacturers' Council, stated before the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs on April 1, 1997, the following:

The manufacturers agree that youth should not smoke, period.

Don Brown, past chairman, president and CEO of Imperial Tobacco and chair of the Canadian Tobacco Manufacturers' Council, made similar comments regarding youth smoking to the Vancouver Board of Trade on October 1, 1998. He said “We believe children should not smoke—”.

Finally, Speaker Parent, in his ruling, overlooked the fact that selling cigarettes to minors is against the law. He was suggesting that breaking the law is a common sense marketing strategy.

In the event the Speaker is sympathetic to the point of view of the government House leader, I offer another alternative, and this will be my last point.

In our rules there are exemptions regarding financial matters. Standing Order 80(1) states:

All aids and supplies granted to the Sovereign by the Parliament of Canada are the sole gift of the House of Commons, and all bills for granting such aids and supplies ought to begin with the House, as it is the undoubted right of the House to direct, limit and appoint in all such bills, the ends, purposes, considerations, conditions, limitations and qualifications of such grants, which are not alterable by the Senate.

Standing Order 80(2) states:

In order to expedite the business of Parliament, the House will not insist on the privilege claimed—.

The standing order describes these circumstances as, and I quote:

—penalties thereby imposed are only to punish or prevent crimes and offences—

The purpose and the benefit of Bill S-15 would be to prevent young people from smoking. Since this is considered an offence, it would meet the criteria of Standing Order 80(2). I would think that the government and all members of the House would not, in this instance, insist on its financial privileges. Bill S-15 is aimed at significantly reducing underage smoking in Canada. What better reason is there than that.

Finally, the Senate Speaker, in his ruling of April 2, 1998 on Bill S-13 said that it was his view that, and I quote:

—matters are presumed to be in order except where the contrary is clearly established by the case. This presumption suggests to me that the best policy for a Speaker is to interpret the rules in favour of debate.

In this case I would argue that we should give the benefit of the doubt to the receivability of Bill S-15 and allow for debate and a decision by the House on a very important issue for the young children of this country.

Nuclear Fuel Waste Act

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to the bill on the long term management of nuclear fuel waste.

First, I would like to draw a parallel with the discussions on open line shows this morning. Yesterday, the finance minister gave his economic update. On a local radio show in my riding people were expressing their views on various elements of the minister's statement, including the debt.

Why am I talking about the debt? People where saying that over the past 30 years previous governments had been accumulating the debt. The government is now taking steps to pay it down as quickly as possible so that future generations are not stuck with reimbursing the amounts borrowed by previous generations.

What I want to stress here is responsibility. We must take responsibility for what we are doing now and for what we did in the past. When it comes to the nuclear world, nuclear waste in particular, we are told, depending on the source, that nuclear waste can last 200 years, 300 years or 500 years. Other sources mention 1,000 years, or even several thousands of years.

How can we deal responsibly with waste that will affect people throughout the world for hundreds, even thousands of years?

Since we have been talking about the nuclear industry for a number of years, I would like to step into the past and point out a few things about the background to the bill.

In February 1998, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency published the “Report of the Nuclear Fuel Waste Management and Disposal Concept Environmental Assessment Panel”, known as the Seaborn report.

In a 1978 joint statement, the governments of Canada and Ontario asked Atomic Energy Canada Limited to develop a concept for the deep geological disposal of nuclear fuel waste.

In a later joint statement, in 1981, they agreed not to go ahead with the selection of a site for that purpose without first holding proper public hearings at the federal level and submitting the concept to the approval of Canadian and provincial authorities.

In September 1988, the federal Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources referred the concept, along with a broad range of nuclear fuel waste management issues, for public review.

On October 4 1989, the federal Minister of the Environment appointed an independent environmental assessment panel to conduct the review.

At that time, the panel's mandate was to review a concept rather than a specific project at a specific site. The panel was also mandated to review a proposal for which the implementing agency was not identified, and to establish a scientific review group of distinguished independent experts to examine the safety and scientific acceptability of the proposal. The mandate also involved reviewing a broad range of policy issues. Finally, all those elements had to be reviewed in the five provinces concerned.

AECL describes its concept as a method of geological disposal of nuclear fuel waste in which the waste form is either used CANDU, or Canada deuterium uranium, fuel or the solidified high level waste from reprocessing. The waste form is sealed in a container designed to last at least 500 years and possibly much longer.

Waste containers are placed within the confines of underground disposal rooms or in boreholes drilled from the rooms. The disposal rooms are between 500 and 1,000 metres below the surface. The geological medium is plutonic rock of the Canadian Shield.

Such a facility would cost an estimated $8.7 billion to $13.3 billion in 1991 dollars, depending on the amount of waste to be disposed of. The panel conducted its review in several provinces, including Quebec and Ontario. It did environmental impact assessments and consulted the public, namely the natives.

Among other activities, the terms of reference directed the panel to examine the criteria by which the safety and acceptability of the concept for long term waste management and disposal should be evaluated. It also required the panel to prepare a final report addressing whether AECL's concept is safe and acceptable or should be modified, and the future steps to be taken in managing nuclear fuel wastes in Canada.

Here are some key panel conclusions. Broad public support is necessary in Canada to ensure the acceptability of a concept for managing nuclear fuel wastes. Safety is a key part but only one part of acceptability. Safety must be viewed from two complementary perspectives: technical and social.

To be considered acceptable, a concept for managing nuclear fuel wastes must have broad public support, as I was saying earlier, and must be advanced by a stable and trustworthy proponent and overseen by a trustworthy regulator. Therefore, for the public, the level of confidence in the people and organizations managing nuclear wastes is very important.

After applying these criteria to the AECL disposal concept, the panel came to a number of key conclusions.

The key panel conclusions are the following: from a technical perspective, the panel believes that safety of the AECL concept has been on balance adequately demonstrated for a conceptual stage of development, but from a social perspective, it has not. It also says that, as it stands, the AECL concept for deep geological disposal has not been demonstrated to have broad public support. The concept in its current form does not have the required level of acceptability to be adopted as Canada's approach for managing nuclear fuel wastes.

Then the panel considered the steps that must be taken to ensure the safe and acceptable long term management of nuclear fuel wastes in Canada.

Here are its main recommendations.

A number of additional steps are required to develop an approach for managing nuclear fuel wastes in a way that could achieve broad public support.

Among other things, we should issue a policy statement governing the management of these wastes; initiate an aboriginal participation process; create a nuclear fuel waste management organization, or NFWMA—but its better to use the full name, so we know what we are talking about; a public review of the regulatory documents of the AECB through effective consultation processes.

We also need to develop a comprehensive public participation plan, to develop an ethical and social assessment framework and to compare the options for the management of nuclear wastes.

Taking into account the views of participants in our public hearings and our own analysis, the commission developed the following basic recommendations to governments with respect to a management agency.

It was recommended that a nuclear fuel waste management organization be established quickly, at arm's length from the utilities and AECL, with the sole purpose of managing and co-ordinating the full range of activities relating to the long term management of nuclear fuel wastes.

Another recommendation was that the agency be fully funded in all its operations from a segregated fund to which only the producers and owners of nuclear fuel wastes would contribute.

It was also recommended that its board of directors, appointed by the federal government, be representative of key stakeholders, and that it have a strong and active advisory council representative of a wide variety of interested parties.

It was also recommended that its purposes, responsibilities and accountability, particularly in relation to the ownership of the wastes, be clearly and explicitly spelled out, preferably in legislation or in its charter of incorporation.

It was also recommended that it be subject to multiple oversight mechanisms, including federal regulatory control with respect to its scientific-technical work and the adequacy of its financial guarantees, to policy direction from the federal government and to regular public review, preferably by parliament.

Finally, the commission pointed out that until the foregoing steps have been completed and broad public acceptance of a nuclear fuel waste management approach has been achieved, the search for a specific site should not proceed.

If the AECL concept is chosen as the most acceptable option after implementation of the steps recommended above, governments should direct the NFWMA, together with Natural Resources Canada and the AECB or its successor, to undertake a review all the social and technical shortcomings identified by the scientific review group and other review participants, to establish their priority and to generate a plan to address them. The nuclear fuel waste management organization should make its plan public, carry out public consultations and then implement its plan.

As members will recall in the Seaborn report, the panel recommended that the federal government establish a management committee with the objective of finding solutions for nuclear fuel waste management and implementing them.

However there has been a change of approach and through Bill C-27 the government has decided to pass the waste management responsibility off to the provinces. In Quebec, Hydro-Quebec should be the one in charge of establishing a waste management organization. I point out that the WMO must establish, by appointing its members, an advisory committee to study proposals and make recommendations.

The idea is to establish a waste management organization whose objective will be to set out nuclear fuel waste management proposals for the federal government and to implement the proposal it accepts. The WMO established by Hydro-Quebec must then make available to Atomic Energy of Canada Limited and to any owners of nuclear fuel waste produced in Canada, at a reasonable cost of course, nuclear fuel waste management services as provided in the proposal approved by the governor in council.

When I gave details about Hydro-Quebec,, I must say that I was venturing an opinion and was interpreting a little. Would Hydro-Québec make recommendations? If so, would it do so individually or in conjunction with the group mentioned in the bill? This group is comprised of the Ontario Power Generation, Hydro-Québec, a New Brunswick power corporation and Atomic Energy of Canada.

Some aspects of the bill are not clear. For example, we presume that all these stakeholders will work on a nuclear waste management policy but we can also presume that this would be done individually.

As for financing, the nuclear energy corporations, such as Hydro-Québec and Atomic Energy of Canada, would individually or jointly, as I said earlier, create a trust fund that would be used for implementing the approved waste management proposal.

Under the bill, Hydro-Quebec would have to pay, 10 days after the day on which the bill came into force, $20 million for its fund, and $4 million in each subsequent year. Afterward, the waste management organization, Hydro-Québec, would be able to propose shares to the federal government.

We also know that there is interest on any late payment. I suppose members know about this. We all get into situations where payments are due but not in arrears, of course. If the funds or the interest are not paid, the bill provides for fines not exceeding $300,000 for each day on which the offence is committed.

In this trust, the first withdrawal of funds must be for an authorized construction or storage activity. The funds must be used to implement the proposal approved by the minister.

Examination of the bill shows that the proposal to the minister should include three management approaches, particularly concerning the following: disposal in the Canadian Shield; storage on site at nuclear plants; centralized storage, either above or below ground; a comparison of the benefits, risks and costs taking into account the economic area to be determined; a description of management services; an implementation plan; a timeframe, and especially a program for public consultation and an annual financing formula for policy implementation.

However there is a hitch in the bill, which provides, as I read it and I think that I am right, that only the minister can hold public consultations. As we know, consultation is crucial because we also know that the capacity to rely on those who will manage nuclear waste is just as crucial.

Of course the waste management organization will have to submit an annual report of its activities. The form, the updated estimated total cost, the financing formula, the amount of the deposit to be paid, of course, and the amount of the final guarantees to be included in the annual report must be approved by the minister.

All these reports will be tabled and the minister will make a public announcement in this regard. Let me repeat that this report still provides for fines of $50,000 to $300,000 per day of violation. Should we consider that as an incentive for the tabling of these reports on time? I think so. Are the fines too high given the importance of the reports to be tabled? It is a question worth asking. The members will answer if they want to.

The Canadian government is the only one that regulates the nuclear industry. It has invested more than $5 billion in this area over the years and approximately $150 million a year since 1994, whereas all the other countries of the world, even those that use nuclear energy the most, are reviewing their use of this type of energy and are even thinking about progressively decommissioning their nuclear power plants and opting for alternative energy sources.

The Liberal government is determined to promote this type of energy as an interesting alternative to fossil fuels, which create more pollution in spite of the virulent public opposition and the major problem of radioactive waste. Last year, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited estimated that it would cost $377 million to decontaminate its plants and dispose of the waste.

However, the Seaborn panel clearly indicated in 1998 that the estimated cost of a long term nuclear waste management facility ranged from $8.7 billion to $13.3 billion in 1991 . Today, the amount is estimated at $15 billion for most countries, such as France and the United States.

Therefore, the amount of $20 billion, plus $4 million annually for Quebec, raises questions in our minds. Will it be enough? In November 1999, at a meeting of the parties to the convention on climate change held in Bonn, Germany, Canada proposed a plan that would give emission credits to countries that export nuclear reactors, which would enable Canada to meet its targets indirectly without reducing its own emissions.

Despite growing opposition from the people, Canada is continuing down the nuclear path instead of favouring renewable energy and adopting strong policies for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

During the last election campaign, the Bloc Quebecois promised to suggest that the federal government cancel any funding to the nuclear fission industry and that the $150 million that go to that industry every year be retargeted for research and development in the area of clean energy.

Since this opens the door to exporting nuclear waste, one has to wonder if the government really understands the public's opposition to this type of project.

On the subject of importation, in a previous committee sitting, I had the opportunity to discuss with officials from the Department of Natural Resources.

I asked one of them, with respect to importing nuclear wastes, if the waste management organization were to find relatively good solutions—being taken for granted, of course, that we support nuclear projects and therefore consider that the proposals are relatively good—should we fear that nuclear waste might be imported to get a better return on our investment in various waste management programs or projects that Canada might implement?

This is a major risk because in every one of our communities there are waste disposal sites for solid waste or domestic waste. We know what this is all about. When I was on the municipal council in Sherbrooke, we had a waste disposal site. There is one in my ward. One can imagine the problem it creates.

When it comes to the management of nuclear waste or any other kind of waste—of course technically they cannot be compared, although as far as a process is concerned it is the same thing—nobody wants it in their backyard. We all know that. We do not want to see waste imported because it has happened before. It has happened in Quebec and I am convinced it has happened in other provinces too. We should avoid it.

In view of the fact that often the only thing that matters for our Liberal government is money, I am afraid that at some time in the future waste will be imported to make our nuclear waste management system more profitable.

It is something we must keep in mind because the official from the Department of Natural Resources told me that for the time being they had more than enough to do in dealing with our own waste. What concerns me, not to say scares me, is the fact that he said that for the time being they are not considering this.

When I am told “For the time being, we are not planning on it”, am I to understand that their plans may change tomorrow, next week or next year?

That is why the bill must really be transparent. All its details must be clear, precise and, to the extent possible, be assessed. Moreover, even though consultation is provided for in the legislation, we must never neglect to consult. The population must be consulted.

Even if the urgency is evident, we believe that public consultation—and let it be clear that we do not want the kind of bogus consultation that was held in regards to MOX and that lasted only 28 days—is necessary and fundamental.

Another thing will have to be closely considered. The bill intends to force Quebec or, more precisely, Hydro-Quebec to operate according to the proposal that will be adopted by the natural resources minister in Ottawa and to the criteria set by him. Is Quebec really in agreement with these criteria? That is what we will determine later.

We also have a concern about the fines provided for in the bill. Do members not think that the fines imposed for each day of infraction are excessive, considering that this type of bill always contains variable factors? We know that the bill contains provisions allowing additional delay, but the issue of fines is still of concern us.

If we look briefly at the situation of Canada's nuclear power stations, we find that the obligation to treat nuclear fuel waste is unfortunately something that the Bloc Quebecois cannot oppose, but we do strongly oppose the use of fuel and the operation of power plants using nuclear fission.

As members know, in his most recent report, the auditor general clearly indicated that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission needs to improve its regulatory regime for power reactors. Among other things, the audit pointed out that the commission does not use quantitative measures to rate nuclear power facilities.

According to the auditor general, the rating systems used are not always based on specific criteria but rather on the judgment and expertise of staff.

While we do not believe that the staff would be dishonest and is probably competent, we would like to point out that the auditor general said, and I quote:

The criteria for what is acceptable or unacceptable are subjective and could be misunderstood.

Moreover, as the auditor general pointed out in the report, CNSC faces significant difficulties in recruiting and retaining qualified staff. Combined with its current regulatory regime, which relies heavily on the expertise and judgment of staff, the lack of human resource capacity could impact its ability to function adequately in the future.

Considering that only a responsible approach is necessary on this matter, the Bloc Quebecois will support Bill C-27, while maintaining major reservations. The Bloc Quebecois will continue to follow the matter very carefully because there are major issues involved in this bill.

These issues relate to the huge economic investment required for a management regime based on the protection of the environment and of the health of Quebecers. The Canadian people and even the American people would be affected by this bill. While Mr. Bush is not giving a lot of hope on this matter and the Canadian government has a strange approach toward this, we consider it our duty to ensure first and foremost that the bill does not have negative consequences and that the issues will be carefully considered at all stages. At this point, we agree on the bill but we have very major reservations.

In conclusion, people need to have a good relationship with the main stakeholders, as, of course, with the federal government in its responsibilities on waste management. There must also be a trust relationship with the fuel nuclear waste management organization.

If it is possible to create this trust, we will get the support of the public. The public will have to be consulted, but it has to be real consultation and not token consultation, as I said earlier.

The bill will have to be very specific on the potential for importing nuclear waste. It must be clear that the waste management organization's sole purpose is to manage nuclear waste from Quebec and Canada. We know very well that nobody would accept nuclear waste from other countries, with all the risks involved.

Our responsibility today is crucial. We are making decisions that will have an impact on events that could occur in hundreds or thousands of years. Some people are used to managing without any long term vision but here we need to consider future generations, and much more than the next few generations, as we are talking about hundreds and thousands of years.

We will get a chance in committee to deal with various aspects of the bill and we retain the right to move amendments to Bill C-27.

[Keith Martin, Canadian Alliance, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure today to speak to Bill C-27, an act respecting the long term management of nuclear fuel waste.

The bill mandates the establishment of a long term management strategy to ensure nuclear waste is disposed of in a comprehensive, integrated and economically sound manner.

The bill has three key elements. The major owners of nuclear fuel must establish and implement a long term management plan for nuclear fuel waste. They also must establish a trust fund and make set payments to the fund on an ongoing basis.

We support the bill in principle although we have concerns. The onus to act should not fall entirely on industry. The government should have an observer capacity and should share responsibility for waste disposal. By and large, however, we support the bill.

There must be checks and balances to ensure waste is disposed of properly and safely. However it is a major challenge. There is an international aspect to the issue which, although not immediately evident, should nonetheless frighten Canadians. We are heading toward an environmental catastrophe not just next door but across the ocean. The impact will affect Canadians from coast to coast.

Radioactive waste is an intriguing problem because it lasts for tens of thousands of years. When we deal with radioactive waste we must make sure it does not come in contact with any aspects of our biodiversity or ecology for 10,000 years. The decisions we make today will affect generations far down the line. It is a very difficult problem.

Fuel rods used in nuclear reactors last about three to four years. Every nuclear plant deposits about 30 tonnes of nuclear waste per year. What happens to the rods? After three to four years they cannot carry on a nuclear reaction. However they still have a great deal of power. A lot of energy is locked away within used fuel rods and they can still be lethal to human beings, animals and plants.

People exposed to nuclear materials can be killed outright. However they also suffer from high rates of cancer, various malignancies and other profound health effects that dramatically shorten their lifespan.

We have about 18,000 tonnes of nuclear fuel in Canada. That will expand as time passes. The challenge is deciding what to do with it. How do we ensure public safety? That challenge will affect us south of the border as well.

A number of principles need to be followed. They are as follows. First, there must be a commitment to safety and environmental protection when disposing of nuclear waste. Second, nuclear waste materials must be accepted voluntarily by the host community. In other words, any community in which we deposit nuclear materials must give its consent.

The decisions that community makes could potentially affect it down the road. We do not know the long term affects of the disposal of this material. We worry about leakage and cracks in the tomb nuclear waste material is encased in. We do not know what will happen to that nuclear material 5,000 years from now when it will still be lethal and dangerous for human beings, animals and plants.

From the outset there has to be open communication of information with the communities involved. There can be no secretive or unilateral decisions made to deposit nuclear waste in areas near human habitation. The communities in the area must be made aware and they must buy into it. In fairness to the host community, a benefits provision in recognition of its service to the community at large has to be recognized.

Some very interesting experiments have been done on the disposal of this kind of material. I will talk about two of them. One is called the nuclear powered turbo reciprocating engine. Rather than burying the nuclear rods in the ground, can we extract the considerable amount of energy contained within those nuclear rods? That is an intriguing question. However the question also poses some very interesting potential solutions on how to use the nuclear rods by extracting energy from them for a longer period of time. That is where the nuclear powered turbo reciprocating engine comes into play.

This engine utilizes some of the remaining uranium within the rods. We use uranium-235 in nuclear reactors. However uranium-238, which cannot maintain a nuclear reaction, is in sizeable proportions in the effete rods. The rods can be bombarded with atoms which will break them apart and they will release considerable amounts of energy.

While the fuel rods in their original state are used for about three or four years in a nuclear reactor, they can be used for 13 to 15 more years, thus extracting more energy from the effete rods than what would have been received in the first three to four years. To use these rods for 18 years rather than 3 or 4 years is a very interesting proposal. When using the effete rods there is still the problem of disposal at the end of that period of time as they are still as radioactive as they were when they originally came out of the nuclear reactor.

The government should ask the National Research Council to explore this option with researchers in the United States who are doing similar research. It is a simple principle of burning rubbish rods and generating energy from them in a way that would be very useful for our environment. This would also lead to fewer rods being used if energy could be generated from the effete rods. Therefore the nuclear waste that we would have to deal with would be smaller.

Another option is called the fusion torch which was established some time in the seventies when the possibility of fusion reactions existed. For whatever reason there has been less interest in exploring the possibility of fusion. However the fusion torch can be used to burn the effete rods in a different way through fusion reaction.

While fusion is not a reality at this point in time, I would ask the government to have the National Research Council work with scientists in the international community who are working on fusion as a potential option for dealing with our nuclear waste problem.

What I am about to tell the House now is truly frightening. It is taking place in Russia and Ukraine and there is active Canadian involvement. We all know what happened to Chernobyl, the devastation that incident brought on the population there, and how radioactive nuclear tides were spread over a large area. What Canadians may not know is that there are many more Chernobyls in Russia and Ukraine. It is not only a problem for the people there. Radionucleotides are cancer causing and teratogenic materials that enter our ecosystem and bioaccumulate into other ecosystems far and wide.

I had the honour of participating in discussions with members of the government on this. We know many radionucleotides are bioaccumulating in the flora and fauna in the Arctic, and that is having a dramatic negative impact on the lives and health of the people living there.

A Mayak reactor, which is located near Ozersk in Russia, was supposed to be closed down. Lake Karachay, which is nearby, is the repository of nuclear waste materials from that reactor. The lake is the most radioactive place on our planet. If people were to bathe in the lake it would kill them. One would think the reactor would be shut down, but it is actually expanding, and it is expanding with Canadian taxpayer money.

Canadian taxpayer money is being used to maintain the Mayak reactor that is dumping radioactive waste materials into Lake Karachay. This is having a dramatic, negative and lethal impact upon the population there. Why is Canada funding a reactor in Russia that is dumping radioactive waste materials into a lake where people could be killed?

The goal has always been to shut down a lot of these reactors that are effete. In the last 10 years Canada has put almost $90 million into shutting them down but we now know that a lot of the money was not used for that purpose. These reactors are not only open but a lot of the money has gone into the pockets of the Russian bureaucracy.

Why is $90 million of Canadian taxpayer money being sent to Russia in good faith only to be dumped into the bureaucracy and into the pockets of private individuals, and then chewed up with no end result?

As a G-7 country, Canada committed almost $300 million to make sure those reactors were shut down, closed and cleansed of radioactive material. That has not happened. Russian nuclear weapons are being sent to the Mayak reactor so they can be reprocessed into MOX fuel, which is a radioactive and lethal fuel.

The Canadian government should be asking some tough questions of the Russian government, such as where is the money that was sent, why are the reactors not being closed down, and why is radioactive material being dumped right into the biosphere with no checks or balances whatsoever.

We were supposed to close the reactors down. Canadians will be shocked to know that we are funding 40 new reactors in Russia. However the reactors are using 30 year old technology that has been widely dismissed as being dangerous and unsafe by western standards. Why is Canada funding 40 new reactors in Russia that have 30 year old technology? We are exporting to the international community technology that is unsafe for us. Why are we doing this?

This will lead to more Chernobyls, more Mayak reactors and more nuclear waste being dumped into the biosphere. It will not affect communities in the former U.S.S.R. but it will affect all of us. Our government does not know where the money has gone or where we are supposed to spend it.

Little has changed in Russia in terms of nuclear reactors, cleanup mechanisms, and checks and balances that ought to be there. There are many other Chernobyl-type situations just waiting on the horizon.

Another aspect that would be frightening for Canadians to realize is that in Ukraine, which has a number of nuclear reactors, the government has stripped the regulating body of its monitoring powers. What is happening is that fewer checks and balances are being put in place. This will have a lethal and devastating effect not only on that country but on all former eastern bloc countries.

CIDA has said that the money that it sent has simply disappeared. Millions of dollars have disappeared. Money was also sent through Atomic Energy of Canada Limited to finance a program that would increase the operating safety of nuclear reactor plants. That was a great idea. Who could argue with that?

It also wanted to clean up Europe's largest nuclear power plant, the Leningrad nuclear power station near St. Petersburg, because it was unsafe. The power plant continues to operate. The money that was sent to clean up these operations and to close them down has done absolutely nothing at all.

CIDA also gave $500,000 to Russia's nuclear regulatory agency, GAN, but legislation currently before the Russian parliament will transfer the GAN's licensing powers to another group called Minatom. Minatom will be a self-regulating company beyond the reach of government. Why are we sending money to the Russian government to fund a regulatory agency that will have no powers?

We are sending money to an agency that will have nothing to do with regulations because the regulatory body has been moved to something else and will be a toothless tiger. It will have no checks and balances, no government regulation, no transparency and no public involvement. That is very frightening. Canadians would never tolerate that type of situation here.

Canadians would demand, and rightfully so, that the nuclear regulatory agency be monitored by a public transparent organization. What Canada is doing with its international aid money is sending millions of dollars into a big, black hole where it is not producing the intended effect.

I encourage the minister responsible for international development, when she hears about these issues, to take a very aggressive position. The Minister of Foreign Affairs should also make immediate interventions with President Putin and the Russian government to get to the bottom of it.

If he cannot do that, Canada should choke off all moneys going into these programs and should rally the international community to say that no more money will be sent to clean up Russian nuclear waste sites or to decommission nuclear reactors until we know where it will go and where the other money has gone. The Russian government has a great deal to answer for and has poisoned the good will of Canadians and the international community.

The last aspect I want to talk about is the issue of depleted uranium. This came up as a big issue after the war in the former Yugoslavia and the gulf war. A number of our soldiers came back with strange illnesses such as malignancies, weaknesses and depressed immune systems. No answers were found as to the cause. The Department of National Defence said very clearly that it did not believe it was due to anything in particular and that these people just got sick as a matter of course.

There is the larger question of whether or not depleted uranium, which is radioactive and can have lethal effects on individuals, contributed to the illness of men and women in uniform, not only those from our country but also other participants who came back from both the gulf war and the former Yugoslavia.

I emphasize that it is essential for the Minister of National Defence to work with the international community to obtain an answer for our soldiers. They deserve one. We must have an answer to determine whether depleted uranium has a negative effect, whether on impact the dust created that can travel for more than 100 kilometres has a deleterious and potentially lethal effect on the health of our soldiers. We have a responsibility in that regard.

Many people from around the world are looking at this question. If we work with our international defence partners on the matter together, we will have the answer for our soldiers who have been affected in some unknown way as yet by some terrible diseases.

Actually a group on the east coast has done some very interesting studies. It found residues of radioactive uranium in the bodies of individuals who came back. If my memory serves me, I believe residue has been found in the bodies of 12 of 20 individuals.

The department of defence has said this was not a problem. I urge the department not to take such a cavalier attitude toward the problem and not to completely dismiss it. It should deal with and explore the facts and the signs. It should not deal with it individually but work with the international community that is struggling to find an answer to this very important problem.

It is not only important because of what happened in the past but because depleted uranium is still being used. It is being used in the anti-tank ammunition of the A-10 warthogs and anti-tank weapons that are used on the ground. The number of countries that are using it has expanded dramatically over the last few years. Pakistan and India, our NATO partners, and many other countries are using DU munitions in their military.

This is not only a problem that has happened in the past. It will happen in the future. We must find the answer. A concerted international effort by defence departments and scientists from around the world will get to the bottom of it. We owe it to our men and women in uniform not only to find the answers but to make sure they are treated with more care and consideration. That is our minimum responsibility to them.

We support the bill. We recognize that nuclear waste is a very serious problem, but for it to be disposed of wisely we must have buy-in from the communities. There must be an open and transparent process for where it will be put, how it will be disposed of, and the tomb these nuclear materials will be encased in.

I also encourage the government to work with the international community to look at alternatives. I have spoken about the fusion torch. I have spoken about the NPTRE that can be used as another way of burning effete nuclear rods. We can use these things to decrease the amount of nuclear waste that we will ultimately have.

I encourage Canada to work with the international community to do it. It is another one of those problems that not only affect us but affects the international community and all those who are in possession of nuclear reactors.

We have to deal with former U.S.S.R. countries to find out where the tens of millions of dollars have gone that we have sent to Russia and Ukraine for decommissioning nuclear reactors and other nuclear waste material.

It has not gone where it should be going. There are other Chernobyls on the horizon. People will be killed. Canada can play a very important international role with our other partners in this regard. We all have a vested interest in ensuring that nuclear waste is disposed of wisely. I encourage the government to work with all of us and the international community to make sure that happens.

Business Of The House

[Alfonso Gagliano, Liberal, Minister of Public Works and Government Services]

Mr. Speaker, we will continue this afternoon with the debate on the opposition motion.

Tomorrow, we will begin second reading of Bill S-24, the Kanesatake agreement legislation, and resume debate on Bill C-27, the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act.

When we return on May 28 we will complete consideration of Bill C-7, the youth justice bill. I will be seeking advice from members opposite about wrapping up that debate. As backup we would have Bill C-27, if necessary, and Bill C-19, the environmental legislation.

Around mid-week we hope to commence report stage of Bill C-11, the immigration legislation.

Thursday, May 31, shall be an allotted day.

Nuclear Fuel Waste Act

[Jacques Saada, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Following consultations among all parties, I believe you will find unanimous consent to adjourn the debate on Bill C-27 now.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Natural Resources and Minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board]

moved that Bill C-27, an act respecting the long-term management of nuclear fuel waste, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased today to present Bill C-27 for second reading. This is an act respecting the long term management of nuclear fuel waste.

The nuclear energy option has been part of Canada's energy supply mix for over a quarter of a century. Canada and, in particular, Ontario have benefited from this production. With these benefits, however, comes the responsibility of properly managing the resulting waste.

The waste in question is solid fuel bundles discharged from reactors built with our own Canadian Candu technology. Existing waste is currently stored safely at the reactor sites and await a long term management strategy. The development and control of the nuclear energy option falls under federal jurisdiction and the Government of Canada has a duty to assume its responsibilities in this area, which includes the very critical matter of oversight functions.

The proposed legislation in Bill C-27 is a major step forward in dealing with the management of nuclear fuel waste in Canada over the long term. The bill is the culmination of many years of research, environmental assessment and extensive consultations with stakeholders, including waste owners, the provinces, the public and aboriginal organizations.

Canadians want a solution to this issue and are looking to the Government of Canada to establish a clear, fair and comprehensive strategy to make effective progress. Bill C-27 provides a legal framework for such a strategy and sets the course for years to come.

This federal initiative builds on the government response to the nuclear fuel waste and disposal environmental assessment panel. The panel, also known, for short, as the Seaborn panel, carried out a comprehensive, decade long review while consulting with Canadians from Saskatchewan to New Brunswick. I commend the panel on its efforts to come to grips with this very important issue.

In March 1998, the panel submitted its recommendations to the Government of Canada. In December 1998, the Government of Canada provided its response. In the response, the government agreed with the large majority of the panel's recommendations. In particular, the government agreed that federal oversight was needed to proceed with the long term management of nuclear fuel waste, and we stated three policy objectives for that oversight: first, that it must ensure that a segregated fund be established by waste owners; second, that it must ensure a reporting relationship between the Government of Canada and a waste management organization to be set up by the waste owners themselves; and third, that it must ensure a federal review and approval mechanism, including the issue of access to the fund.

In 1996 the Government of Canada announced a policy framework for radioactive waste which highlighted that:

The federal government will ensure that radioactive waste disposal is carried out in a safe, environmentally sound, comprehensive, cost-effective and integrated manner.

The Government of Canada has already provided oversight to ensure that the safety and environment of Canadians are not unduly affected by the nuclear energy option. This has mainly been carried out pursuant to the 1945 Atomic Energy Control Act which was replaced in 2000 by the new Nuclear Safety and Control Act. The proposed nuclear fuel waste act is now needed to complete the fulfilment of government responsibilities by ensuring that long term waste management activities are carried out in a comprehensive, cost effective and integrated manner.

Bill C-27 ensures: that all nuclear fuel waste to be managed in Canada is addressed under a consistent and unified approach; that all nuclear fuel waste owners fall within the same legal framework; that waste owners will start setting aside funds to fulfill all their financial responsibilities over the long term; and that waste owners will work together in complying with all relevant Government of Canada policies considering technical, socioeconomic and ethical aspects.

The proposed nuclear fuel waste act and the existing Nuclear Safety and Control Act would be complementary. Together they set the foundation for fulfilling federal jurisdictional oversight responsibilities for the long term management of nuclear fuel waste.

What are the main requirements of Bill C-27? First, the bill requires the establishment of a waste management organization by the main waste owners in Canada, which includes primarily the operating nuclear utilities. The organization would be responsible for carrying out government approved waste management operations. This is consistent with the regulatory philosophy adopted in Canada which places the primary responsibility for safety within the nuclear industry.

The safety record of our Canadian nuclear utilities is unparalleled. It is recognized internationally. These utilities understand the need for excellent performance and they understand the need and desirability of public participation in the decision making process. They must, in short, earn the public's trust. The proposed legislation would ensure activities of the waste owners and of the waste management organization are subject to public scrutiny and reviewed annually by the government.

Second, the bill requires the waste management organization to submit to the federal government options for the long term management of nuclear fuel waste. It is important to understand, and I underline this point very clearly, that no decision has yet been made on which management method will ultimately be adopted. The Government of Canada agreed with the Seaborn panel that more work needed to be done in this area before any decisions could be made. Bill C-27 provides a legal framework to carry out that work. The bill requires that the waste management organization examine three options: deep geological disposal, onsite storage or central long term storage. In addition, the waste management organization can propose any other option as well. The bill makes clear that the government will make the final decision on an approach to be adopted for Canada.

Third, the bill requires the main waste owners to put aside real money in a segregated trust fund managed by a third party. Canadians want to be assured that when the time comes, money will be available to fund all long term waste management activities and the Canadian taxpayers will not be called upon to shoulder that financial burden. This is entirely consistent with the polluter pay principle. Therefore, upon entry into force of this legislation, it is expected that deposits as prescribed in the proposed nuclear fuel waste act would start the accumulation of the money that is needed in the trust fund.

The challenge for the government in developing this legislation was to be fair to all of the stakeholders and to strike an effective balance in the public interest. I firmly believe that the proposed legislation fully meets that challenge and it is supported by initial reactions that have been received on Bill C-27.

The main owners of nuclear fuel waste have conveyed to me that they welcome the increased regulatory certainty provided by the legislation, that it provides them with a clear framework to fulfil their public responsibilities and that it does not create an unmanageable financial burden. Small waste owners will note that the new waste management organization would be required to provide them, that is, the small owners, with long term management services at reasonable cost.

In developing this legislation the Government of Canada of course consulted with the affected provinces, that is, Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. We addressed many of their concerns and showed as much flexibility as possible without compromising that fundamental point about federal oversight. The provinces recognize that the development and control of nuclear energy is indeed within federal jurisdiction and they are supportive of the direction that we are taking in this legislation.

Government oversight in the legislative scheme provides for mandatory transparency. This was recommended by the Seaborn panel and agreed to by the Government of Canada for increasing public confidence. For example, all waste management organization reports submitted to the Minister of Natural Resources are to be made public. The waste management organization must carry out public consultations at every stage of its process. An advisory council must be established by the waste management organization, whose comments on the organization's activities would also be made public. In addition, over the life of the project the government would exercise additional oversight as required through the Nuclear Safety and Control Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

Care was taken in putting all of this together to avoid overlap and duplication while ensuring that all requirements are fully met. Therefore, as recommended by the Seaborn panel, there are multiple government oversight mechanisms at play here which would ensure that the process proceeds effectively and democratically.

Aboriginal people have shown considerable interest in this important initiative. I have sought their active participation in decision making on the long term management of nuclear fuel waste. They participated extensively in the Seaborn hearings. I have met with a number of aboriginal leaders to discuss how they wish to be further consulted on next steps. This active involvement of aboriginal people has been recognized and ensured in Bill C-27.

In addition the government will continue to carry out related activities pursuant to its fiduciary responsibility toward aboriginal people and recognizes the valuable perspectives and insights of aboriginal peoples which can usefully inform and influence all future steps.

I would make the point that in any of the dialogue that I have had with aboriginal leaders, whether verbally or in writing, whenever we have discussed this matter we have not discussed the issue of where any particular future disposal sight might hypothetically be located. That has not been the topic on the agenda. What we have talked about is how they wish to be consulted in the process, how they wish to have influence on and input into the process. It has not been any form of negotiation. It has been a respectful solicitation of their advice and their insights, because they do have a great deal to offer in this decision making process.

What of the administration of the nuclear fuel waste act? Under the proposed legislation the main decisions would be made by the governor in council. The designated minister for the administration of the legislation would be the Minister of Natural Resources. As such, the Department of Natural Resources would be charged with carrying out ministerial responsibilities under the act.

The department would provide the focal point for interdepartmental, technical, financial, social and ethical reviews and for any independent reviews that might be necessary. The department would provide the government's direct and regular liaison with the waste management organization, the public, the provinces, aboriginal peoples and other interested parties. The department would ensure that the nuclear fuel waste act is complied with and thus would manage all auditing, verification, inspection and enforcement measures.

Bill C-27 was not established in a contextual vacuum. The evolution of policy was guided by consultations with stakeholders and by experienced gained in other countries, together with the invaluable work that was done by the Seaborn panel. The bill adopts a phased, step-wise approach allowing for all planned and executed waste management activities to be reviewed and for the public to participate effectively at every step along the way.

The process would take many years to complete and would possibly affect future generations. The legislation focuses on this generation's responsibilities but is flexible in allowing decision making by future generations if that turns out to be the case.

Canada can now move ahead effectively toward an appropriate solution for the long term management of nuclear fuel waste which takes into consideration not only technical safety matters but incorporates, in a very integral way, the social and ethical values of Canadians. I commend the legislation to the House.

Canadian Environmental Assessment Act

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I understand that there have been negotiations among various parties in the House on Bill C-19. I would propose that we adjourn the debate and then proceed to Bill C-27.

Nuclear Fuel Waste Act

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Natural Resources and Minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-27, an act respecting the long-term management of nuclear fuel waste.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)