Bill C-38 (Historical)

An Act to permit the resumption and continuation of the operation of the National Research Universal Reactor at Chalk River

This enactment permits Atomic Energy of Canada Limited to resume and continue the operation of the National Research Universal Reactor at Chalk River in Ontario for a period of 120 days despite certain conditions of its licence under the Nuclear Safety and Control Act.

Sitting Resumed

[Linda J. Keen]

Mr. Chair, as I mentioned earlier, the Nuclear Safety and Control Act was passed by Parliament in 2000. It specifically restricted the involvement of the commission to health and safety. This is the international standard. We talked earlier about what is happening around the world, and an economic regulator mixed with a safety regulator is not considered to be the safe way to regulate nuclear areas.

What Parliament did here is what is done around the world, which is to say, someone takes care of safety and someone else takes care of economics and other areas. We are certainly doing our best. We have modified licences of clinics to use different procedures and to import various areas. We have helped MDS with licences in terms of importation. We have reviewed to make sure that there is no restriction on movement of the goods to put in the new pumps. We have done whatever we can within our mandate, and we respect Parliament which told us what our mandate is.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB]

Mr. Chair, I actually find that response rather disturbing. I am not talking about economics, I am talking about people's lives, people who are sick, people who want diagnostic imaging, diagnostic help, people who want to get better. What I am hearing is bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo suggesting that public safety is not a concern.

I would urge the commission to take into consideration what we have heard this evening, which is that every day matters, that every day of delay affects from dozens of people, to hundreds of people, to thousands of people, to tens of thousands, and then hundreds of thousands if this continues.

There are engineers here who have said that based on the balance of probabilities, the balance is to restart the reactor, yet the commission seems to be resisting the attempts of this Parliament to save people's lives.

I would like to know from Ms. Keen, will she allow Parliament to exert its will to allow this reactor to produce the isotopes necessary to save people's lives?

[Linda J. Keen]

Mr. Chair, the commission and I as president have respect for Parliament. Parliament has provided the act that we put forward. We did receive yesterday a directive to the commission under section 19, which specifically says that we should take into account the health of Canadians. As soon as we have an application in front of us, we will take this into account when we are looking at that application.

I would just like to reiterate that the reactor is down because AECL kept it down. We have not had an application since November 10 to amend the licence or whatever. This directive will be taken into account immediately upon receipt of applicable applications. We will do that, respect Parliament.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB]

Mr. Chair, again my question is for Ms. Keen.

If there was respect for Parliament, I think it would have been reasonable for the Minister of Natural Resources to, as you say, hear through a report that this crisis was likely to happen. As I understand it tonight, there was no such warning.

We are in a situation where each day counts and real people are being affected. This is not about applications or just bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo. This is about people's lives. I wonder when the common sense light bulb turns on at the CNSC.

[Linda J. Keen]

First of all, Mr. Chair, this is not bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo. It is the law. If the commission goes outside its mandate, we will be taken to Federal Court for exceeding our mandate.

We are concerned about Canadians in the isotope field. We did not have an application or any reason; we did not have a regulatory licence in front of us. I certainly believe that communications should have been made and they would not necessarily come from a commission that has not seen any applications. I think Mr. McGee talked about that earlier.

The view of the commission is that we respect Parliament and Parliament set out the law.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB]

Mr. Chair, I think the will of Parliament, hopefully after this debate, is that the law will state that the reactor should be restarted to save lives around the world.

I would like to give the opportunity to the Minister of Health or the Minister of Natural Resources to comment on or provide assurance that the nuclear reactor will be as safe as it has ever been, if not safer.

[Gary Lunn, Conservative, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Chair, not only has AECL repeatedly given us its assurances that it can operate the NRU as safely or more safely than it was operating before, but under no circumstances would AECL ever operate the reactor if it believed for a second that it could not be done safely.

I believe we have also in testimony tonight the acknowledgement from the CNSC technical person that in fact if the NRU were to operate today, it would be even safer than it was when it was operating on November 18.

With that, I think we have come to a conclusion. I, too, want to give my thanks to all the witnesses. Some have driven through three or four hours of freezing rain, six hours with the snow. They have made an extraordinary effort to be here in extenuating circumstances. I think we all owe them our thanks.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[The Chair, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

I, too, would certainly like to extend my appreciation to the witnesses, but we are not done with you yet. We have another round from the official opposition, so I would move to the hon. member for St. Paul's.

[Gary Lunn, Conservative, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Chair, I rise on a point of order. I wonder if we could receive unanimous consent to go to five minute rounds, even if we had to do multiple questions to try to speed up the process.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Chair, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

I do not think there is unanimous consent. We have three members on the official opposition side at five minutes apiece. That is 15 minutes. They have 20 minutes. I do not make the rules here. I just try to enforce them. We have another round here and we will hear from the hon. member for St. Paul's.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Mr. Chair, I too obviously am very worried about the patients and how we can ensure that this never happens again, but as a physician member of Parliament, I am also very worried about the integrity of a regulation system that we in this Parliament put in place in the year 2000 to make sure that there would never be the need for Parliament to override the regulator or the people with the knowledge in terms of the size and picking between he said, she said in what we have had to do tonight.

I am still upset that the news has been that there was a licence given to AECL to run the plant based on a promise to fix all seven NRU safety system upgrades, and that they had to be fully operational, and that that commitment was made to the regulator. Seventeen months later, six of them were done, and yet I understand that AECL misled the regulator, and led the regulator to believe that all seven had been done. I think that it is only when on a spot check the starter pump thingamabob had not been put in place that everybody knew that that absolutely had to be the case.

Now we are in a situation where there is a public health emergency because AECL misled the regulator over this period of time. Now we are being asked to allow the facility to run just on one pump, when the recommendation from science and from the commission has been that it needs two pumps to make that tenfold difference between 100 times safer and 1,000 times safer.

I am worried that in a situation where we now override the regulator to allow AECL to mind itself when indeed it was not fully honest with the regulator on the issue of these two pumps, I hope that we as Parliament will be able to put in place something so that this situation never ever happens again.

From 2000 until now we have needed the regulator. AECL has said it likes having a regulator. Now we as the House of Commons are being asked to overturn the decision of a regulator. It makes me extraordinarily uncomfortable and I hope that we will make sure it never happens again.

Mr. Chair, I will pass to the member for Etobicoke--Lakeshore to ask a question.

[Michael Ignatieff, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Chair, this is a question for the regulator, Ms. Keen.

The Minister of Natural Resources some time ago gave an assurance to the House based on a legal opinion that the authority of the regulator under the Nuclear Safety and Control Act would continue to apply to Chalk River in the 120 day period, except in respect of the installation of seismically qualified motor starters on heavy water pumps.

If that opinion was added to Bill C-38 in the form of an amendment that would say, “Nothing in this act derogates from the authority of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in respect of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited”, that is, if that legal opinion offered by the minister was in the bill, would it enable the CNSC as a regulator to continue to discharge its regulatory duties in respect of the NRU at Chalk River?

[Linda J. Keen]

Mr. Chair, first I would like to make it clear that the CNSC did not receive a copy of that legal opinion. We received a draft copy of the legislation.

In terms of the legal opinion, that would be a great reassurance to the commission if that were correct, which we assume it would be from justice, and that would stand the test. As I prefaced my remarks, I did not have the legal opinion.

However, the second point is that we talk about regulating the pump as if it were a completely separate piece of the reactor. It is not. It is an integral installed part of it.

I must say that we agree that the installation of one pump is safer than not having the pumps but it will not be as safe as two pumps, which AECL is committed to look at within the 180 days.

All together, we would put in a regulatory program that looked at the whole area and, if this legislation is passed, which is the prerogative of the House, then we would hope that this would be installed as soon as possible and we would return to full regulatory compliance.