Bill C-5 (Historical)

Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act

An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident

This enactment establishes a liability regime applicable in the event of a nuclear incident that makes operators of nuclear installations absolutely and exclusively liable for damages up to a maximum of $650 million. Operators are required to hold financial security in respect of their liability. This amount will be reviewed regularly and may be increased by regulation. The enactment also provides for the establishment, in certain circumstances, of an administrative tribunal to hear and decide claims. Finally, this enactment repeals the Nuclear Liability Act and makes consequential amendments.

Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, whom I worked with on the committee, for her interest in this bill and for her interest in these issues generally. I share some of her concerns.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources suggested that the amendments would mean we would be back at the $70 million limit. No, the sum total of the amendments would mean there would be unlimited liability for nuclear accidents, much as there is in Germany.

We originally had taken a different position in the committee, but this is the position we could bring forward as an amendment, to have it as unlimited liability. If we take into account deletion of clause 21 and the deletion of the amounts referred to in subclause 21(1) in the two amendments, the bill would then refer to unlimited liability on the part of the operators for any damages incurred by their facility.

If there is unlimited liability, then oversight as to the amount of the liability is not required. The liability is set and continues forever as unlimited liability. It is up to the insurance company to understand the nature of unlimited liability. In the case of nuclear plants, there can be very different degrees of liability according to the locations of those plants.

That is the explanation and I hope that helps my colleague.

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member opposite for his explanation.

I would like to understand whether the proposed amendment in fact removes the compensation under subsection 30(1). In the current bill, a victim of a nuclear incident who applies for compensation has 30 years to do so. For example, if that person develops cancer 15 years later, he or she can, up to 3 years after he or she is diagnosed with cancer, apply for compensation.

Under the bill, a victim has this recourse for up to 30 years after the incident. Obviously, this is a very complex and technical matter. I have a hard time understanding why anyone would want to delete such an important clause that allows people to get compensation up to 30 years after the incident.

To my knowledge and in light of everything the witnesses have told us, I think that after an incident, repercussions such as illness or a condition can appear more than 30 years later. According to the witnesses, 30 years is enough time to report this.

I am surprised. Since this was not debated in committee and since we are seeing this amendment for the first time today, I would like our NDP colleague to elaborate on this.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be brief. I simply have a question for the hon. member.

According to the hon. member, what would be the potential effects of this bill if the government decides to go ahead and privatize some or all of Atomic Energy of Canada?

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is hard to comment on such projections. The debate is not over. We know that the government is currently conducting a study on Atomic Energy of Canada.

This morning the Minister of Natural Resources appeared before our committee. He told us that the study was not finished and that privatizing Atomic Energy of Canada is still a possibility.

This is certainly worrisome since there could be consequences to privatizing that agency. Nonetheless, I do not believe that privatizing Atomic Energy of Canada is problematic in the context of this bill.

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to support Bill C-5 in its unamended form, particularly in light of the discussion which I have been privileged to hear today in the House.

I want to pick up on the points that were raised by my colleague from Mississauga—Erindale, which had to do with a number of fundamental questions about the future of nuclear energy in this country which underlie this bill. I also want to echo what my colleague from Western Arctic said, that as we think about that future, we have to think about not only the interests of the nuclear industry, but also the interests of the whole population of Canada.

First, at the deepest level, this bill raises a number of very profound questions about the future of nuclear power in Canada, about the future of AECL itself, about the future of the nuclear regulator, about the future of Canada's own Candu reactor, the future of evolving nuclear technologies around the world, competitive technologies to the Candu reactor and, indeed, the future of nuclear power around the world.

It is evident that the great change which has occurred in the debate about nuclear power has been driven by climate change. This has radically altered the terms of debate. It has radically altered the way in which we think about these issues.

I can say that as a long-time environmentalist, I have been one of those who, over the years, has had reservations about the nuclear industry. I have moved from that position to one of being agnostic, but today, as I weigh the odds, the chances and the dangers, I now find myself on the side of a nuclear future for Canada. I believe that inevitably, nuclear power will be an increasingly important component of our national energy portfolio in the years to come.

Even if we funded and built no new nuclear plants in this country, Canada would have been having a nuclear future for a long time anyway. If we consider the very lights in this chamber, two out of every five lights in this chamber and in Ontario are powered by nuclear power. Forty per cent of all the power currently generated comes from nuclear generators.

Their importance becomes all the more compelling, because we know what the future of coal fired energy plants is in this province. That is to say they will be eliminated, which puts an even greater burden on nuclear power certainly in this part of the world for the future. There is no existing alternative source of energy on the scope and scale of nuclear power which can replace coal fired generating plants.

Second, the climate change argument puts us in a world in which we have to balance off risks. That is what we are here for. We are here to make choices. To govern is to choose.

On the one hand, a world in which carbon dioxide continues to increase exponentially along with other greenhouse gases puts us into a perilous future when we would reach an increase in world temperature of plus 2°C. This would take us to a place we have not been in many generations and millions of years, versus the well-known risks of nuclear power, which have been nuclear accidents, terrorist threats or how we dispose of nuclear waste. These are not trivial matters, but we have to choose. We have to decide what is the greatest peril and can we manage the risks on the other side.

Bill C-5 itself and the debate about its amendments is about risk management, about somewhere between zero liability and limitless liability. The committee came down and decided on $650 million, increasing it from $75 million. That is about risk management.

The problem with climate change is that this is not a manageable risk if we continue not to do anything about it. That is the challenge, that we are in a potentially runaway situation. Nuclear power must be part of the answer to that.

The third point I would like to make is that around the world we do see a renaissance of nuclear power. There are currently operating in the world 439 nuclear power reactors. They have been operating for a collective number of 10,000 reactor years of experience. There are now 200 new nuclear power plants being planned around the world. During the entire nuclear power period there have been only two accidents: Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Only one of those, Chernobyl, had fatalities associated with it, and there is no denying that was a major, major accident.

However, what we do forget as we think about risk is what happens as a result of the emissions from coal and power plants every year from mining. The number of deaths every year associated with coal mining so that we can actually power coal fired generating plants far exceeds the number of deaths associated with the Chernobyl disaster, and yet we never balance out those risks. That is what our job is as legislators, to balance choices, to balance risks and try and do the best we can for the future.

The fourth point I want to make is about nuclear waste itself. It is a problem which ultimately is technologically controllable. The exciting part, if I may say so, about nuclear waste is that it represents a potential future source of energy which we have not found a way of exploiting yet. There will be a new generation of reactors which will be able to extract from our existing nuclear waste energy almost on an indefinite, time unlimited basis. It is true we do not know exactly what that road ahead looks like of using nuclear waste for new power, but we also know that if we do not get on with change what our future looks like in a world of plus 2°C climate change. That we have a much stronger sense of. Again we have to choose; we have to balance.

My fifth point is that we have in AECL, a world leader, a company which has led the nuclear revolution not only in power but in medical isotopes and other areas. It deals with an evolving technology which has a tremendous future. Someone somewhere in the world, some industrial group is going to be developing the next generation of nuclear plants and the question is why should Canada, pioneers in this area, leaders for half a century, not be that somebody? Why should we leave it to France or to General Electric if we are going to be having a nuclear future in any event?

This brings me to the sixth point which is national interest. We have had interesting debate recently on a Canadian owned company, MDA, which developed RADARSAT and the Canadarm, as to what our national interest is in high tech companies. The government has said, and I credit it with this, that for things like space technology, this is in the national interest. I would argue that AECL is in the same vein. It is in our national interest to give this technology the resources and the support to take us to the next level and to take that technology to the world to see it not only in terms of contributing to the climate change debate but to wealth creation.

Finally, by passing Bill C-5, clearly we are anticipating a long life ahead for nuclear power in Canada, otherwise we would not have this bill. This might as well be a future where Canada is a leader. As the member for York Centre used to put it in his former life as a hockey player with the Montreal Canadiens as they got ready to play a game but they were feeling a little discouraged, “Well, since we have to play the game anyway, we might as well win it”. I think the same is true of nuclear power.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague really touched on some very important points in his speech, one of them being that we simply cannot deal with the nuclear industry in this piecemeal fashion, and that is correct.

We have many problems with the liability limits in the bill. We did not have a context in which to put that. We did not have a sense of providing leadership in terms of identifying the true cost of the industry to the consumer. This is one point for someone who is interested in the comparison of directions in which we have to go.

If we continue to hold the liability for nuclear accidents above $650 million with the Government of Canada, we are instituting a long term subsidy of the industry. We are not expressing the true costs of the industry in relationship to other potential new energy sources at which we may be looking.

Our amendment would simply create an unlimited liability for the nuclear industry, much as there is in many other countries. This would ensure that the cost to deal with it would be left with the industry. It would be reflected in the prices that the industry would charge for its product.

Is that not a better situation than continuing the liability of the government in subsidizing the industry?

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, three points were raised, and very valid ones, by my colleague.

First, he raises the question of establishing true costs. However, in any discussion of true costs, we have to compare, for example, what the true costs are of coal-fired electrical generating plants. Do we take into account the true cost to health when the particulate goes up? Do we take into account the true long term cost of global warming? Therefore, I am in favour of true costs, but they have to be compared on a wide basis.

Second, on the issue of subsidy, I think that is right. This is an industry, certainly through AECL and its research side, that needs to be subsidized. It needs to be controlled by the Government of Canada because it is such a crucial technology and it is also one which, if mishandled, has very dangerous and negative consequences. Therefore, I do not shy away from the notion of subsidizing a technology which takes us to a new place and will enhance our export capacity.

Finally, on the subject of unlimited liability, I guess the issue is if we were to change it from $650 million to unlimited liability, would we in fact destroy the possibility of there being a nuclear power future for Canada and the world?

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member almost was my university professor in Halifax. I do not know if that is his loss or mine. However, I was very enraptured by his comments, especially as I come from New Brunswick, which has put a lot of its power generating eggs in the basket of the nuclear power future.

Is the government and its climate change policy in step with the policy for nuclear power in the future and this bill in particular? What is it about this climate change policy of the government that in any way meshes with the nuclear aspects of his comments?

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, to the extent that there is a climate change policy of the government, I would be very hard pressed, generous as I am and creative as I am, to find a connection between a nuclear strategy and a climate change plan and also one in which we saw the wealth creating component of our future climate change plans as being part of the mix, that when we think of climate change and the future we have to think of technologies and how we can actually make money by being green and by doing the right think.

I would locate this larger debate about nuclear power in that context about innovation and wealth creation.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-5, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident.

These amendments are being passed off by the government and many in the Liberal Party as simply administrative changes to modernize an obsolete law. However, all Canadians should be very attentive to this legislation. It raises many questions as to who the government is really protecting through it and as to the future of nuclear energy in Canada.

Comments have been made by the government about fearmongering. I was one of those people who many years ago lived in Europe and experienced Chernobyl. I happened to be living in an area of France that received some of the fallout from that meltdown. I was one of those people who was very opposed to the nuclear industry.

Over the years and with climate change, at this point I am open to the idea, but it has to be done following very stringent regulations. This industry cannot be privatized. It cannot follow a financial bottom line. It is out of the concern to protect all Canadians that the NDP has proposed a number of amendments.

The bill, as was suggested, proposes a new compensation limit. The cap has been raised from $75 million to $650 million. It would be reasonable to assume that this limit is based on the risk and the implications to Canadians, but this is not so. The NDP brought forward an amendment to clause 22, which would establish a risk based on the consumer price index for Canada, as published by Statistics Canada, financial security requirements under international agreements and other considerations. The limit to the compensation is clearly insufficient and will be even worse in coming years.

Canada has not signed any international agreements on nuclear liability and has consistently resisted taking part in these agreements. The minister needs to take into consideration more issues than the CPI, such as the risk of an accident.

Risk has been defined in the following way, as being equal to the probability of something happening times the consequences. Using this actuarial definition, the probability of a nuclear incident in Canada is, as has been said, very low. However, when one factors in the catastrophic consequences of a nuclear incident, we see that then the risk is very high. It has been estimated that a nuclear accident would cause billions of dollars in damage in personal injuries, death, contamination of the surroundings and so on. The cap is clearly insufficient.

The U.S.A., for example, has a cap of $10 billion. Germany, which has experienced the fallout of the Chernobyl meltdown, has an unlimited amount. Many countries are also moving toward an unlimited amount.

Bill C-5 brings compensation levels up to an absolute international minimum. In the case of a nuclear accident, as remote as that might be, the damage would be catastrophic. That means with the level of compensation proposed in the bill, only a handful of dollars would be offered to Canadians impacted for loss of life, loss of limb, for contaminated property and so on.

In our opinion the legislation represents an almost cavalier attitude toward an energy source with the potential for catastrophic levels of damage and with no consideration of the risk levels as established by actuarial norms. We have proposed amendments to the bill to protect the interests of Canadians.

Earlier the parliamentary secretary said that the NDP wanted to have the compensation limit remain at the very low level in the earlier legislation. I must clarify that misleading statement because it could not be further from the truth. We feel that the cap proposed by the government should be unlimited. If one considers the NDP amendments together, they would have that effect. Following the principle of the polluter pays, nuclear operators should be prepared to cover a larger portion of the liability for their actions.

Canadians need to ask, why such a low limit? I will start by setting the legislation in the context of the recent events at Chalk River.

As with the legislation, it is important to ask whose interests the government was protecting when it fired the nuclear safety inspector for doing her job, or when the natural resources minister mused about having the private sector build a nuclear reactor to power the tar sands.

Last December's crisis at the nuclear plant in Chalk River gave Canadians cause for concern. It certainly has not inspired our confidence that the Conservatives will put safety ahead of profits.

First, for a decade both Liberal and Conservative governments ignored deficiencies in the operations of Atomic Energy of Canada, and that has been well documented by the Auditor General.

Second, Conservatives ran emergency legislation through the House supposedly to settle medical emergencies due to a long-time dispute between AECL and Canada's Nuclear Safety Commission, and that is now questionable.

Finally, the Conservatives continued with their trademark bullying tactics of silencing those who disagreed with them and fired the head of CNSC for stubbornly standing up for the safety of Canadians.

The way in which the Conservatives handled the Chalk River crisis raises concerns about whether safety is paramount to them.

Other worrisome questions have emerged about the Conservative privatization agenda.

The minister commented publicly on this. In the Globe and Mail, of November 2007, the Minister of Natural Resources said:

It is time to consider whether the existing structure of AECL is appropriate in a changing marketplace.

In an interview with Sun Media, the minister said:

It's not a question of if, it's a question of when, in my mind. I think nuclear can play a very significant role in the oil sands.

He admitted that he had been involved in discussions about a two year exclusive deal with Calgary based Energy Alberta Corporation to establish the Candu reactor technology in the oil sands.

The legislation facilitates the government's intention to privatize the nuclear industry. First it fired the safety inspector. Now it wants to set up an insurance plan that would take liability away from the operators, placing it on the backs of Canadians.

The government's drive to privatize all that is government, including the nuclear industry, should be a red flag to those who think money should not be the main driver in nuclear energy. It is too risky to leave it to the whim of the market. We know the Conservatives hands-off approach to government. They look the other way at efforts to privatize our health care system. If there is one other industry where money should not be the main driver, it is the nuclear industry. It cannot be left to the whim of the market nor to its cost cutting patterns for increased efficiency. Government should be subsidizing this industry.

I see my time has run out, but I assume I will be able to continue after question period.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

The hon. member's time has expired, but there will be five minutes for questions and comments consequent on her speech after question period.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-5, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident, as reported (without amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

Before question period, the hon. member for Victoria had concluded her remarks and there are five minutes remaining for questions and comments consequent upon those remarks. I therefore call for questions and comments.

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Ottawa South.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the ongoing debate on Bill C-5. It speaks to civil liability and compensation for damage in case we ever had a nuclear incident in our country.

The difficulty with addressing the bill in isolation is that I think for most Canadians, it has to be seen in the context of what has happed with the government with respect to the nuclear industry at large over the past roughly two and half years since it assumed power.

It is true that the bill is supported by the official opposition. I congratulate my colleague, the member for Mississauga—Erindale, the official opposition critic for natural resources, who has helped to stickhandle some of the more delicate questions around levels of compensation and standards for insurance, for example, that find themselves in the bill, and for that I thank him. We will support the bill as it is presently constituted.

However, it is fair to point out for Canadians just what has transpired around the nuclear issue in Canada over the last two and a half years. Let us review what has been happening around the government's performance recently.

The first ground breaking development was when the Prime Minister of Canada stood up in the House of Commons and labelled Linda Keen, who was then the chair of the quasi-judicial Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, a Liberal appointee who he implied was simply doing the bidding of the Liberal Party of Canada by not folding to the pressure being brought to bear on her by the government.

It was quite an astonishing thing, given the fact that the Prime Minister several years ago had promised the Canadian people, in another election campaign, that they should not worry about him assuming power because the senior ranks of the bureaucracy and those who headed up our boards, agencies, commissions and our Supreme Court would “keep him in check”. Obviously he was pandering for votes, knowing that his polling was telling him clearly that the Canadian people did not trust his ideological bent and his deepest motives. Now we know on the nuclear front that they have reason and cause to be concerned, despite what is in the bill. C-5.

We can recall that Linda Keen, the former chair of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, appeared before the House in a committee of the whole, with Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. They had been called to the floor of the House for an emergency debate. It surrounded the question of medical isotopes.

We have since discovered that the night before the Minister of Natural Resources's appearance before committee, after Linda Keen denounced the government's condemnation of her rocking the stability of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission as a whole, he fired her in the dark of night, just hours before she was to testify. His parliamentary secretary had pleaded with the committee to allow her to come and to allow for rebuttal, which we approved and agreed upon. However, at 11 o'clock at night, the chief nuclear safety regulator was informed at her home that she was fired.

I am a former governor in council appointee. I was involved in a whole series of appointments of members on my board and I have never ever, in my 25 years as a lawyer, heard anything of this kind. For that matter, nor has the minister. When he came to committee, he was asked to give us one shred of evidence, one ounce of questioning of this officer's performing her duties, doing exactly what her statutory responsibilities compelled her to do. The minister, carrying the line for the Prime Minister, said nothing.

Since then we have asked the minister to tell us, all in the interest of transparency and stability of the nuclear sector in our country, how much money it will cost the country to settle this preposterous lawsuit that the government has to defend because of its reckless conduct. Will it cost us half a million dollars? Will it cost us $2.5 million?

We know there is a very aggressive wrongful dismissal lawsuit now in the hands of PCO officials, but the government will not tell the Canadian people how much is will cost. It will not tell them because it was so reckless in firing the chief regulator for the nuclear industry. Canadians have a right to be deeply concerned about exactly what the government has done on the nuclear front.

Let us turn to AECL.

The provinces of Ontario, New Brunswick and Quebec have to deal with their nuclear capacity as they seek to meet their energy needs for the future. As one of my colleagues put it earlier today, all of this must be seen in the context of reaching and achieving our climate change greenhouse gas reduction targets.

The Premier of Ontario wrote the Prime Minister, asking him to clarify exactly what he would be doing with Atomic Energy of Canada Limited before the province moved forward with an $18 billion request for proposals to help deal with its energy needs going forward. There was no response. Is AECL now being compromised in terms of its potential success with such a bid? Of course it is.

This morning the Minister of Natural Resources was at committee. My colleague, the official critic for natural resources, repeatedly asked him exactly what role AECL would be expected to play in Canada. We know there are some 200 new nuclear power plants being built as we speak. There are 126 requests for proposals right now worldwide, which AECL ought to be winning. What was the answer? Nothing.

We asked the Minister of Natural Resources what the Banque Nationale study, which he asked to have conducted, had to say about the future of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. We asked if the government would move to privatize all of AECL. There was no answer. We asked if it would move to privatize part of AECL. There was no answer. We asked if it would infuse it with new public capital, or if no money was left over after the Minister of Finance pulled yet another voodoo economic act at the federal level? Again, there was no answer. We asked if research and development would remain public or if it would remain possibly private. There was no answer.

This is at a time when the province of Ontario has indicated to the Prime Minister that it needs an answer by June, with clarity and certainty of exactly what the federal government will do with Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.

This is not a shell game. This is an important fundamental question about keeping the lights on, keeping our industries humming and providing new forms of energy in an energy mix that Ontario, New Brunswick and Quebec at least want to see addressed by the federal government.

The bill is important because it speaks to core issues around liability, indemnification, insurance coverages and the likes. However, it is very unfortunate because while the bill is being supported by the official opposition, what we are really seeing is complete incoherence on behalf of the government when it comes to taking a position on nuclear energy in our country and the future of what used to be and what still is arguably one of the world's pre-eminent nuclear companies.

Are we going to sit back and be out-skated by the French government and its partner in the private sector that is supplying now roughly 80% of France's electricity needs? Are we going to sit back and be outmanoeuvred by American nuclear companies? These questions have to be answered, but the government refuses to answer them. It has to come clean and come clean soon.

At the very least, the minister should admit his reckless incompetence in following suit, taking the lead from the Prime Minister, and singling out a top-notch, apolitical, lifetime official who was running the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. He bullied her, although she would not stand down. He dispatched two other ministers to bully her publicly, and she would not stand down. Now we find ourselves faced with a multi-million dollar lawsuit because of the Prime Minister's choice of what I call non-judicious remarks on the floor of the House of Commons.

The minister should apologize for that conduct. In fact, we repeatedly have called for his resignation. At the very least, he has to tell us how much money it will cost the Canadian people to settle the lawsuit caused by the reckless conduct of the Prime Minister.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has raised a very interesting question, about the privatization of AECL, which seems to be under consideration.

Does he not think that Bill C-5 is necessary for such privatization? A company that bought Atomic Energy of Canada would naturally fear that it might be responsible for the production of CANDU reactors and fear that it could, in case of accident, at some time be held accountable. Accordingly, for anyone who wanted to buy the company it is more attractive to have $650 million in insurance as a first buffer, and the government responsible for the rest.

In addition, I would like to point out that this morning, during the committee meeting, the minister said that he would make a decision this year and all options are on the table. In my opinion, that seems to indicate very clearly that he will privatize it this year.

Does my colleague think it is right that after the government has invested money in Atomic Energy of Canada, it could sell it or hand it over to the private sector just when it becomes profitable?