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

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think it is important, and I will mention this, that it is possible to have industry in this country, but this industry has to come under the surveillance of the elected representatives.

The fact that we have uncontrolled pollution in the oil sands is not acceptable. The fact that it is providing jobs certainly helps our economy, but there are also foreign jobs that are taking away jobs from Canadians. I think any megaproject has to have oversight and we have to look at it step by step to ensure that it serves our best interests and not the interests of those big oil corporations.

[Catherine Bell, NDP, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed the member's speech on the NDP's energy plan. I think it was very interesting. The other hon. member also talked about the oil sands.

I sit on the natural resources committee. We visited and did a study on the oil sands. The Minister of Natural Resources, at one point, said that nuclear might be a way to go because it is a clean source of energy, as he calls it.

My concern is that we are going to be looking at more and more nuclear facilities across this country, especially in Alberta, where we can use that energy to melt the tar to make the bitumen that we are going to ship, unfortunately, straight to the U.S. We are building new pipelines and this is going to further increase our greenhouse gas emissions coming from the tar sands.

The government sees nuclear as a way to get us out of these emissions because it sees it as clean energy. However, there are a lot of problems with nuclear. It is extremely expensive. It always has cost overruns and it can be seen as dangerous.

Notwithstanding the fact that we have nuclear facilities in this country that are aging, there are more and more problems with them, and some of the licences are running out. I think we are going to see in the very near future the possibility that we could be using this nuclear liability act more and more. I wonder if my hon. colleague could comment on any of those things.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I basically agree with what the member says. We have to be very careful as we move into the future. We have a chance in this country to become world leaders in the whole area of environmental technology. We must be careful how we proceed and we must make some very hard and fast choices.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I notice my colleagues from the Conservative Party are taking it personal when we talk about megaprojects. I have never met someone who would be personally slighted about something like the Athabasca tar sands, but perhaps they are.

I wonder again if the member has a sense that this is again a government that will do anything to protect the mega energy boondoogles and yet, it would not cry a tear for the hundreds of thousands of workers who have been laid off in Ontario and Quebec during this manufacturing crisis. Does he see this strange duplicity that will bend over backwards and cry tears for the Athabasca tar sands and yet say nothing about the hundreds of thousands of jobs, particularly in southern Ontario in the auto belt, where our Conservative members have run and hid under their Prime Minister's desk rather than meet workers who have been laid off in Oshawa, the London area, and Windsor?

These are very serious issues. We are talking about the complete extinction of an entire industry in Ontario and yet, we see Conservative members who will not even go and meet their constituents who are seeing the complete loss of, say, the GM plant in Oshawa. At Ford, I met with the CAW workers in London. They said that the Conservatives are completely missing in action.

Does the hon. member have any thoughts on why this strange duplicity?

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I am not sure if that has anything to do with Bill C-5. There was a point of order raised previously about relevance, so I will give the floor to the hon. member for British Columbia Southern Interior to respond, keeping in mind the rules of relevance regarding the third reading stage of the bill.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Mr. Speaker, obviously, I must respond to a question. I think it is up to those who are asking the question to realize whether or not it is relevant.

The comments are very well taken. This is not an isolated incident we are viewing with one aspect of industry. We are looking at the global picture.

What we see, to answer my colleague's question, is the lack of political will to really provide a strong direction in this country. We see basically a strategy that involves sitting back and letting the market rule.

This is the same strategy we are seeing in my province of British Columbia and unfortunately across this country. That same strategy is being seen in the battle between the corporate sector, which is driving the agenda, and the idea that we actually have people elected who can work on behalf of all of us here in Canada.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to rise to speak today on behalf of the New Democratic Party on the issue of Bill C-5 and--

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order. I do apologize. I forget to mention, before I recognized the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay, that the first five hours of debate have expired. We are now at the portion of debate where the allotted time for speaking is ten minutes, with a five minute question and comment period.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry to hear that I have only 10 minutes. I was led to believe that I was going to speak for 20 minutes. I do not know if I can raise all the issues that I really wanted to raise in 10 minutes, but I will do my best. If we allow each other just a little leeway, we can probably get through this in a very healthy fashion.

It is very important to talk about this issue of liability. I have some background on the issue of liability in terms of megaprojects. I will speak to that in a moment.

The issue here is that we have to address the problem we are dealing with, which is of course whether we need to move toward a much larger nuclear strategy, along with the mega tar sands development. It is the problem of how to address energy. Once we start to address a megaproject, we of course have to deal with the liability. We have to look at what is driving this.

We get this strange schizophrenic response from the government party all the time. It tells us that we always oppose things that it brings forward. We normally do, because it seems to be a party, as G.K. Chesterton said, that is completely blinded by “the horrible mysticism of money” and pays no attention to community or the values of a balanced approach.

The government accuses us of opposing, but when we propose alternatives, it says we are speaking about things that are irrelevant. We are somehow boxed in. If we try to actually propose things and engage the government members in a dialogue, they often get upset and leave, or they try to raise points of order. So I will stay very focused.

Of course, as we know, the issue of liability with the nuclear industry is that the present liability is woefully inadequate. This is probably the one point that we will agree on with the government. We have a real problem with low liability in this country.

Where we begin to diverge almost immediately is that if the government is going to move toward the privatization of nukes, we know it needs to have some very large industrial partners that will step into the breach and assume this mercantile approach to nuclear energy.

The problem being faced is that there is a very low liability, so what the government does is peg a new standard for liability. What is that standard? It is the minimum norm of the international average, which is $650 million. If we agree with this new norm, we suddenly would be in a position whereby U.S. investors would now start to take interest in privatized Canadian nukes, whereas before they would not because of their own liability problems and their inability to protect victims from lawsuits.

We have already begun to diverge from the Conservative track. The Conservatives are obviously interested in privatizing nukes. They are obviously interested in opening that door as quickly as possible. They need to be seen raising the liability issue just so they can actually get credibility with investors.

Yet from the democratic point of view, we are looking at how we ensure that a development is sustainable and how we ensure that development actually protects the interests of Canadian communities, Canadian individuals and the Canadian environment.

We look at the $650 million liability and the record of industrial nuclear accidents across the world and we recognize that $650 million is a pittance if something goes wrong. We look to other jurisdictions that actually have set serious standards for liability. In Germany, there is unlimited liability. In Japan, there is unlimited liability. The U.S. has a limit of $9.7 billion. That is a heck of a lot more than the $650 million being offered by our government.

Once again we see the government diving to the basement in terms of standards that would protect communities and then telling the investors not to worry. Do not worry, says the government to them, if something goes wrong, if someone pours a coke down the front of the machine and the whole thing goes ballistic, guess who will be on the hook for it? It will not be the plant, the investors or the corporation. It will be the Canadian public who will pick up the tab.

Of course that is a win-win if one lives in the world that these gentlemen--and some women--live in, which is the world of being there to privatize and support the complete interests of the big energy interests, whether it is the Athabasca tar sands or the nukes.

We are looking at pathetic minimal standards. We are also seeing that this is a very lax and very loosey-goosey bill. It would allow the government and the industry to get through the approvals process like a groupie with a backstage pass.

The New Democrats tried to bring forward a few clear amendments that would actually begin to address this imbalance. We brought forward 35 amendments to try to bring about balance. That is our job as opposition members. It is not our job to be toadies to the Conservative Party. Our job is to bring balance to a very unbalanced government approach, so we brought forward 35 amendments.

We wanted to work with the government and say that if there are going to be nukes, let us look at liability and let us look at how we can ensure that the public is protected. Of course the Conservatives were not interested in balance. They were looking at opening the door to the massive expansion of the nukes.

Of course, as has been suggested here and by many people in the media, this is an agenda that is really driven by the fact that whatever the Athabasca tar sands development needs, the Athabasca tar sands development will get. Therefore, we have a government that will suddenly bring in a bill on limiting the liability of the nukes so they can be privatized and we can move forward in that direction.

This is the problem we are dealing with: an unbalanced approach by the government. What is driving it, of course, is the fact that the Conservative Party has presented itself to the Canadian public as a front for big energy projects at any costs, without any scrutiny, for whatever there needs to be, whether it wants to dump the waste in a lake or approve massive expansions of projects that increase massive amounts of greenhouse gas without proper scrutiny.

Then, of course, we are expected to sign off on nuclear liability that does not have any of the real clear provisions that will protect the public.

We have the problem and we have what is driving it, but the real issue, as I have said, is that if we are going to oppose, we have to propose. The issue the New Democrats are very concerned about is the billions and billions of dollars that are spent on nukes. We consistently have seen massive overruns time and time again.

There has never been a nuclear project that has come in at even close to costs. Billions have been spent in Ontario, and now billions are going to be spent in Ontario under Dalton McGuinty's government, and that money would actually be better spent in limiting the energy environmental footprint from one massive project to many smaller projects.

My colleague had begun to speak about this earlier. He spoke about the need for retrofitting and for looking at alternatives. In the region I live in, we have mine shafts in the centre of town that go down 8,000 feet. This is a perfect climate. Any community that has had coal mining or hardrock mining is a perfect climate for creating geothermal energy. Geothermal is sustainable. It does not rely on the nuclear industry. This is the proposition that we are trying to raise and it is perfectly in line with this.

However, I want to get back to the issue of liability because it is very important. We had a megaproject boondoggle in the Abitibi-Temiskaming region in Ontario. It was the Adams Mine dump. It was created as this wonderful gift for investors, whereby the largest dump in North America would created using an abandoned iron ore mine on the heights of land above the farm belt of Temiskaming. Millions of tonnes of garbage would be dumped in there even though 350 million litres of groundwater flowed through every year and the risk of contamination was over a 2,000 year lifespan.

However, the reason this crazy crackpot scheme was allowed to get to first base was of course that it was under the government of Mike Harris. Many of his cronies are here now in the House. The other thing was that the government limited the environmental assessment. It refused to let the public have full disclosure, but two things eventually killed the project.

One was massive public protest by farmers, forestry workers and first nations people. I am very glad to say that I was one of those people involved in that, but when it came to city council, written in the very fine print of the contract, which was not supposed to be made public, was the issue of liability. Who was on the hook if something went wrong?

It was actually the New Democratic members of the Toronto city council who stood up and said, “Wait a minute”. They said it was the consumer who would be on the hook, the taxpayer. Then that whole chimera, the whole deck of cards, came tumbling down, and the mega boondoggle fell apart. Once the members of the public knew that they and the City of Toronto were on the hook for the unlimited liability if something went wrong, nobody wanted to touch it, and not an investor in North America or the world would pick up the project.

The issue of who is on the hook for the liability is always crucial. If we actually went to the kinds of liability provisions that are needed with any nuclear project, not one private investor in the world would be loony enough to get involved in such a project.

The NDP remains absolutely opposed to this bill. We remain absolutely appalled that the government is not interested in dealing with the amendments necessary to protect the public interest. We remain very vigilant against attempts by the government to fast track any privatization of the nuclear industry that limits liability.

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

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to the presentation of the hon. member opposite.

I was on the Standing Committee on Natural Resources and I studied Bill C-5 with the rest of the hon. members.

The Bloc Québécois certainly shares some of the concerns of the hon. member opposite with respect to the $650 million compensation amount. This was cause for much debate in committee. Unfortunately, none of the witnesses who were asked to appear before us swayed us or even suggested an alternative, perhaps because data on that amount was not available at the time. Neither the Bloc, the Liberal Party, nor the NDP asked the witnesses specifically to address the $650 million compensation amount. The only thing the witnesses said was that, unfortunately, it was not currently possible to insure and reinsure the compensation in the event of an incident.

I would like to know what my colleague has to say about that. Since we did not have the opportunity to hear from witnesses and to debate this here in this House or in committee, can he share his sources with us? What witnesses, in his view, could have come to testify and contribute to our debates?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was sorry that in my speech I did actually focus a fair bit on the Conservative Party and not on the Bloc Québécois. I did not want to show any disrespect for the Bloc in not mentioning it as part of mega boondoggle energy projects. I have been on the James Bay coast in Quebec and I have seen the massive flooding and the mercury contamination that has been done by the Bloc's love of mega environment and energy projects.

I am surprised that the member, who is on the committee, says that she does not remember any testimony. I was looking at the testimony of Professor Michel Duguay from Quebec's Laval University in Quebec City. He said that he thought the $650 million was a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of money that would be needed in case of an accident.

I was thinking of Mr. Edwards who spoke. He said that he felt “it is important for elected representatives to ensure that the nuclear industry is held publicly accountable and to ensure that the best interests of Canadians are not compromised in order to serve the interest of the nuclear industry”.

We believe that the figure of $650 million has no sound scientific or financial basis and that this arbitrary amount serves to distract the committee from the much more important question. I do not know, but perhaps my hon. colleague was distracted.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, if we look at the past and all the comments made by the members from the Bloc Québécois in committee, it is very clear that they felt that the level of civil liability could not be limited to $650 million. Indeed, speech after speech, the members from the Bloc Québécois were very clear on this. Like the NDP, they felt this limited amount of civil liability was clearly insufficient. I can cite member after member, including several who are here in this House today.

I would like to ask the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay whether he knows where this about-face is coming from in the Bloc Québécois on an issue that affects Quebeckers. They are the ones who will have to pay if there is ever a nuclear accident.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague asks a very in depth question. I was actually thinking about that after I sat down. I thought that perhaps I had finished my comments too early, but I sometimes think it is very important to be brief, direct and to the point in the House. I did feel that things certainly were being left out of the little exchange that I had with my hon. colleague from the Bloc Québécois.

Certainly there were serious concerns raised about the limits on liability, because the Canadian taxpayer will be on the hook. If something goes wrong, the municipalities and provincial governments will be faced with the costs. Talk about the ultimate intervention in the affairs of Quebec: we would be talking about a nuclear accident and the citizens of Quebec being left on the hook. So why the Bloc Québécois would not stand up--

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

We will move on.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Beauharnois—Salaberry.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is truly a pleasure for me to speak to this bill at third reading and to answer the NDP's many questions about the Bloc Québécois' position.

We have been talking about this bill since October 2007. This bill would overhaul an outdated act that both Conservative and Liberal governments have cast aside. Under the old act, maximum liability for damages was $75 million. Many of our debates have hinged on the amount of compensation. Those on the other side of the House have not really talked about the mechanism, the tribunal, provided for in this new legislation to support citizens and communities seeking compensation.

Bill C-5 seeks to modernize the old act. The amount of liability has not changed in some 30 years. The NDP's position is irresponsible because if a serious nuclear incident were to happen right now in Ontario or another province, even Quebec, compensation would not exceed $75 million. Delaying the passage of this bill is irresponsible because the status quo is not acceptable.

I understand and agree with many members of this House that $650 million is not nearly enough. The interesting thing about this bill is that it includes mechanisms allowing the minister to change that amount as often as every five years. That does not mean the amount will be changed every five years; that just means that it can be.

The fact that the NDP has done everything in its power to delay passage of this bill means that today or even yesterday, had there been an incident, people and communities would have received just $75 million in compensation instead of $650 million. Even though we disagree on certain points, and even though we often disagree with the critic during Standing Committee on Natural Resources meetings, we have good discussions, and we often end up reaching an agreement.

When Bill C-5 was being debated in committee, we heard from many witnesses. A fairly rigorous examination was conducted. This is a somewhat technical bill dealing with insurance. Within the committee, there were no members with expertise acquired in the insurance industry prior to being elected. Accordingly, we listened very carefully to the witnesses as well as to the House and departmental legislative staff who advised us very well. We asked them many questions and I think we did a good job. Of course, the Bloc Québécois cannot say that it agrees with the bill 100%, but we do believe that, basically, it represents an improvement. The status quo was unacceptable. We think this is an improvement and that this bill is better than the previous legislation.

We do share some concerns of the members opposite who were wondering why the Conservative government suddenly woke up and decided to modernize an old act that had been abandoned by previous Liberal and Conservative governments. Why are they suddenly waking up and exerting pressure to see this bill passed quickly? Of course, the Conservative government endorses nuclear energy and is looking into opportunities in that area. Canada's legislation was completely outdated and no longer met international standards and accepted norms.

In that respect, I completely understand the distress and concerns, since I share them as well. The fact remains that, after all the evidence, all the work done in committee and after debating the amendments proposed by the Bloc Québécois and the NDP, unfortunately, very few amendments were retained. If the Blocs' amendments had also been accepted, the bill would have been even better.

In any case, we believe that the creation of a tribunal to hear cases and ensure compensation for communities and citizens is already a step in the right direction.

We heard some rather touching testimony. All municipalities with a nuclear power station located in their limits are members of an association and the mayor of a “host” city spoke to us about her concerns.

Her message was that she does not oppose the bill because she believes that this old, outdated law—cast aside by the Liberals and the Conservatives—should be revised. However, she was particularly concerned that $650 million would not be enough to compensate both individuals and the communities. For example, she stated that all infrastructure could be affected, requiring much more than $650 million in compensation.

Yet, the mayor also said that $650 million was better than the $75 million currently in place. The testimony to this effect by several witnesses determined the position we took in the committee.

It is rather odd. We studied a large number of amendments in committee, which were presented in the proper way and democratically. Then, all of a sudden, without consultation or democratic debate by our committee, a series of NDP amendments were presented in this House and, unfortunately, the committee was unable to hear witnesses in order to further study them.

I am a new member and this is the first time I have had such an experience. In committee, we carefully studied a bill and the amendments; then at subsequent readings in the House, we were faced with fifteen to twenty amendments. Some had been studied in committee and reintroduced, but others were altogether new. I know it takes a lot of work to introduce amendments, and I found it unfortunate that we were unable to study them in committee with new witnesses.

The Bloc Québécois is very concerned by the renewed interest in nuclear energy and, above all, by all the energy this Conservative government is putting into promoting it. I often laugh under my breath. In fact, I find it amusing that the Minister of Natural Resources justifies promoting nuclear energy by stating that it is a clean energy because it reduces greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, he says that every province is responsible for choosing its own energy and that if the provinces choose nuclear energy, that is their business.

I am saying to him that safety and waste management are federal responsibilities, and thousands of dollars are currently being spent for nothing. There are the MAPLE reactors. Half a billion dollars was invested to design a replacement reactor for the old Chalk River reactor. But this design, unfortunately, will never be built because Atomic Energy of Canada decided to scrap the project due to a major design flaw that could not be fixed. The world's top experts are not able to find a solution to the MAPLE design flaw.

It is true that energy comes under provincial jurisdiction. However, the federal government is responsible for waste management and technology development. Unfortunately, we are facing a government that spends Quebec and Canadian taxpayers' money on projects that result in money pits.

Ultimately, we wonder who will benefit from these projects, which really should be condemned. That is what the Bloc Québécois is doing. We are telling the Conservative government that it is on the wrong track, promoting energy that will produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions in the short term, but will create problems further down the road. We have a problem right now, but we are putting off fixing it until later, which creates serious consequences in terms of waste management.