Bill C-20 (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

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. We will take his comments into consideration. It is important to keep in mind that if there is unlimited liability and operators are required to have insurance, we will have to make sure that the public, the government and everyone agrees to pay for nuclear plants. This is turning into a real debate in Canada. It will surely require a referendum. Quebec has some experience with this, and could perhaps lend a hand.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great enthusiasm that I enter today's debate.

This issue points out some of the more fundamental questions that Canada now faces around the production of energy, energy security, climate change and others. When we talk about the nuclear industry and the government's enthusiasm and support of it to this point, it shows us a decision has been made. In fact, it shows that many decisions made.

What the New Democrats have struggled with is the government's sense of balance. If there was any sort of attention of equal amount or intensity made toward the alternatives, in terms of energy supply and demand for Canadians, in scope and scale, then we would have some enthusiasm in supporting the government.

Instead we see this imbalance, an enormous amount of money going to carbon capture and sequestration, an unproven and costly technology, huge amounts of attention going toward the nuclear industry, which raises some fundamental questions and which exist within this bill, and still a $1.3 billion or $1.4 billion subsidy into the tar sands every year, money they do not need nor should have from the Canadian taxpayers.

The bill talks about liability and the limits of it. The New Democrats have no challenge and no question at all in entering the debate of the need for modernization of the act. We understand the act is antiquated and old. The liability limits were set in the early 1970s. They are not sufficient and they need to be modernized.

The question is this. How do we come to a figure that meets the risks that are inherent within the nuclear industry? How do we find a formula, as my Liberal colleague mentioned earlier, or an actual sum amount to compensate a community for a nuclear accident of any scale?

As I will show in some parts of my testimony, if not today then perhaps later when we resume, when accidents happen in the nuclear industry, and they do happen, the costs can be enormous for relatively small accidents in which there was no major fallout. We are not talking simply about Chernobyls. We are talking about what are called minor nuclear accidents in the nuclear industry.

I attempted to put this question to the parliamentary secretary and to my colleagues in the Liberal Party, who have given more of a blank cheque to the government in all things: so much for probation. I cannot see any of my Conservative colleagues in the government losing much sleep during this probationary period. In giving a blank cheque around nuclear liability, the Liberals have intoned and suggested they can take this to committee and potentially raise the limits of liability for a nuclear accident. However, that is not the case.

If the Liberals and the Bloc choose to support the government on this bill and on this figure, then $650 million is what we are stuck with. It is critical for everybody to understand this. It cannot go up. We cannot, as my colleague from Winnipeg suggested, meet international standards.

Once the bill goes through with this limited liability, that is it. It is always curious when the government decides to place limited liability on one industry and not on any others. There is no need for the government to put a limited liability on an oil and gas producer, or a coal-fired plant or a wind generating plant or a solar industry because the accidents that happen in those areas, although they can be significant, cannot come anywhere close to the type of damage a nuclear accident can cause.

When the two other opposition parties pass this bill to go to committee, they also give their stamp of approval on the limited liability of $650 million. Yet today they have declared that they have no clue whether that limit is sufficient, whether $650 million is satisfactory to cover off the damages from a nuclear accident.

That somehow seems to be irresponsible. To suggest one thing to the public, that they will take a good look at this and maybe raise the limits, is irresponsible. They should know they cannot raise the limit because the royal recommendation contained within this bill suggests otherwise.

Now let us get to some of those international standards. It was mentioned earlier that in the United States it was an approximately $10 billion pool of moneys collected together from all kinds of different—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

We are about to move on to private members' business. I can assure the hon. member that he will have 15 minutes left to finish his remarks the next time the bill is before the House.

It being 1:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

The House resumed from May 15 consideration of the motion that Bill C-20, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

When the bill was last before the House, the hon. member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley had 15 minutes left to conclude his remarks.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to continue this discourse that was interrupted some weeks ago before the House rose.

I want to remind the folks in the House and at home that we are dealing with Bill C-20, the Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act. This is an attempt to reform a very old piece of legislation that has been sitting on the government's books for a number of years. It does require some modernization but the government has gone about it in such a way as to leave very few, outside of the very narrow band of the industry, satisfied, and has allowed no real sense of security or knowledge that communities will be properly compensated in the event of a nuclear accident.

The bill would limit the liability that a nuclear provider will be exposed to in the event of a nuclear accident to $650 million. On a number of fronts this raises concerns for New Democrats and for Canadians across the country, whether they live in a community that has a nuclear reactor in it, adjacent to a community or just on the broad principle of how this country goes about dealing with the very sensitive and controversial issue of nuclear energy.

This is all happening within the context that is not exactly ideal for the nuclear industry. We hear in the House, day after day, questions put to the Minister of Natural Resources about Chalk River, which is a nuclear facility here in Canada owned by the government that seems to go through problems every 18 months or so, in which it leaks, contaminates and then shuts down. In the shutting down, this facility provides isotopes that are used in diagnostic testing for cancer patients and provides 80% of the Canadian supply and more than 50% of the world supply, throwing the world into all sorts of concern that Canada is becoming an increasingly unreliable partner in this field.

It also falls into the context of Ontario putting many billions of dollars forward foreseeing that it is running out of viable energy supplies and deciding not to put the economy on a green track but deciding to invest in nuclear instead.

Obviously the CANDU reactor, the AECL is one of those bidders, as is the French and some other interests. This is an extraordinarily important file for the government, obviously, because it seems to want to sell AECL, a Canadian subsidized company, an arm's length crown corporation into which the Canadian taxpayer has put more than $20 billion over time.

No other energy sector outside of the oil and gas sector has received the kind of subsidies and special treatment that the nuclear industry has, and that is continued under Bill C-20. We do not offer limited liability to other sectors in the Canadian economy. We do not say to the auto sector, the manufacturing sector or the resort and tourism sector that the Government of Canada will backstop major accidents.

To understand why we feel that the bill falls short at $650 million, one has only to go back to when there have been nuclear accidents and look at the costs to clean it up and the costs to compensate people. What do other countries do when they are faced with the question of liability? There is a variance of degrees in ways that this industry is treated but we cannot find any cases where the limited liability is set at such a small amount.

For example, all nuclear providers in the U.S. contribute to a common pool that approaches upward of $10 billion in the event of a nuclear accident; that is $10 billion to $650 million. It does not matter when we are taking the size and scale in terms of our country being smaller than the U.S. because a nuclear accident is a nuclear accident and a community affected is a community affected. We can take the case of Japan and Germany which are advocating and putting in position unlimited liability.

One needs to ask how viable this technology and industry is if it requires not only $20 billion in government subsidies and subsidies every year, because we just kicked in another few hundred million dollars, but it also requires the government to backstop the liability of the industry. The risks are so great, as acknowledged by the government, that the taxpayer will either be backstopping any large insurance claims or it will just prevent Canadians from suing the government beyond a certain amount.

One needs to wonder how the government comes to the point of saying that if, in the event of a nuclear accident of some scale in Pickering or in any of the other communities associated with these nuclear facilities are seriously harmed or destroyed, that it will set a figure as to how much they can be compensated for the loss of life, industry, home, community, and then we need to imagine that over time.

How would $650 million compensate a community with nuclear toxicity in its soil and water? We know the half-life of some isotopes could be many thousands of years, and taking that over time means hundreds of thousands of years of contamination.

This is the challenge with nuclear that has been described as the saving grace under the carbon constrained economies that we are looking at right now. The liability component is serious and significant and it has to be curtailed by government. The special treatment that is afforded to nuclear is not afforded to other industries.

The government often talks about not wanting to pick winners and losers, about letting the invisible hand of the marketplace dictate what will or will not happen, but then we see bills like Bill C-20. This is not an Adam Smith bill in design or designation. This is not a free market, free capital principled bill. This legislation would have us enter the marketplace, decide, and then tip the scales one way or the other.

That is the debate required here. That is what the government must defend in bringing the bill forward. The Liberals support the bill overwhelmingly, but I am not sure if any of the Liberal members will stand up with conviction.

Many representatives of the nuclear industry appeared before committee when the Chalk River spill and contamination occurred. Canadians heard that there was no leak at Chalk River and that contamination was contained. These words are used in common parlance as meaning to contain something or to withhold it. What in fact happens is that nuclear radiation leaks out of the facility, is held in a pool for a certain amount of time and then released into the Ottawa River. The nuclear industry defines that as containment. A leak is not a leak if it goes into the air. That is something else entirely. Another word is used for that. The government said there was no leak and anything that did happen was contained.

We have all heard in Parliament and in committee folks using words that in common usage mean one thing, but in a specific application mean something entirely different. People are led astray.

The nuclear industry is very nervous because at this moment it is trying to sell a bunch of Candu reactors. It is trying to sell them to Ontario, then maybe to other countries, and then maybe sell off all of AECL. Moving the limited liability act through the House is critical to the government's hope of eventually selling off this public asset.

If we are talking about competitiveness for the nuclear industry, then for heaven's sake, one would imagine the government would look to our competitors, primarily Europe, Japan and the United States, to find out what they are doing for their industries. What kind of compensation regime have they set up? What kind of limited liability have they set up to allow the Canadian product to compete fairly?

From all of our reading of this, and we have yet to see it corrected by the government or anybody else, that has yet to be proven. That is not what our competitors use. Our competitors allow for something that would seek a bit more compensation.

Even undercutting that entire argument, what is proper compensation after a nuclear accident? The industry said the Three Mile Island incident did not typify a major accident in the sense that it did not go through a full nuclear meltdown. The cost in those days was just shy of $1 billion. This legislation limits liability to $650 million.

The Chernobyl accident stands alone in its own rarefied air of when something really goes wrong. The compensation amounts that would be required if a Chernobyl incident happened obviously would exceed anything close to the limited liability act.

As Ontario muses as to whether it will go with the Candu system or the European or some other model, the liability question stands front and centre. This is all meshed into one.

There are the incidents at Chalk River where we have a reactor that is 50-some years old. It leaks from time to time. It contaminates the Ottawa River from time to time. It leaks out the smoke stacks and out the pipe itself. They call them pinhole pricks, but I suppose it does not take much in terms of a nuclear leak to really matter. It throws into question the whole nature, orientation and management of the nuclear industry by the current government and previous governments.

One has to take this all into consideration with the other choices that are available when it comes to producing energy. We have seen the government apply the blinkers when it comes to the tar sands, continuing a $1.3 billion to $1.4 billion tax subsidy into northern Alberta every year, whether or not the market is roaring hot, too hot according to the people who live there, subsidizing an industry that did not need subsidizing.

The government has shown itself to be incapable of properly measuring its own greenhouse gas emissions. It challenges every bill the opposition puts forth. The NDP has proposed a bill for the next round of climate change commitments in Copenhagen and the government's number one criticism has been, “We are not sure that you can properly account for things here, here and here”.

The Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, the auditor of all things environmental came before committee this morning and confirmed to government and opposition members who were there that the government has no capacity to measure its own greenhouse gas numbers and the effectiveness of any of the programs that it runs. Yet the government feels completely comfortable in taking credit for all sorts of reductions it is going to have in the future when it cannot actually measure what it has already done.

The whole thing is thrown into suspicion, and into this walks so much certainty from the government with respect to nuclear. Is nuclear part of the debate? Absolutely. Should it be put on the table with the alternatives? Absolutely. But the government is not creating a level playing field. We have seen that with the recent budget that came from the government when we compare it to what came out of Washington. In terms of the alternative resources, in terms of the alternative generation of energy, it is the game. Everyone who has studied this, everyone who has looked at economic recoveries around the world knows that energy has been and will be the central question for economies.

The government is spending on a ratio of one to fourteen per capita to the Americans right now. On the alternative energies--we are not talking nuclear or the fictitious carbon capture and sequestration the government keeps pandering and no one is listening to and certainly no one in industry is interested in investing in--but the true alternatives, the solar, the wind, the tidal and run a river on those fronts that have an extremely high job creation potential, the government is doing one-fourteenth on a per person basis compared to our American counterparts.

What happens to an industry, especially a nascent industry, when it is looking to locate itself on one side of a border or another? Industry representatives from wind, from solar, from tidal, from all of these groups, Canadian firms, have come to us time and time again to say that they are leaving. They want to operate here and they want to create the jobs here, but the investment climate is terrible.

Take wind for example. The government has a program that was meant to run out in year 2011. It was successful. The provinces actually filled in the void and they subscribed to it. This is a program that started a number of years ago. The government should realize there is success to be had in creating wind energy in Canada and perhaps even manufacturing in Canada. It could be helping out those communities such as the one we visited in Welland the other day, where a former auto parts plant is now making components for the wind industry. The government should be magnifying that, making that greater. It should have a vision that Canadians can get excited about and enthralled with. Rather than realizing that, still we see a government tinkering at the edges, putting up fictitious ideas that no one supports. It has yet to present a credible environmental plan that anyone, right wing, left wing, environmental, industry will validate. Not one has said that the numbers the government pretends to have in dealing with climate change can be validated. That was confirmed again by the auditor.

This liability act raises many questions for Canadians who are faced with concerns around nuclear liability and they are given no assurances. They are told that we will have a limited liability and nothing else.

Government members time and time again remain silent on this. Members of the official opposition, the Liberals, seem to give this a wink and a nod and off it goes. It feels more and more like an inside job. It feels like a job where Canadians are not allowed to participate in the conversation, saying that if we are going to support this industry for another $20 billion and another 50 years at cost overruns, leaks and melts and all the rest of that, then for heaven's sake there will be something that will allow--

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Order. I will have to stop the hon. member there.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Yukon.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, the member correctly made the point that the government has cut the wind energy program. I am hoping that as a fellow northerner, quasi-northerner, he would support the effort that because wind energy in the north is a lot more expensive as it is a harsher climate and there is rime icing, the incentive for wind energy has to be even higher in the north so we can take advantage of it and get it going. Hopefully he would support that.

In an industry that he has described as dangerous, how much confidence does he have in the independent regulators? Especially when the government fires the independent regulator, how much confidence does he have in that system?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the government fired the regulator once and then appointed somebody new, so I do not suppose it has that tactic to use again. It will have to find another scapegoat if it is looking for one.

We are hearing now that AECL has actually been briefing the department and the minister, suggesting that the shutdown in Chalk River that produces the isotopes may not be for one or two months, that it may be six or eight months.

This is a concern for those who are in cancer treatment and who need these isotopes. We are getting urgent letters from doctors and hospitals across the country wanting to know what the situation actually is. It is one of the reasons we requested an emergency debate yesterday, so that the government could come forward and say what the actual numbers are and what it is doing to fill in the gaps in terms of people who are in cancer treatment or will be in the next number of months. The government has not been forthright on this at all.

In terms of the member's first question, we are as alienated and disaffected as anybody in Yukon, so we hold on to our northern status properly. This place feels as far away where I come from as it does for the member.

We must treat wind energy or any of the alternatives as industrial projects, no different from a mine. We cannot make the mistake that the B.C. provincial government did and throw away the licences for 300 rivers forever, essentially privatizing and hiding behind the idea that it is a green project and therefore it cannot be held up to criticism.

Any industrial project must meet good environmental criteria and must have the local community supporting it. Otherwise it is not a green project that anyone should support.

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

Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate the enthusiasm with which my colleague delivered his speech.

However, as he rightly points out, nuclear power is dangerous. At the same time, and I would like to hear his thoughts on this, we are not like the United States, where there are a great number of nuclear projects. They can afford to pool their money and place $11 billion into a reserve in the event of an accident. That is probably the amount required, if not more, to clean up a nuclear accident.

Given that we are talking about Canada, which has only a few nuclear projects, I would like the member to tell me how many insurance companies could provide more than $650 million in coverage.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. The situation in the United States is different because there are many more companies. However, the pooling of $10 billion, as in the United States, might be enough to cover the cost of a nuclear accident. The question is not how much the companies are willing to pay but what would be the compensation in the event of an accident.

The liability established in the United States, Europe and Japan is not the same as that provided for in the bill. Who are we trying to delude by saying that the level of compensation is lower in Canada? The Government of Canada wants to show that this is an opportunity for nuclear companies. That is ridiculous. The situation in the United States is different. At the same time, this bill cannot set a liability of $10 billion. It is not possible for us to do the same thing.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the only nuclear plant in operation in Quebec at this time is Gentilly-2. Continuing its trend of unsustainable choices, ones that run squarely counter to sustainable development, the current government chose to go ahead with the rebuilding of the Gentilly-2 nuclear plant, at an estimated cost of $2 billion.

Will my friend and colleague tell the people from the Trois-Rivières area, those who are likely to be affected in the event of a nuclear accident at Gentilly, what impact this bill will have? It will deprive them because not only would they never be compensated for losing their health in such circumstances but they would not be compensated for material losses either, at least appropriately.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Quebec.

That is the issue for local people, the only one. In the event of a nuclear accident, there is an overall liability limit. That is not an amount just for individuals and another for the municipalities or industries affected. That is an overall amount, for one and all families in the event of an accident. With this bill, the possibility of a nuclear accident has to be considered. We cannot have this debate without taking that into account.

Regarding the limit, the government says it is high enough. I think not. The problem the Liberals are having in committees now is that they cannot get amounts changed. Should the House approve this bill at this stage, it would then be impossible to amend it with respect to compensation amounts and limits. We have a problem with that. I assume and hope that the Liberals, Bloc members and all the other members also have a problem with that.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, under the bill in the setting liability limits, one of the questions that has come up in some discussions is that if the liability limit is set too high, there may be a problem with a party being able to acquire sufficient insurance, which all of a sudden has some business implications.

Is anything in the bill, or may be considered in the bill, to address the situation where limits may be set so high that no one could possibly afford the insurance to provide that service?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that is the point about the low limit set by the bill in order to attract the investment. Other jurisdictions such as the United States, Japan, Europe, which have viable nuclear industries, much bigger than ours, have set much higher limits. The fact that we have to set such a low and artificial limit for this industry alone should be of concern to Canadians. We do not do that for any other industry

The fact is if an accident were to happen at a nuclear facility, as has been shown in any other accident that happened in the past, the costs are enormous. The true cost of operating nuclear facilities is not simply the cost overruns on the production; it is the eventual and incurred cost of risk that is sitting in that facility. If things go wrong, it gets expensive quickly, not only in terms of dollars but also of human life and suffering.