Bill C-15 (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.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-15, 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.

Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

When the bill was last before the House, we were in questions and comments.

The hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member's speech. I know he is very knowledgeable about Bill C-15. The bill has come before us now probably five years. Many of us spoke to this bill last year.

Fundamentally, the NDP disagree with any limitation of liability for the nuclear industry. We would prefer to follow the A tier of companies, the European countries, Belgium, Germany, Slovenia, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, Norway and the United Kingdom, which have unlimited liability, rather than the second tier of countries, Chile, Romania, Uruguay, Mexico and Poland, which have far less liability. Because the OECD countries have picked a much higher limit for countries such as England and France and since we are in that league, we should follow the unlimited liability provisions.

Does the member agree with that assessment? If that is the case, then we have to do some work on the bill in committee.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question. As I mentioned in my speech on nuclear safety, nuclear plant operators must assume the liability

We believe that increasing compensation from $75 million to $650 million for damages or nuclear disasters caused by a defect or malfunction is a step forward. This bill can be improved even more if that is the will of Parliament. However, we think it is a step in the right direction, and that this increase, which is still significant, more appropriately responds to the new reality of operating a nuclear plant.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, members will more than likely know, and certainly in my lifetime, since 1952, there have been 81 nuclear accidents. During that time, we have been unable to determine that one accident in hydroelectric power. That brings me to a fundamental point, which is whether and when the government will get online and support an east-west power grid.

The Minister of State for Democratic Reform, a fellow member of Parliament from Winnipeg, has advocated it in his caucus to no avail so far. Manitoba has enormous hydroelectric power. Quebec has hydroelectric power. It is about time we took over Sir John A. Macdonald's dream of uniting the country with a national railway and build an east-west power grid so we could send clean, renewable hydroelectric power from Manitoba's north into Ontario. That would help it to stop the use of coal-fired plants and it would not have to develop nuclear power.

It is very clear that nuclear power is still an uphill battle. Literally no one wants a nuclear plant built in his or her jurisdiction. We will find residents up in arms over any initiative to do this. This is not to mention the fact that it will take many years to put this together. We need power in a much shorter term than what it would take to develop this nuclear facility.

Could the member comment on that?

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as I said in my speech, I do not support nuclear energy and, personally, I do not think of it as clean energy. I think the government should invest more in renewable energy and much cleaner energy, such as hydroelectricity, as well as geothermal energy, solar power and wind energy. However, as we saw in its most recent budget, the Conservative government has not made the choice to step up development of these renewable energy sources.

If we continue on the same path, in a few years—not many years—Canada will lag behind in developing new forms of energy. Research is being done all over Europe. Even the Americans have invested huge amounts of money in renewable energy. Here in Canada, we are stuck with a dinosaur of a government, as we would say in Quebec. We are already lagging behind when it comes to investments in renewable energy sources.

With nuclear energy always comes the problem of nuclear waste. What do we do with the waste? That is always the big question.

There is a nuclear power plant in my riding, which creates a great deal of uncertainty among the people. They need to be reassured and safety needs to maximized to ensure that this energy is regulated and monitored as much as possible. The government also needs to ensure the utmost human, social, and economic security, as well as public health.

In that regard, I agree with my NDP colleague.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to follow up with another question.

The member may or may not be aware, but a German politician by the name of Scheer has been single-handedly responsible for moving Germany in the area of renewable energy sources. As a matter of fact, I believe he may have been responsible for taking a Canadian company. I believe Mr. MacLellan from southern Ontario, who has the best solar panels in the world, could not get a hearing from the Ontario government or the federal government. In fact, the German government poached him and his plant and it has built a plant now in East Germany where it is producing a huge percentage of the solar panels used in the world. The panels are being manufactured in Germany and Germany is moving miles ahead in terms of wind power and solar power.

Does the member not agree that that is what we should be doing in Canada, especially since we have a Canadian who developed the solar panels?

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, once again, I would like to thank my colleague for his question.

In Canada, we are going to bat for a matter of vital importance, that is, the development of green energy. Quebec has reached an important turning point, which has even been noted abroad. If Quebec were a sovereign nation, I believe that it would be admired for its green energy initiatives. We have invested extraordinary amounts in Hydro-Québec—which develops clean energy—and in wind energy. We are also looking at solar energy. The people want good air and water quality, a good quality of life overall. That is not presently the case with the Conservative government, which seems to want to exploit the oil sands, and perhaps even go with nuclear power because it believes it will reduce pollution. That is not true.

Therefore, the rest of Canada has a lot of work to do to develop green energy. The economic stimulus package with its infrastructure programs could have been a good opportunity to develop green energy initiatives, but it did not happen. The government said absolutely nothing about this.

The Conservative government will have to wake up and realize that it is 2010, that we are no longer in the 1950s, and that turning to renewable and green energy represents the future of our children.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-15. As I indicated before, this bill has been reintroduced after the Prime Minister prorogued the House. We dealt with the bill last year and it has been in the pipeline now for something like five years. Hopefully we will get something done with this bill and many other bills if the government quits proroguing the House whenever it feels threatened. It is an enormous cost to legislative time and effort to reintroduce and begin the process all over again on these bills.

I want to follow up on what the previous speaker dealt with in questions and answers. I think it is very fair to say at the outset that Canada is strewn with missed opportunities. For example, in the wind power environment, as early as 1991, wind power was being developed in Pincher Creek, Alberta. In those days, there were small wind turbines and it was the beginning of wind power development in Canada.

The Conservative government in Manitoba could have moved at that time and developed wind power but it did not. It sat and watched the world go by for another 10 years. It finally got into the wind power business only five or six years ago under an NDP government. The first wind farm in Manitoba was set up and it had 99 megawatts of power.

Saskatchewan has a wind farm set up in Gull Lake that is an operating farm in the intervening period. The reality is that we have developed wind power in a very sporadic way in this country, unlike Europe which has a much more comprehensive approach to the whole area of wind power development and, I might add, solar power development.

I did mention a politician in Germany, known as Mr. Scheer, who is recognized as a leader in alternative energy and as being an advocate and a champion for the alternative energy sector. I believe he had something to do with a case where a man named Mr. MacLellan tried to build a solar panel plant in southern Ontario. He approached the Ontario government and the federal government and he did not get any type of agreement or any enthusiasm from them. I believe he was actually approached by the German government, which offered to help subsidize his plant. I think the German government paid for most of his plant and built it in East Germany. The reason this was done is that the Germans recognized that this Canadian had developed one of the best solar panels in the world and they wanted to capture this technology and develop it in Germany.

This man now has a huge plant in East Germany that is running at full capacity. I believe there are plans for him to either expand the existing plant or build another plant in East Germany just to keep up with the demand for solar panels.

When we were looking at the wind farm business in Canada, and particularly in Manitoba, we were thinking about how we could develop some secondary industry here. The turbines are being bought from Vestus and General Electric. They are being manufactured offshore and are being brought to Canada. We thought that we could somehow get in on the ground floor and start manufacturing these wind turbines.

The fact is that there are all sorts of missed opportunities here. In the area of wind turbines and solar panels, it took the aggressive nature of the German government to see the opportunity, seize the opportunity and get the Canadian entrepreneur onside and over to East Germany producing these solar panels.

What does Germany have out of this? It has a great lead in developing solar panels and wind technologies. Those little wind turbines in Pincher Creek in 1991 were just tiny machines and they are still there. One can go out and see some of them still operating. They are very tiny compared to the new one megawatt and two megawatt wind turbines. Why did that happen? It happened because Vestus and established companies like it have now used their technology to build bigger products.

How does a jurisdiction like Manitoba, Saskatchewan or Alberta for that matter, even get on the ground floor now? The train has already left the station and it is in Germany. As a matter of fact, there are examples of German farms. A television program outlined this whole situation recently. It interviewed people in Germany who have solar panels on their own barns. They are not only producing enough energy to power their entire farm operations, but they are selling the surplus on the grid.

Let us juxtapose that with what is happening in Canada. They interviewed a Canadian farmer. This poor Canadian farmer came here from Holland a number of years ago and he wants to develop wind capabilities on his farm. He was given the runaround by the Ontario Hydro facilities. Not only did he have to pay for the hookup to the power line himself, but he is still having problems hooking up, and this is to sell his excess power to the grid.

It really is comical, when one looks at it, to see how many missed opportunities this country has had. It is very sad. We see that Mr. Scheer in Europe and his Canadian partner in Arise Technologies, Mr. MacLellan, are now transforming the German economy. They are getting the German economy off non-renewables and getting the German economy on renewable fuels. We should be doing more that actually works. We can look at examples of best practices and we should be following Germany.

I want to deal once again with another issue. I know my colleague, the member for Ottawa Centre, is very keen on this issue as well. Even though he is not from my province, he knows a lot about my province. He accepts and understands that Winnipeg does have and has had the longest skating rink in the country for several years now. In any event, he is very understanding, as is the Minister of State for Democratic Reform, and I give him full credit.

I do not know what the Conservative MPs from Manitoba and Saskatchewan are doing over there, but if I were part of that group, I would be joining the Minister of State for Democratic Reform and banging on the door of the government ministers, demanding that we develop an east-west power grid, in the tradition of John A. Macdonald who had the vision to tie this country together 100 years ago and build a railway across this country, which was absolutely astounding and visionary in his day. We could do the same thing with an east-west power grid.

When we look at a map of the country, what do we see with power lines, with oil pipelines and with gas pipelines? The member for Ottawa Centre said, “Going south”. That is exactly right. Every single one of the pipelines heads to the United States, heads south, when in fact we should be looking at trying to keep this country together and have the lines running east-west, particularly with regard to electricity.

We in Manitoba are selling our power into the United States, and we are happy to do it. We are developing more hydro plants currently and we will be selling more power into the United States, but it seems to me fairly obvious that what we should be doing is selling this power east-west.

Ontario has a long-identified problem. As a matter of fact, the Gary Filmon government and the Bob Rae government way back in 1991 were on the verge of signing an agreement to build an east-west power grid to bring Manitoba power to Ontario, to get rid of the coal-fired power plants in Ontario.

Now the option is nuclear. That is some option. I can certainly agree with leaving coal-fired plants, but to think that somehow nuclear is the new development, the new frontier, is basically through the past darkly. We are going into the past. We are going with something we know does not work.

As I have indicated, in my lifetime there have been 81 nuclear accidents causing all kinds of damage, whereas we know of no hydroelectric damage that has ever caused loss of life and loss of property.

Our orientation in this country is all wrong when it comes to energy. It is not as if we are trying to reinvent the wheel here. We had the leader in solar panel development right in our backyard, a Canadian living here in Canada, who had to pull up stakes and move to Germany because we did not have the common sense, nor the good sense, to take him up on his offer and help him build a plant. Now of course we will be buying our solar panels from Germany and we will have to get in line, because there is a long waiting list for those panels.

This bill probably would have been good if it had been brought in 10 years ago. The limit of liability is currently $75 million. We are looking at going up to $600 million, but we are now moving into an environment where there is a group of countries with unlimited liability. That is what we should be looking at doing. We should be joining the likes of Belgium, Germany, Slovenia, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, Norway and the United Kingdom. These countries have signed onto agreements which are going to increase their nuclear liability into the unlimited category.

As a matter of fact, all of the group A countries are signatories to the 2004 amending protocol to the Paris convention on Third Party Liability in the Field of Nuclear Energy which sets a minimum liability for nuclear power operators at about $1 billion Canadian. There is compensation from state funds as well.

I want to also point out that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is an issue that is driving the agenda at the moment. I listened to committee hearings yesterday where the president of BP Canada was not really even familiar with the rules and the penalties. When representatives were asked by our critic, the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley, whether the chair of the natural resources committee would endeavour to get in touch with the Americans to find out what the rules are because they did not know what the rules are, he said he thinks the Americans are pretty busy right now with the oil spill.

Fortunately, there are members of the House whom I was lucky enough to be with last weekend for the Canada-U.S. meetings in New Orleans. On Sunday morning we were given a briefing on the oil spill. Without getting into a lot of specifics, the congressman who is well known to many people in this House and has been around for over 30 years was very pessimistic in his report to our group after the authorities gave their presentation.

We are seriously looking at very difficult circumstances where this drilling rig is operating.

I asked a question about the total liability of the spill and what the penalties would be. I believe we were told that there is a fund to which companies contribute, but the limit of liability is in the $100 million range. If British Petroleum is judged to be negligent, it becomes an unlimited liability. Just a few weeks ago BP had very happy shareholders because one of the oil companies made about $15 billion in profit in the last couple of years, so it has a rosy future because government is reducing the corporate taxes. Even so, BP shareholders who just a few weeks ago were having a very happy existence may find their shares being worth very little if the company ends up going out of business as a result of what potentially could be an almost unlimited liability in the case of this oil spill.

Fundamentally we have to hold these companies accountable. If that is what happens to BP, then that is what should happen because the public should not be shoring up private industry. If private industry wants to insist upon drilling at ridiculously deep levels without having proper relief wells in place and without having all the backups, then they have to assume full liability.

Our approach here is that we have to nurture the industry, give them all kinds of incentives and limit their liability. If we do that, the taxpayers are the ones who will end up with all the residual costs at the end of the process when there is an accident and meanwhile, the shareholders will be laughing all the way to the bank.

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona on his speech. He is quite involved in a number of different bills. However, I missed part of his presentation.

Since we are talking about Bill C-15, An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident, I would like to ask him whether he touched on Bill C-9, on budget implementation. If not, I would like him to say a few words about it.

Since that is an omnibus bill, the sale of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited assets also just happens to be included in it. Tendering has begun on the sale of AECL's reactor business. I wonder whether the hon. member has studied this issue within the bill we are currently studying, in terms of liability. Are we sure that liability for the reactors will be transferred to the potential buyer? What are his thoughts on this?

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I do not really think we have changed our view on that over the last year because we feel at the end of the day that the government will be planning perhaps to divest itself of the assets, that asset and many other assets. If the purchaser happens to be an American company, for example, or a company from anywhere else, the company would be very pleased to find itself in a situation where it would have extremely limited liability which would save on its insurance costs.

I want to make a comment about the whole issue of insurance. For some reason the suggestion is that the nuclear consortium can somehow access certain levels of insurance. I have some experience in that area over a large number of years, and I can say that insurance premiums go up and down a lot. It all depends on the reinsurance treaties which are signed every year in London, England on January 1. That is what tells us what we are going to pay for insurance on various items that we are ensuring.

A big catastrophe like 9/11 cost Warren Buffett, who owns one of the reinsurance companies, $3 billion. That money is going to be recouped through increased car insurance, house insurance and all sorts of other insurance rates in the years following.

Insurance markets are highly unpredictable particularly in the area of liability.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question regarding this piece of legislation, which the government tried to pass before, linking it to what many see as a subsidy for an industry that has always required a subsidy.

I remember being in Washington and being briefed on the whole issue of nuclear disarmament. Someone who saw himself as a conservative said unequivocally that there has not been one example where nuclear power has not had massive subsidies and in fact it was the most subsidized industry. He said that anyone could try to bring forward an example and he would show unequivocally that it was subsidized massively.

Is this not just another subsidy to industry by way of a liability piece? If so, should we not be focusing on that for the real cost because this legislation covers industry?

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, absolutely. When a limit is put on the liability, it is telling the business what its ultimate, top-end cost is going to be. Businesses like that. They like to know what their costs are going to be.

What it is also telling the public is that all the excess costs are going to be borne by the taxpayer. We are not talking about a little bit of money here; we are talking about a tremendous amount of money.

The insurance consortium tells us today that it will be able to get limits of whatever amount, $1 billion or whatever it tells us, but because events in the insurance markets are outside of its control, it will come to us in another year or two from now and say, “Sorry, but our insurers withdrew the terms” or the insurance company put some restrictions, or the insurance company doubled or tripled the premiums.

A number of years ago, in 1986 in Manitoba, liability insurance rates went up so drastically and so fast that playground equipment manufacturers could not get liability. When they could not get liability, they could not produce the product and they could not sell it to the City of Winnipeg. And that is just playground equipment.

When it comes to liability, insurance runs the entire economy.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I was listening to my colleague. In his speech, he talked about nuclear energy. The Conservative government currently wants to develop nuclear energy more fully to extract oil from the oil sands. Its argument is that this will reduce some of the pollution created from the oil sands operations. I do not think nuclear energy is the answer because it generates radioactive and nuclear waste that no one knows what to do with.

I would like the hon. member to say a few words about the Conservative government's desire to develop the oil sands.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to answer the question by expanding on reasons why we should not be going the nuclear route.

We have to look at the total cost of the nuclear option. One of the costs of the nuclear option is the storage of waste. There was talk of storing nuclear waste in Pinawa, Manitoba. Even though it is a fairly sparsely populated area, people were outraged. They were organized. They were going to stop this.

Where are they going to put the waste? No matter where they try to put it in this country, people are going to be protesting and trying to stop it. That is a huge cost here.

The waste has to be stored for a long time. We cannot do what the Russians were doing a number of years ago, simply dumping the waste into the oceans. We cannot do something like that.

Why would they want to embark on an avenue where the costs are huge and where they cannot get public buy-in on the area of waste? Where are they going to get buy-in today, in 2010, to situate a nuclear plant? No matter where they try to do it in this country, people are going to try to stop it. Now they are looking at a decade, maybe, before they can get these plants on stream.

If they were to spend that time on wind or solar or developing the east-west power grid, we could have much safer renewable energy on stream in half the time and not have to worry about storage or damage.

I have indicated we have had 81 nuclear accidents in my lifetime. We have had zero hydroelectric power accidents. That is a very compelling argument for going the route of traditional hydroelectric development or wind and solar versus nuclear, which is just riddled with problems.