Environment Committee on Feb. 15th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I call this meeting to order. It's the fifth meeting of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development in this 44th Parliament.

For the benefit of the witnesses—because members are well aware of this—please keep your mikes off, unless you are speaking to the committee. When you've finished speaking, whether it's your opening statement or an answer to a question, put your mike on mute again.

For the people in the room, we maintain two metres of physical distancing and wear a mask when circulating. There's hand sanitizer available in the room, as well as some wipes and so on.

Before we get started, I would like to ask the committee members if we have agreement to adopt the subcommittee report.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

It looks like there is agreement. That's fantastic. The subcommittee report is adopted.

Today, we'll be extending our meeting until about 11:30 because of the vote. We have two panels. The first panel includes three witnesses. I would ask the witnesses to be aware of the time. You have five minutes, but anything under that is greatly appreciated by me and other members of the committee.

We have with us today, appearing as an individual, Mr. Thomas Isaacs, who is a consultant in California. I'm told, Mr. Isaacs, that the temperature here in Ottawa is similar to the temperature in California, or is that just wishful thinking on our part? I think it's wishful thinking on our part. It's a very cold day in the world's second coldest capital.

We also have from Bruce Power, James Scongack, chief development officer and executive vice-president of operations. From the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, we have Mr. Gordon Edwards, who is president of the coalition.

We'll start with you, Mr. Isaacs, for five minutes please.

[Thomas Isaacs, Private Consultant, As an Individual]

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.

I want to thank you for the opportunity to participate in this panel on nuclear waste governance in Canada. I'll try to be brief.

My name in Tom Isaacs and I am a citizen of the United States living in sunny California. I worked on the program for the management of used nuclear fuel in the U.S. Department of Energy for many years and have had the opportunity to work with and advise similar programs in other countries, including the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization.

Almost 20 years ago, I was a member of the original team assembled by the NWMO to identify and evaluate options for Canada’s plans to manage used nuclear fuel, and I've advised NWMO on a number of other occasions. I've also visited a number of the communities that have expressed interest in having Canada potentially host a nuclear waste repository, largely to inform them about my experiences in similar programs in other countries. I currently chair the NWMO site selection review group to provide oversight and advice on the appropriateness and fairness of their ultimate repository site selection process.

In 2010, the U.S. stopped its nuclear waste management program and created the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future to make recommendations on how to restart a U.S. program that had better chances of success. I was the lead advisor for that Blue Ribbon Commission report, and many of its recommendations reflected what we saw as best practices being carried out in places like Canada, as well as Finland and Sweden.

I believe strongly that all countries that rely on nuclear power for part of their energy mix have a responsibility to begin preparations for the ultimate disposition of the resulting used fuel. This generation has an obligation to provide solutions for this used fuel, not to simply pass it on to future generations as their burden. I am pleased that NWMO plays an active role in meeting this obligation for Canada.

Thank you very much. I'm happy to respond to any questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Mr. Isaacs.

We'll go now to Mr. Scongack from Bruce Power. You have five minutes.

[James Scongack, Chief Development Officer and Executive Vice President, Operations, Bruce Power]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before the committee today.

I have a few items I do want to cover in my introductory remarks, but before I do so, I want to recognize that I am presenting today from the traditional territories of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation and the traditional harvesting territories of the Métis Nation of Ontario and the Historic Saugeen Métis. Our facility at Bruce Power is also located on those traditional territories.

I serve as the chair of the Canadian Nuclear Isotope Council, an organization that is a coalition of over 70 organizations across Canada that are committed to asserting Canada's historic role as a producer, developer and exporter of life-saving medical isotopes, which are used in the sterilization of medical equipment and the sterilization of personal protective equipment, in the vaccine production and manufacturing process and also in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

For generations, Canada has provided global leadership in this space, and I understand that this is an area of study that this committee is also looking at, so I am looking forward today to discussing Canada's role as what I call an “isotope superpower”.

The organization for which I work is a world-leading provider of cobalt-60. Just last month, we harvested enough cobalt-60 to sterilize 10 billion pairs of COVID swabs and medical gloves all over the world. This is a leadership position that Canada has.

We also recently installed a new delivery system on our Canadian CANDU reactors to produce an isotope called Lutetium-177, which is used to treat neuroendocrine tumours in brain cancer. In this particular project, what is unique about it as well is the fact that we've partnered with the Saugeen Ojibway Nation through a “fighting cancer together” initiative.

Why am I starting with that? It's because what we really are talking about at this committee and broadly in this discussion are the by-products from the production of medical isotopes or the by-products from nuclear power generation. If we are going to fight climate change as a society, we need every clean energy source in the tool box to do so.

Here in Ontario, one of the things we are immensely proud of as the Province of Ontario, as you may have seen over the weekend, is the demolition of our last remaining coal plant in the province. You know, there are a lot of people talking about climate change; there are not many people doing a lot about it. It's not policy papers; it's actual things that happen in the real world to reduce emissions. You can look at the work we've done here in the province of Ontario to phase out the use of coal-fired electricity. That's one of the largest climate change reduction initiatives in the world. Seventy per cent of that energy to replace coal in the province of Ontario came from our nuclear fleet at Bruce Power.

Why am I saying that? Because when we look at the by-products of what comes from the production of nuclear energy or the production of medical isotopes, we have to look at this from a broader perspective. There is an old saying that I often like to quote, which is that you should not idolize or demonize any energy source. If we are going to fight climate change, if we are going to tackle some of the most significant public policy and societal challenges we have, we would look at our array of energy sources and determine the right mix.

Part of looking at energy sources and determining the right mix is managing the by-products from the production of nuclear energy and the production of medical isotopes. We have a plan in Canada that is funded and well managed, and I can tell you that at a site, in the case of Bruce Power, we spend a tremendous amount of time, effort and innovation in reducing the amount of waste we produce.

We adopt a reduce, reuse and recycle approach, and while the committee is looking at alternate waste disposal, we need to look at it just like we do when we teach our kids when they are young what to do in terms of the blue bin recycling. For any industry that has a by-product, the first thing they need to look as is, how do you reduce that? The second thing they need to look at is how you reuse or recycle it, and then, whatever by-product is left, they need to look at how is it safely disposed of.

I've worked for my entire career in the nuclear industry, and I am very proud of the fact that we're one of the few industries to have that plan. As the previous panellist said, there have been many countries that haven't gotten this right, countries that consistently had political intervention in this space. We have a well-funded, well-developed plan in Canada and it's time that we allowed that plan to get implemented through the processes that are in place.

I'm immensely proud of the work our industry has done, and I look forward to answering questions from members of the committee today.

Thanks again for having me here, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Mr. Scongack.

We'll go now to Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.

Mr. Edwards, go ahead.

[Dr. Gordon Edwards, President, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility]

I welcome this opportunity to talk to parliamentarians about nuclear waste governance in Canada. Parliament should no longer be excluded from nuclear debates. Parliamentary involvement will be extremely important going forward, as the age of nuclear waste is just beginning now and will stretch forward for hundreds of thousands of years. Your oversight is needed to ensure that public interest is protected for thousands of years to come.

Parliament has ultimate responsibility for seeing that public monies are properly spent and not wasted, and that the health and welfare of Canadians and the environment are well protected. There is no assurance that these goals will be met, given the long time frame, if the industry that created the waste is in effect given the sole authority to deal with it.

The industry has a serious conflict of interest. It views nuclear waste as a major public relations problem, a stumbling block. They don't want to get rid of the waste and forget about it, but they would if they could. It can't be done, because radioactivity is a form of nuclear energy that cannot be shut off, so what they do is they downplay it. They have other fish to fry. At the last committee hearing and at this one as well, industry spokesmen are clearly much more interested in singing the praises of nuclear power and selling the idea of new reactors than saying anything useful about nuclear waste.

For the first 30 years of the nuclear age, political leaders and the public did not even know nuclear waste existed, since the industry portrayed the technology as perfectly clean and safe. Now we hear that it's a blue box. We seem to be in some kind of time warp, as new nuclear reactors are being promoted with absolutely no discussion of the radioactive waste they will create. NWMO is not in the habit of telling the whole truth about radioactive waste either.

Without good governance, the costs of radioactive waste management will skyrocket. Contaminated sites in Hanford, Washington and Sellafield, England are now estimated to cost more than $100 billion Canadian each for cleanup. Here in Canada, negligence at Chalk River and Port Hope has resulted in a federal radioactive waste liability in excess of $16 billion. Since a consortium of multinational corporations took charge in 2015, working under the Crown corporation AECL, the cost of the federal waste management program has quadrupled from less than $1 billion in the six years before the consortium to more than $4 billion in the following six years.

Surely it is Parliament's responsibility to oversee these expenditures and insist on proper accountability. Bear in mind that some of the corporations that run the consortium, SNC-Lavalin, Fluor and Jacobs, have a checkered history including fraud, bribery and illegal political donations.

The consortium favours quick and dirty methods. It plans to dump a million tonnes of radioactive waste in a surface landfill less than one kilometre from the Ottawa River despite opposition from the over 140 municipalities downstream, including the Montreal agglomeration. It also plans to bury the dangerous radioactive carcasses of two defunct reactors right beside major rivers instead of dismantling them, as was originally proposed and approved by the CNSC. These three projects are in violation of strong warnings issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Radioactive waste governance is a non-partisan issue; party affiliation is irrelevant, nor does it matter whether you support nuclear power or do not support it, because we are all in the same boat when it comes to radioactive waste. We have to do the best we can to keep these dangerous radioactive poisons out of the environment of living things forever.

Here are some things that Parliament can do. Number one, we need a nuclear waste management and decommissioning agency that is independent of industry and of agencies that promote the industry such as NRCan. That was a unanimous recommendation of the Seaborn panel after a 10-year environmental assessment process. That waste agency should report to Parliament regularly, not just to the minister.

Number two, CNSC, our nuclear regulator, should not be under the minister of Natural Resources but under Environment Canada. This will help remedy the predicament that CNSC has been captured by the industry it is regulating. CNSC should also report directly to Parliament on a regular basis.

Number three, amnesia is a bad policy. Heritage Canada should be archiving complete records of the radioactive legacies that we are leaving to future generations starting now. This necessity has been stressed by the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency for over a decade, but here in Canada, it is not done.

Number four, reprocessing used nuclear fuel to extract plutonium should be banned. It complicates waste management and is a dangerous step towards proliferation of weapons.

Number five, rolling stewardship is an alternative to abandonment and should be seriously considered by Parliament. Abandonment is irresponsible; three final repositories have experienced failure so far.

Finally, the current legacy of uranium mining in Canada is 218 million tonnes of radioactive sand that must be kept out of the environment for at least one-million years. Parliamentary action is needed to keep these uranium wastes on the political agenda.

Parliamentarians, Canadians need your help.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Our time is up, Mr. Edwards. Thank you.

There'll be a time to make statements and comments and to answer questions.

We will now begin the first round of questions. Each member will have six minutes to speak.

Mr. Mazier, you have the floor.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for coming out this morning.

I'll go to Mr. Isaacs first.

You've worked with nuclear waste management over the years. Do you believe that the consultations they are undertaking right now are done very thoroughly?

[Thomas Isaacs]

In my experience, Mr. Mazier—I assume you're talking about the Nuclear Waste Management Organization—I have seen an extraordinary attempt by NWMO to engage with communities of interest over an extended period of time to educate them, inform them, try to understand their concerns and to try to establish relationships that will stand the test of time, because any ultimate partnership, which is required to develop such a facility, will have to span generations.

This is not, as was mentioned earlier, a quick and dirty process. This has to be a very thorough and carefully considered process.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

What really impressed me was how they included all stakeholders from every angle. The communities wanted them. At the end of the day, they had to make sure that they were all in.

Also, could you expand on the potential beneficial outcome that nuclear partnerships with indigenous communities could have? For example, what could be the beneficial results with those communities if they partnered with the nuclear industry?

[Thomas Isaacs]

I can tell you in general how I think these things have to occur. I've often said that I think there are three things that are important if a community is going to have the kind of trust and confidence that they need in order to move forward in this.

First, you have to believe that the party that you're dealing with is competent and has a track record of competence. Being competent, however, isn't enough.

Second, you have to believe that when a party, whether it's NWMO or any organization, makes decisions, they have the best interests of the community in mind and will make decisions in concert with that.

Third, and very importantly, you have to listen and then respond. It's not good enough for an organization or an individual to say, “Well, I understand your concerned about something, but trust me. I'm a scientist. I know best.” If a community has questions or concerns, they have to be responded to.

To answer your question, the ways in which NWMO or any organization will help indigenous communities or others is by working together to build a relationship of trust, partnership and understanding. The communities themselves have to take the lead in deciding what they want their future to be. It is then the role of the NWMO, in my view, to work closely and continuously with the community to help them achieve the vision that they have for themselves. Whether that's more money, more education, more public services, whatever that community feels it needs—opportunities so that the young people will want to stay there, whatever it is—they have to be flexible and adaptable to try to meet that community in the space where it resides in terms of where it wants to go and what it sees is important for its future.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. Mazier, I am told that your party has requested that we do a little switch here, where you get five minutes and then Mr. Davidson gets six.

We have about a minute left.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Mr. Scongack, did you have any comments on that?

[James Scongack]

It's a really appropriate question. The only thing I would add to this is really taking a step back and recognizing the independent quasi-judicial regulatory process that we have in Canada. Any nuclear facility, whether it's an operating nuclear facility or a waste facility, does fall under the jurisdiction of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. That is a very open, transparent process.

As I noted, it is quasi-judicial, but also within that process is embedded community engagement, consultation and the licence renewal process.

If you look at this from an international perspective, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission internationally is a tremendously respected independent regulator. Not only is this important at the front of the process, but once this facility is licensed and operating, it's a critical ongoing component for both indigenous and non-indigenous communities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

We'll go now to Ms. Thompson for six minutes.

[Joanne Thompson, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you.

I want to follow through with the last question, and probably in the same order, Mr. Isaacs, if you wouldn't mind being the first to answer.

Certainly I understand the relationships with indigenous communities based on trust and partnership, understanding and collaboration, but to drill down a little more specifically, in the 2021 mandate letter for the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, the minister was asked to deliver results on the following commitment:

Recognize the “right to a healthy environment” in federal law and introduce legislation to require the development of an environmental justice strategy and the examination of the link between race, socio-economic status and exposure to environmental risk.

With this strategy in examination, would you mind speaking more specifically to the issues of nuclear waste storage on indigenous lands?

[Thomas Isaacs]

It would be somewhat inappropriate for me to try to drill down into the specific instances in Canada of the relationships, because I don't have deep experience in dealing with those communities, although I have visited a couple of them.

I'm a strong proponent of the fact that we need to find ways to take extra measures to understand and respond to injustices that have occurred in the past that might translate into limitations on the ability of certain communities to participate fully or to understand fully, or to benefit fully from the prospects of a program like this.

The NWMO's stated judgment that they will only site this in a place where they have a willing and informed community is probably a good point of departure for this. I think the “informed” aspect comes first, finding ways to make sure that communities are aware of and informed about and have the opportunity to engage with and are given the resources to build their own capacity to deal with this in a responsible way. That is what I would suggest.

Beyond that, I'm a little hesitant to prescribe what I think needs to be done in that regard.

[Joanne Thompson, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you.

I don't know if anyone else wants to jump in. Clearly this is work that must have happened, and I'm confident has happened, but what I'm really trying to put out on the table and what I'd like the witnesses to speak to more specifically is where the mitigation is for the prevention of any type of harm to human health, and specifically about what has been put in place to safeguard against what is clearly an environmental disaster

[James Scongack]

Maybe I can start.

I live right next to a community that's undergoing this process now, so I think it's important to unpack the process and how people are engaged and how those questions are answered.

The most important thing to understand first and foremost is that the NWMO hasn't selected a site yet. They're going through that process for a willing host. That willing host includes indigenous and non-indigenous communities, so there's that dialogue process under way.

Once the NWMO selects a preferred site, that site will be subject to the impact assessment process, which is a multi-year environmental impact assessment process that will deal with all of those, whether they're socio-economic, environmental, safety or community—all of those items in a multi-year process. Once that process is complete, the NWMO needs to progress through a licensing process through the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to progress the project, but also to operate that particular facility; and that process also has all of those check marks.

It's a really good question, because we shouldn't look at this as a decision in one point in time. We should look at it as an early dialogue for a willing host, but there's a consistent set of accountability around safety, environmental protection and public engagement. It's not a “one and done”.

As somebody who works for an operator of a nuclear plant that was built 30 or 40 years ago, I think we still do that today. We are still earning that confidence today, and I think that's often one of the challenges we run into in this debate.

[Dr. Gordon Edwards]

I think the Canadian Parliament should be working for the Canadian people and not only for the nuclear industry.

The problem is that the industry gives people, including parliamentarians, what is essentially pablum rather than actual detailed information. I talked to the South Bruce willing host community candidate. There were people on that panel for seven years and they had never once been told by the NWMO that in order to get the waste underground it has to be unpackaged and repackaged using robotic equipment on the site of the waste. They were not told this. They had also never heard the words “radioactive iodine” or “radioactive cesium”. They never heard about the specific radioactive poisons that are contained in the fuel.

What's happening is a sales pitch. That's what we're having right here today, in fact. We're having a sales pitch and Parliament is supposed to just sit back, be reassured and not actually take an active interest in listening to both sides of the question or listening to people from those communities who are unhappy with what's going on to see if their unhappiness has any basis in fact.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Ms. Pauzé, you now have the floor for six minutes.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Following on from what Mr. Edwards said, I would point out that NWMO only manages 10% of nuclear waste. So the other 90% needs to be taken into account.

Mr. Edwards, I would like you to tell us about the polluter pays principle in particular, according to which the polluters themselves determine the solutions.

[Dr. Gordon Edwards]

I think the polluter pays principle is very important. I believe that the polluter should pay, but not necessarily be in charge. They shouldn't be driving the bus. Somebody else who has only the health and welfare of the Canadian citizens and the Canadian environment...should be running the show.

Yes, the polluter should pay. The polluter should not pay according to what he considers he can get away with, but rather what the protection of the environment and the citizens require.

For example, although these gentlemen today are talking only about one type of fuel waste—that is the radiative fuel from a nuclear reactor—there are other types of low and intermediate-level waste. There are 218 million tonnes of radioactive waste left over from uranium mining in Canada. All of these wastes have to be looked after and they all have to be dealt with. It's going to be expensive, but if you pay the correct money today by people who have the correct motives then you can safeguard the future.

To give an example, when they talk about building a radioactive waste mound at Chalk River that is five to six stories high and that is going to last forever, how can any future generation start making repairs to that mound once it starts disintegrating? It would be far better to have these things properly packaged, properly labelled, and able to be repackaged and relabelled as time goes on with all of the information detailed and archived for future generations to consult, so that they know the problems that they're dealing with.

We've seen many examples where waste has been buried and when they start digging it up, they're surprised at what they find because nobody told them these things were there. This is happening at Port Hope today, for example.

Lack of care in the process leads to greater costs later.