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.