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.