Natural Resources Committee on Jan. 29th, 2008

[Christiane Gagnon, Bloc, Québec, QC]

Good afternoon, Minister.

You claim to have acted out of a sense of duty, a desire to protect the welfare of patients and of Canadians in general. You said that you did not have a response protocol. That is what you seem to be trying to tell us. However, in light of certain information, Minister, I have to question your candour. We have found out, for example, that you did not contact European producers for help until December 10. You did not do all that you could to find another solution.

Having listened to your testimony, we can conclude that this was not your primary objective. Indeed, you perceive Canada as being in competition with other producers. Market share was at stake and you did not want to lose face. You claim that other producers were unable to provide isotopes to those who are usually served by the Chalk River reactor. Minister, I question your candour. Your actual objective was probably to keep Canada's market share, and to do so—as you said on many occasions—the reactor had to be restarted as soon as was possible. It seems to me that your strategy was to restart the reactor and not to seek help from other countries for Canada's hospitals.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

It is a question of having two tandem solutions. When I was informed of the situation, we obviously got in touch with the South African authorities. That was on December 6, 2007. On December 7, NRCAN officials contacted other countries. I myself spoke with the President of the Areva group on the phone. We were, however, at the same time, also implementing local, Canadian solutions. As there was no solution to be found on the international front, the best solution was to restart the nuclear reactor.

[Christiane Gagnon, Bloc, Québec, QC]

As you know, last December 11, the House of Commons was taken hostage. We had to adopt emergency legislation. We felt very much responsible for what was happening, but we did not have in hand all of the data we needed. We supported the bill, but as you know, security was also one of our concerns, and it had to be taken into account. We were caught between two ethical issues: meeting patients' needs and considering safety issues.

In an interview, a journalist spoke to foreign representatives, namely from Belgium, and to someone in charge in the Netherlands. They could have increased their output and taken over the production of isotopes, but action would have been required prior to December 10. You knew that the Chalk River facility was not complying with operational requirements. Why did you not take any action prior to December 10? You knew there was a problem. There were warning signs.

I think that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission did its job. It brought Atomic Energy of Canada Limited into step. During the plenary, I was under the impression that AECL controlled the commission, not the opposite. AECL did not feel compelled to upgrade the reactor within the required time. It was during a monitoring operation that they realized the reactor had not been upgraded in accordance with operational standards.

I see some bad faith in what you are telling us about the dates. You can tell us that you called a French, African or Dutch representative, but apart from the dates, the fact remains that there was a problem. You were aware of it: it had been ongoing for two years. AECL was in survival mode, and you let the situation continue instead of developing a memorandum of understanding with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

By firing the president, you removed all authority from the CNSC. You had us pass the bill using a somewhat questionable process.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

I can only say that my role is to protect the health and safety of Canadians. When we realized that the interruption would not just last a few days, but that it would last for an extended period, we took action. We discovered at the international level, sources could provide us with 10% to 15% of the radio isotopes we needed. That did not solve the problem. The only solution was to start the reactor again. That was the solution in December. Permanent solutions will perhaps arise in the future. At least I hope so, because this is important at both the Canadian and international levels. The fact remains, however, that in December, that was the situation.

[Christiane Gagnon, Bloc, Québec, QC]

My point of view is not partisan. You say that it is very important, but you also know that this is about a nuclear reactor. Why wasn't there a memorandum of understanding? If a breakdown were to occur, the situation had to be dealt with at the last minute.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

I agree with you that that is not perfect.

[Christiane Gagnon, Bloc, Québec, QC]

What's more, you took time to act. You waited until the last minute, until December 11, to introduce the bill. It was the end of a session, and we were preparing to leave for the holidays. Why was nothing planned ahead of time? You knew that it would happen and that it would have serious consequences, both in terms of safety and in terms of the supply of isotopes. Why didn't you act sooner? Moreover, when you were asked about your...

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Madame Gagnon, your time is up.

Madame Gagnon, we will allow the minister to answer the question now if you'd like.

Minister.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

As I have already stated, when it became clear that there was a problem with medical isotopes, we took action.

When it was just in a scheduled shutdown it was not clear that this would go on for an extended period of time. When it became clear that this was going on for an extended period of time, that we were beyond just a regularly scheduled shutdown, when it was clear that the Nuclear Safety Commission was not going to re-license so that they could get out of a shutdown, that's when everyone clued in, starting with the Society of Nuclear Medicine specialists, and then others very quickly, that we were in a situation where the health and safety of Canadians were affected. That's when I became part of the story, not before, because I'm not the line minister.

When there's a nexus with health and safety, of course, I'm going to be involved. And I can give you the timeline, but the very day we found out is the very day we started to act.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Minister.

A point of order.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Chairman, Madame Gagnon mentioned that AECL was not in compliance. I would like to point out that this issue is in dispute. AECL's non-compliance was decreed by the CNSC, but no hearing was ever held where the commission considered the evidence for AECL's case and concluded that AECL was in violation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

That's not a point of order.

We'll go to the next questioner. We will go now to the New Democratic Party, to Ms. Bell, for seven minutes.

[Catherine Bell, NDP, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for appearing today.

I have a lot of questions based on your testimony, based on things that I've also done some investigation on myself, and based on the notes from Minister Lunn that we received in a previous meeting.

I will set the tone here. On November 30, Natural Resources Canada received details from AECL on the implications of a prolonged shutdown on isotope supply. They were already being made aware on November 30 that there was going to be a prolonged shutdown. I'm just curious to know why it took until December 5 for you to get that information. That was another five days that we could have had to make sure that the supply was brought up to capacity.

I read from your documents that you are changing your reporting mechanisms. I think that's very important, because those were the first questions I had when this all came about. Why did it get to this point, and why did it take so long for ministers to be informed? Where did it all break down? Obviously some reporting mechanisms were not in place or people were not doing their jobs.

I find that quite disturbing, because this is such an important issue, and it put parliamentarians in a very disturbing position at the time to make the decision. And of course we made that decision, in all good conscience, on the health and safety of Canadians, and for all the right reasons. But again it goes back to how we got there in the first place.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Sure, and I appreciate the question. I think it's a valid question as we review what happened, when it happened, and so on.

I was actually under the understanding that Minister Lunn deposed to this committee that he was first informed on December 3. Regardless of that, I think you're quite right to key in on an issue that we have also keyed in on. That is why we have the protocol in place right now. Chalk River has been there for 50 years. There's never been a protocol and now we have a protocol. It says, here's a defining event that has to be shared with not only Natural Resources Canada but also Health Canada if there are health impacts.

[Catherine Bell, NDP, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Thank you.

Before that you say there was no protocol in place, but in 1996 a plan was drafted to deal with any closures at Chalk River due to a labour dispute that created a prolonged shutdown, or was going to--I think that happened in 1998. So there was some mechanism in place to deal with the shortage of isotopes. I'm curious to know why this plan wasn't used in this instance.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

I'll say a couple of things.

First of all, as we are all now well aware, the half-life of isotopes is such that you're really dealing with, in some cases, a 72-hour timeline, so it's not the usual situation in which you can stockpile supplies. I wish it were not that way, but that is the way it is with radioisotopes. That's the first issue.

The second issue was that we had almost a perfect storm of circumstances around this shutdown, in that at the same time as the unscheduled shutdown, because of the regulatory issues with Chalk River and the NRU, two out of the four were also in scheduled shutdown at precisely the same moment. If you believe in Murphy's law, then certainly we faced a variation of that.

I think the protocol we have in place right now, Ms. Bell, will be helpful in this regard.

[Catherine Bell, NDP, Vancouver Island North, BC]

I have heard what you had to say about the worldwide supply, and I have listened to some experts, and I actually had my office make some phone calls to some of those suppliers to find out about the world's supply. They have indicated to us that indeed there would have been a shortage. It might not have been to the extent that we were led to believe, but there were already facilities, one of them in Belgium, that had already stepped up their supply in late November when they heard about what was happening at AECL and that there would be a prolonged shutdown.

They knew on the other side of the planet that there would be a prolonged shutdown and they were stepping up their supply. Of course, as I said, there would have been a shortage, but we would have been able to assist people who were in emergency situations and put other ones on hold had the situation been managed properly, so there was the potential to have that supply if we had acted sooner.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

I guess I have to respectfully disagree in this regard.

Based on our research of the Belgian option and the other options, that could have added at maximum 15% to our supply. It would not have solved the problem. The only way to solve the problem in the month of December, which was when we needed to solve the problem, was to get the Chalk River reactor, the NRU reactor, up and running again.

Yes, other facilities could have been of modest assistance at the margins, but in order to ensure that every single Canadian would get the right diagnostics, would get the right treatments, there was no option other than to get Chalk River up and running in a safe manner.

[Catherine Bell, NDP, Vancouver Island North, BC]

How much time do I have left?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

You have 40 seconds, Ms. Bell.

[Catherine Bell, NDP, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Minister Clement, whose responsibility is it to ensure that medical isotopes are available, in your opinion?

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

I would say certainly there is a direct contractual relationship between the hospitals that use the isotopes and the producers of the isotopes. Health Canada is one step removed from that. I would say that we take our responsibility seriously, so that when the hospitals, and by extension their patients, were facing a crisis situation, of course we sought to be part of the solution.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Ms. Bell and Mr. Minister.

We go now to the government side, to the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources.

Mr. Anderson, you have seven minutes. Go ahead.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Minister, for coming today. I appreciate your clarification.

Apart from what you've had to say today, I don't think we've heard much new, but it seems to me we've had a series of increasingly desperate attempts by the opposition and some others to try to find an issue in this whole process.

If you'll recall, I think they began with the timelines, trying to confuse the timelines, trying to confuse the public with those timelines. The Minister of Natural Resources was here, was very clear on that, and clarified those timelines. Then the opposition resorted to trying to make some phoney connections between the Auditor General's report and Chalk River. It was clear, after the minister was here, and today, after the Auditor General was here, that there is no connection between her reports and what happened in November and December at Chalk River.

It's unfortunate, and probably most disconcerting to people, that the opposition now wants to rewrite the night of December 11. We had a genuine emergency. They supported us wholeheartedly while the emergency existed. Then once it was over they bailed out, and then have tried to make a political game out of this. Now I hear they want to try to pretend there was no issue at all.

At our last meeting with the Minister of Natural Resources, Mr. McGuinty called them fabricated health concerns, that the health crisis was fabricated. That contradicted, by the way, what his deputy leader had said, that the Canadian Association of Nuclear Medicine estimated that 50,000 Canadians a month would experience delays in their medical tests. He called it a national medical crisis and also said this situation was endangering the lives of millions of Canadians. So clearly we had a situation.

I also found it strange today that Mr. Alghabra seemed to be angry that you didn't move faster, but then we spent an hour listening to the fact that we shouldn't have moved at all, that we should have stayed out of this entirely. It's another one of the inconsistencies we've seen from them.

Yesterday, another strange accusation was made about you when it was said that you were actually discouraging isotope supply. I want to ask you to comment on that, but secondly, I just want to clear this up. The Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Nuclear Medical Association, the government, the deputy leader of the Liberals, all the opposition parties agreed there was an emergency, a health crisis. I want you to tell us if that health crisis was real or if the health concerns were fabricated, as Mr. McGuinty said.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Let me answer that question directly first. The crisis was real, based on the assessment of the experts and our expert advisory group. These are nuclear medicine professionals and oncologists and cardiac specialists.

At the point at which Parliament passed the bill, our supply in Canada was already down by 65% and we were reaching the point at which mere inconvenience was tipping over into life or death situations. This is very serious. It was recognized as serious at the time by Parliament.

I can tell you none of that is fabricated. It doesn't come from me; it comes from the experts in the field, the people I rely on. I go to the field. I respect my colleagues I work with in the public service, but they, quite rightly, assisted me in going right down into the field, at the hospital level, at the clinic level, hearing from the experts. That's the first point I would make.

The second point I would make is to categorically reject the accusation that somehow we were trying to avoid foreign suppliers. We contacted foreign suppliers. A minister doesn't just get on the phone on a Saturday morning to phone the president of a rival of AECL in Paris. You don't do that if you're trying to discourage alternative supply. You're looking for alternative supply. That's exactly what I did and that's exactly what officials in Natural Resources Canada and Health Canada, working together, did.

So that is false. It's just not the way it happened. I am quite convinced that there was no stone left unturned by our departments, by the Government of Canada, by all those involved, to seek the best way to resume supply.