Natural Resources Committee on Feb. 5th, 2008

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

Mr. McGee, I have a question for you.

I understand there's a formal procedure if CNSC is going to move to either regulate or make a decision with regard to one of your facilities. Was that procedure seen through in a proper fashion? I understand there was no particular hearing or anything; there was a decision. You said you were going to extend the shutdown, but then apparently the commission chairman made it clear that if you hadn't, they would have shut you down.

Was there any process that you went through for them to have made that determination?

[Brian McGee]

There was no process that we went through. One of our concerns is that we weren't given an opportunity to table our case for why we still were within the licensing basis of the facility.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. McGee and Mr. Anderson.

We have about five minutes left and four people to question. We're going to have very short questions, and I will hold people to a minute total.

First of all, to Mr. Alghabra.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Dr. Perry, we lost you there for a bit. I don't know if you heard Mr. Anderson's accusation. I think you're next on their list, because now you're considered an NDP appointee.

I want to give you the chance to respond to that, that they're trying to undermine your credibility. Could you please respond to that accusation?

[Dr. Thomas Perry]

I didn't hear it, but--

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

Mr. Chair--

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

On a point of order, Mr. Anderson.

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

Mr. Perry, to be fair, since Mr. Alghabra didn't seem to understand what I said, I just pointed out that you were an NDP cabinet minister in the B.C. government, and I felt that clearly your reason for being here today wasn't only your concern for Parliament. But I would suspect you have an opinion about this that is related to Ms. Bell and her position as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Okay, Dr. Perry, go ahead, please.

[Dr. Thomas Perry]

I'm not familiar with Ms. Bell.

I was very critical of some of my friends in the NDP for voting in Parliament to overrule the Nuclear Safety Commission without asking intelligent questions. The only intelligent question I heard asked in the news coverage of Parliament came from Mr. Ignatieff, of whom I'm not a great fan, but I was impressed by his questioning.

The other day in your committee hearings both the Bloc and the Liberal members seemed to ask the more perceptive questions. I noticed there were some good government questions today as well.

But my interest is more as a citizen, frankly. I was thinking, listening to Dr. Gulenchyn, that really, if you listen carefully to what both of us said.... She's the expert in terms of the use of the radionuclides. She and I both have used them diagnostically, and we both would start, as I was doing this morning with my own students and house staff, with the history of the patient and the physical exam. I'm probably different from her in that I've worked in some extremely remote communities where I didn't have access to fancy diagnostics and had to use my head.

But the key interest, the reason I'm so appreciative of the chance to talk with your committee this morning, is that there are multiple apparent crises, and a crisis depends on who's perceiving it. For example, a former Liberal Minister of Health bought hundreds of millions of dollars worth of a drug called oseltamivir, or Tamiflu, against avian flu. I think that was almost certainly a gigantic waste of money.

Listening to the man from AECL today, I thought, gee, $10 million of that could have apparently fixed the reactor problems at AECL if they were “underfunded”.

What I would like to see from my Parliament and MPs of all parties are scrupulous, intelligent questions, using their staff who are trained to ask hard questions, and try to get to the facts.

I'm hoping your committee will, at the end of the day, allow me to learn whether there really was a crisis or whether there was a manageable situation that was being well-managed by people like Dr. Gulenchyn and whether there are lessons we can learn in the future.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Dr. Perry. I have to cut you off. We have three other questioners. They'll have to be brief indeed.

Next we'll go to Madame DeBellefeuille.

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. McGee, I hope you realize that today's meeting has done little to reassure Quebeckers and Canadians. Our concerns have not by any means been put to rest when we see the kinds of organizational and communications problems that are prevalent in health-related areas.

You issued a press release in February 2006 announcing that MAPLE 1 would go on line in October 2008. Yet, according to some sources, the MAPLE reactors are not operational and never will be. Can you confirm to our committee that there is no truth whatsoever to these reports?

[Brian McGee]

Thank you for the question.

As I mentioned earlier, the MAPLE reactors are awaiting approval from the CNSC to do what we're calling the “400 series” testing. That's intended to identify the contributors to the positive power coefficient of reactivity. We believe, based on our analysis and the work done to this point, that those tests will show us what is causing the positive coefficient of reactivity. Following that, we'll undertake to correct it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. McGee.

We'll go now to Ms. Bell, for one question, please.

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

Thank you.

What I've heard from all the witnesses today is that there was a breakdown in communications at many different levels. That is something I've been trying to get to the heart of from the beginning of this. We heard from Ms. Gulenchyn that the clear and timely information was not provided, and from Mr. Edwards that Parliament didn't have all the information to make a decision when we met in Parliament.

Ms. Gulenchyn, you were part of the group of experts. I just wonder why you were not in Parliament on that night to inform us there. But also, when I find that the Minister of NRCan got an email from AECL on November 22 saying that the shutdown would be extended and that was the first email to alert us to this, when we know that isotope production is such a critical thing for medicine in Canada, why was nothing started at that point?

I'm really concerned that we didn't have all the information in Parliament. I would like to hear from each of you a little bit more on that, knowing back then, on November 22, that if we had started the process then, whether we would have been in the predicament we're in today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Ms. Bell. That will wrap things up.

To all members of the committee, thank you very much for your questions.

Thank you to the witnesses. I appreciate very much your responses to the questions today. Well done.

Just for the committee, looking forward, we had invited the deputy minister, along with other witnesses, to come on Thursday. She can't come on Thursday. She has volunteered to come next Tuesday.

The committee had agreed, of course, to start the forestry study next Tuesday, and we should be inviting witnesses for that. We have the choice of starting the softwood lumber study or having the deputy minister on Tuesday.

What could be done, of course, is that the deputy minister could be here for an hour on forestry, following an hour on the nuclear study that we're carrying out now. Would that be an appropriate way to go, or do you want to go straight to forestry?

I think there is agreement, then, to go ahead and have her for an hour on each issue. Of course, we come back on Thursday to continue with this study.

Seeing no further interventions, the meeting is adjourned.