Thank you very much.
First, since you raised the issue of promoting nuclear, I just want to emphatically state that it's not my job to promote it at all, and that's not what I'm doing. It's purely the jurisdiction of the provinces to decide on their energy mix. Quebec and British Columbia are blessed with a lot of hydro, and that's where they may choose to get their energy. Other parts of the country may decide to use coal and are investing in clean-coal technologies. Almost 50% of Ontario's energy comes from nuclear. Quebec and New Brunswick also use nuclear.
Our first and foremost responsibility as a federal government is to ensure the safety and security of all Canadians. That's our number one priority with respect to nuclear. Obviously there are other issues that we have to deal with. But as the government responsible for the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the regulator, that's our priority.
When a province makes a decision to build a new nuclear reactor, our job is to ensure that all the processes and resources are in place to go through those approvals and that we do a very thorough job to ensure safety and security.
We have many sources of energy across the country, and it's absolutely 100% provincial jurisdiction. If Quebec decides to build a new nuclear reactor, that's 100% their jurisdiction. We aren't involved in that in any way, shape, or form. Once they make that decision, our job as the regulator is to ensure the process is there to go through the environmental processes and all the correct approvals.
On the financial side—you raised AECL—one of the issues is specifically at our Chalk River research labs. The NRU reactor there produces medical isotopes. There are some health and safety issues there that have been overlooked for some time. They require some funds to meet those regulations, and as a government we have to provide the resources to do that. They've been ignored for a long time and have fallen into a.... Obviously they meet minimum safety standards, but they need to become compliant with other health and safety standards, and we have to address that. So you will see additional funding requests in the supplementary estimates for that.
How much will the taxpayer have to pay? I've emphatically stated that any new reactor to be built must be done on a commercial basis without government assistance. The record of the AECL on the CANDU and recent builds has been very good. We haven't built a new reactor in Canada in 25 to 30 years, but they've recently built two in Qinshan, China. They came in on time and under budget. So the recent record on new builds has been very good, but AECL has to compete with the rest of the competitors. It has to be done on a commercial basis, and we're confident they can do that.