So the governing ideology is there, that if you want to play in the nuclear game, you had better have the assets to cover the liability and the risk you may engender. That must be the operating philosophy of that particular country.
When we had evidence presented to us about the CANDU reactors and the nature of the CANDU reactors, we were told there were new versions of the CANDU reactor coming forward. Of course, among the issues with the CANDUs over many years has been the great amount of redundancy in the safety systems that led to extreme maintenance costs, shutdowns of plants for lengths of time to allow them to get through the systems in order to fix the ones closer to the source. That's the nature of the CANDU reactor. So it's not a very profitable system, and its safety provisions are extremely high. So I am concerned as well with the potential for that situation to change. We're not necessarily, in this bill, limiting....
When we talk about Chernobyl and catastrophic conditions, if anything like Chernobyl happened in North America today, after people understand the nature of nuclear contamination, I don't think any insurance would cover that. I don't think we could put a limit there. It would have to be unlimited.
My experience with nuclear cleanups is Cosmos 954, which, although it happened over mostly uninhabited country, still cost of fair bit of money to clean up. My community was over 300 miles away from where the object burned up in the atmosphere, and we're talking about a nuclear reactor the size of a thermos bottle.
So when we talk about the costs of cleanup, in the accelerating world of environmental consideration, in the nature of the industry and the liability, all these questions, we look to the future and say, “Is this sufficient?” I'd say that's where a lot of the concern here comes from.
We have a bill here that's going to open the door for things that I'm sure in Belarus were never considered as compensatory items. I don't understand how we can really limit as much as we have and be fair to people in the future, who may make claims for things that can cost an enormous amount of money. As my Liberal colleague pointed out, we may find out under this $650 million that each individual would be severely limited in the amount they could claim.