Natural Resources Committee on March 3rd, 2009

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

I'm just waiting for Mr. Regan to join the conversation.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

This must be brilliant, now that you have my attention. I'll wait for that. I look forward to this being absolutely brilliant. Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Order, please.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

The expectations are too high.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Always go through the chair, Mr. Hiebert.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Mr. Chair, we have launched ourselves into an integrated community energy systems study. It would seem to me perfectly appropriate for us to continue that study. We have witnesses lined up. The clerk has done an excellent job of filling the calendar with people like the ones we were supposed to hear from today, so it seems rather odd that the opposition is trying to derail a study that they already agreed to, as regards what we're currently doing.

All I can make of this is that it is an attempt for further fearmongering on the part of the opposition when we know that is simply not the case. We had representatives from AECL tell us very clearly that there is no reason to be concerned, Mr. Regan. They said very clearly that there is no risk to the public.

I'm not sure what angle they're trying to tease out of these officials—they would be, of course, the ones to speak to again—or what value there would be for taxpayers if our current study were derailed. Can they answer that question?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Are there any further comments?

Mr. Anderson, you're still on the list on the amendment.

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

I have a few comments. I think Mr. Hiebert is making some very good comments here. We've already moved on to something else, and I'm not sure why we're dealing with this right now. We had quite a discussion about whether we wanted to have the minister here to discuss the nuclear issues, and she was willing to come. We had the discussion, and this goes more to the heart of the original motion of Mr. Cullen. But there was no new information presented, so I don't know why he's bringing that forward.

Further to the amendment, that's precisely why she was here. She came to talk about the funding for the AECL generally and for the Chalk River reactor. The discussion was about those kinds of things. It doesn't make any sense, and I think that's how the invitation will be seen, when she's already been here to address those very issues. Now we're inviting her to come back to do the same thing again. The response will likely be, “We've done that. That's why we were there, and we had those conversations.” The opposition had a chance to ask those questions, and if they had taken it they would have received the answers they requested.

We agreed to one meeting. We had the meeting and we've moved on to other things now. I think we need to see that through.

So I'm going to make the suggestion that we table this motion until we're done our integrated energy partnership study, and then come back to it at that time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Is that a suggestion or a motion?

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

I'll make it into a motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

The motion is to adjourn debate.

(Motion negatived)

If there is no further discussion on the amendment to the motion, we will go to the vote on the amendment.

(Amendment agreed to) [See Minutes of Proceedings]

Is there any further discussion on the motion as amended?

Mr. Allen.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Anderson was raising a very good point here a minute ago when we were talking about the amendment. We did agree some time ago to hold the one meeting on this. I think that in fairness to this, we have moved on. If we're always going to be bringing up new stuff and derailing the committee business....

Mr. Chair, I agree that committees are masters of their own destinies, but at the same time, it doesn't promote a whole lot of goodwill when we end up debating stuff over and over and over, and we keep bringing stuff up, and we agree to a course of action, such as our community energy study—which I know some of the others on the other side really want to do—and then we turn around and actually change that.

Mr. Chair, when I was looking at this and at the testimony of the folks the other day from the AECL and CNSC, just following the line of questioning then, I'm really not sure this motion adds a whole lot of value at this time, because we clarified things then. I just want to repeat, Mr. Chair, that I think we got these things on the record from AECL. I want to follow that line of questioning we were on then, when I said:

My understanding, based on the questions that were put to the CNSC and everything before, is that tritium emissions are not new. This happens all the time and it's part of the regular process of the reactor. The leak we're talking about was two pinholes, as Mr. Pilkington said. It was self-contained within the reactor itself and there was no risk whatsoever to humans based on that leak. Is that true?

Mr. MacDiarmid, in his response, said, “That is correct. Maybe the chief nuclear officer, as the executive responsible, should have a say as well.”

Mr. Pilkington concluded, “Yes, that is correct. You're speaking of the latest leak, which occurred this past weekend.”

And my next question was, “Right, but the tritium levels that are normal have been a normal course of operation at the Chalk River reactor for eons, right?”

Mr. Pilkington responded:

Yes, the total amount of tritium that would have been released as a result of the event on the weekend was initially estimated to be about 18 kilograms, and with more refined calculations we determined that it was in the order of 11 kilograms. That's 11 kilograms of heavy water that would have been released through the ventilation system. That was in fact monitored, recorded, and will be reported.

Then I asked, “Following that, there's also tritium that's released as a normal course without any leaks. Is that correct?”

Mr. Pilkington once again responded:

That's correct. A facility like Chalk River has a low chronic level of tritium release

—“chronic” meaning all the time, the last time I checked—

both through the ventilation system and through the liquid effluents that are treated in our waste treatment centre and released. That is correct.

My next question was, “Therefore it is not a new phenomenon. Mr. MacDiarmid, you said you are very mindful of the need to acquire the licence renewal.”

So in responding to that line of questioning, AECL was very, very structured in their response. It took us three or four questions to get to it, but Mr. Pilkington was very clear in his answer, and so was Mr. MacDiarmid, that these are chronic things that happen at Chalk River as part of the normal course of business.

So, Mr. Chair, I'm not sure why we're.... The minister's been very straightforward in all of her responses in the House and here that humans were not adversely impacted. AECL has said the same thing, and so has CNSC. So I think we're going on a fishing expedition on this one, if you will, and I really don't see the point of debating it any further. The fact is that this really shouldn't....

My point here would be to say if the committee wants to invite the minister back at some point in time, then that might be relevant, but at the end of the day, the minister has already spoken to this. We already know from the officials, in that questioning on the day we had, that this information did come out and that there's no further value in having this motion go on.

Mr. Chair, I firmly believe that the motion is just a waste of the committee's time. We could be doing things that are a lot more productive in terms of continuing our study on the community energy projects. I felt bad today when we had that number of votes, nine standing votes, and of course we were tired from getting up and down, but walking over here took us a lot of extra time too.

We had the people here from the Green Building Council and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, which would have given us a heck of an opportunity to ask some great questions, and now here we are back at this again.

I'm concerned that in the future, in the next meetings, Mr. Chair, this is going to continue, and we're going to keep bringing up these red herrings, if you will. I think this is off-base and we should just be dropping it and moving on to the order of business that we've adopted on our schedule.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Allen.

I have Mr. Trost and Mr. Cullen on the speaking list, speaking to the motion as amended.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

I know that not everyone sat on this committee in the previous Parliament, but one of the things that frustrated me on the committee in the previous Parliament was that every so often we would have no basic scientific understanding of questions. There was basic scientific illiteracy.

I can understand that not everyone will get this, but we had discussions about the half-life of isotopes and there were questions to the officials about why you couldn't store an isotope with a certain amount of half-life, radioactive decay, and things of that nature. There seemed to be some idea that you could manufacture it and put it away. Then we had—this was amazingly ridiculous—people who didn't understand the difference between a one in a thousand year probability and a one in a thousand probability, something that could be differentiated in a high school statistics class. These sorts of things tend to frustrate me. I understand in the general press....

My concern, when we start to go back and look at these issues again and again, is that we need to have some sort of basic scientific background for what's serious and what's not. I think it was very appropriate that you had one hearing on this to see if this was something that was serious or not, because reports in the popular press often cannot differentiate between normal radioactivity and a Chernobyl type of situation. They don't understand that.

For people who don't know: you can get radioactivity from wooden buildings, from brick buildings, and from your TV. Every day, from everything around us, we get doses of radiation. It's not just from things such as X-rays at a dentist's office or so forth. Just being in a wooden or brick building gives you different levels of radiation.

This brings me to my concern here. We talk here about the heavy water, about the spills, and about things like that. Throughout the whole world, any industrial facility of any size will have spills. I come from a farm family. We spilled oil on the ground every so often when we changed the oil in our tractors, our trucks, and things like that. Was getting a little bit of oil in there good for the environment? Of course not, but these things actually do happen.

What we have to do when we look at events is put them in the proper context and understand the scientific scale that we're dealing with. The reason I'm opposed to this is that we are taking this from what's incredibly minor, almost trivial. It was proper to find out whether or not it was trivial, whether or not it was a major incident, and whether or not it was something of sufficient interest, but we've done that. All we can do now is try to exaggerate its importance or create it to be something that it's not.

My colleague will eventually figure out how to turn off his phone here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Yes. I would like to ask the member to turn the volume down on his phone so it's—

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

There's a vibrate and a silence option on those things too.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

You'd figure out the technology really quickly, I'm sure.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

It's something they just don't teach at MP school like they did in the old days.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

We didn't have cell phones back when some of us started.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

With my long speech basically ended, what I am saying is that I'm appealing to members not to support this, because we need to be able to differentiate between the trivial and the substantive when it comes to scientific issues.

Everywhere we go, there's radiation around us. There's background radiation. Every industrial plant of any size has leaks and spills and so forth if they do anything. From what I've heard of the testimony, what Mr. Allen read, the accounts I've seen, and the people I've talked to who were here at the meetings, this does not qualify as a substantive event.

Instead of concentrating on something trivial like this, we need to move on to our report and actually get something accomplished instead of having one-off sessions that don't actually lead to any report.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Trost.

Mr. Cullen.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

In the interest of time and productivity, which the government members have called for, I'll keep my comments brief, as we've now gone on for nearly 45 minutes discussing one single motion.

I apologize for the need to vote in the House of Commons. I know what a hassle that can be when we're passing $260 billion worth of taxpayer money. It's a drag.

The motion, as put before us, was a very simple presentation of a contradiction of a witness's testimony. We heard the witness present that there were no leaks, that it was contained. Then we found out that containment, under the definition of the minister, I suppose, means when water flows out after it has leaked out of a reactor, then it is held for a while, and then it is put into a public river, that is not a leak; it is in fact a containment. When there's a leak of radioactive isotopes out of one of our reactors that then goes up a stack without any treatment whatsoever, that is also not a leak.

I think it behoves the minister...and I suspect, knowing the minister to the point that I do so far, that she'll have no problem in answering these questions. I don't understand the opposition from the government on this. If clearing the air is what they're about, and accountability in terms of such a critical part of Canada's future prospects, with the billions of dollars that have gone into this industry, it seems like it would very much calm the public's nerves and help us, as committee members, to understand how a containment is called a containment if there's actual radioactive material leaving the facility, and how treatment is called treatment when the water is in fact just as radioactive as when it was first leaked. I think those are basic understandings.

The questions I've put to the minister have been as clear and straightforward as I can make them. After hearing from the experts—which Mr. Trost unfortunately didn't, but he's since caught up with the notes, and that's good—I think today it behoves us to move to the vote and get on with things, if productivity is clearly....

Apparently Mr. Anderson wants that in, but I think the understanding is clear.

I wish we would move forward so we can discuss the rest of the engaging calendar that we have before us, which the clerk has done such an admirable job on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Anderson.

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

I would like to move ahead with the calendar we have before us. We have a choice to make as well, but I was looking forward to hearing the witnesses today from the Green Building Council and the FCM. But we'll have to take a look at our schedule and try to sort things out.

We have witnesses on Thursday, and now we have witnesses next Tuesday, but we still haven't set a schedule for our own hearings on the integrated energy partnership, and I think that's frustrating the members on the government side. I hope it's frustrating the members on the opposition side, because we should have been at that and had that done already.

Mr. Trost talked a little about the past and this committee. One of the things we did last year, in terms of that forestry report, was put a report together that everybody agreed on. The credibility that's given to reports that come out with all-party agreement has always amazed me. I think we were looking forward to trying to make sure we did one with this integrated energy partnership. Hopefully we can still work toward that. But if we're going to start splitting hairs on issues where there are none, as we see in other committees where the parties don't agree, you end up not being able to present a report that's unanimous.

One of the things I've noticed is that unanimous reports do get consideration. The government treats them seriously and industry treats them seriously. We certainly want to move ahead on this energy partnership, but maybe I'll talk about that in a few minutes.

I want to come back to the motion we're dealing with here. It's frustrating. I understand Mr. Cullen has to try to make his political points here, but that's the only thing happening on this motion, because even in the wording of it there are no new developments. We all sat here for the testimony and heard the witnesses who came forward. We heard Mr. Binder from the CNSC. I thought he gave a very clear presentation of the responsibilities of the CNSC and how they have fulfilled them in this case. I guess I was surprised by how clearly he said there was no threat to human safety in any way, shape, or form when these leaks took place.

Mr. Cullen heard that as well as we did. Mr. Binder was clear on several occasions. He said he was surprised there was so much public attention on such an event, when it was handled so cleanly and clearly by both the regulator and the operator. That really said it all to us. There isn't anything new here, and I think the minister is probably going to take that position as well when the opposition tries to force this through. If they pass it, I think the response will be that there are no new developments; we don't have anything to talk about here; and we're not sure what you're asking for, because there was nothing new on the leaks, other than the fact that there was no threat to human health and safety. The leaks were contained, and Mr. Cullen knows that. We were told several times that no water from the leaks ended up in the river. The leaks were contained, the product was stored, and it has been properly taken care of.

As Mr. Trost pointed out, every industrial operation has leaks at times, and the real issue is what they do with them and how they handle them. In this case we were assured by both the operator and the regulator--who is the one responsible for this--that there was nothing there. There was no threat to human health and safety. There was nothing in terms of the shutdown that we need to explore. We've received full information on the shutdown and what took place there, and there was certainly nothing on the side of human risk.

So I guess it's a little frustrating to have sat here now for most of our hour--when we were planning to get to this schedule--talking about a motion that is unnecessary. If the committee wants to invite the minister to come to committee they can do that, but the invitation should actually deal with some part of reality so she can then come and say, “Here's the issue we're going to deal with”.

The amendment passed, so I'm going to come back to my criticism of that. We had the opportunity to discuss the impact of additional spending on both Chalk River and AECL, and the opposition chose to use very little of their time to do that. So I don't know why we're coming back to trying to hold another meeting when we were good; we cooperated. The opposition asked for one meeting on these issues. We went along with that and felt that was reasonable. Then we thought we'd move on to something we could actually work on together.

So again, there were no contradictions there. Mr. Allen read out the testimony and I'm sure he'd read it again if people didn't hear it the first time. The tritium levels are within the limits that are laid out. They talked not only about the nuclear standards, but also the international standards for tritium, and the rates there are within, by far, those set parameters.

The CNSC came as a regulator and told us that this was contained. There was no contradiction between the witnesses, in spite of what Mr. Cullen wants to try to create. I think what probably happened here is that the opposition came to that meeting with some great expectations that they were somehow going to find something and that there was going to be a news story, because they've been trying to keep a dead news story going for a few weeks on this issue. They got here, and were very disappointed to find out that, again, there was nothing. As Mr. Binder put it, there was no risk to anyone's health or safety.

As Mr. Hiebert or Mr. Allen talked about, I wish we could move on to substantive issues rather than dealing with trivial ones.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Yes, absolutely.