Evidence of meeting #47 for Natural Resources in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was aecl.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:05 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
—but basically the loss accumulation over the course of the three projects will be in the range of $400 million, plus or minus.
5:05 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
I have to look over here to make sure I don't get myself in too much trouble.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Dick Harris Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Right.
So then the few hundred million you'd expect to make is added on to that; that's where you get that $800 million number, right?
5:05 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
The original--and again, I use that as basically.... What I felt was important was that members did not assume that we lost $830 million on the projects. What we did is have a variance. Again, these are such large numbers—
5:05 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
—and I'm not trying to suggest that it's okay, but it's a variance relative to a planned profit.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Dick Harris Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Okay.
Well, first of all, I wish you the best of luck in trying to recapture that, and I'm sure you're going to put a lot of—all—your efforts into that.
We talked about the Chalk River facilities. I'm really interested; I think the repairs that were under way are all done now.
I want to ask you what, in your opinion, are the opportunities for producing isotopes and the research reactor; what do you see? I think 2016 is the end date.
5:05 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
The current time horizon of the Government of Canada is 2016.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Dick Harris Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
What do you see between now and then as to the opportunities for that facility?
5:05 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
We certainly expect to continue to produce isotopes reliably for the marketplace. We don't control our marketing efforts; it's through our distributor. We have made it very clear that we have to re-earn our reputation as a reliable supplier before the volumes will return to where they were before and/or grow beyond that. We are in the process of doing that. We've made good progress in the weekly and monthly volumes of isotope production and we hope that will continue.
Clearly isotopes are not the only business and the only mission at Chalk River. Continuing the Canadian Neutron Beam Centre and its support for the academic and scientific research communities is an important mission, as is support for the CANDU fleet worldwide. We do very important research and development activities through the CANDU owners group and with utilities.
Naturally enough, the management of the legacy waste is another very important program that we support. We're proud of the accomplishments of our team. We're appreciative of the continued funding of the Government of Canada to support that work, because a lot of it is inherently pre-commercial in nature and it's an appropriate use of government and taxpayer money. Clearly, we're building for the future.
For example, if I may say, I'm pleased that we were successful in recruiting a new executive to head up the laboratories, Dr. Bob Walker, who joined us from Defence Research and Development Canada, where he was the head of the defence research establishment. He is a very, very qualified individual with a tremendous wealth of experience in running a lab. We were successful in attracting Bob Walker because of the great potential at Chalk River. So we have a future there.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Dick Harris Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Perhaps I could just ask you quickly--we could go a long way into this question, but I don't want to--about the cost of producing isotopes. By comparing the cost of producing isotopes to the actual revenue from them, we discovered there was a lot of room there. Do you see any ability to narrow the gap between revenue and cost in the near future?
5:10 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
Certainly there are some things mitigating in our favour. Frankly, we participate in the increase in market prices for isotopes that has occurred. The shortage and the stress on the supply chain increased the prices. We derived a benefit from that in terms of the net back, or our share of those revenues. At the same time, we have to be mindful that we are continuing to spend substantial amounts of money on the isotope supply reliability program and that spending will exceed the revenues we bring in.
I don't believe there's any basis on which you can make the claim that isotope production is a commercially viable business or an economic or compensatory business for us. We do it because of a government policy direction and social policy objectives, and we're pleased to do it.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Dick Harris Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
I want to get to the social policy objectives and the responsibility to ensure a sustainable and guaranteed supply of isotopes. That has a built-in cost, which the government has agreed to handle of course.
5:10 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
We take that responsibility seriously. We intend to be a reliable supplier. We want to carry our weight as Canadians in the global scene. There are many forces at work and many of them are healthy. A better diversity of supply is coming. I think the world community woke up to the vulnerability we had with regard to having so few reactors and the dependency particularly on the NRU and the Petten reactor in Holland. We are seeing more diversity coming on stream. The government is also funding research into non-reactor based means of producing technetium-99.
It's all healthy and in the spirit of saying what we want to do is provide for the health and safety of Canadians and others around the world at the lowest possible cost.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Dick Harris Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
And you think you're getting a pretty good grade on that right now, right?
5:10 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
We only have one piece of the puzzle, which is to produce isotopes reliably, and right now we're meeting every isotope demand that we have.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit
Thank you to both of you, gentlemen, for being here this afternoon.
We have to go to votes on the supplementary estimates (C), so we will suspend for a couple of minutes.
Again, thank you very much for your input and for helping us review the estimates.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit
We will resume the meeting now to go through the four votes on the supplementary estimates (C).
NATURAL RESOURCES Department Vote 1c--Operating expenditures..........$1 Vote 5c--Capital expenditures..........$1
(Votes 1c and 5c agreed to)
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited Vote 15c--Payments to Atomic Energy of Canada Limited for operating and capital expenditures..........$175,400,000
(Vote 15c agreed to on division)
National Energy Board Vote 25c--Program expenditures..........$1
(Vote 25c agreed to)
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit
Shall the chair report votes 1c, 5c, 15c, and 25c as carried under Natural Resources to the House?
5:15 p.m.
Some hon. members
Agreed.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit
Thank you all very much. Have a great weekend.
The meeting is adjourned.