I think that's an important question, in the sense that the majority of the system begins with the design, implementation, build, and operation of the system, and the regulatory approach to ensuring the system is regularly developed, tested, and mitigated. On the work that goes in, there's a fairly substantial amount of work that goes in to protect taxpayers, to ensure that the system is designed well. There are prevention measures. There are exercises that are tested. There are a number of procedures in place that would prevent the worst case from ever even being possible. That's the most important point of all of the dollars invested in the investment of prevention and preparing for the possibility.
On the next step, you're right. The bill proposes $1 billion in absolute liability. That is a cap. It's a limit; there is a limit to $1 billion for the operators. The bill provides that should an incident ever appear to approach the $1 billion, or exceed the $1 billion, the Minister of Natural Resources would be obligated to bring to Parliament a report that outlines what said costs would be or what they're proposed to be, so that Parliament would be in a position to discuss and debate what response, if any, the government would choose to consider and invoke.
That said, I think it's important to point out that there are only three nuclear operators in Canada. Two of those operators are crown agencies. In other words, they're agencies for provincial governments. In fact, there are three, if we count Gentilly and Hydro-Québec in Quebec, although that particular facility is not operating right now. Also, there's one private operator, but in all instances, the reactors are owned by crown agencies.
There's an element of—how would I put it?—interaction between ownership of the reactors themselves, the operations of those reactors, and then the federal and provincial governments, in which you see an interaction between the law and the regulatory environment that's federal, and yet they're owned, operated, developed, and produced in provincial jurisdictions. There's an element of relationship between governments and between certainly how one would hold and deal with an incident should it ever exceed—which we don't expect it ever would, heaven forbid—the billion-dollar absolute liability amount.