Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am joined today by Mr. Vince Frisina, vice-president of the Chalk River Professional Employees Group, and Mr. Steve Hindle, vice-president of PIPSC.
Our union represents almost 900 engineers, scientists, and technicians at the Chalk River and Whiteshell sites of Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, formerly known as AECL. These professionals are at the very heart of the Canadian nuclear industry. Collectively we are the bearers of a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience. Together we have endured the ups and downs of the nuclear industry's eventful history. Nuclear energy supplies a big part of our country's energy needs. It is also an important contributor to our medical, industrial, and innovation requirements.
Our members are a key part of Canada's science and technology knowledge infrastructure, and they collaborate with advanced nuclear research institutions worldwide. We provide the research that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the industry's regulator, requires to keep this industry safe and online.
Nuclear contributes $5 billion to our economy and tens of thousands of direct and indirect jobs in this country as a result of domestic needs and international trade. Canada's long history as a nuclear nation has been built on this research and expertise.
Division 29 of Bill C-43 includes measures related to the implementation of a new model for the laboratories of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, an entity now known as Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. These measures include the provision of transitional pension coverage to CNL employees following the share transfer, after which CNL will become a GOCO, a government-owned and contractor-operated facility.
Ensuring that this new management model works means ensuring that CNL can continue to retain and attract the best and brightest nuclear scientists and engineers. These scientists and engineers are needed to maintain Canada's status as a tier one nuclear nation and to meet the federal government's long-term obligations to public safety and scientific innovation both nationally and internationally.
We are here today to voice our deep concern that the pension measures in this bill do not meet this requirement and would put this capacity at risk. Let me explain.
BillC-43 would allow existing employees to continue to participate in the public service pension plan for a transitional period of three years. The public service plan, however, would not be extended to any new employees of CNL, and there would be no requirement to maintain a similar standard of defined benefit pension as provided under the Public Service Superannuation Act once the transition is complete. In fact, the RFP prepared for prospective new operators requires them to have an alternative pension plan in place at the time of share transfer. By excluding new hires from the transitional coverage, the message to industry workers is that the next pension plan will not be equivalent, comparable, or for that matter, negotiable.
As a result, the Canadian industry and, more specifically, the new corporate entity will be at serious risk of failing to attract and retain the best and brightest nuclear expertise. To be clear, we agree that transitional pension coverage under the PSSA should provide certainty and stability for both employees and the bidders in the procurement process. Unfortunately, by not extending the same treatment to new hires, Bill C-43 undermines the objective of a seamless transfer from AECL to CNL.
In fact, putting in place a two tier pension system for the first three years of the new entity would be divisive in the workplace and would have an impact on collective agreement negotiations. Once the new plan had been imposed on new hires and eventually on all employees of CNL, it would be very complex to successfully negotiate a different plan at a later date, so that would be highly unlikely.
This, in our view, would place the labs at risk of being programmed to fail rather than set up for success. It sends a clear message to highly skilled professionals at CNL to start looking elsewhere in a very competitive industry.
I should note that, while our union represents 900 employees at CNL, all 3,400 employees would be affected by these pension measures. The future prospects of Canada's premier nuclear labs depend on a fair, stable, and predictable pension plan being put in place for all employees. We believe the best, the easiest, and the most cost-effective avenue to achieve this goal is to have the three-year PSSA transitional coverage applied to both existing employees and new hires at CNL following share transfer.
Transitional pension coverage should give the new employer and its employees three years to negotiate a deal that pleases everyone. But this will only be possible if participation in the PSSA is extended to new hires following the share transfer.
Thank you for your time. We look forward to your questions.