Natural Resources Committee on June 2nd, 2015

[Jean-Frédéric Lafaille]

These are two different numbers. The $60 million that I have spoken about for Natural Resources Canada's programs is totally separate from the funding for AECL nuclear laboratories. The $164.9 million would not comprise the $60 million for supporting alternative ways to produce medical isotopes, if I understand the question.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Sorry, the $164 million will not go towards supporting...?

[Jean-Frédéric Lafaille]

None of it will go to supporting alternative technologies to produce medical isotopes. The $164.9 goes to AECL to fund their regular operations, which would include the operations of the NRU reactor, which, among other things, produces medical isotopes. I know it's a bit complicated, but you have the funding for alternative technology through NRCan programs, and then you have funding to AECL, which does many things including medical isotopes, and the two envelopes are separate.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

I think I'm going to leave it there.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

You have one minute, Mr. Caron, or are you finished?

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

I can ask a question.

With regard to the investments in cyclotrons in particular, because as you know, Thunder Bay is due to open one and I think to start its actual production in March, isotopes have very short half-lives. They're not going to be exporting any of this stuff, because it might have a usable life of only one or two or three days. None of this money is really going to go into exploring export markets or anything like that.

[Jean-Frédéric Lafaille]

You're quite right that the half-life of what we produce in the cyclotron is six hours. It goes from the cyclotron to the hospital to be used in nuclear medicine to do diagnostics and these kinds of procedures. What would be exported is not really the isotope itself but the technology, so if you're a large urban area and you want to secure your supply of medical isotopes, you might want to have a cyclotron somewhere in your urban area to fill the needs of your health community. You would export a technology as opposed to the isotopes.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Some of this supplementary money would be spent on looking for markets for actual exports.

[Jean-Frédéric Lafaille]

It would be up to the proponents to decide what they want to do, what their market strategy would be. The NRCan program supporting alternative technologies will support them to get to that phase so they will have the technology ready so that all the regulatory approvals will be in place, and then they will have their strategy about how they want to bring that technology forward. In the supplementary estimates (A) funding is going to AECL including to maintain operations of the NRU reactor to produce the current medical isotopes until October 2016.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you.

Thank you very much to all of you from the Department of Natural Resources for being here today, Ms. Ramcharan, Mr. Lafaille, Mr. Lebel, and all the others at the back.

Members, let's quickly go through the votes here for the supplementary estimates (A).

ATOMIC ENERGY OF CANADA LIMITED

Vote 1a—Operating and capital expenditures..........$164,900,000

(Vote 1a agreed to on division)

NATURAL RESOURCES

Vote 1a—Operating expenditures..........$237,888,974

Vote 5a—Capital expenditures..........$39,586,996

(Votes 1a and 5a agreed to on division)

Shall the chair report vote 1a under Atomic Energy of Canada Limited and votes 1a and 5a under Natural Resources to the House?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you very much.

That is it for today's meeting. I will see you next Tuesday to start the review of the report, which the analysts have assured us will be out sometime.

The meeting is adjourned.