Hello everybody. It's wonderful to be here in person with you.
My name is Chris Keefer. I'm an ER physician and also the president of Canadians for Nuclear Energy. We are a non-profit made up of scientists, doctors, engineers, environmentalists and tradespeople, who believe that nuclear energy is the keystone technology of our climate response and the gold standard template for a just transition.
Nuclear is an evidence-based path that we have walked before when we used nuclear energy right here in this province to provide 90% of the power generation needed to permanently close Ontario's massive coal fleet. Fossil fuel workers transitioned from high-paying, skilled trades jobs in coal to even better jobs in nuclear.
We know that to get to net zero, we need to replace fossil fuel power generation with zero-carbon power, at least one to one. It's a simple concept with staggering implications.
We currently use fossil fuels for 74% of our energy needs, and we need to build the equivalent of 113 Site C dams or 96 large CANDU reactors to double our grid in order to electrify everything.
Battery electric vehicles and hydrogen are a vital part of this solution, but electric vehicles don't charge themselves and hydrogen doesn't fall like manna from the heavens. We need reliable energy to generate that. This will be an expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars, and given the tight timelines and limited resources, we can't afford to get this wrong.
What are our options for that low-carbon power generation? Nationally, hydroelectricity has been the backbone of our low-carbon grid, but it's largely tapped out and vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Geothermal is geographically limited. We're left with potential scalable options of wind, solar and nuclear. It is my contention that the just transition is technologically specific, and that despite excellent PR and branding, wind and solar, unfortunately, do not offer a just transition for Canadian workers.
I'm going to explain myself by examining the respective supply chains, job types and negotiating positions of workers in these respective sectors. The nuclear supply chain is 96% made in Canada. That includes the mines, fuel fabrication, heavy industry, construction, operation, maintenance and spent fuel handling. Nuclear energy consists of cheap uranium plus high-skilled mostly union labour. It experiences an economic multiplier effect unparalleled by any other energy source. Every dollar invested in nuclear in Canada generates $1.30 return in GDP. We capture the value of that entire investment—and again, we're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars—within the Canadian economy, and mostly within the pockets of working Canadians.
Wind and solar unfortunately don't share this.... The supply chain is almost exclusively overseas. Forty per cent of the world's polysilicon is made in China's Xinjiang province, where there are credible allegations of forced Uighur labour, and where the Canadian Parliament voted last year, 266 to zero, that a genocide of the Uighur people is taking place. Seven of the 10 largest wind turbine manufacturers are Chinese companies, and European wind developers are quickly moving their manufacturing to China for cheaper raw materials and labour.
What are the just transition implications of spending hundreds of billions of dollars here at home in Canada on nuclear, the ultimate economic multiplier, versus generating an epic trade deficit by sending that money to a foreign supply chain in an authoritarian country and becoming a nation of low-skilled, foreign-made solar panel and wind turbine installers?
Let's talk about jobs now.
I want you to imagine yourself in the parking lot at a nuclear plant. It's a big parking lot with probably 2,000 spots. Who's getting out of their cars? They are nuclear plant workers, skilled tradespeople, boilermakers, pipefitters, electricians, welders, STEM professionals and Ph.D.s. These workers have permanent, secure, intergenerational employment anchored in their community, and almost all of them are union members. They earn six-figure salaries mostly, and spend their wages within their thriving local communities, stimulating their local economies.
Wind and solar, on the other hand, do not offer these same kinds of jobs. The majority of them are in installation and construction. Jim Harrison, the director of renewable energy for the Utility Workers Union of America said, “It’s a lot of transient work, work that is marginal, precarious, and very difficult to...organize.” Two-thirds of jobs are low skilled, and most are non-union. Once constructed, these facilities are virtually workerless.
I want to close by talking a little bit about labour history and how workers have got themselves just working conditions to this date. As Frederick Douglass famously said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” Workers were not historically gifted high wages and safe working conditions; they fought for them. It is high-skilled workers, who are hard to replace with scab labour, who have the right to strike who win concessions. Nuclear offers precisely this mix. An overseas supply chain, workerless wind and solar facilities, and temporary low-skilled jobs do not offer this possibility.
Ultimately, Canadian workers will be the heroes of their own just transition, but only if policy-makers make the right technological choices and set the right industrial policy, one centred on Canadian nuclear energy.
My organization would like to see nuclear included in the green bond. Bonds built this country's infrastructure off of which we're currently freeloading. You've heard about the sheer volume of the number of power plants that we're going to need to build. I'd also like to suggest that we develop a federal vehicle that can help facilitate investment in this structure, streamlined licensing, etc.
Lastly, there is a critical need for education in the STEM areas and skilled trades to staff the positions of this nuclear renaissance, which we truly believe is coming to Canada.
Thank you very much.