Natural Resources Committee on Jan. 27th, 2026

[Eric McGoey]

Yes, we do, and the law is very clear: We cannot export—

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Duguid]

Thank you very much.

We're going to Mrs. Gallant.

Mrs. Gallant, you have five minutes.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

This is for both of you.

Does the contract have any non-competition clauses to ensure that companies in the consortium cannot take the business away from CNL in the future?

[Eric McGoey]

I don't know about non-competition clauses specifically, but there certainly are strong conflict of interest clauses.

For example, since I was recruited by Kinectrics to be part of their bid, I'm only able to be a CNL executive as a seconded Kinectrics employee. Of course, Kinectrics does compete with CNL for some commercial work—on pressure tubes, for example—and as a result I am expressly prohibited from participating at any level in any of the procurements related to that work. I'm not allowed to see the scope of work from other companies that are submitting in the bid process. I'm not allowed to help design the bids. I'm not allowed to evaluate the bids. I'm not allowed to see the bids. There are very thick ethical walls that prevent me from any involvement.

In fact, the expectation is, in addition to those thick ethical walls on the CNL side.... From my Kinectrics reporting relationship, I have a vice-president who approves my time sheets and admin support to help with travel costs and so on, but I am fully seconded to Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. I have not done any work to support Kinectrics on any files since the contract was awarded on December 11.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke, ON]

Okay.

Have you worked federally in government or in any political offices?

[Eric McGoey]

Provincially, yes; federally, no.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke, ON]

Okay.

You mentioned the definite conflict of interest. Our previous witness said there had been the appearance of a conflict of interest because of the ownership of shares by the Prime Minister, who is ultimately responsible for appointing the AECL board.

From your knowledge of the ethics procedures, are you subject to any of that?

[Eric McGoey]

I believe that in the previous testimony on December 11, Mr. Dermarkar and Madame Maude-Émilie Pagé made it clear that the procurement decisions were made exclusively by AECL and were not subject to political interference, and I take them at their word.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke, ON]

Do you have a pecuniary interest in any of the companies within the consortium?

[Eric McGoey]

Other than being paid through one of them through the contract, I do not. I don't own shares. No.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke, ON]

Okay.

You don't own shares. You don't have any conflicts of interest with respect to your previous employment and with provincial ministers.

[Eric McGoey]

No. Ontario Power Generation is a provincially owned utility. It has one shareholder: the Province of Ontario. I worked as an independent consultant, so I owned my own business with no shareholders.

I have exchange-traded funds and a small pension. It's possible that somewhere in there, there would be holdings through a mutual fund or an ETF that would be exchanged, but I do not own stocks in any particular company, for example.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Aplin, would it be fair to say that the CNL contract surrenders Canada's lead nuclear powerhouse over to the United States?

[Stephen Aplin]

That's what I think, yes. I think it's fair to say that, yes.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke, ON]

From your experience, how do you glean this? What have you done to be able to make that assessment?

[Stephen Aplin]

These are American companies, and in the situation we're in today, where there's political pressure being exerted on American companies— you have American CEOs giving the President gold statues—there's a very good chance that this kind of political pressure could be exerted on the members of this consortium. Why not?

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke, ON]

Have you seen examples of that type of surrendering Canadian sovereignty in any other companies that you've worked with?

[Stephen Aplin]

I work in the nuclear industry. From my general observation—I don't want to quote our Prime Minister—I see a “going along to get along” attitude with respect to this particular situation of turning Chalk River labs over to American management. We're in—

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Duguid]

Thank you, both.

Thank you, Mrs. Gallant.

We are going to hear now from Mr. Hogan for five minutes.

[Corey Hogan, Liberal, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses.

This has been a wide-ranging discussion, as were previous conversations on this topic. I want to pull it back and say that, in my view, we've really come to three questions that the committee, the government and Canadians need to tackle.

One is about oversight. It's an independent board. It's designed to be at arms' length. It is subject to the Auditor General. It doesn't mean that the government doesn't have a role. The question is the nature of the role. That's question one. Certainly, as parliamentarians, we have a role.

A second question would be about the model. Those previous oversight questions lead to the question of the model. Is GOCO the right model? Should we be exploring Crown models? I understand the policy rationale of the Harper government in creating a GOCO model for this. It seems to me to be designed to pull in the kind of expertise we are now a bit worried about. That does not seem crazy in the current context.

This leads to my third question, which is about our relationship with the United States and our comfort with the integration of our nuclear systems, our need for their technology and our comfort with provisions and agreements that we've come to with them in the past.

The three questions are on the oversight, the model and our relationship with the United States. Fundamentally, I'm hoping we can take this whole ball we've been given and put some framework around it.

Within that, I want to understand a bit more about the model. Mr. McGoey, this is for you. We've heard from previous witnesses some contradictory comments about intellectual property. Who controls IP, how is IP established and how is IP managed by the combination of AECL, CNL and the vendors that were successful in receiving the contract?

[Eric McGoey]

Thank you very much, Mr. Hogan.

I liked your framing of the issue of the oversight, the model and the relationship with the United States. Respectfully, that third piece strikes me as a much more philosophical conversation. It's probably best with some beverages and no livestream.

If you'll excuse me, I'll speak mostly to the first two.

[Corey Hogan, Liberal, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Absolutely.

[Eric McGoey]

You talked about intellectual property, and I will absolutely go into that. The short answer is that Atomic Energy of Canada Limited owns the intellectual property. They licensed intellectual property for the CANDU technology to SNC-Lavalin, and SNC-Lavalin continues to be the licensee, AECL continues to be the owner, and CNL continues to support the CANDU IP, as well as related intellectual property developed by AECL, such as the SLOWPOKE reactor that we were talking about earlier, the technology that's in Mr. Danko's riding, as well as what we call the “nuclear battery technology”.

With your indulgence, Mr. Chair, I would like to just correct the record, because some earlier witnesses made some claims that I think are just not true, and it's not helpful to have those go unaddressed. For example, it was said earlier that there's no Canadian content, that the contractor sets the priority, that these companies have no Canadian experience and that these are all American companies. None of those things are true.

I'll go through them one by one.

On the Canadian experience, Amentum, which is one of the three shareholders in NLPC, acquired Jacobs Engineering, which was one of the three companies in the last consortium. They have 10 years of Canadian experience at CNL through the GOCO because of their acquisition of Jacobs Engineering.

Kinectrics, the company that hired me to support them with their bid, was spun off from Ontario Hydro's research division in 1999 and has been operating in the GTA since then. That's where their headquarters are. They have nearly 1,200 employees in Canada supporting the CANDU fleet, doing high-voltage transmission work and supporting CANDU across the world, in fact, with their base of operations in Canada.

When I was recruited for this contract, I signed a contract with a Canadian company to do exciting work at Canada's national nuclear laboratories, and yes, events have overtaken us in many respects since that time about a year and a half ago, when I first—

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Duguid]

Mr. McGoey, you have 40 seconds. Could you wrap up your points?

[Eric McGoey]

Yes. Thank you.

Finally, BWXT Canada has over 3,000 employees in Canada, in places like Cambridge and Peterborough. They make nuclear components for CANDU, SMRs, steam generators, heat exchangers and CANDU fuel pellet fabrication.

To suggest that these are companies that don't have a strong Canadian presence, don't employ thousands of Canadians and don't have Canadian experience is simply untrue, as is the suggestion that it's CNL that controls the intellectual property.