Evidence of meeting #20 for Natural Resources in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was contract.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
I have a point of order, Chair.
These are all American-owned companies, are they not?
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
The point of order is that these are American companies. That's the point I'm trying to make.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Terry Duguid
That is not a point of order, Mr. Tochor.
Please continue. Could you wrap up on your last point there, Mr. McGoey?
Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories
I've said my piece.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Terry Duguid
All right. Thank you.
That is time, Mr. Hogan.
Mr. Simard, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.
Bloc
Mario Simard Bloc Jonquière, QC
Thank you very much.
I'll go back to what you just said, Mr. McGoey. You talked about my colleagues' fallacious claims. I would invite you to send us a written answer, if possible. You answered verbally, but it's pretty hard for us to get a sense of things. If you could take those questions back with you and answer them as you did, but in writing, and send us the answers, that might help when we write our report.
I'd like to go in another direction for my personal knowledge. If I remember correctly, as part of another study, the committee received documents from Electricity Canada showing the various production costs per megawatts. It talked about wind, hydraulic, solar and nuclear energy, and the various costs were disproportionate. I read an article recently about how the Chinese are deploying and rapidly developing new battery technologies for wind and solar energy.
Because of the high cost of nuclear energy, aren't we going to see a decline in its use in 15 or 20 years?
I'd like to hear from both of you on that.
As an Individual
Sure.
I think it's a myth that nuclear costs are higher than solar costs. Comparing the two of them is like comparing apples and oranges. One of them provides steady baseload power throughout the day, hundreds of days at a time, at a high power rate—thousands of megawatts, quite literally—and literally for hundreds of days at a time. The other one stops when the sun goes down and starts and provides a very spotty performance when the sun is up. The two of them are not comparable when it comes to costs. That's the main thing I would say.
On the idea that nuclear is something that will be gone in the next few years, I just simply disagree with that.
Bloc
Mario Simard Bloc Jonquière, QC
Even with the deployment of new storage technologies, you still think it's not comparable, is that correct?
Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories
Yes, I think so.
I apologize, but I'm going to answer in English, because I lack the technical vocabulary in French.
This is really technical stuff. Mr. Aplin was absolutely right when he made the distinction of baseload power. You need your steady, reliable baseload. Hydro is perfect for baseload. Nuclear is perfect for baseload. Then you have peaking power, and when you have intermittent power, it needs to be backed up by peaking.
That's why, as Ontario expanded renewables like solar and wind, it also built a whole bunch of new gas plants because, while a battery can supply you enough power to keep the electricity flowing when a cloud passes between the sun and your solar panel, it can't provide power overnight when the sun isn't shining, so you need to run peaking plants.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Terry Duguid
Thank you, both.
We'll now go on to our last two speakers, Mr. Tochor and Mr. Danko.
You have five minutes each, and then we'll be going in camera.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
Thank you, Chair.
Mr. McGoey, you said that you're here in a non-partisan role. You said that you worked provincially with the Liberals but have no connections with the federal Liberals.
Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories
That's correct. I've never worked for the federal Liberals.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
The new member who just joined our committee, Mrs. Nguyen, is a Liberal, and your LinkedIn account says you volunteered with her.
Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories
That's not MP Nguyen; that's a different MP.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
Did you volunteer with another federal Liberal, then?
Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories
That's correct. I did, yes.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
But you just said you didn't have an association with the Liberals. Where I'm going with this is the transparency issues—
Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories
I said I didn't work for the Liberals—
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
We have issues with the contract and with transparency, and you're claiming that you're not associated with that. It appears not to be the case. We have issues where this contract isn't transparent on a lot of it. You worked on the bidding process, and you said that the bid.... Who do you think created the priorities or the parameters of that bid, Mr. McGoey?
Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories
I believe the parameters of the bid were created by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.
Conservative
Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories
I presume that the board would have to approve the overall parameters. I don't know whether the board was specifically involved in the design of the procurement itself or whether it delegated that to the executive.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
So the board, which was appointed by the Liberals, okayed the parameters of this bid that your company won. Is that correct?