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.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Terry Duguid
That's your time, Monsieur Martel. Thank you very much.
We will wrap up this round with Mr. Guay.
You have five minutes.
Liberal
Claude Guay Liberal LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm Canadian, and I've worked with other Canadians for a large American multinational. We were doing business in Canada, and my colleagues all had a Canadian passport. They were very nationalistic. In this particular case, had you listened to the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited representatives' testimony during our last meeting, you'd know that most of those who work for the consortium are Canadians.
We talked earlier about a series of measures around intellectual property. You suggested an audit might be necessary to ensure the measures are being followed. For starters, I'm convinced Canadians working for the consortium will act like Canadians. You seem to imply that, because Canadians work for a company headquartered in the U.S.—even though they work for a Canadian-incorporated business—they might not respect the rules and send everything to the U.S. That's what I don't understand. As a professor, I think you have a very good understanding of how multinationals are structured. Why do you fear Canadians working for Canadian-incorporated businesses are constantly sending material or could send material to the U.S. headquarters in….
By the way, we're talking about waste management and decommissioning, no nuclear football or nuclear war. This is about civilian application. I'd like to know where you think the flaws are. What issues should I be more worried about?
Let's also be clear as to what an audit would focus on. When it comes to the government-owned, contractor-operated model, or GOCO—and I'd also like to hear your thoughts on that—it's often easier to make changes based on what we find out than going back and establishing crown corporations. I'd like to hear my Conservative friends argue that we should go back to crown corporations, when it's the Harper government that adopted the GOCO model, and that we're trying to save Canadians money.
Would you have an answer for me, Mr. Leuprecht?
Professor, Royal Military College of Canada and Queen's University, As an Individual
It's common for a government to evaluate a multiyear contract to see whether it has delivered the expected economic, national, security, knowledge and intellectual property results. Where is the GOCO model evaluation on the expected results? It's up to the government to determine what the expected results were at the time and what results it's looking for now.
There are two things that worry me. On the one hand, I'm worried about data protection, meaning cybersecurity and the need to ensure digital protection. As I was saying, the first cybersecurity regulations for nuclear were only introduced at the end of last year. We're really lagging behind when it comes to protection, cybersecurity and cybersecurity legislation.
On the other hand—
Liberal
Claude Guay Liberal LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC
Hold on a second. I want to go back to cybersecurity.
Are you saying this is a larger cybersecurity issue that affects the entire Canadian industry, not just the consortium and the contract we're talking about here?
Professor, Royal Military College of Canada and Queen's University, As an Individual
There is a significant lag in legislation and regulations for all critical infrastructure, not just nuclear infrastructure. You're absolutely right. That's one thing that worries me.
The other worry I have is about information management, specifically information related to intellectual property. Some of you know that I also work in research security, not only physical and digital security, but also contract security.
As I said, leading intellectual property lawyers in Canada are raising all kinds of concerns. There are real issues with the way contracts are written. Maybe the consortium really has an up-to-date contract at the head of the queue. However, we can't rely solely on what the CEO says. We need to confirm that.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Terry Duguid
Thank you to both of our witnesses for that very stimulating round of dialogue and questions. It was respectful as well, which we like to see at this committee. Thank you very much on behalf of the committee.
Colleagues, we're going to take a five-minute break. We'll be back here at about 12:05 for our next panel.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Terry Duguid
Welcome back, everyone. We're going to resume the meeting with our second panel.
Welcome to our witnesses. We have with us, as an individual, Mr. Stephen Aplin. Welcome, Stephen.
From the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, we have Eric McGoey, vice-president, corporate affairs.
I think you may have both been in the room when you heard the rules of the road here. Please address your remarks through the chair. You may have noticed I'm a little loose on the rules from time to time, just to encourage good dialogue between our members and yourselves.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Terry Duguid
Again, we always try to remain respectful and on point here.
You're each going to have five minutes for your opening remarks, after which we will open the floor to questions.
Mr. Aplin, we're going to start with you. You have the floor for five minutes.
Stephen Aplin As an Individual
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members, for having me as a witness. This is a very consequential parliamentary hearing, possibly the most consequential one that Canada is facing right now, about Chalk River and its coming under American management.
When I say “Chalk River”, I mean CNL. Those are interchangeable terms. Chalk River is the centrepiece of Canada's nuclear history. It's where we became a tier-one nuclear nation. All of the fundamental research we did that put us on that map was done at Chalk River: cobalt-60, the cancer-fighting radioisotope, and molybdenum-99. Of course, there is the CANDU reactor, which I think it's no exaggeration to say is the most consequential invention in Canada's history. It's powering this room as we speak.
A lot of people don't know that when all of this marvellous research was being done in the early days of Chalk River, the Americans—our one-time friend and ally—told us to hold out our hands, and they were going to put handcuffs on us. We held out our hands, and they slapped the handcuffs on. What am I talking about? They did not want us to enrich uranium in the early days, or any time thereafter. They said if we were going to use enriched uranium, which is a fundamental material in nuclear research, they would provide it for us: no enriched uranium for Canada. We could not do that on our own soil, and we agreed to it.
Why did we agree to it? We went along with it “to get along”, as per Prime Minister Carney's remarks last week in Davos. They did not want us to enrich uranium, they said, because of some proliferation reason. I think that's bogus. That was a smokescreen for a commercial purpose. They did not want us competing against them in the developing power reactor market, so we went along. They were worried that we would be a good competitor, and they were right. As the CANDU proved, we could run circles around them if it were a level playing field, but it wasn't a level playing field. We were not allowed to enrich our own uranium, and we still won this game—until we got cut off when the country that told us not to enrich uranium because they'd provide us with it cut us off from enriched uranium. That was in 2016, under Barack Obama. Canada and Chalk River, at that point, stopped doing major nuclear research. We went along “to get along”, as Mark Carney said, and this ended up biting us, because, as I said, we ended up getting cut off.
Now, who ran Chalk River during this time of wonderful innovation that brought us the radioisotopes and the CANDU reactor? It was a small federal Crown corporation called Atomic Energy Canada Limited. It was spun out of the National Research Council. Its president, Fred Dermarkar, appeared before this very committee at the end of last year. In his remarks to the committee, Fred Dermarkar emphasized—and I agree with him—that Canada is “a tier-one nuclear country.” We are a tier-one nuclear country.
I would ask this question. If we're a tier-one nuclear country, why do we need another country managing our flagship nuclear lab?
We have a major amount of nuclear research to do that we need enriched uranium for, and that's because we have a major geopolitical problem in our Arctic. Essentially, we cannot defend our Arctic. That wasn't a big problem under the previous rules-based international order, but that order is gone. The United States, its inventor, has ruptured that world order.
In order to protect our Arctic, Canada needs nuclear-powered devices. We don't have those devices now. We would need to develop them, and we would develop them at Chalk River. We're handing Americans control of the very facility that we would need to conduct the fundamental research into protecting our Arctic. We're handing the keys of our nuclear kingdom over to representatives of that country. This is not Alice in Wonderland. This is actual, real life. We're handing control over our nuclear kingdom to representatives of that country. Essentially, we're going to pay them with public money to keep their eye on us.
The American executives in charge at NLPC, the company that's going to manage this, are all queue-cleared in the United States. They all have top-level clearance. Essentially, they're members of the U.S. intelligence community. They work for a person with whom Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand don't want to share intelligence because she is a pro-Putin stooge. She works for a president who is a pro-Putin stooge, if you've been following the horrific news out of Ukraine over the last year.
Ladies and gentlemen of the committee, when we conducted our nuclear research with the handcuffs on over those eight decades, what did we get in return? We got “the 51st state”, we got “Governor Trudeau”, we got “Governor Carney”, and we got a trade war by this guy who's mad because Canadians wouldn't stay in his crappy hotel in Vancouver.
We should not be turning over control of our nuclear flagship, of our nuclear kingdom, to representatives of that country.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Terry Duguid
Thank you very much.
We are now going to Mr. McGoey.
You have five minutes.
Eric McGoey Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
My name is Eric McGoey, and I am vice-president of corporate affairs at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories.
Born and raised in northwestern Ontario, I have over twenty years of experience working at the intersection of government, energy and communities. I spent more than a decade in government and another decade in the energy sector, including at Ontario Power Generation and the Ontario Ministry of Energy and Mines.
In recent years, my work has focused on indigenous and public engagement for clean energy projects, including supporting new nuclear projects and relationship agreements with indigenous communities, as well as intergovernmental collaboration on small modular reactor development across Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta and New Brunswick.
As vice-president of public affairs, I'm responsible for communications and engagement with employees, host communities, stakeholders and elected officials, and I support transparency within the framework established by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited and the Government of Canada.
Allow me now to expand on the relationship between CNL and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.
CNL operates Canada's nuclear laboratories on behalf of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited under a government-owned, contractor-operated contract, often referred to as GOCO. AECL owns the sites, the assets, the liabilities and the intellectual property. It also sets CNL's mandate and remains accountable to the Government of Canada and to Parliament.
CNL's role is to deliver that mandate safely, securely and effectively in full compliance with Canadian law, Canadian regulators and AECL's requirements.
Our three priorities at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories are to restore and protect the environment, to advance clean energy for today and tomorrow, and to contribute to the health of Canadians.
I look forward to answering your questions.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Terry Duguid
Thank you, Mr. McGoey.
We will go on to questions. Our first speaker is Mr. Tochor, for six minutes.
Mr. Tochor.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you to our witnesses.
Mr. Aplin, where do the paycheques for the NLPC staff come from?
Conservative
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
Please explain about the staff who are part of the consortium that's taking over. Regarding CFR 810 and the full legal obligations of U.S. citizens in the NLPC, what do you know of that agreement they have to sign?
As an Individual
I think they're obliged to turn over what they know to their American employers and to the American government—to DOE. That is my basic knowledge of it. It doesn't go much beyond that.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
The contract they have to sign is that they have to share with the U.S. government—
Conservative
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
People working at Chalk River will have to do that.
Then, if Donald Trump orders U.S. citizens not to help Canadians develop nuclear technology, will the American executives and the American group comply and prevent CNL from doing the research, or will they disobey Donald Trump and their obligations? Which one would they do?
As an Individual
That's a rhetorical question. Obviously, he doesn't need this act that you're talking about in order to compel somebody to be loyal to him, just from what we're seeing. If he wants them to not co-operate with us, they will not co-operate with us.
