Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members. It's a pleasure to be with you today.
My name is Alex MacDonald. I'm a public policy and government relations professional.
Today, I would like to speak to you about why Canada should begin the domestic enrichment of uranium for peaceful purposes. Doing so would enhance Canada's energy security and energy independence and allow us to recognize the full economic value of our vast uranium resource. While Canada's nuclear research has been vast and often on the leading edge, our domestic deployment of nuclear power technology has been necessarily specialized.
Historically in this sector, we have been a nation of CANDU reactors. This singular Canadian technology has influenced our nuclear supply chains and our domestic nuclear fuel cycle. The CANDU reactor's ability to operate on natural uranium has meant that Canada has never needed a domestic uranium enrichment capability. This is now changing, and it should prompt a strategic review of Canada's nuclear fuel cycle and supply chains.
The adoption of small modular reactor technology in Ontario marks the beginning of a fundamental shift in Canadian nuclear deployment, with cascading effects that will be seen in Canada's supply chains and fuel cycle. Simply, Canada will now need enriched uranium. The question is how much and whether it will be produced domestically or imported from abroad, with both scenarios starting with the raw resource produced here in Canada.
In light of this, it's time for Canada to reassess whether Canadian uranium should be enriched in Canada for peaceful uses. This topic is often fraught with misperception and erroneous statements. It's therefore worth clarifying that Canada, as a signatory of the non-proliferation treaty, can domestically enrich uranium for peaceful purposes without violating any international treaty obligation. To be clear, peaceful uranium enrichment is compatible with Canada's long-standing domestic and international non-proliferation commitments.
It is commonly misunderstood that only nuclear weapon states enrich uranium and that enrichment is synonymous with nuclear weapons. In reality, a number of non-nuclear weapon states peacefully enrich uranium to support the operation of the majority of the world's commercial power reactors. These include Germany, the Netherlands, Argentina, Brazil and Japan.
However, current global enrichment capacity is dominated by state-owned enterprises in countries that are adversarial towards Canada. According to recent estimates, Russia supplies 44% and China 16% of enriched uranium globally; Europe and the U.S. produce a combined total of 40% of the world's enriched uranium. Canadian policy has begun to respond to these market and geopolitical dynamics, but much more could be done.
In 2023, Canada and four other G7 nations, known as the Sapporo 5, announced a civil nuclear fuel co-operation agreement, which resolved to establish a resilient global uranium supply market free from Russian influence and the potential to be subject to political leverage by other countries.
It is admirable that Canada is the first G7 nation to deploy an SMR, but Canada is also the only G7 nuclear nation without a domestic uranium enrichment capacity. While we may be pioneering the deployment of SMR technologies, we are not developing in tandem their full range of operational supports. Rather, we remain dependent on importing the fuel required to operate these reactors.
Therefore, as Canada and many of its allies deploy nuclear technologies that rely on enriched uranium, fuel security ought to become more of an imperative. The ecosystem for supporting the operation of these reactors is becoming just as critical as the regulatory pathways for building them on time and on budget. Many Canadians now appreciate that it is a strategic and economic loss not to refine more of our own oil in Canada.
Without a domestic uranium enrichment capacity, we are on track to make a similar but even worse mistake, because enrichment is the highest-profit step in the uranium value chain. If we do not harvest the economic benefit from enrichment, someone else will—at our expense. In this context, domestic uranium enrichment takes on strategic national energy and security importance, with significant economic export potential.
As Canada's and the world's demand for enriched uranium grows, there is a significant opportunity for Canada to enhance its energy superpower status both domestically and abroad by enriching its own uranium in Canada.
Thank you.