Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to follow up with some questions that were being asked by Mr. Comartin and Mrs. Fry with respect to municipalities, and I'll be specific in this.
I was on municipal council for seven years. I was acting mayor of a municipality that has a nuclear facility, the municipality of Pickering. I was also a member of the Canadian Association of Nuclear Host Communities. In my experience--and we had FCM come and testify before this committee--municipalities as the first responders are extremely critical in this process, and we're talking about emergency preparedness and also responding appropriately to emergencies, whether it's a public health crisis or a nuclear emergency. Municipalities are not only the first ones that respond, but they are the ones that I think really make the difference in those early hours as to whether or not we're going to be successful in responding to an emergency.
Therefore, the flaw I see in this bill, the thing that most concerns me, is the lack of recognition of municipalities in the bill, and more specifically, the lack of representation of municipalities on some of the committees that exist. I appreciate that municipalities are creatures of the provinces, but I would think that our understanding of municipalities has evolved as our nation has become one of large cities that are very complex and really true of levels of government in their own right.
In this regard I would be interested in your thoughts, particularly the CNSC's but also for you, Mr. Young, on the idea of including municipalities, through their broader agencies, in some of the committees, at the very least in this process to ensure that there's input. As an example, I would suggest the Canadian Association of Nuclear Host Communities would be an appropriate one perhaps to sit in on some of these committees, and there could be representation perhaps from FCM or representation from maybe some of the provincial or territorial associations.
So I would be interested in your thoughts on including some of these bodies, at least at the committee level, to ensure that their voices are heard, given their importance in this process.