Mr. Speaker, I know the members opposite are keen to hear another speech on Bill C-23, the nuclear safety act.
As members know, I have a new role within the party and I do not have a lot to do with this bill, but I did spend several months as the critic in the natural resource area and did quite a bit of work in this area. Therefore, I would just like to make a few comments before the bill passes.
As has been mentioned already by our critic, Reform members will be supporting this bill, but there are a few things we would like to see changed. However, this is a good bill and long overdue.
The comments made by the hon. member for Davenport were, by and large, very accurate and very well taken. His concern with the
decommissioning costs, with the true costs of the creation of electrical power from nuclear energy being reflected in the cost to the consumer, is an accurate statement and something that has not been done. It has created an enormous liability for the federal government and provincial governments, but specifically for the federal government as it is on the hook for billions of dollars. That is an unfortunate and should have been addressed years ago. This bill starts the process of correcting that but it has been a long time coming.
We can do a few things to strengthen the bill. It has been mentioned by several people that the bill has been a long time coming. The minister promised it a year ago, again last fall and it finally came in this spring. We are grateful for it after a 50-year wait. It increases some of the fines and punishments that can be dished out. The existing punishments are ridiculously low. A maximum of $10,000 can be charged under the old act, which is a laughable amount.
The bill deals with the overlap and duplication of arrangements between provinces and the federal government. However, Reformers have several concerns about the bill.
First and most important is the treatment of radioactive waste. I mentioned that the bill has been a long time coming. While we have been waiting, in the last year or two there have been developments which are placing the federal government and the taxpayers on the hook for big bucks. It is going to end up costing a lot of money.
This has been delayed not only by this government but by previous Liberal governments that had introduced bills and then let them die on the Order Paper. It was introduced by the Conservatives who also let it die. Now finally, hopefully, we can get through the bill quickly and get royal assent.
In 1994 the Atomic Energy Control Board Secretary General J.G. McManus said about the old Atomic Energy Control Act:
The deficiencies of the Atomic Energy Control Act have been noted by the courts, the media, special interest groups and parliamentary committees. They include the lack of formal powers for AECB inspectors, an inadequate ceiling on the $10,000 on fines, no stated provision for public hearings, lack of explicit power to recover the cost of regulation from the users, an inability to hold polluters financially accountable for their actions or for the AECB to initiate remedial action and recover the costs-the AECB is handicapped by its statutory underpinnings which reflect the needs of another age.
This is really a synopsis of the speech by the hon. member for Davenport and almost a synopsis of mine. However, I should go through it in just a little more detail for the hon. member opposite.
There are no nuclear reactors in British Columbia. It is not a big issue and I doubt that it ever will be because I do not think that there is a chance to get public approval for a nuclear energy plant in British Columbia. I cannot foresee that day. However, people in B.C. are very environmentally concerned and this is very high on their list of concerns. As taxpayers they are also concerned about the amount of money that may be required to fix this long lasting nuclear problem.
Nuclear waste is a big problem. To dispose of low level waste in Ontario is going to cost at least $300 million. That is just an estimate. If anything goes wrong in the transportation or the disposal it could be much higher. That is just $300 million to start.
I have been to the high level waste test sites where they are trying to find ways to dispose of the high level wastes in Pinawa. To bury this high level waste will cost from $13 billion to $16 billion and that is just an estimate. If track records mean anything it is likely to be much higher. The problem for everybody across Canada is that the tab will have to be picked up by the Canadian taxpayer.
I think members on the other side are trying to make the nuclear sign with their hands. So I will go on for a bit longer about this particular cause.
Over the last 20 years if there had been a fund established to look after the decommissioning costs of the nuclear sites and the wastes generated, then this would almost be a housekeeping bill. No one would much care about the details because at least the dollars would have been looked after. However, there was nothing set up 20 years ago and billions of dollars are going to have to be paid by a generation that did not benefit from that electrical energy.
This is a principle which I would hope the Liberal government would pay attention to on more issues. The government is now concerned that the generation which will benefit from this electrical power should be the one that pays for it. If we translated that into other government legislation, we would not have a national debt which is pushing $600 billion.
If the government was concerned about ensuring that the generation which is benefiting from programs or benefiting from government largesse was the one paying the bills, who could argue with that? However, governments have saddled future generations with excessively high tax rates and problems such as this one which will cost billions of dollars to correct.
When I talk to high school students about this intergenerational transfer of wealth and the fact that people in the federal government have been satisfied to saddle them with these bills, they are upset. We cannot blame them. They will be paying the taxes, the pensions, UI premiums and everything else at excessively high
rates. When I mention to them that there will be another $13 billion or $15 billion for a nuclear clean-up and that their environmentally conscious generation will have to pay the bills which their fathers and grandfathers ran up, they are not impressed. It is not right.
The principle should be that if we create an environmental mess, we should clean it up. If the government has a problem, it should pay for it now. It should not ask our children and our children's children to clean up the mess which is being created now. Procrastination has created the problems. It is unfair both financially and environmentally to put off what should have been done a long time ago.
With respect to the funding of the clean-up, there is no fund in place. It is a real problem. There are some bookkeeping entries and yes there is an obligation. However, as the hon. member for Davenport has pointed out, there is no fund. If it is going to cost $10 billion or $20 billion to clean up this mess and we ask where the money will come from, the government will say that it will come out of general revenue when the time comes. That may be 10 or 20 years from now. If that is not another intergenerational transfer of wealth I do not know what is.
The government is going to ask somebody to pay for it down the road. When we think of the clean up of the tailings from mines, the clean up of some sites such as the Bruce power plant and so on, we should start setting aside a significant amount of dollars now so that the current consumers and producers will fund those clean-ups. Reformers believe that the policy of pay as you go certainly applies to environmental clean-ups and definitely to the nuclear industry.
In April I received a letter from the Saskatchewan minister of energy and mines, the hon. Eldon Lautermilch. It was in response to a letter I had written to him concerning this legislation. He said that there was concern about overlap and duplication in the regulation of the uranium mining and milling operations and that therefore they were disappointed with the limited provisions within the act to delegate administration to the provinces.
That lack of ability to delegate responsibility is something we will address in committee with an amendment to try to at least give the power to delegate. In other words, we will try to reduce the amount of duplication between the federal and provincial governments and allow the federal government to delegate to the provinces on that issue. Saskatchewan would be the major benefactor of that.
We have suggested that the act could be amended to allow for a clearer division of responsibilities between the federal and provincial governments in the whole area of the clean up of the tailings from uranium mines that have now been decommissioned. There are problems with leaching and with who is responsible for the clean up. On the one hand it is a provincial resource and on the other hand it has been regulated by the federal government. We have to solve the financial mess and the environmental mess that goes with that.
We have general concerns about the independence of the board from politicians. We do not want a board that is made up of people who have been appointed because they have a paid up Liberal card. We want to make sure that people who are appointed to this board, a superboard with superpowers, will be qualified and will be the right people.
We have suggested that board members not be appointed by a House of Commons standing committee but could be approved or vetoed by the committee. In other words, let us have people who have general qualifications. They could come before a committee and say what they were going to do and why they should have the job regardless of their political background and we could be satisfied with their qualifications. That would be an improvement as well.
We have a small problem with the make up of the board. In 1985 the Nielsen commission said the board was too small and the size of the board has been increased somewhat. That was a good idea but it has still been left that just two members have to be full time members. We think two full time members on this board is not going to be enough. This board is going to have a lot of powers and a lot of responsibilities. With the responsibilities the board has been given under this act, more members will be need.
This new act is going to add legitimacy to this commission. The confidence Canadians have in the nuclear industry will increase if they see that the commission has powers and follows through on some of the problems that the member for Davenport, the auditor general, the Nielsen report and other reports have consistently identified for all to see.
To give Ontario credit, hearings on the nuclear industry have been held from time to time and in times past all these hearings have been public hearings. But the act does not specify that any hearings relating to the nuclear industry must be public hearings. It should be changed so that hearings must be held. Canadians can then be assured that the process is very open and that nothing is hidden from them and nothing is being done behind closed doors.
I know the government, given its track record for example on constitutional issues, would never want to do something behind closed doors I am sure. Well maybe I am not entirely convinced but certainly that is an amendment we will be proposing because we want things out in the open.
In conclusion, we welcome this act. As it goes to committee we are going to find widespread agreement on the act.
I will put in a little plug for my private member's bill which also deals with the nuclear industry and the need for liability insurance in order to protect the Canadian taxpayer and the Canadian public. There is some room for that which is not addressed in this act. There is a necessity to update the nuclear industry regulation into the 21st century so that Canadians can have confidence that the regulation and control of the industry will make it as safe as possible.