Madam Speaker, the people in my riding of Waterloo—Wellington and Canadians all across Canada are very concerned about our environment and what we as a society and as a country are doing to our environment both good and bad.
People know and understand that we need to do everything possible to protect and preserve our environment. People know and understand that we must not make decisions which will have harmful effects on our environment. People also know and understand that we need to pass on a clean and safe environment to future generations of Canadians. We owe this to our children and to our children's children.
The disposal of nuclear waste is a concern which is important to all Canadians. There is more than 1.2 million bundles of spent fuel, nearly 30,000 tonnes, in temporary above-ground storage at nuclear facilities across Canada. A lot of work has gone on to find a solution regarding proper and safe disposal of this kind of material.
I remind the House that the Atomic Energy Board of Canada Ltd. supported by Ontario Hydro has spent a considerable amount of time and resources on research to prove that creating enormous vaults inside the granite of the Canadian Shield is the best and safest method of disposal of nuclear waste.
The Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. research showed that technology behind the proposed burial was safe. However Canadians remain sceptical and are not convinced that the solution was absolutely foolproof.
Accordingly a Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency panel decided it could not endorse disposal of nuclear waste in this manner. The panel is quoted as saying “While the safety of the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited concept has been adequately demonstrated from a technical perspective, from a social perspective it has not”. In addition the panel said “the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited concept in its current form for deep geologic disposal does not have broad public support and does not have the required level of acceptability to be adopted as Canada's approach for managing nuclear fuel waste”.
As a federal government we need to make a decision on how to provide long term management of nuclear waste. It is important that we do so knowing that nuclear waste can remain harmful to the environment and health for up to 500 years and radioactive for as long as 10,000 years.
My question to the parliamentary secretary is straightforward. What does the government plan to do to dispose of nuclear waste in Canada?