Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to finish my comments on Bill C-27. The PC/DR coalition has some difficulty with a number of issues with this legislation. As the natural resources critic what I find most problematic about the bill is that it does not prevent the importation of nuclear fuel waste from outside Canada.
Municipalities that have nuclear power plants within their boundaries presented a very well produced and articulate brief to the committee. None of their recommendations were taken into consideration. There is an arrogance on the part of some of the government committee members and certainly on the part of the minister that the complaints or concerns of Canadians are not taken into consideration.
It is absolutely necessary and extremely important that any waste management organization which is set up to deal with nuclear fuel waste and the advisory board that goes with it be completely open, transparent and accountable. In order for this process to be accountable, it has to be open to access to information. However, this process is not open to access to information. The difficulty is that Atomic Energy Canada Ltd., which is a crown corporation, puts $2 million a year into the organization with an initial investment of $4 million and still there is no access to information even though federal dollars are going into it.
When we reviewed the bill at committee, we tried to change that by introducing amendments. The PC/DR coalition introduced a number of amendments, as did the Bloc, the New Democratic Party and the Alliance Party. All of the opposition parties introduced a number of amendments. One amendment by the Alliance and one amendment by the PC/DR coalition were accepted.
The purpose of committee stage is to look at legislation, to review and understand that legislation and, not just for opposition members but for all members sitting on the committee, to offer constructive changes to the legislation. The amendments we brought forth were not accepted. They were never looked at.
It is not just on this legislation that the amendments were not looked at; we could go back over a long list of government legislation. One example is the anti-terrorism bill. Closure was forced on that bill. We did not have time to debate the issue in the Parliament of Canada and the very next day the Liberal government did not have enough speakers to continue the debate on Bill C-27.
The problem is not going to go away. Many of us may disagree on how to deal with it, however I think we would all agree that we have to deal with nuclear waste. We cannot pretend it is going to go away by itself because it will not. We have to deal with it in a timely fashion. However the process in place not only is not being done in a timely fashion as it is two years, but it does not have openness, it does not have accountability and it does not have parliamentary review. It is not open to access to information.
It is obvious the government was not listening to committee. It was not listening to the opposition members of parliament. Nor was it listening to its own government backbenchers on committee, who simply should not be there to sit on committee for 10 days and on the 11th day when the vote is taken be moved out so someone who does not know anything about the issue can come in and vote the government party line. That is an abuse of process. That process has been abused for far too long in this place.
I listened to the member who spoke before I did. If we look around the world, without question the dependence on nuclear power is going to continue, especially in third world countries with burgeoning populations. Therefore, the issue of nuclear fuel waste is going to continue. We have to find a way to deal with the issue fairly quickly.
The issue should not be, as the bill allows, for on site management of nuclear fuel waste for perpetuity. That is one of the options that could be recommended by the waste management organization. That is one of the options it could choose. It may decide to store nuclear fuel in Canada at sites on surface for perpetuity.
I would suggest that is a mistake. It is part of the legislation that has been poorly crafted and hurried through parliament when it simply did not have to be. We have a much greater responsibility than that.
It is the same difference here. There is a budget coming down, but there are no surprises. The budget has been leaked. We have a nuclear waste management bill that the opposition members are not satisfied with. A bill on terrorism was passed. It was hurried through parliament and will have to be corrected. We passed an immigration bill and now there is another bill before the House to correct the mistakes in the first one. It is one thing after another.
Surely the government should figure out what its agenda is and what specific legislation it plans to pass. The government should let the committees do their job and craft legislation that comes to the House in a manner that we can improve on, if needed, or we can pass it with reasonable debate. Instead, parliament is not doing its job. We are not able to do our job. We continue to have a government that uses closure like a hammer: no more debate; debate is finished, and it forces closure.
I repeat that the issue with Bill C-27 which I find most problematic is that it does not prevent the importation of nuclear fuel waste into Canada. The bill should specifically prevent the importation of nuclear fuel waste. If Ontario Hydro, Hydro-Québec, New Brunswick Power or Atomic Energy of Canada Limited chose to build a reactor in another country, there is nothing specific in this legislation that prevents them from bringing back that nuclear fuel waste for deposit in Canada.