Madam Speaker, obviously if I knew the answer to that question and had I known why the government was going to reject all of the amendments proposed by the Bloc Quebecois, the Canadian Alliance, the NDP or the Progressive Conservative Democratic Representative Coalition, I could quite easily have intervened and had our amendments accepted.
As my colleague for Rosemont—Petite-Patrie was saying, Quebec has about 3% of the nuclear waste, Ontario, 90%, and New Brunswick, 2%. Atomic Energy of Canada, with all its activities, produces about 5%. So one may really wonder why the government does not want the public consulted. Consultation was a key word that appeared in all the recommendations of the Seaborn panel.
For it to be acceptable, a nuclear waste management strategy must first enjoy broad public support. It is all very well to introduce any old system or technology to convince people that you have the problems of nuclear waste management under control. If you do not have the confidence of the public, this is all for naught, because at some point you will have to store the waste somewhere. The Canadian Shield was mentioned. Care must be taken here, because Quebec has 95% of the Canadian Shield within its borders.
Does another province, one that produces 90% of the waste, intend to store it elsewhere? This is a legitimate question. At this point, if we were to consult the public, environmental organizations, the public and experts in the waste management and nuclear field, the government might well have to make public its intentions, which at the moment it does not wish to reveal.
I think there was not enough consultation with respect to the bill, because the government figured there had been consultation in the course of the hearings of the Seaborn panel. So it washed its hands of it. However, it is not implementing the recommendations of the panel. The mechanism provided in the bill is the establishment of a committee by management organizations and producers of nuclear waste. It does not necessarily have a clear mandate and clear responsibilities. The management organization does not even have any responsibility for approving the recommendations of the committee as such, and so it becomes a hollow committee. The management organization can appoint whom it wishes to this committee.
There were proposals via various amendments to make consultation mandatory and to also consult the aboriginal people, which was one of the Seaborn recommendations. Given the government's intention of getting this bill passed, consultations would be risky. It would then be forced to start all over from scratch.
There are serious questions about waste management methods, but whose was the initial responsibility for deciding to produce energy this way, knowing it would produce waste that cannot be properly controlled or managed? Who made the choice originally? It would be far better to focus efforts on reducing energy consumption. We know we have become a nation of high energy consumption. This is where the focus must be, on decreasing energy consumption, because it has become too easy to consume. Often what is out of sight is out of mind, but we must take care. Nuclear waste does exist. Ideally, we should get rid of all of it. This should be the focus of research and development, in the same proportion as the profits being made by all of our energy industries, in Canada, the Americas, and the entire world.
All these profits should be reinvested in order to manage energy properly, find renewable energy sources and no longer have the problems we do in connection with pollution, with something that is going to be around for hundreds, indeed thousands of years, and will always represent a risk to the population.
Madam Speaker, in closing I again wish you a happy holiday season.