Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by congratulating my colleague from Rosemont—Petite-Patrie for his question.
I think he has pointed out, and rightly, that the Bloc Quebecois had studied in considerable depth the entire issue of renewable energy and the technologies surrounding traditional nuclear fission.
In this connection, I must express my admiration for the work done so far by the various Bloc Quebecois environment critics. I am thinking first and foremost of my colleague from Laurentides, our first critic; my colleague from Jonquière, who also served in that position for some time; and my colleague from Rosemont--Petite-Patrie, who held the position during a certain interim period and is now our environmental critic once again.
In the same vein, I must thank and congratulate for their contributions the hon. members for Jonquière and for Sherbrooke, the latter our natural resources critic, for looking after the specific issue of Bill C-27.
This bill is the continuation of a process that began some 20 years ago and the outcome of a study that took some ten years, the study by the Seaborn panel. A lot of work went into this, and the Bloc Quebecois has carefully monitored the progress of the panel's work with the help of our various critics.
I must congratulate them on their excellent work, which ended up as one component of the Bloc campaign platform. So now we are able to keep abreast of current trends internationally and no longer invest in this costly and dangerous technology, which shows such contempt for the environment, nuclear fission. As a result, the funds currently invested in this annually will be redirected to the so-called green energies, as they should be, in keeping with the Kyoto accord, of which Canada is a signatory.
Canada must be rational in its decisions. Canada cannot expect, as is the case in the bill, to make all the decisions and have others do the work for us, be it the provinces, industry, consumers, or citizens, pawning off all of the work onto others instead of doing it ourselves. The government wants to make the decisions and offload the work onto others. But that is not what it should be doing.
I believe that this is one of the fundamental weaknesses with the current federal system. I will not delve into it in detail. I could repeat the little speech I gave to one of my colleagues yesterday on the nature of the federal system compared to the one that exists in Germany, where currently there is no way to regulate or control the federal government if it oversteps its powers, responsibilities or jurisdiction.
I will come back to the question raised by my colleague, the member for Rosemont—Petite-Patrie, as to the difference between traditional nuclear fission and nuclear fusion, which is the way of the future and which is considered to be among those technologies that are considered green technologies.
Of course, when nuclear fusion is mentioned, often the public hears the word nuclear. They say “No, no, no more nuclear power. First, it is expensive. It is very dangerous. We do not know what to do with the waste and it is not environmentally friendly”.
It is important to make some distinctions. As I said in my speech, nuclear fission splits atoms whereas nuclear fusion fuses atoms. The heat created by this fusion creates energy, which can then be used.
As I mentioned in my speech, it is essentially the dream of creating solar energy in a bottle, in miniature. It produces a large amount of energy with very few negative side effects, very little waste; waste is virtually non-existent. This solves one of the major problems inherent in today's nuclear fission technology.
It is therefore an industry which is safer, cleaner, and more environmentally friendly. According to scientists, a phenomenal quantity of energy can be produced by means of nuclear fusion.
Right now, an international consortium, of which Canada is no longer a member, is working on nuclear fusion, but what makes the situation I described earlier even more insidious is that the federal government first cut funding for the Tokamak project in Varennes. As a result, that project ultimately folded up. The Tokamak project in Varennes was closed. There are no longer any nuclear fusion reactors in Canada. Canada is no longer a member of the international nuclear fusion research consortium.
Then all of a sudden Canada is interested in being the site of the ITER project. What is the ITER project? It is a project, led by this international consortium, which includes Japan and the European Union countries, whose goal it is to build the biggest nuclear fusion reactor in the world. It is a project on the order of $12 billion. And where do the federal government and the Canadian consortium looking after the ITER project want to put the ITER reactor? In Ontario.
The federal government waited for Quebec's reactor and all the expertise developed in Quebec to fade away, and then gave its tacit and financial support for the possible establishment of the ITER project in Ontario.
Once again, the members opposite will say this is a conspiracy theory, but to a certain degree, the facts speak for themselves.