Indeed. One only has to think of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Yesterday I was surprised to hear a member, who is supposedly an expert on this, say that there was really no danger whatsoever in managing a nuclear power plant. I wondered if maybe the victims of Chernobyl did not die by some simple mistake. Perhaps people were not being careful enough. Perhaps there was so little danger that the accident that occurred at Chernobyl was almost a minor one.
It is hard to imagine that there are people out there who think this way about products that will influence our lives and the lives of those who will come after us, that is, if we become aware of the planet enough so as not to bring about its destruction in the near future. One wonders sometimes how long the planet will exist, when one sees how little attention we pay to the environment.
I was saying earlier that the government had made mistakes in the past. Toward the end of the 1970s and in the early 1980s I was a member of the Government of Quebec, Mr. Trudeau was the Prime Minister of Canada, with the same Liberal government, and the current Prime Minister was a key minister in the Trudeau cabinet.
In Quebec we did not want a nuclear plant. Finally an agreement was reached between the two governments, because Mr. Trudeau wanted to sell Candu reactors, to build a nuclear plant in Gentilly, just to “join the club”, as they said. This meant that 3% of our energy would come from that nuclear plant.
In order to convince us, Mr. Trudeau said “If you do it, I will build a heavy water plant in LaPrade”. Three-quarters of the plant was built. Three-quarters of a billion dollars were spent in 1980. An economist could tell us what it is worth today, but it is around two or three billion dollars.
I had the honour of having these candles just in front of me until last spring, when it was decided to tear down the plant and sell it for scrap. Three-quarters of a billion dollars for the LaPrade plant. And the government got as much mileage as it could in terms of patronage. Such was the result of the agreement on the LaPrade plant, on the heavy water plant that was going to supply nuclear plants in Quebec and in part of Ontario.
This decision was made by a government that claims to be in sole possession of the truth. We can trust governments like this one. Last year, when I saw a plant that cost three-quarters of a billion dollars to build in 1980 being demolished, I found it rather painful to watch. And this government boasts about being a good manager. This is rather extraordinary.
I was told that the government will follow the recommendations of the committees that review these issues and make recommendations to the minister. I no longer have much faith in this process, and this bill reinforces that impression, because I attended the sittings of other committees. I did not have the opportunity to attend sittings of this particular committee but I attended those of other committees, including agriculture and human resources development.
When we studied issues such as employment insurance in the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development, the Liberals, the Canadian Alliance, the Bloc Quebecois, the New Democrats, and the Progressive Conservatives unanimously condemned the theft from the EI fund. The report was tabled in the House. The minister told us that she was going to study the issue, the recommendations and the report.
We can see that the EI money has disappeared and that the workers, who paid their premiums, are the ones who are now paying down Canada's debt in part, if not in whole.
What is rather surprising about all this, Mr. Speaker, is that neither you nor I, nor the Minister of Finance, nor the Prime Minister, nor any of the ministers, nor any member of this House are paying EI premiums. The EI fund belongs to workers and to industry, which contributes to it.
Those who are deciding to help themselves to this fund and to use it to pay down government debt are not paying into it. Who else is not paying into it, apart from us? Our staff here in Parliament pay into the fund. They and other workers in Quebec and in Canada are paying down Canada's debt to the tune of about $40 billion.
I saw the same thing on the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development, where we realized that approximately 20% of seniors eligible for the guaranteed income supplement are not receiving it because they cannot be found.