Exactly. The point was raised and is worth repeating. It is not Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. but Canadian taxpayers who are reaching into their jeans pockets to come up with those dollars.
On an annual basis, Ontario Hydro will fork over $100 million to keep this waste management organization active. Hydro-Québec will fork over $4 million. New Brunswick Power will give $4 million. Atomic Energy Canada Ltd., with somehow no responsibility for nuclear waste, will still fork over another $2 million per annum.
We are talking about significant dollars going into a waste management organization. I cannot help but think that we have it backward. Perhaps Atomic Energy Canada Limited should be putting in the primary dollars. The subsidiary dollars should be put in by the industry itself because it certainly is responsible for nuclear waste.
I found a number of issues in this piece of legislation to be problematic. The bill pretends to deal with the issue of nuclear waste but it does not satisfy the problem. Nor does it completely deal with the issue. We end up with a piece of legislation which would allow for on surface or on site management of nuclear fuel waste for perpetuity.
There is absolutely nothing in the legislation which would force the nuclear energy sector in Canada and Atomic Energy Canada Limited to come up with an option. We must consider one option which is on site storage if we are to deal with the problem.
My colleagues mentioned earlier that we could recycle the fuel, run it through reactors so that it would become inert and the radioactivity would be taken out of it. Perhaps science will find a way of dealing with this through transmutation. Those are not options that are realistic at this time but they are still options. They are worthy of debate and that debate was curtailed in committee.
It should be noted that prior to our last debate at report stage on Bill C-27 there was a piece of legislation that was important to the security of Canada. Bill C-36 was as important to our security as this piece of legislation. Yet the government forced closure on Bill C-36 because it did not have time. It was an emergency. We did not have time to debate it. The next day there were not enough government members to continue debate at report stage of Bill C-27. Debate failed on Bill C-27.
What is important and what is not important? Canadian voters will make that decision a few years down the road.
It is true that the issue has been around for 50 years. We need to deal with it in a timely manner. This does not necessarily allow us to deal with nuclear waste in a timely manner because it does not preclude on surface and on site storage forever.
There is the issue of accountability to the public. It is also important for the bill to establish a waste management organization and an advisory council that would be reflective of Canadian society.
The member for Windsor--St. Clair talked about the amendments that were put forth by Ontario municipalities which have nuclear reactors in their midst. The PC/DR coalition put forth amendments on behalf of those municipalities as did other members. There was unanimous support for the amendments on the opposition side. That speaks to some unity that we found as we all worked together on this piece of legislation.
The government claims to represent Ontario because it has a lot of members from Ontario. However it does not represent Ontario when push comes to shove and we are trying to get amendments passed that were proposed on behalf of the people from Ontario. They wanted their concerns reflected in legislation that will affect them more than any other group in Canada.
The bill does not mention property values in municipalities that have nuclear reactors or on site storage facilities. People tend not to like to be near radioactivity. They tend to have doubts, concerns and worries about radioactivity. They tend not to buy houses and properties or to build businesses there.
It is a cheap source of power. We would not see that reflection in the property values if we assured Canadians that it was safe and if we dealt with the issue in a timely fashion. A municipality that has a nuclear reactor in its midst would benefit from it because it would be an immediate source of electricity and corporations would come to the area for that reason.
I want to talk about the issue of foreign waste being deposited at some type of a waste management facility in Canada. That issue is neither dealt with nor precluded in this piece of legislation. Most Canadians do not understand that.
The legal authority from the department stated in committee that the intent of the bill did not cover the question of the import of nuclear fuel waste. Another piece of legal advice was that the scope of the bill did not touch upon the importation of nuclear fuel waste from outside the boundaries of Canada. It did not speak to that point.
That is important to me and is one of the reasons, if not the main reason, that the PC/DR coalition will not support the bill. It does not preclude Hydro-Québec, Ontario Power Generation, New Brunswick Power Corporation or any corporation from setting up a plant in the U.S. It does not preclude them from producing nuclear fuel waste at a foreign owned plant and bringing that waste back to a depository somewhere in Canada. It is unfortunate that the legislation was drafted so poorly that we will not be able to support it.