Mr. Speaker, in 1997 the federal government announced that it would no longer provide its annual contribution of $7.2 million to Tokamak, in Varennes, which was then the main nuclear fusion research centre in Canada.
We are now learning that the government is part of a consortium that is trying to attract to Ontario the $12 billion ITER project, a megaproject for international research in the same sector.
How does the Minister of Natural Resources explain that his government forced the closure of Tokamak in Varennes by claiming that nuclear fusion was no longer one of its priorities, when it is now injecting billions of public funds in that same sector, but this time in Ontario?