Mr. Speaker, 22 years ago in a former incarnation as a member of the Ontario legislature and as a member of the select committee on Ontario hydro affairs the subject of the storage of high level nuclear waste was on the front burner. The committee was taken to Whiteshell, Manitoba, and exposed to the technology to be used for the long term burial of that waste. It is the same technology being proposed in the bill. It was highly developed 22 years ago. I believe that is rather ironic.
Politics entered into the debate because storage required the location and development of a natural formation of impervious rock known as a pluton. There are some hundreds of plutons in the northern parts of Ontario, Manitoba, and elsewhere. When it got down to actually developing it, public resistance did not allow for it.
The bill before us might have been more useful 22 years ago. However the minister must be commended for bringing the legislation before the House at this time. It shows that he understands the problem is still with us and growing.
The bill would provide a three year study period which is felt to be quite adequate despite my friend from Windsor--St. Clair claiming that it is not enough time. Enough is known and understood now about the technology. This is a great step forward.
I remember some 22 years ago raising the question of long term storage of nuclear waste at power sites being vulnerable to terrorist attack. The plants were not designed to be secure. The waste being stored in what we called swimming pools at that time was vulnerable because they could have been drained and have released radioactive material. That is still the case. Over the years the amount of radioactive material has compounded. Whether or not nuclear power has a long term future in Canada, the waste is still there and must be dealt with.
In spite of my overwhelming support for the bill I have a concern about its content. My concern is provincial in nature and has to do with financing. We may have difficulty amending the legislation in an effective manner. The bill clearly states that funding would come from the utility involved or a third party. When I see the expression third party I begin to get concerned about the fact that I could read it as subsidy.
If there is third party funding that results in a subsidy for electric power generation, it once more gives us a false sense of what it really costs to produce electricity from nuclear power. There is no energy in Canada that is not subject to some form of subsidy, whether it is financing on the tar sands or the $16.2 billion that has already gone into nuclear subsidy over the last 40 years or so. The time has come, especially looking into the future and the energy options as my friend across the way mentioned, to deal with the real costs of producing energy and the real environmental costs as well.
In an article in the Globe and Mail a couple of weeks ago, two professors in California did a comparison of generating electricity with wind power versus coal. At first coal was half the price of wind generated power but when the true environmental costs were injected into the equation, wind power won. Such is the case with many other forms of energy and energy comparisons.
As long as we keep the blinders on and fail to look at the true costs and keep convincing ourselves that what we are paying at the moment is the real cost, we will not be able to proceed into a new and necessary era of renewable and environmentally sustainable energy. Those technologies are there, they are mature and developed but they are not attracting sufficient investment to make them work. That is why I have a concern for the third party addition in the bill.
When the bill is studied at committee, I will attempt to introduce an amendment that may be satisfactory, if we can satisfy ourselves that it is also constitutional because electric power generation is the purview of the provinces and we are not the provinces. At least we will make that attempt. Hopefully through the discussion and debate that will ensue we will expose the fact that we are not looking at true costs for energy and that we need to do what my friend across the way described as whole costing. Whole costing must be the way of the future.
We can no longer hide our heads in the sand as we have done for so many years, particularly in Ontario. The premier told us a few months ago that the stranded asset, and I use that term advisedly because it should be stranded debt, has now reached $38 billion. That is unrecoverable money that was never passed through the electric power system and the power corporation act clearly stated that the mandate was to produce power at cost. We have deluded ourselves over the years. I am not familiar enough with other provinces to know whether similar activities have gone on but this has resulted in a serious concern inside the province. Ultimately the taxpayers of Ontario will be the ones who will have to cough up the $38 billion one way or another.
In conclusion, I support the bill and what it is intended to do. Finally we are getting a grip on one of the key components of nuclear power generation. If nuclear power has any chance of a future, this has got to be dealt with. I think the bill does it but I will be supporting an amendment at committee stage that will do something with the wording of third party.