Mr. Speaker, I thank the House for the opportunity to speak to this important bill and I thank as my colleague from Windsor for the work he has done in this regard.
We seem to have strayed away from the debate so for the record I would like to reinstate exactly what we are talking about today. The bill states:
Where, after conducting a hearing, the Commission is satisfied that there is contamination referred to in subsection (1), the Commission may, in addition to filing a notice under subsection (2), order that the owner or occupant of, or any other person who has the management and control of, the affected land or place take the prescribed measures to reduce the level of contamination.
That is basically the little change the government is making. The one thing that is offensive is the word “may”. The bill states the commission may do it, but the commission may not do anything and that is a major problem.
I was involved in the union movement for years and in doing collective agreements the word may was considered very vague and ambiguous. One wanted the word “shall”. It has legal meaning from what I understand, and my colleague from Windsor and others are lawyers. I suggest that the government change the word may to the word shall. If it did that, the bill would have much more meaning in ensuring that owners and people who cause contamination or whatever have a legal right to clean up that property.
I spoke on a bill of this nature during the last Parliament. At that time I said that in the end the privatization of nuclear plants will cause higher utility rates for consumers. Also, if something hits the fan, if something catastrophic happens, the owners will simply walk away because no corporation in Canada would have the funds necessary to clean up the mess and the resulting insurance liability.
What would happen? The people of that area would turn to the only place they could: their elected officials. If elected officials are required to assume responsibility in the end, then let us keep these things in public hands until the day comes when a New Democratic government is elected here and we can slowly eliminate nuclear power plants from the face of this country, and for that matter, the face of the earth. They are dangerous.