Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak briefly to Bill C-4. In itself, this is a very small amendment to the Nuclear Safety and Control Act.
This bill contains only one short paragraph with the effect of limiting to the owner or occupant or any other person who has the management and control of the nuclear facility the responsibility of taking measures to reduce contamination or the level of contamination.
In other words, very subtly, the intent is to relieve financial institutions and lenders who choose to invest in nuclear facilities of any and all civil or legal liability. These institutions and investors would be completely excluded from the legislation with respect to any liability when investing in nuclear projects.
That raises the basic question of why is this so. Why should they be exempted? Yesterday the report of the Auditor General on contaminated sites brought home to us the issue of extremely costly and enduring problems caused by the disposal of toxic waste.
In 1995 the Auditor General set out a figure of approximately $850 million as the cost for the federal government to arrive at a solution regarding the disposal of nuclear waste.
The nuclear energy industry involves two major risks and problems. First, there is plant safety. I know that in Canada our industry has been reasonably safe. At the same time, examples have occurred, certainly in the United States at Three Mile Island and also outside. Of course the worst example of a meltdown within a nuclear plant was Chernobyl.
Also there is the whole question of nuclear waste. We still have not found a solution to permanent storage of our nuclear waste. Not only Canada but countries all over the world have been wrestling with this problem. Those that use nuclear power are faced with the problem of having to deal with nuclear waste. It is always the problem of where to store waste on a quasi-permanent basis, which is the large challenge posed to them.
The benefits are certainly there. Nuclear power is present in Ontario. Nuclear power is used extensively in France. Certainly the power by itself is deemed by the industry to be clean power. At the same time, there is no possibility of putting aside the huge risks of plant problems and meltdowns, especially the problem of dealing with the waste which can stay in the environment for literally thousands of years.
This is the reason countries like Sweden and Germany have had national debates on nuclear power. Most recently Finland had a national referendum on nuclear power. Finland decided to go ahead with it. On the other side, Germany declared a total moratorium on nuclear power. Sweden declared a moratorium on nuclear power. In Canada, Quebec has decided to curtail nuclear power. It has a small nuclear plant, but no more nuclear power.
We should encourage investment in green energies, renewable energies, whether wind, solar or biomass.
Bill C-4 enables investors to treat nuclear power as strictly a business risk, ignoring all environmental risks and liabilities which are potentially huge. It is due to the huge potential risks that the Paris and Vienna conventions have placed a limit of liability regarding nuclear safety, which is more than six times higher than the limit placed in Canada. In Canada we use a limit of $75 million, whereas the Paris and Vienna conventions place that limit at $600 million.
Therefore, rather than facilitate and exempt investors from any liability regarding an investment in nuclear power, we should heed the report of the Auditor General and with the utmost safety, caution and prevention use all our skills to put in place safeguards and constraints regarding whatever will cause future toxic waste.
The time may have come, like in Sweden and Germany and most recently in Finland, to review our energy policy and declare, especially in the context of Kyoto, that we are firmly in favour of renewable energies and firmly against making it easier for investors and others to invest in nuclear power with its huge health and environmental risk.
For these reasons, I hope that Bill C-4 will not proceed in the way it is structured now, that we revert to a position where, if there has to be such a law, that investors in financial institutions will bear the burden of the risk, as they should. We should not make it easier for investors to invest in nuclear power. We should, on the contrary, put constraints on them so that in turn they turn their thoughts, their money into investing in green energies of the future, especially in light of Kyoto and the fact that we are soon to ratify the Kyoto protocol.