Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House again on behalf of the people of Surrey Central to take part in the third reading debate on Bill C-27, an act respecting the long term management of nuclear fuel waste. Members of the House no doubt recall the provisions of the bill from previous stages, therefore I will keep my comments about the bill's contents very brief.
The bill requires the creation of a long term management strategy to make sure that the disposal of nuclear fuel waste is done in a complete, integrated and cost effective manner. To do this, it directs the major owners of nuclear waste, which are Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., Ontario Power Generation Inc., Hydro-Québec and New Brunswick Power Corporation, to create waste management organizations to implement these long term strategies.
It also directs these organizations to establish trust funds and make regular payments into them to finance efforts toward long term waste management. These nuclear waste management organizations have a responsibility to come up with a number of fiscally responsible and realistic options for managing these byproducts. Once these options are identified, it becomes the responsibility of the governor in council to choose which one will be used.
It would not be fair to treat the nuclear waste issue as only a domestic one. As a member of the foreign affairs committee studying nuclear proliferation a few years ago, I heard many harrowing tales of how nuclear material was stolen in many of the former Soviet republics and exported by criminal elements. For example, we heard how in Russia the raw material for thousands of Hiroshima bombs was in lightly guarded stockpiles. One observer gave the chilling commentary that “unless something is done or something changes, the next truck bomb could be a nuclear bomb”.
Obviously it is quite important to look at these incidents. There are many. I have examples of 73 different incidents of smuggling of nuclear material from 1993 to 1996. For example, Romanian police had in their possession 82 kilograms of radioactive material, enriched uranium. In another incident, Lithuanian officials seized 100 kilograms of radioactive material, uranium 238. In another incident, the Belarus committee for state security seized five kilograms of cesium 133.
The list goes on. The German parliament discussed how three smugglers offered it 11 kilograms of Russian weapons grade plutonium. Similarly, Greenpeace was offered 800 kilograms of scarred warheads for public display in Berlin. The Czech police seized 2.72 kilograms of this material. Hungarian border guards seized 1.7 kilograms of uranium. The list goes on. As I said, there were 73 different incidents just from 1993 to 1996.
Obviously if Canada is not to become the weak link in nuclear proliferation, Canada's waste management organizations will need to examine security procedures, particularly when we are fighting the war against terrorism.
I also heard that nuclear material and technology is transferred from certain rogue states to countries around the globe that have nuclear ambitions. Both Iran and North Korea are examples of countries that are believed to have transferred nuclear technology and materials to the highest bidder.
Obviously the issue of security and the storage of nuclear waste is not just a Canadian issue. The lesson from these examples is that the Canadian waste management organizations established under Bill C-27 need to have full security procedures in place to ensure that this material does not fall into the wrong hands. This is essential if we are to protect the safety of Canadians.
I have a good example in my constituency. The residents of Surrey Central know a great deal about dealing with radioactive waste. In my constituency of Surrey Central, radioactive material was in temporary storage for 25 years. That 4,000 tonnes of radioactive waste was lying in the open until the federal government realized its carelessness. A company was given a licence in 1972 to import radioactive ore that contained thorium, then the federal government forgot about it. In 1989 the government woke up and created a volunteer based organization called the Surrey sitting task force to look into the disposal and storage of that radioactive material.
When I was on the foreign affairs committee I accidentally found out about that radioactive material being stored in Surrey under unsafe conditions. When I came across this--