Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the bill before us today.
This is my last opportunity to deal with this very serious bill in the House. Obviously, the Bloc Quebecois cannot object to the management of nuclear waste that is stored on the site of nuclear plants in Ontario. It would be foolish. My colleague from Sherbrooke and I have asked for an appointment with the new natural resources minister to explain to him our party's objections to this bill.
The bill does no go far enough in setting guidelines to deal with the immediate problem and make further progress later on. The bill is lacking in that respect. Originally, it was based on the Seaborn report, which recommended extensive public consultations. I do not think the government travelled throughout Canada to ask Canadians for their input on this bill dealing with nuclear waste management.
It is in no way consistent with the priorities highlighted by the Seaborn report. We can say and do all we want, we cannot haul nuclear waste all over Canada while saying we are going to do this or that.
In 1991, the cost of such a facility was estimated at roughly between $9 and $13 billion for the permanent storage of nuclear waste. This was in 1991. Today, it would probably cost $20 billion to bury this kind of waste. Let us not forget that nuclear fuel waste has a half-life after being buried. Hundreds of millions of years of half-life will follow.
Nuclear fuel waste is highly radioactive and 90% of it is located in Ontario. The province opted for nuclear energy and is currently stockpiling waste on its nuclear plant sites. It is looking at burying it deep in the Canadian Shield. Let us not forget that the Canadian Shield covers 90% of Quebec.
All week long, we have been asking the Minister of the Environment to live up to his commitments under the Kyoto protocol. Does this mean he no longer wants to abide by the polluters pay principle? Should we Quebecers, who opted for hydro power, take in waste from Ontario and bury it in our province?
We account for one-quarter of the Canadian population. I am willing to manage one-quarter of Canada's waste on our territory, but not all of it. I would have liked to hear from the new Minister of Natural Resources what his stand is on this bill. Unfortunately, he has not answered my request to meet him.
This is very important. I took part in the committee work, together with my colleague the member for Sherbrooke. I want to take this opportunity to recognize him and congratulate him on his hard work and the amendments he put forward. Liberal members always attend committee in numbers for the clause-by-clause review of bills and, when we put forward amendments, all they say is no, no, no.
They do not even listen, but they say “no, no”, because that is what the parliamentary secretary, who is the spokesperson for the minister, has told them to say. We are willing to rise above political considerations on this issue, but not under just any conditions.
We asked for a real board of directors to be set up and to submit an action plan to the government, who would then consult parliamentarians, so that the governor in council would not be the only deciding authority. We asked for parliamentarians to be consulted, because we wanted a real board of directors with real responsibilities. We wanted some of the powers to be taken away from Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, because that agency is overseen by the Minister of Natural Resources. We believe there is a conflict of interest, because the minister is caught on both sides of the issue.
We also agree that we have to manage our own waste in our province, but we wanted an amendment to ensure that we would stop bringing in waste from other countries. The House remembers the uproar in my area surrounding the movement of MOX from Russia and the United States. This highly radioactive waste was supposed to be burned in our area. We said, “Why should we become the dump site of the whole world?” Let us manage our own waste and then, if we develop a new waste management technique, we will be more than glad to share it with other countries.
However, the Liberal majority on the Standing Committee on Natural Resources said no, once again. It had strict orders to follow. Let us not forget that, in 1998, the Prime Minister of Canada had agreed to help Russia get rid of its nuclear waste. He had made an offer, but I do not think he had consulted with Canadians beforehand.
I think of our children and grandchildren. I do not wish to see Canada, let alone Quebec—one has to be a bit chauvinistic in life; after all, I am defending the interests of Quebec in this House—become the dump of the world. Yet, the Liberals would not listen to people with common sense who said they wanted to deal with their own waste and find a solution together. This is not, however, the way Liberals intend to go. They prefer to use the back door approach.
I am fed up with this government, which always slips major issues in through the back door instead of dealing with them in the open, in particular in the case of environment and our future. The actions we take today will have repercussions on our future. In 10 or 15 years from now, our children and grandchildren will say to us “You could have raised the issue, you could have done something then, but you only went half-way”.
We had a great opportunity to do so, to go the whole nine yards and to say that Canada as a country assumes its responsibilities but does not have to assume other countries' responsibilities. But they chose to ignore the good arguments of the opposition, those from the Alliance, the NDP as well as the Coalition. We were all gagged, which is unfortunate. The Bloc Quebecois will never support such a bill.
I do not like half-measures, half- bills, half-consequences or half-alternatives. We must take clear means, choose a clear way and drastic solutions to eliminate waste, though we should avoid doing so at the expense of future generations. This is the last opportunity I have to call upon the Minister of Natural Resources. It is still time to stop and say, “We will once more look at the bill and listen to the opposition”.
I wish to thank the people from Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean who listened when I appealed to them about MOX. They all got involved with me. They stood behind their member of parliament and said, “We refuse to have that in our area.” And we did not.
He would have had the support of people, had he asked them what they wanted. Unfortunately, he continues to do what this government does, that is act as if he is the only one to know the truth. I do not believe we can expect anything from them, but we will watch them and follow closely what they are doing.