Mr. Chair, in looking at this reactor, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, the CNSC was very concerned that it was a 50-year-old reactor. We asked for these safety upgrades to bring it up to a point where the commission could look at this. When we looked at this and licensed it in August 2006, it was under the express understanding that those upgrades were done to bring it up to those standards.
I would also like to say that we also have documents that we would like the permission of the House to table that say that the connections were part of those upgrades. We understood that those upgrades were going to be done on December 30, 2005. We also have the licence where they actually submitted that those upgrades were done. We think that those documents also are important.
It is not the staff of the CNSC that gives that licence. It is the commission. The commission understood this. Documents about what the staff might have had in other areas is really not of import. We are a quasi-judicial administrative tribunal. We have the law. We give the licences, not the staff.
We specifically thought that those upgrades were there because this is a 50-year-old reactor. We were willing to consider this to bring it up to modern aspect because we knew that those radioisotopes were necessary and so the commission worked very hard on this.
That is what is different. The six areas were required. We thought that they were in place and this was a safe reactor.
As Mr. McGee has said now and as Mr. McGee said at the meeting of the commission on December 6, he said that this was necessary for safety and that is in the transcripts available.