Mr. Speaker, I do not understand how we can say that we are extremely concerned about the environment, that we will shift taxes, that we will do everything we can to protect the environment, that we will tax more, move things around and give corporations at least $1.7 billion here and there and yet say to Canadians that if there is a nuclear accident, they should not worry about it, but they will be picking up the tab. I have not seen any cleanup of any nuclear accident that cost less than $1 billion. Normally if it is a big accident the cleanup costs billions of dollars. How can we say we will limit it? How could any member of Parliament of any party possibly stand here and say that they are extremely concerned about our planet, are extremely concerned about the future of our water and our air quality, and that is why they will support this bill? I do not understand it.
I want to point to one incident. On April 26, 1986, in Ukraine which was then in the U.S.S.R., there was an explosion and complete meltdown. It started with a mishandled reactor safety test, which led to an uncontrolled power excursion causing a severe steam explosion, meltdown, and release of radioactive materials at a nuclear power plant approximately 100 kilometres north-northwest of Kiev. Fifty fatalities resulted from the accident in the immediate aftermath, most of them being cleanup personnel. The people who went in to clean up died. There were nine fatal cases of thyroid cancer. Members will notice that I have been talking about thyroid cancer. Five fatal cases of thyroid cancer in children in the Chernobyl area have been attributed to the accident. The explosion and the combustion of the graphite reactor core spread radioactive material over much of Europe, not just in Chernobyl, but much of Europe.
How many people were evacuated? A hundred thousand people were evacuated from the area immediately surrounding Chernobyl and an additional 300,000 from the areas of heavy fallout in Ukraine and Russia. There is an exclusion zone of 3,000 square kilometres encompassing the whole site, which has been deemed off limits for human habitation for an infinite period of time; not for one year, five years, or ten years, we are talking about forever.
We have seen studies by the government, by UN agencies and by environmentalists--