Madam Speaker, the member is absolutely correct. It is just totally bizarre that we would have private firms developing and owning a new nuclear reactor, having to buy insurance for the reactor and we limit the liability to $650 million when in the United States it is $10 billion and in Germany and Japan it is unlimited liability. We know at the end of the day that if the owners do not buy the insurance some year because it becomes too pricey, or even if they do have the insurance in place and the damages exceed the insurance policy, it will be the taxpayers who keep paying over and over again for the cleanup costs and then the storage costs that go on forever.
There is something in the computer business known as total cost of ownership where one does not just look at the cost of the computer. One needs to look at the total cost of operating the system. That is what we should be looking at.
When we look at those costs in the nuclear industry, we will never win because there is the cost of developing the plant, the huge delays, the cost overruns and the huge insurance costs. The insurance people are not stupid. They know there have been 81 accidents in the last 50 years, which I am sure will scare off a lot of insurance companies. Then there is the storage issue. Nobody wants the waste trucked down their highways nor do they want it stored anywhere near where they live.
What are we going to do with all this stuff? Are we going to store it here in the Parliament Buildings? People do not want it. There is a very limited market. Maybe people are agreeable to nuclear development if it is someone else's problem. If we are going to store it, build it and keep it in Ontario, fine, but the people will not like it there either.
The problem here is that we are dealing with a bad scenario and we have good scenarios for a change. We have hydro development, wind power and other sources. I spoke about the solar panel company that Canada did not help out and it went to Germany. The Germans gave it whatever it needed and it is producing huge amounts of solar panels in Germany right now. Here we are once again on the outside looking in.