Mr. Speaker, I am rising today to present a petition from citizens who point out that the federally owned Chalk River Laboratories are releasing radioactive and other toxic substances into the Ottawa River, in particular from the Perch Lake Basin, where three reactor cores and other radioactive toxic waste has been dumped in the sand, and that a multinational consortium contracted by the federal government to operate the Chalk River Laboratories proposes to create a giant mound of radioactive waste in the Perch Lake Basin that would be exposed to rain and snow, and would release additional contaminants, and that technical criticisms of this proposal are causing major delays in the environmental assessment process.
The petitioners are calling on the Government of Canada to abandon the project to build a radioactive waste mound at Chalk River, identify a site for a new facility that could protect the Ottawa River, and prioritize putting into this new facility the waste of radioactive releases into the Ottawa River.