Lost her last election, in 2004, with 6% of the vote.
Softwood Lumber October 11th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, according to the government, the reason loan guarantees are not included in its softwood lumber aid package is that it might be contrary to the rules for international trade.
Will the Minister for International Trade explain to us how Export Development Canada manages to provide loan guarantees to exporters without, or so it would seem, violating WTO and NAFTA rules, but does not have enough imagination to make adjustments for the current situation?
Nuclear Safety and Control Act October 10th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, the member is right and I urge the government to take his advice.
Nuclear Safety and Control Act October 10th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the hon. member for Windsor—St. Clair.
Yes , it would be very important for this government not to act in a shortsighted manner in connection with nuclear development.
In the throne speech, the Prime Minister of Canada told us of his commitment to ratify Kyoto in the coming months. That is what he said. How is it then that today he is allowing Parliament to debate a bill that would increase greenhouse gas emissions in Canada?
I do not know if the Prime Minister of Canada is aware of what is going on in this place at this time. I would ask him to listen and to tell his MPs, particularly his Minister of Natural Resources, to withdraw this bill.
Today it would be more important to debate the Kyoto protocol. Today, we, as parliamentarians, should debate that, instead of a bill that makes absolutely no sense, the purpose of which is to develop nuclear energy, which will add to the amount of nuclear waste. There are already 20,000 tonnes stockpiled at nuclear plant sites, and we do not know what to do with this waste.
The government will have to get back on track, stop telling us whoppers, stop telling us that it is going to do this or that and then do the opposite as far as Kyoto is concerned.
In response to my colleague's question, yes, this government needs to have a long term view of the situation as far as anything to do with pollution is concerned, anything to do with the agreements we made about ratifying Kyoto, because we made a commitment in 1990 before the world about ratification.
Nuclear Safety and Control Act October 10th, 2002
It is great to see that my Liberal colleagues are listening. I am very pleased. Congratulations and thank you.
According to the experts, Quebec's wind energy potential, concentrated in the Gaspé Peninsula and the North Shore, ranges from 4,000 to 6,000 megawatts-hour, which is about 60% of the total for Canada.
That is why the Bloc Quebecois has always said that environment is important. We have caused enough damage to the environment; we must take immediate measures to protect the environment for future generations, for our children, our children's children and also for the present generations. Something has to be done; we have to go the way of renewable energy. Fossil fuels and nuclear energy must be abandoned.
It would be important to create industries manufacturing wind turbine components. They have a huge potential to make Canada one of the three best wind energy producers in the world. At present, this government is stubbornly staying the course of nuclear energy.
Bill C-4, introduced by the Minister of Natural Resources, is more than an administrative amendment. It will bring about the further development of nuclear energy. This must stop.
The legislation allows for additional funding to develop nuclear energy. Enough is enough. The government must stop. I am asking it to withdraw Bill C-4. This legislation does not address the nuclear problem. It only allows its development.
The Bloc Quebecois believes that the hazards associated with nuclear energy require tighter regulations than for any other type of energy.
The Bloc Quebecois believes that if financial backers find this too risky an investment, there is no reason for society to react differently.
The Bloc Quebecois believes that the government should focus its efforts on developing clean energy such as wind power.
Where energy is concerned, the Bloc Quebecois demands, first and foremost, ratification of Kyoto, and I will vote for it.
I wish to move an amendment to the motion for second reading of Bill C-4. I move:
That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: “Bill C-4, An Act to amend the Nuclear Safety and Control Act, be not now read a second time but that it be read a second time this day six months hence”.
Nuclear Safety and Control Act October 10th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, would you please call the Liberal member on the other side to order. He has not stopped heckling me for my entire speech. If he would like to speak, let him wait to have the floor.
Furthermore, we have to ask ourselves if nuclear energy is safe. The government, just like its engineers, claims that the Candu technology is the best. But is that true?
In a report aired by the French CBC on August 11, 2000, we learned that:
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is concerned about the quality of the maintenance of the main reactor at the Chalk River plant, close to Ottawa. The commission fears that the departure of several experts and engineers in recent years may jeopardize the safety of the plant's operations.
The problem is that, in 1999, a great number of very well trained people have left the plant. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has made an assessment and concluded that Atomic Energy Canada does not invest all the resources needed in replacement personnel training.
Since 1957, we have been relying on a system of on the job training.
Clearly what is happening within our nuclear plants makes no sense. The Bloc Quebecois therefore proposes different ways for the government to deal with nuclear energy.
Recently, and it is important to remind the House of this; my colleagues have said this and I want to remind the House—the Bloc has proposed an investment plan of $700 million over five years to encourage the development of a wind industry in Quebec. This plan could help create more than 15,000 jobs in Quebec, mainly in the Gaspé Peninsula.
We know that we must help the people in the Gaspé Peninsula. We must help these people, and we know that the ideal place in Canada and in Quebec to invest in the wind industry is the Gaspé Peninsula, because of the wind, because of the unique sites there for this type of energy.
I remind the House that in 1997, in Kyoto, Japan, Canada undertook to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 6% compared to the 1990 level by the year 2008 to 2010.
For the federal government, the only alternative to clean and green energy is oil and nuclear energy. This is serious. It has put $6 billion into the atomic energy program alone.
As for financial assistance to the fossil energy industry, since 1970—the Canadian people have to know this—the federal government has paid $66 billion in direct subsidies to the oil and gas industry. By comparison, businesses in the renewable energy sector received 200 times less from the federal government, which gave absolutely nothing for the development of hydroelectric power—not one cent to Quebec—a type of really clean energy that produces no greenhouse gases and no radioactive material. Quebec has been developing this type of energy for more than 40 years.
This is why we believe that Canada should give up on the development of nuclear energy.
No wonder Canada lags far behind the leaders, with a production of only 207 megawatts installed. Even the United States has significant incentives, such as a subsidy of 2.7 cents per kilowatt-hour, to reach a capacity of more than 5,000 kilowatts-hour.
Quebec accounts for 50% of this production, which is minimal considering its potential.
Nuclear Safety and Control Act October 10th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, before I speak to Bill C-4, I would like to congratulate my colleague, the member for Laval Centre, for her clear-sighted and impressive speech. It opens doors for the debate we will now have on Bill C-4.
I am very happy to have the opportunity to talk about Bill C-4 today. As you know, nuclear energy is a very important issue for me. For more than a month, two years ago, I saw how the Canadian nuclear energy industry laughed at the citizens from the Saguenay region in the matter of MOX imports.
You all know about the debate we had on importing MOX from the Soviet Union and how people in my area were opposed to the idea of airplanes transporting containers of that product over their heads. We won our case.
Research scientists in the industry work behind closed doors, ignore the population, paint a bright picture of the industry and think that the public cannot and should not understand the situation, because people do not have the required training to do so.
One does not need to be an expert to understand that the nuclear industry creates radioactive waste that will last for thousands of years and that it is not a green energy like wind or solar energy, but rather a form of energy the appropriateness of which should be reviewed.
I can only approach this issue with a very critical mind. It is for this reason and for many others that I am so interested in taking part in this debate on Bill C-4, An Act to amend the Nuclear Safety and Control Act.
As it now stands, the act says that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission may, and I quote “--order that the owner or occupant of, or any other person with a right to or interest in the affected land or place [to] take the prescribed measures to reduce the level of contamination”. That is what the current act says: “take the prescribed measures to reduce the level of contamination”.
The phrase “any other person with a right to or interest in, the affected land or place” is quite broad. It means that any person with an interest may be made to pay in case of a spill or any other kind of problem. This means everybody, including lenders. That is what the current act says.
A bank that loaned money to a plant could thus be sued and incur what would inevitably be very high costs. It is mainly to spare third parties, like banks and lending institutions, especially those that are able to finance the nuclear industry, that the bill was introduce. The purpose of the bill is to replace “any other person with right to or interest in, the affected land or place take the prescribed measures to reduce the level of contamination” by “any other person who has the management and control of, the affected land or place take the prescribed measures to reduce the level of contamination”.
This bill frees all third parties and lenders who finance nuclear energy, from any responsibility. What is being done through this bill is serious, all the more so when one thinks about all the doors that it will open for nuclear energy.
If the bill is passed, these legal entities would no longer have to clean up the sites contaminated by nuclear waste or the byproducts of nuclear energy exploitation.
It is not just a simple administrative amendment, as the minister would have us believe. There is a lot involved in this bill.
In fact, as the minister indicated in his press release, “Companies that own and operate nuclear facilities must have access to commercial credit to finance their needs, like any other enterprise”. This is where I have a problem.
Two elements caught my eye when I read this document, namely “finance their needs” and “environmentally-sound”.
It is a well-known fact that the current government, led in that by the Prime Minister, has always considered nuclear energy as an incredible economic development tool. Moreover, in terms of respecting its Kyoto commitments, the government is very favourable to this kind of energy
But, as we know, nuclear energy is not clean. It produces so much radioactive waste that we do not know what to do with it anymore. Yet, the Canadian government thinks differently, despite all that we know and the current situation. This is very serious.
Indeed, it says on the Internet site of the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, and I quote, “Nuclear energy is a clean, safe, and economical energy source that has many benefits, particularly in the areas of environment... It does not contribute to air pollution, global warming or acid rain”.
What a wonderfully incomplete propaganda tool. What Atomic Energy of Canada does not say is that we are stuck with over 20,000 tonnes of nuclear waste in Canada. This is serious. Do members know how much it would cost to get rid of it? It would cost over $13 billion. This waste has a half-life of 24,000 years—and this will answer the question of the hon. member for Laval Centre—and they want to bury it deep in the Canadian Shield. As we know, three quarters of the Canadian Shield is located in Quebec.
They want Quebec to become a dumping ground for the waste of others. It is Canada that has nuclear plants. It is Canada that created these 20,000 tonnes of nuclear waste currently stored on the plants' sites.
This government agency is really not telling the whole truth to the public and it would have us believe this incomplete and misleading information.
Furthermore—
Nuclear Safety and Control Act October 10th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, I commend my colleague from Hochelaga—Maisonneuve for his excellent speech. The Bloc Quebecois member mentioned several reasons why this bill should be scrapped.
Will our colleague tell us why the Liberal, Alliance and Tory members are so bent on this bill, when we know, as the member indicated at the end of his comments, that the most important issue right now, beyond all political considerations, is the ratification of the Kyoto protocol, while we know that this bill is aimed at increasing greenhouse gas emissions?
Nuclear Safety and Control Act October 10th, 2002
Certainly not with the Canadian Alliance.
Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply October 9th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, I will gladly answer the question. That member has nothing to say. I say what the people in my riding say. I am the voice of my constituents. That is what they think of this government. I never said 4%. I said 14%, which means 14 cents on each dollar.
Second, the member mentioned polls. The last federal election was in 2000. I would ask him what new measure can be found in this Speech from the Throne with regard to employment insurance.
People can say whatever they want, but we must tell the truth if we want to make any progress. Right now, on the issue of employment insurance, it must be said that the government is putting the money in its pocket. It took $44 billion from the surplus in the EI fund to eliminate the deficit. These are the facts. This is not unfounded criticism. These are the facts. If the member does not want to hear the facts, why does he come to the House of Commons? Why does he not stay home?
If we want to make any progress, we have to tell voters in Canada and in Quebec, “These are the facts. This is what they did with your money, and you are not getting it back”.
It is the same thing with health care. The Liberals grab our money and we only get 14% back. These are the facts. They made the commitment to finance 50% of the costs, and they are now at 14%. Does the member not see those figures? If he does not, I can send him all the figures that were mentioned in the newspapers in the last few years. These are the facts.
This throne speech should have contained measures to improve the employment insurance plan, to help the unemployed and to give them access to employment insurance. It should also have contained concrete measures to help regions.
What is there in this Speech from the Throne? Nothing. It is a rehash of what we heard in 1993, 1997, 2000 and 2001. That is what we have here.
When the Liberals do something right, I do not hesitate to say so. However, do they ever tell PQ members and Bloc members that they have done something right? I have never heard them say that. It is easy to see the mote in someone else's eye and not the beam in one own's eye. These are the facts.
Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply October 9th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
I have thanked all the people of Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean for their involvement in the issue of this highway that we have managed to obtain. There was a consensus in my region. We managed to get this government moving. For so long, it was promising to take action, it would make us false promises and it would say “perhaps” or “this is a provincial jurisdiction”.
The people in the region and the members of the opposition here in the House of Commons have done their job. They have demanded their due.
I always say that the regions are the poor children of this system. The Liberals are always saying “We are helping the regions”. But they are not referring to regions such as ours. In Canada, there are five major regions. They are not sub-regions such as Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean. The Liberals are currently involved in the race for the leadership of their party. The former Minister of Finance came to the Gaspé Peninsula to say that his priority was for regions such as the Gaspé Peninsula. Honestly. They should stop having us on.
With highway 175, we have succeeded because everybody stood up. We confronted this government. We told it “You made promises; now it is time to deliver”. Everybody pulled together and there was unanimity.
I am proud to have contributed to the achievement of this project and I am proud that my region is coming out a winner. Together, we believed in it and, together, we got it.