Dave Chatters

[The Environment, February 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the government's first business plan to reach Kyoto was nothing but a vague wish list, a fraud in fact. The provinces do not believe it. Canadians do not believe it.

Why is the government hiding the real costs of Kyoto? When will the minister produce a real proposal so that we can have a real dialogue on the cost of Kyoto?

[The Environment, February 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the environment minister has publicly estimated the cost of ratifying the Kyoto accord to the Canadian economy at $500 million per year. Industry estimates the same cost to be $4.5 billion per year.

Industry has produced its studies. Will the environment minister provide the House and Canadians with factual verifiable information to support his version of the Kyoto costs?

[The Environment, February 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, depending on who one speaks to and where one is at the time, the government's message on Kyoto seems to be all over the place. Today's message was that the environment minister plans to ratify the Kyoto agreement as early as June at the G-8 in Kananaskis.

Yesterday the Minister of Natural Resources promised to produce a plan to demonstrate to Canadians how they would reach the Kyoto targets by 2010 before we ratify, I guess because the only one who really knows for sure is the Prime Minister.

Could the Prime Minister tell us when Canadians will see the plan to reach the Kyoto targets?

[The Budget, January 29th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I have a fairly straightforward question. I have listened to that same rhetoric for four days through the budget debate.

Why should Canadians be satisfied and content to accept what the government claims is a reasonably competent management of the decline of this great country? The dollar continues to fall. We continue to be buried in taxes and debt. Our standard of living and competitiveness are dropping. Yet the government seems to think that it is managing this decline to third world status reasonably well. Why should we accept that?

[The Budget, January 29th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure what the hon. member is referring to. My position on Kyoto has not changed from the first time I heard of this proposal until today. I remain extremely skeptical about the whole benefit involved in Canada essentially ratifying the accord and committing economic suicide and the benefits this country will receive from doing that.

I have and always will feel that industry and corporate Canada has to do whatever they can to reduce emissions to whatever level possible and should continue to do that, and they are.

[The Budget, January 29th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad the member raised that issue because the government did in fact introduce such a program and it has been used successfully on a number of government buildings. However, success under the program is less than stellar because there does not seem to be a stampede of private sector corporations looking for contracts to retrofit government buildings.

Far greater than that is my concern regarding what the Kyoto accord will do to the average homeowner's family budget. I think it is imperative for the government to immediately produce, what it should have already produced, a cost benefit analysis of this drive to reach the Kyoto commitment. Canadians should be able to judge for themselves whether the gains will be worth the price they are expected to pay.

Even if we were able to meet our Kyoto commitment, it is pretty clear that with the increase in greenhouse gas emissions from countries who are not part of this process, the gains we would make would be swallowed up within a mere six months. I think Canadians need to know the real costs so they can make up their own minds. That is what I think the government should do right away.

[The Budget, January 29th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Medicine Hat. I agree with all of those things that make Canada such a wonderful place to live but I still appreciate a dollar that is worth more than 62 cents.

I will not go into all of the issues that my colleagues have been over and over in the four days of debate on the budget because they have done a good job of exposing the weaknesses in this budget. However, I do want to talk about a couple of things from the perspective of my position as official opposition natural resources critic. There were issues relating to the area of natural resources that were not in the budget but should have been.

I was disappointed that the government did not move to address the truly unfair system of corporate taxation that is discriminatory against the mining and oil and gas industries. Currently the mining and oil and gas industries pay a 28% corporate tax rate whereas, as part of the Liberal government's five year $100 billion tax reduction plan, all other corporations are enjoying a phased in reduction in corporate tax rates to 21%. According to the budget figures released last year by the finance minister the cumulative corporate savings would amount to $10.1 billion by 2004 when the rates of other businesses are lowered to 21%.

Canada is the third largest producer of natural gas in the world and the 13th largest producer of crude oil. The oil and gas trade exports account for half of Canada's trade balance. The $42 billion oil industry, which employs more than 525,000 Canadians, pays an average of $2.5 billion in annual federal income taxes. In 2000 the industry invested $23 billion in exploration and development, often with a lead time of up to five years before it could expect any return. The oil industry is the largest single private sector investor in Canada.

The mining industry is one of the few Canadian industries that operates in all provinces and territories. New investment will bring significant economic benefits to all mineral producing regions and urban centres across the nation. In 2000 the mining and mineral processing industry contributed $28 billion to Canada's GDP. Direct employment by the industry exceeds 400,000 and Canada is one of the world's largest exporters of minerals and mineral products. In 2000 exports amounted to $49 billion representing 13% of total exports.

In 2001 the mining and oil and gas extraction industries, which includes the oil sands mining, was forecast to invest more than $30 billion on construction machinery and equipment representing roughly 16% of forecast capital investment in Canada. These two industries bring massive investment, jobs and secondary benefits to Canadians. It is in our best interest to ensure the health of the industries. However, the Liberals made their priorities clear in the last budget by not including the mining and oil industries in the group eligible for the reduced corporate tax rate.

I urge the government to remember the fable of the goose that laid the golden egg. A villager and his wife had a goose that laid a golden egg every day. They supposed that the goose had some great lump of gold in its insides to produce the eggs and in order to get the gold, they killed it. Having done so they found to their surprise that the goose was no different from other geese. The foolish pair, hoping to become rich, deprived themselves all at once of the gain of which they were so assured day by day. There is a parody there to what the Liberal government has done and is doing to the natural resource industries over time.

A lower tax rate in the oil and gas industry alone would cost the federal treasury about $400 million by the end of 2004. The government claims that due to the recent economic turndown, it is unable to cut taxes and forego that kind of revenue. However, the government is well known for hoarding taxes and to finance extra spending on the efforts of two key industries in Canada while all other corporations enjoy a lower tax rate. That is plainly discriminatory.

If one asks the government its rationale behind the decision one would no doubt hear that the finance department believes that energy companies get tax breaks not available to other economic sectors and that these breaks effectively bring the tax rate of the resource sector down to 21%.

What is conveniently not mentioned is that while it is true that energy companies have a 100% deduction for eligible exploration and development expenses, accelerated write-offs for certain capital assets and accelerated capital cost allowance and resource allowance, these industries face massive initial capital investments with no guarantee of return, and often the return is not seen for extremely long periods of time.

Without other tax benefits companies could not afford to invest in projects such as the Athabasca oil sands, Hibernia and other natural resource projects. These eventually bring billions of dollars to both investors and the government. The resource allowance is simply a proxy for the royalties that companies pay to the provincial governments. It is a business cost not a special tax treatment.

I must admit that I find it curious that the finance minister claims there is simply no room in his budget to give resource industries a break yet he was able to find $260 million with which to start the government's wind energy initiative. I cannot help but wonder if all that hot air contributes to the wind program.

Recently in Fort McMurray the finance minister pledged that if the current system is found to be unfair it would be changed. I call on the finance minister to follow up on his promise and do the right thing. The truth is that without a more stable and fair corporate tax system investors in the resource industries will be scared away. In this of time of increased U.S. demand for reliable energy sources, the government owes it to Canadian resource companies to ensure their competitiveness and survival in Canada and worldwide.

I turn my focus now to the government's climate change plans. Canada is considering one of the most expensive undertakings since World War II, the Kyoto protocol. Yet, this huge commitment is not seriously considered in the most recent budget. The Liberal government is considering ratifying the protocol either by the G-8 meeting in Kananaskis in June or at the meeting in Johannesburg in September 2002.

Business and environmental groups have been raising their voices in protest in the last few months. They are saying that the government has no idea how to achieve its target eight years before we are supposed to have our greenhouse emissions down to 6% below 1990 levels. The commissioner of the environment indicated that at the moment we are 17% over 1990 levels.

Lately the government has been travelling across the country asking businesses to tell it how it should meet its own promises under the Kyoto protocol. It is asking others to do the work for it.

While the environment minister says over and over that implementing Kyoto will cost between 0.1% and 1% of Canada's GDP per year. Added up we are looking at between 3% and 8% GDP loss by 2010. A 4% GDP loss is approximately $40 billion or $1,100 per person. It is a huge expense for combating a problem for which we still do not have a real solution. The government often talks of all the health benefits of reducing greenhouse gases but atmospheric carbon dioxide has never been considered a health risk.

We want to see a more aggressive action on air pollutants that have been demonstrated to have a negative affect on human health, such as air particles and ozone, but these should be targeted separately and not together with carbon dioxide. Referring to carbon dioxide and water vapour as atmospheric pollution is dishonest and smacks of a hidden agenda.

If the government is so serious about ratifying Kyoto why were the costs of implementing Kyoto not taken into consideration? Where are the numbers that say Canada will lose up to 1% of its GDP next year by implementing Kyoto? Where are the considerations of economic leakage where certain sectors that are heavily hit by regulations under Kyoto leave Canada and go to other countries such as the U.S. and Mexico where they are not under the same constraints? The government will continue to say it will not impose a carbon tax but the emissions permits or carbon caps that it is considering are just a carbon tax by another name.

Some sectors that produce more greenhouse gases such as the energy sector will be hit harder than others. They will be constrained to pay more for the right to emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Is this tax fairness? Will this keep these businesses in Canada or will it drive these companies out of Canada to other countries not bound by Kyoto, such as the United States, which is refusing to ratify, citing the economic damage the agreement will cause?

[The Budget, January 29th, 2002]

I would also like to say a few words about the dollar. Far more important than the artificial level of the dollar is the quality of life we have. I was in Washington on September 11. The taxi driver told me not to go out of my hotel room at night. I left this place at 2 a.m. this morning. I am not afraid to do that in Canada.

According to newspapers Edmonton is the best city in the world today in which to invest. We live in a great country where we are not afraid to go outside, we have universal access to health care, we can give $16 billion in programs for people, and we can given $185 million to aboriginal children. If Canada is the best country in the world in which to live, then I do not care about the level of the dollar.

[Nuclear Fuel Waste Act, December 5th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have this final opportunity to speak on Bill C-27. I have been involved in the process of the bill, which has been in the works for months and years.

Generally speaking, it is my position, and the position of my party, that the bill does achieve some important things and certainly is worthy of support.

Before I get into the analysis of the bill, I want to express some of my frustration with the process that brought us to this point today.

The speech of the member on the government side of the House is part of that frustration. During the hearing of witnesses who expressed their concerns and on whose concerns we based that amendments, I never saw that member present. I very much suspect the speech he just presented was drafted within the bureaucracy of the department and presented here just as the bill was.

Part of my frustration is the way the process works and the mockery it makes of democracy. There are so many better ways to deal with the development of legislation, which would result in better legislation that would better reflect the concerns of a broader section of the Canadian public.

The bill came to parliament, then went to committee. At committee, we went through the process of calling in countless expert witnesses on the issues. They presented their concerns, their analyses and how the bill could be made better. Then we went into the clause by clause process. Some 70 amendments were proposed based on what a lot of us heard from those witnesses.

When we presented those suggested amendments and concerns in committee, the entire government side of the committee sat like a bunch of posts and refused to debate or engage in any discussion about the bill and the rationale for the amendments. Instead, the bureaucrats from the department, who wrote the bill and understood what was in it, sat at the end of the table and answered those questions. That was a very frustrating process.

This could be done in other ways that would include all parties of the House in a committee setting, with experts from the various departments, such as justice, technical, et cetera. Together we could sit down, draft a bill and enter into some discussion as to why it should be done this way or that way and how the bill could be made as good as it possibly could. That just does not happen.

It seemed as though the members of the government side of the committee table were so arrogant that felt they did not need to enter into any discussion because, in the interests of time and expediency, they would simply use their majority in committee and in the House to pass the bill whether we liked it or not. Perhaps they did not understand the bill and the implications of the sections for which we suggested some amendments and therefore passed off the responsibility to respond to those things to the departmental experts at the end of the table.

Whatever the case, it truly was a frustrating process. I find the same frustration over and over again whenever we get into a bill that falls within my area as critic of natural resources. It seems to be a practice that repeats itself over and over again.

I have been here for over eight years. There certainly has not been any demonstrated desire to give elected members of parliament any degree of authority or any real input in the development of legislation which we will all have to live by for many years to come.

Having vented my frustrations with all of those things, I will proceed to discuss the bill.

There is a lot of merit in the bill. It deals with an area that we in Canada have needed to address for a long time. As the member opposite suggested, this is a process that has been going on for 25 years in Canada without any resolution. Bill C-27 takes us a little way toward some resolution of the problem of nuclear waste disposal.

For the most part the bill is a reflection of the recommendations of the Seaborn panel which did an excellent job in its study and its recommendations on how we should handle this matter. It did not comply in a number of ways that would have had merit and would have made the bill better. The Seaborn panel suggested strongly to have some kind of outside independent oversight over the waste management organization. The government for whatever reason chose not to do it that way.

Bill C-27 reflects some of the recommendations made by the disposal concept environmental assessment panel and presented to the Minister of Natural Resources and the Minister of the Environment in February 1998.

Some might imagine that an issue as important as the management and disposal of nuclear fuel waste would have fast tracked its way through the House of Commons. However, we saw those recommendations back in 1998 and here we are in 2001, almost 2002, and only now are we at third reading stage of this important bill. Despite the time lag, the bill has a lot of merit.

Canada's nuclear industry has stood alone for many years because of the fact that the industry does not have a producer pay approach to the cleanup of waste products. Other industries, particularly other industries within natural resources, have had to concern themselves with the cleanup of potentially dangerous or damaging materials and have similar funds built into a condition of their licensing. It is common within the industry.

Those costs are so well ingrained within most industries that the fact that the nuclear industry has never had that requirement probably has raised concerns in many parts of Canada for many years. The legislation will finally put the nuclear industry on a par with other resource industries in its requirement to be financially and morally responsible for the disposal of hazardous waste.

I believe that by using this piece of legislation the government intends to create an accountable management system for the long term management and disposal of nuclear fuel waste. I would quantify that to restrict it to high level nuclear fuel waste. I can only hope that the road the government chooses to take is not just paved with good intentions. I hope that the bill will quickly lead us to some concrete action.

I am pleased to see that the major players in the industry, namely, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, or AECL as it is known, Ontario Power Generation, Hydro-Québec and New Brunswick Power Corporation are all involved in the process. The bill will ensure that this collective group will be required to establish a waste management organization that will implement the long term management of nuclear fuel waste.

One of the other concerns, which we heard a lot of talk of in committee and from the previous speaker, is the need for transparency. There is at least the transparency of the requirement to table the studies and the annual reports of the waste management organization, and I was glad to see that. However any time it is suggested in the bill that there is a responsibility either to report to, or for the governor in council to make a decision on, it makes me a little nervous. I think it makes a lot of Canadians nervous.

It seems that only by allowing members of cabinet to make final decisions with no role for parliament in those decisions, especially on something as important as nuclear fuel waste, it opens a decision to Liberal insider trading. Certainly we saw a lot of that yesterday in the auditor general's report. It is a reasonably common phenomenon. Who knows what friends the governor in council might have in the business of nuclear fuel waste disposal. It could of course present some very lucrative contracts to individuals who are running the right business at the right time and of course have made the right levels of contributions to the Liberal Party of Canada. That is a legitimate concern, a concern backed up as I said by some of the comments of the auditor general yesterday.

Furthermore, the major owners and producers of nuclear fuel waste have to establish a trust fund and make set annual payments into that trust fund to finance the long term management of the waste.

Finally, the new waste management organization has the responsibility to determine fiscally responsible, realistic options for the long term management of nuclear fuel waste.

Once these options are determined, they will then be presented to the governor in council through the minister, who will then make a choice as to the best approach. That decision having been made, the waste management organization may, and I emphasize the word may, then move forward to waste disposal.

One of the most outstanding weaknesses of the bill is that once the report is done, the trust fund is set up, the study is done and the recommendations are made to the minister, there is really no assurance that will require the waste management organization to proceed with implementation of any of the chosen options. We could sit on this issue for another 10 years before anything concrete was done.

While the waste management organization may identify a technically feasible process for disposing of nuclear fuel waste, it may find, as the Seaborn panel did and as the department has for a number of years, that while technically the idea is acceptable, it simply cannot find a location, a community or a province that will allow such a facility in its backyard. It is a well known fact that it is hard enough in this day and age to find something as simple as a nuisance ground, a non-toxic waste disposal site if you will, for the huge amounts of urban garbage that we produce. It is very difficult to find a site that is acceptable for those kinds of facilities. It is no small feat to find a community anywhere that will jump at the opportunity to accept the kind of facility that we are proposing for the disposal of nuclear fuel waste.

One of the key recommendations of the Seaborn report that appeared in the legislation is the need for an independent advisory board. I referred to that suggestion earlier. In the Seaborn report the advisory council would be given the responsibility of ensuring openness and transparency of nuclear fuel waste management, particularly in areas related to public and aboriginal participation, environmental assessment, monitoring, mediation and dispute settlements. Furthermore, the Seaborn panel recommended that the agency should be heavily involved in all stages of the agency's work and options for long term management.

I am pleased to see that the government has incorporated the general idea of an advisory council in the legislation. However it concerns me and others on the committee and others in the public that the original spirit of the council seems to have been lost in the translation into this legislation.

As far as I can see there is little in the bill that structures the advisory council to be the watchdog of the agency. In fact it seems to me that the council is to be given a much smaller role than what the Seaborn panel recommended.

The government's record on openness and transparency when it comes to governor in council appointments is not good. There simply is not another word for it. The Seaborn panel made solid recommendations to enable the agency to be an open, honest, transparent and accountable organization, yet the government seems unwilling to open up its process to that kind of scrutiny or that kind of input. I must confess that it makes me wonder exactly how the government intends to set this whole process up if it is unwilling to ensure transparency and accountability from the very beginning.

Obviously a key area of the bill is the process by which a method of disposal of nuclear fuel waste will be chosen. As described by the bill, within three years of the coming into force of the act, the waste management organization shall submit to the minister a study setting out its proposed approaches for the management of nuclear fuel waste along with the comments of the advisory council on those approaches, as well as the organization's recommendations as to which of its proposed approaches should be adopted.

Realistically, and this is reflected in the legislation, there are only three real choices for the disposal of nuclear fuel waste. The idea that the waste management organization has a broad range of options to study, examine and recommend really is not realistic. There are three choices, those being deep geological disposal in the Canadian Shield, storage in a nuclear reactor site, or centralized storage either above or below ground. The only feasible one is the first one, the deep geological disposal in the Canadian Shield, with some variations as to how that is done and whether it is absolutely permanent or is a type of storage system that will allow reclaiming of that buried fuel waste if technology should come along in the future that would allow for a better method of disposal.

Certainly we already have above ground storage at the nuclear reactor sites. We have had in the past to some degree some centralized storage at some of those sites as well. The very fact is that the industry and Canadians and a number of the panels that made recommendations do not deem what is presently taking place as being acceptable in the long term. At least in my opinion that narrows the choices down to the one that was looked at and the one which the Seaborn panel suggested was technically feasible. The problem was there was no public support to allow that proposal to go ahead.

According to the Seaborn panel, whichever method the waste management agency chose, the choice had to meet several key safety and acceptability criteria. To be considered, the concept must have broad public support and, as I suggested, that is not the case.

It has to be safe from both a technical and a social perspective. That criteria seems to be at least within reach. It has to have been developed within a sound ethical and social assessment framework. There has been a lot of good work done but I am not sure that particular criteria has been met at this point.

It has to have the support of aboriginal people. We heard at committee that this support is certainly not there at this time. Some very stringent conditions were placed on that support being forthcoming.

It has to be selected after comparison with the risks, costs and benefits of the other options. As I said, the other options are very limited.

It has to be advanced by a stable and trustworthy proponent and overseen by a trustworthy regulator. I suggest it has yet to be determined if the waste management organization could be deemed to be a trustworthy proponent. I certainly hope it would.

There are those on this side of the House, at least, and I think a fair number of people across the country who would question whether the government is in fact a trustworthy regulator of this system.

It seems to me that in some ways it is the first of those conditions that will be the most difficult to meet. Having broad public support on an issue such as this where there is such a strong sense of “not in my backyard” will be a truly tough obstacle for this agency to overcome. Of course there are also a number of other conditions which, as I said, will be some challenge to meet.

The choice, according to the Seaborn panel, must: demonstrate robustness in meeting appropriate regulatory requirements; be based on thorough and participatory scenario analyses; use realistic data, modelling and natural analogues; incorporate sound science and good practices; and demonstrate flexibility.

Of course we will not know until the report comes to the minister and then becomes public whether in fact the chosen one will meet those criteria.

I certainly hope that any organization working with nuclear fuel would already have the stringent safety regulations and good practices, but even that is in some question considering the conditions under which Ontario Hydro had to shut down a number of its nuclear reactors. That process was forced upon it not by Canada's own industry regulators but by a U.S. industry inspector.

There certainly are a number of concerns about the stringent safety regulations and the compliance with those regulations and good practices and they will remain.

One of the key issues this agency will have to contend with is the question of how safe is safe enough, taking into consideration different technical and social perspectives. Nuclear scientists are likely to have views on the issue that are very different from those on the environmentalist side of the equation, yet somehow, if the plan is to go forward, both groups must be made to feel comfortable with and accepting of this plan.

As far as I can tell the only really viable course of action for the long term disposal and management of nuclear fuel waste is that which has been proposed by AECL, that is, the deep geological disposal in the Canadian Shield. However, as I mentioned, in its study the Seaborn panel concluded that it seems to meet the requirement from a technical perspective and states that:

—safety of the AECL concept has been on balance adequately demonstrated from a conceptual stage of development, but from a social perspective, it has not.

Furthermore, the study concluded that:

—the AECL concept for deep geological disposal has not been demonstrated to have broad public support. The concept in its current form does not have the required level of acceptability to be adopted as Canada's approach for managing nuclear fuel waste.

I know only too well how the government likes to operate when there are contentious matters that do not have public support. A perfect example is the MOX fuel that was flown into Chalk River without any sort of public support after numerous towns, cities, native communities and the Ontario provincial government raised their opposition to the MOX plutonium test plan. Without any public notice, and showing complete disregard for public concerns, the government went ahead and flew in the MOX for the test.

I would like to urge the government to take a more responsible, measured and, frankly, more reasonable approach to nuclear fuel waste management. There is simply too much at stake to just put a stranglehold on opponents of the proposal.

As I said at the beginning of my comments, I am pleased that the legislation has finally come to the House and that the government seems to have taken to heart most of the recommendations of the Seaborn report.

The committee discussions on the bill were certainly interesting and could have been even more interesting if we had had a little more participation from the government side. Not surprisingly, the government did not allow any opposition amendments to the bill, which could have been to the benefit of the waste management agency as well as all Canadians.

While I do have hopes that the good intentions of the bill will actually turn into solid, responsible legislation I am not convinced that the government intends to follow through with total accountability and openness. The bill certainly has merit, and while I am pleased to see that the government has finally taken action on this issue, I believe more should have been done with the bill. Consequently, with some reservations, we will be supporting the passage of Bill C-27.

[Andy Shott, December 5th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to extend my warmest thanks and congratulations to Mr. Andy Shott. The photographic recording of the history of this place has been in his capable hands ever since Andy became the official photographer for the House of Commons when he started the department in 1993.

Andy has photographed all of our memorable official visits and notable events as well as just the daily business of parliament for the last eight years, and during that time Andy has become a parliamentary institution. An event just was not the same if Andy was not there with at least three cameras hanging off his neck.

I should also remind the House that before starting the photography department Andy had 20 years of service on Parliament Hill in a variety of positions.

Andy is retiring in the early part of next year and I would like to tip my hat to him for all his great work, great humour and excellent service over the years. I know I speak on behalf of everyone when I wish Andy all the best of luck in his retirement. We hope that it is truly picture perfect.