Alex Atamanenko

[Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act, June 19th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I think it is important, and I will mention this, that it is possible to have industry in this country, but this industry has to come under the surveillance of the elected representatives.

The fact that we have uncontrolled pollution in the oil sands is not acceptable. The fact that it is providing jobs certainly helps our economy, but there are also foreign jobs that are taking away jobs from Canadians. I think any megaproject has to have oversight and we have to look at it step by step to ensure that it serves our best interests and not the interests of those big oil corporations.

[Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act, June 19th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I believe our challenge in the 21st century is between the corporate sector, the banking sector and those that put pressure on elected officials, and on the other hand, the ability of elected officials to continue serving people by making wise, constructive policy decisions. I have stated this before and I stated it last night when I was participating in a food security forum in Renfrew.

What is driving the government's agenda is corporate influence that exploits at all costs, that pollutes our lakes as we heard today in question period. The corporate sector does not worry about selling our energy to the United States. It continues to funnel cheap energy to the United States while at the same time importing 90% of oil east of Ottawa, which we are currently doing and which makes absolutely no sense. The reason this is happening is the fact that there is no political will to have some kind of national strategy for green energy. We need to ensure that we do not follow along in the corporate footsteps.

[Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act, June 19th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my hon. colleague for reminding me of that. I just got so involved and excited about this wonderful plan that we have that I just could not help but talk about it. With respect to Bill C-5, we have to be very careful. It is not advantageous for our country to adopt this bill the way it currently stands.

[Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act, June 19th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am a little disappointed that there are not more members here when they knew that I would be making this speech. In any case, I will do my best. I know that the members who stayed are very interested in what I have to say.

In the first part of my speech, I was trying to give an overview of our environmental plan. I was talking about how we can avoid the nuclear industry by creating green jobs. Before going on, I would like to put all of this in the context of what I call political will.

Anything that comes from the government, such as bills and so on, can sometimes diminish the government's power and give more powers to large, multinational companies. What I am seeing is a struggle between big business and the will of the people. Bill C-5 is an example, because it sets a limit of $650 million, instead of truly protecting people and society.

I would also like to point out that this is all going on in the context of what I call the Friedman philosophy, which talks of privatization, deregulation and a government that is pulling out of programs for which it is responsible.

Before I continue, I would like to share with my colleagues a book, which no doubt some of them have read and if they have not, I am sure it would be good, depressing bedtime reading. The book is entitled The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein, in which she outlines exactly what I have been trying to get at, the role of the corporate sector in dismantling our societies, not only in our country but in the rest of the world.

In case I do not have time to continue in outlining our plan for the environment, I would like to give a few examples of what has happened in other countries of the world with regard to the nuclear industry.

For example, on April 10, 2003, in Hungary, partially spent fuel rods undergoing cleaning in a tank of heavy water ruptured and spilled fuel pellets at Paks Nuclear Power Plant. It is expected that inadequate cooling of the rods during the cleaning process, combined with a sudden influx of cold water, thermally shocked the fuel rods, causing them to split. Boric acid was added to the tank to prevent the loose fuel pellets from achieving criticality. Ammonia and hydrazine were also added to absorb iodine.

On April 19, 2005, in Sellafield in the United Kingdom, there was a nuclear material leak. Twenty metric tonnes of uranium and 160 kilograms of plutonium, dissolved in 83,000 litres of nitric acid, leaked over several months from a cracked pipe into a stainless steel subchamber at the THORP nuclear fuel reprocessing plant. The partially processed spent fuel was drained into holding tanks outside the plant.

Most recently, on March 6, 2006, in Erwin, Tennessee, 35 litres of a highly enriched uranium solution leaked during transfer into a lab at the Nuclear Fuel Services Erwin plant. The incident caused a seven month shutdown and required a public hearing on the licensing of the plant.

What we are seeing is the nuclear industry is by no means 100% safe. The fact that even if there is the slightest accident, this can cause havoc on the environment. As I was trying to point out earlier in my speech, this can cause irreparable damage also to the health of individuals.

There is an alternative, and I started to outline this alternative in my speech just before being stopped. At that time, I was speaking about the fact that, in addition to establishing a cap and trade system, we could create green jobs and also continue to make sustainable consumer choices more affordable.

We need a national energy plan that would make a better building retrofit and energy efficient strategy, which would constitute a groundbreaking, historic construction project for Canada in every community, creating thousands of new local jobs, making Canada a world leader in building efficiency skills in technology.

I referred to the fact that a few months ago, a Canadian solar power company was forced to set up shop in Germany because Germany was providing the Canadian company with incentives to develop this industry, where there were no incentives in our country. This is really a shame on our future and on our country, that we are not able to promote clean, efficient energy in our country.

I would like to go further and say that there are now approximately 12.5 million homes in Canada. Green Communities, an environmental organization involved extensively in residential home audits and retrofits, estimates that home energy efficiency improvements can result in greenhouse gas savings of four tonnes a year per house.

What is our strategy? Our strategy is a new program for retrofitting low income homes to replace the program that was cancelled by the government. We also want to expand and revamp the co-energy programs by providing low interest loans and improved grants for energy efficient home and building retrofits, modelled on the city of Toronto's successful better building partnership using revolving funds.

We also feel that we should amend the Canadian building code to add energy conservation and efficiency to the criteria.

[Nuclear Liability and compensation Act, June 19th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, once again it is my pleasure to appear before a full House to speak to Bill C-5. I notice my friend, the hon. member for Prince Albert, who knew I was speaking, decided to listen to my speech today, and I thank him for that.

First, I want to zero in on Bill C-5, speak a little about it and try to put it the context of what we are dealing with when we look at energy.

In an overview of Bill C-5, the Conservative government is taking what some would say a cavalier toward nuclear safety, and this recklessness is being supported by the other two opposition parties.

The bill will shortchange ordinary Canadians who get sick and die from a nuclear accident, or may lose all they own because of contamination or lose a family member who dies from cancer or radiation sickness.

The $650 million cap on compensation is not sufficient. The United States has a limit of $10 billion. Germany has an unlimited amount. Many countries are moving toward unlimited amounts. No private insurance is available, and it has been estimated that a nuclear accident would cost billions of dollars in damage, personal injury and death.

Let us look at nuclear safety. Despite assurances from the nuclear industry, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Windscale all show that the potential for a nuclear accident is real. Later on, if I have some time, I will once again give an account of some of the accidents that have happened in this industry.

The safety of nuclear installations must be paramount. We have already seen the government willing to put the lives and property of Canadians at risk to keep unsafe nuclear reactors running.

The nuclear industry is not really a green choice, as opposed to what some people might want us to believe. Nuclear waste remains deadly for thousands of years.

A few weeks ago I gave a brief statement on depleted uranium and the effects it had on those who used weapons containing depleted uranium, not only the soldiers of those armies who use these weapons, but civilian populations in countries such as Iraq.

Canada exports uranium to the United States with supposed assurances that it will never be used for weapons. However, experts say that some of it actually creeps into depleted uranium weapons, which then endangers the lives of people in those areas.

The last time I spoke with regard to depleted uranium, I mentioned a film which graphically illustrated the damaging effects. I have asked the government to ensure that we become a leader in banning and abolishing all the depleted uranium weapons in the world.

A person exposed to a used nuclear fuel bundle will be dead within an hour. There is no long term storage solution that has been found for the waste. The processing of fuel and waste has resulted in widespread contamination requiring expensive cleanups, and I cite the example of Fort Hope, Ontario and Rayrock Mine in the Northwest Territories.

Before moving on, I will mention that some people on this continent and in the world are tracking nuclear power reactors and the effects they have on surrounding populations. It would be very wise for our government to explore the possibility of doing a comprehensive study, at least in our country, and perhaps coordinating it with our neighbours to the south, to see what effects there are on the health of people who live in the surrounding areas of nuclear reactors.

Approximately a month ago I met with Dr. Leuren Moret from the United States. She has been quite heavily involved in the nuclear industry and is one of the leaders in the world exposing the danger of depleted uranium. She has been coordinating and looking at studies that link the effects on health with nuclear reactors. In addition to cancer, there is some evidence pointing to the correlation between high rates of diabetes and the proximity to nuclear reactors. Whether this is in fact the case, whether this is science, I am not sure, but these concerns warrant an investigation.

Our country should take the lead on this and say that we will challenge the world to investigate the fact that some people may suffer and die from the effects of living too close to nuclear reactors. As we move on in this debate, this is one of the things at which we could look.

The answer is not in building more nuclear reactors. In the budget the government has been investing in nuclear energy. It seems there is quite a lot of money for nuclear energy, but very little for green alternatives, such as solar power, wind power, wave generation, geothermal and all kinds of things that truly are green clean sources of energy, which have very little impact and leave a much smaller footprint on our planet. The government should be supporting more of these sources of energy in our country.

If the passage of the bill allows the expansion of nuclear power in our country, it will be a big step backward for us in our quest to have a greener and cleaner energy source in many ways. We need to ensure that it not only does not create greenhouse gases, which it does not in that respect, but we need to look at if for other things, such as the waste, the mining that takes place and the tragedy, human and otherwise, to which I just alluded, that it could inflict if there were to be an accident.

It is not the green source of energy we should invest in so heavily. We should be thinking of much cleaner greener ways to go. I will outline a few points from our NDP plan for the environment in a few minutes.

Bill C-5 limits the total liability of a nuclear operator to $650 million, which is the bottom of the international average. This is not enough.

Before outlining some of the tragic instances of nuclear accidents that have happened, it is important for us to realize there is another way of conserving energy and making our planet much more conducive to the environment. One way is what our party has proposed, and that is a cap and trade system. This is a mechanism at the heart of the Kyoto protocol. In fact, both candidates for the president of the United States have embraced cap and trade, making it a key tool in the continental fight against climate change. Cap and trade has already been tested in Europe and the NDP's plan builds on the lessons learned there.

My colleague, the hon. member for Outremont. was at an OECD conference in Europe. He said that the Europeans were embracing cap and trade as the way to conserve energy and fight climate change. They were not holding on to the fallacy of trying to put a tax on carbon so ordinary people would suffer, as my colleague from Winnipeg Centre pointed out.

When we called on other parties to reject the Conservative's dead on arrival clean air act and work together to build better legislation, the resulting legislation was deemed a breakthrough bill by environmental groups. The centrepiece of the bill was a carbon pricing regime. However, that is not enough. In addition to this method, which works, we need to create jobs in the green environment sector.

We would propose a green collar jobs fund be established that would allocate $1 billion per year to train workers, displaced workers and new entrants to the job market, so they could be provided with the skills that would be necessary to power Canada into the new energy economy.

The green collar jobs fund would be used to leverage training apprenticeships and investment partnerships from provincial and territorial governments, from first nations, Métis and Inuit communities, and from the private sector. For my hon. Conservative friends I repeat, from the private sector.

High skills training would be needed for such areas as installing and maintaining energy efficient and renewable energy technology for alternative cars and fuels, manufacturing parts for wind turbines and other new energy technologies, and energy efficiency auditing expertise.

It is a shame that a Canadian solar power private enterprise has to go to Germany to set up business because there is not enough incentive available in our country. Parallel to this, tax breaks are being given to the big oil companies that are reaping billions of dollars in profits. Something in this equation is not right.

At the same time, as we see with this bill, we are limiting the amount of liability in a nuclear accident. As my hon. colleague who spoke before said, there is something wrong in this equation.

In the province of British Columbia, where I come from, we had BC Hydro in control of our public water and our power system. The current government in British Columbia is slowly dismantling the public trust of our waters and our energy and creating what it calls public-private companies to damn the creeks, create energy and sell it on the open market.

I want to emphasize the importance for senior levels of government to take the lead and the initiative. The time is gone when we could just sit back and say that we would let the market take over and let private enterprise run our energy system. It is up to each and every one of us to--

[Food Safety, June 18th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I understand that to mean a commitment that there will be no flooding in Canada.

I will move on to another subject. With food riots and food rationing on the rise around the world, and a growing concern about the quality and safety of food right here in Canada, there is a desperate need for Canada to take a leadership role when it comes to food security.

We have the world-class talent. We have world-class facilities such as the Ontario Agricultural College at the University of Guelph. However, the band-aid solutions offered by the government have not been nearly enough.

Where is the government's plan for food security both here and abroad?

[The Environment, June 18th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, a public utility in the State of Washington is in the preliminary stages of applying to build a hydro dam on the Similkameen River at Shanker's Bend, the proposed height of which could be as high as 260 feet. A dam of this magnitude would necessitate the flooding of Canadian territory.

The Regional District of South Okanagan and the Okanagan Nation Alliance have both passed resolutions opposing a 260-foot dam.

Before this goes any further, will the government take immediate action to make it perfectly clear to the U.S. authorities that any flooding north of the 49th parallel is not acceptable?

[Iraq, June 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, on June 3 of this year, the House adopted a motion to allow those American soldiers opposed to the Iraq war to stay in Canada. Some Canadians, including some members of the House, opposed this initiative, mainly on the grounds that these young people voluntarily chose to enlist.

I am reading a book by Joshua Key, one of the war resisters in Canada, called The Deserter's Tale, which outlines how a poor Oklahoma boy from a dysfunctional family was lured into the U.S. Army with promises of health insurance and higher education.

It is important for all of us to clearly understand how poor American kids are targeted into enlisting and how many are lied to.

Joshua Key was explicitly told on a number of occasions that he would be building bridges in the U.S. as an engineer and not fighting in Iraq. However, he ended up in Iraq, taking part in house raids where U.S. soldiers abducted the men of the families, terrified women and children and pillaged their homes.

We need to understand the nature of this war and its effect. As an immediate humanitarian gesture, I urge the minister to cancel the deportation of another war resister, Corey Glass, who faces a prison sentence and criminal record because of his opposition to the illegal war.

[Committees of the House, June 10th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am not really sure what the question was, but he has a point. However, we often deal with items in committee and then a report is done. By the time that happens, had we not had this debate, we would not have had a chance to bring this issue forward before Parliament finished. After having heard the—

[Committees of the House, June 10th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the motion states:

The Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-food calls on the Federal Government to immediately implement an exit strategy for tobacco producers consistent with the most recent proposal they have submitted and that it be reported to the House.

If I remember correctly, it talked about other stakeholders and about bringing in other people. Once again, the motion gives us a chance to bring this issue forward once again and hopefully come to a final solution.