Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about the important issue before us. The NDP environment critic is under the weather at the moment. I wish she could be in my place, but I will try to do some justice to the file, which I have been working on in the Ontario region for quite some time, in the South Bruce region.
South Bruce has had proposals for the storage of nuclear waste facilities that have had complications because they have threatened the Great Lakes Basin system and international relations. It has been highly complex, and force has been thrust upon the community to make a decision. It has already said no to one project. Recently there was a referendum for another project that passed with only 51% in favour. Despite the fact that the project passed, the lobbying was intense and significant, and the voting process, I have to say, was rather suspect in the sense that no paper balloting was allowed and there were people who felt they could not get their vote. It passed with only 51% and, ironically, it still has to go through more hurdles.
Some of the proposals in the past have failed in other countries when it comes to nuclear waste. In fact, to go back to what I learned about it, an OPG scientist involved was a whistle-blower who talked about the proposal at that time to bury intermittent nuclear waste for the length of the CN Tower into the ground in Ontario, within about a kilometre of the Great Lakes Basin waterway system. The proposal to bury it in rock formations that were known to be suspect for containment and expect it to be there in safety and perpetuity, for over 100 million years, boiled down to a decision of the small community.
Ironically, in the past the Conservatives under Joe Clark, a Progressive Conservative, intervened. I was fortunate enough to be in the chamber when he was here. It was a much different Progressive Conservative Party than what we are faced with now, which is the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party becoming the Conservative Party. Clark was foreign affairs minister at the time and intervened in the U.S. decision, saying not to put nuclear waste next to our Great Lakes. That was lived up to, and now there is a series of letters from Congress members and Senate members in the United States who have been actively lobbying against Canada's proposal for another project.
The Chalk River project is similar to what South Bruce went through. Chalk River, of course, is by fresh water as well. It is very significant heritage-wise with first nations, similar to South Bruce. The Nuclear Waste Management Organization has been described as being the fox guarding the henhouse, but I think it is more significant than that because it is an active lobbying organization that gets deep-rooted into the communities. What is sad is that it divides communities with promises of a magical vision of how things will be versus what can and will take place afterward.
Ironically, successive Conservative and Liberal governments have tried to pass on the Nuclear Waste Management Organization as something they cannot touch or be involved in or that is independent, such as in the case that happened most recently, in October. There were 1,604 people who voted in favour of hosting a nuclear waste facility versus 1,526 who voted against it, to determine the outcome of the Great Lakes and its future should there be a failure or a problem. We need to think about the gravity of that.
I have been in South Bruce several times over the years to meet with people there. I have met with Michelle and others who have very much done the right thing. They are farmers. What is not being said and what is always pushed against them as neighbour is pitted against neighbour are the issues that come up about whether their properties can even be used for the businesses they have right now.
Some businesses, like the famous Chapman's ice cream business, will be opposed because, with U.S. export and import laws, there are different conditions that can actually be put on products that go into the United States and that have nuclear waste associated with them.
There are also issues, as I have mentioned, for some of the farms, whether they be sheep farms, beef farms, dairy farms or other livestock farms. They could lose their insurance, or their insurance companies threaten them by saying that they are not sure whether they will insure them in the future. We are looking at some of the largest farm operations, significant businesses, and health. Even if there were never a problem, they would have consequences put on them, their families and the agricultural food industry, which is very significant in a practical, immediate term. Heaven forbid something else happens, as it would be long-term.
What is always put to the residents, which is insulting, is that they have to come up with the solution. There have been a couple of recent developments that have some elements that are new and different but that, in the history of storage of nuclear waste, have failed. We have gone through some really wild rides when it comes to nuclear waste. At times there were people who proposed putting it in rockets and sending it off into space.
There have been other times when nuclear waste machinery, equipment and so forth has been proposed to be shipped across the Great Lakes over to Europe for the waste to get processed and shipped back. It was said that the only concern people should have if they were standing on the shore is that they might get nuclear radiation similar to that from an X-ray. Heaven forbid that an accident or something else would take place.
In addition, what nobody will talk about in the situation is the fact that we have to transport nuclear waste across communities. They focus specifically on the hosting communities and about lobbying supporting organizations, trying to get money into the hands of different projects that electorally are significant to people and so forth, to put pressure on winning the vote.
I am concerned that winning the vote becomes the excuse, because it says to people and organizations, whether in Chalk River or South Bruce, “You asked for this”, which will be forever remembered. There is no funding or response of a “no” with regard to the situation of all the community organizations, no commitment there, so when the first one in South Bruce failed, they just moved over a little and another project emerged.
Yes, we have to deal with the storage of nuclear waste. I want to thank Bruce Power for having me there and allowing me to tour the facility and see it. It is independent because of the way Ontario has set up the system of the production of energy versus transmission and versus storage. However, we do not factor storage and treatment, the billions upon billions of dollars' worth, and the legacy, into the cost of nuclear energy. We just kick it down the road and expect somebody else to deal with it.
What was amazing about the situation that I saw was the mere fact that there has been the expectation and the push placed on the residents to find a solution, dividing residents from one another, instead of there being the proper accountability that is necessary.
I want to at least thank the committee for putting in some recommendations and shedding some light on this, but the reality is that nuclear energy is something of a legacy that still is not being treated responsibly.
