Dennis Bevington

[The Environment, March 27th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, confidential documents on the Giant Mine cleanup demonstrate it actually costs less to protect the environment than to just let polluters off the hook. The Treasury Board now pegs the cost of cleanup of the arsenic trioxide at double the government's previous claim, $903 million.

Will the government admit it is wrong? Protecting the environment protects the taxpayer as well. For $1 billion, surely we can find a better way to treat this poison other than freezing it underground.

[Canada Petroleum Resources Act, March 25th, 2013]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-485, An Act to amend the Canada Petroleum Resources Act (transfer approval).

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to put forward the bill to amend the Canada Petroleum Resources Act. The bill would amend section 85 of the act, requiring that all lease transfers must be approved by the minister, that there be a 60-day period of public comment before the minister makes his decision on these transfers, that all public comments must be available through the department's website and that the minister's decision must be made public through a notification in a local newspaper.

Under the current law, when an oil company transfers an oil or gas lease, especially in the offshore areas, it is only required to notify the minister. The minister has no ability to say yes or no to those transfers, even though the minister, when approving leases, has the ability to say yes or no to them. We would put these transfer opportunities back in the hands of the minister.

Canadians have been rightly concerned about the disposition of their natural resources through the sale of Nexen and through other things that have happened where foreign companies have taken over vast quantities of our Canadian natural resources.

With the great interest there now is in the Arctic, there is need for more protection and more understanding of the transfer potential of leases that are given in the Arctic. The bill would give that protection to Canadians and to the future of our natural resources industry.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Nuclear Terrorism Act, March 18th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for the question, because it is really germane to what I was saying.

The importance of recognizing the criminal liability of those who handle radioactive material is part of the solution in dealing with this. I do not see that in the bill. I do not see that the bill has addressed that in any way. There are no penalties for an error, bad judgment or simple carelessness in dealing with this type of material. That is something we should perhaps look at in committee. What are the responsibilities of those who handle radioactive material and enter it into the system?

As my colleague from Ottawa Centre has pointed out, we are going to be engaged in some very large takedowns of nuclear facilities in Canada, and those questions are of extreme importance.

[Nuclear Terrorism Act, March 18th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Scarborough—Rouge River.

I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak, however briefly, to this particular subject. In a previous Parliament we had many a debate over the Nuclear Liability Act, and many of those issues are very important to us all. I really do not see any reason why debate in the House on such an important issue should be curtailed simply because we all agree on things. We are looking for better answers throughout the time that we work on a bill. Certainly this bill is no exception. No one can say that the bill comes from experience, because not everyone has experience with radioactive waste and not everyone has experience with what happens with radiation when it gets into the environment.

I want to preface with a couple of experiences that I have had in my community and in the north.

The first one deals with the transport of yellowcake from the Port Radium mine on Great Bear Lake in the 1930s, when it was transported by gunny sack down the Mackenzie River and over the portage at my town of Fort Smith. Sixty years later, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited came through to deal with the residue that came from the yellowcake that was carried on people's shoulders in gunny sacks. This was after many of them suffered radiation-induced cancer throughout the system and that is something that can be referenced by googling the Deline radiation issues.

In any event, when passing through the community, one of the bags happened to fall off a cart. Sixty years later, we could identify precisely where that bag fell off the cart. The residue remains in perpetuity unless we do a very massive cleanup.

The second incident I want to talk about is COSMOS 954. COSMOS 954 was a satellite that the Russians lost control of in 1984 or 1985, somewhere in that range. This was a nuclear-powered satellite with a reactor the size of a football. It exploded coming through the atmosphere and the debris from that explosion covered an area of some 30,000 square kilometres, including my community of Fort Smith, which was on the edge of that radius.

When the cleanup started, people with Geiger counters could go through the community and sort out the pieces of radioactive material that littered the entire community. A team of people worked all summer long with Geiger counters, picking up the pieces as they went around.

Radioactive material is dangerous material. Radioactive material in any size, shape or form can cause difficulties for human beings. We are seeing this now on a more massive scale with what has happened at Fukushima, where radioactive releases are costing the economy of Japan a huge price and will continue to do so. We can look at Chernobyl where large numbers of deaths occurred, but the impact on the countryside and on the people who lived in those areas was huge as well.

Now we come to the potential for dirty bombs—that is, someone taking some radioactive material and blowing it up in a populated area, say over Ottawa, using a Cessna 172 filled with some explosives and some radioactive material they happened to get somehow from Chalk River or from some other place. The impact upon the city of Ottawa would be immense. The cleanup would be incredibly costly. The cost to the community over time would be incredibly serious.

What we are talking about are serious issues. These are issues that can affect us all. I have seen the effects of very small amounts of radiation escaping from the system. Deliberate efforts to create radiation issues with something such as a dirty bomb would be devastating to anyone in the areas that was hit by it.

We might not see it today. It might not be something that kills everyone in its surroundings, but it would kill the initiative of people to live in that area. It would take away so much from any community affected by it.

When we talk about the act, are we taking it seriously enough? Have we identified any criminal offences that could be put against people who might, without malice or intent to injure or create serious bodily harm, simply make mistakes or do something that was wrong with the material moving through the system?

Let us remember that there are thousands of sources of radioactive material around the world. There are thousands of sources of radioactive material in Canada. The problem is very large. Would this act give enough impetus to those who are in charge of radioactive material any sense of their mistakes or apprehensions, or perhaps cover criminal activity in selling it to someone else or in dealing with it in a bad fashion, even not with the intent to injure or kill? Would it cover completely what we want to do with those types of people? That would be my question with the legislation. That is why I am standing here today and talking about it. It is important to have debate and discussion over these types of issues.

I notice the Conservatives have not spoken up on the bill in front of us to explain to their constituents and to us in Parliament how they feel about this issue. Simply to push it through without debate and without understanding is not the thing to do. We need to understand the issue. We need to explain to Canadians what we are doing, how it works and what the legislation is intended to accomplish. If we simply say we will push it through and someone else can take care of it, and we simply fulfill our role under treaty obligations, we do not know if we are doing enough to protect Canadians, because we do not understand this issue that well.

Is that what is happening here with this question as we stand up and debate this subject in Parliament? I find that reprehensible in some ways, and that attitude should be looked at very carefully by all members of the House. When we talk about this issue, there are many things to say. I have said what I really wanted to say about it because we want a full discussion of those issues at committee. It is not good enough that the Senate has done it; we are elected members. We need to make sure that the work that is done is correct.

I hope that all members will enter into thought about this issue. It is serious. It is one of the more important items that have been brought forward to protect Canadians in my time here in Parliament.

We speak about protecting the victims of crime. This is a great opportunity to do just that, because these are preventative measures. It is not good enough to have a bill that simply deals with the after-effects of criminal activity in this regard; we need to prevent this type of activity from happening.

[Petitions, March 18th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I join the parade of MPs today putting forward petitions from Canadians asking for the saving of the ELA freshwater research station, and asking the government to change its decision to close this great facility.

[Service Canada, March 7th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives' requirement that first-time applicants for social insurance numbers have to apply in person has made it nearly impossible for people in remote communities to get a card.

In Nunavut in communities like Grise Fiord, people must travel to a Iqaluit, costing thousands in air fare and a week's journey. Getting a SIN card is the first step in getting a job. This move flies in the face of Conservative rhetoric about job creation

Will the minister reinstate the mail-in process for these cards?

[National Defence, March 5th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, documents have revealed that Conservative mismanagement is now forcing Canada's military to scale back plans in the Arctic.

The air base at Resolute Bay is shelved. The promised navy port is nothing more than an unheated shed and the navy's Arctic patrol ships are delayed until at least 2018.

When will the Conservatives realize that Arctic sovereignty comes from working with other Arctic nations and listening to northerners? Do they not understand that high-priced photo ops for the Prime Minister do nothing to help Arctic communities?

[Northern Jobs and Growth Act, March 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech on this issue and for the work she did in committee, along with the official opposition. We presented many amendments that should have been listened to in a better fashion.

I would like the hon. member's understanding of why the Conservative members refuse to really even talk about these amendments. We would think, after the amendments were presented by witnesses before the committee, friendly witnesses, not hostile witnesses, that there would have been a more fruitful dialogue on committee.

Does my hon. colleague have any explanation for the silence that came from the government side?

[Northern Jobs and Growth Act, March 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, getting things wrong in legislation that deals with projects and environmental assessments is opening oneself up to going to court. Court would eat up a lot more costs and time than a review of legislation. The argument brought forward in committee not by Conservative members but, to a great extent, by government officials who seem to be running interference for the government, which is fair enough, just does not stand up.

[Northern Jobs and Growth Act, March 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, there are two different situations. In Nunavut, the five-year review is an essential element that should have been included in this bill. My own personal experience with federal legislation on land use and environmental assessment says that there are going to be problems with the bill that will come up very quickly. The thought that the Conservatives would not support the review says to me that they are really not open to change. They are really not interested in anything other than their blinkered view of how legislation should work.

My hope lies with the Government of the Northwest Territories, if what the premier said was correct. The legislative assembly in the Northwest Territories is going to be the place where combinations can be made properly. That is where this power should reside in the end and, hopefully, will.