Gerald Keddy

[Committees of the House, December 13th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I realize we are running short of time so I will ask the hon. member two direct questions. He gave a very interesting and colourful, if not very accurate speech. I would like him to address two points specifically.

My first point deals with the fact that the budget was very much touted as a security budget. There is no real funding in it for the military. The military asked for $1.2 billion to stay in the black this year, but it received $150 million so it cannot stay in the black. It either has to cut services or cut capital expenditures.

My second point also is with regard to security. In the budget, the government indicated that it will spend $2.2 billion on airport security. However that money is not extra spending by the government; it is a tax on Canadians which the hon. member for Burnaby--Douglas just discussed. How does the member consider that to be new spending?

[Committees of the House, December 13th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to most of the hon. member's speech and there seemed to be something lacking.

For my own information I have been trying to peg down the NDP's position vis-à-vis support or non-support for the military. Certainly in the prebudget report there is not enough support for the military.

The military asked for $1.2 billion just to stay in the black. It will be given $150 million this year and $150 million next year.

Yesterday the NDP voted not to support the military, to actually take the meagre amount it got out of the budget and give it to health care. This would exclude any more funding for the military, and I understand that funding for health care is needed too.

Exactly what is his party's position? What I hear the member's leader saying is that her party does not want to give extra money to the military, yet in a scrum she said that her party does support the military. There is a nuance that I am missing and perhaps it could be explained.

[Nuclear Fuel Waste Act, December 10th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to finish my comments on Bill C-27. The PC/DR coalition has some difficulty with a number of issues with this legislation. As the natural resources critic what I find most problematic about the bill is that it does not prevent the importation of nuclear fuel waste from outside Canada.

Municipalities that have nuclear power plants within their boundaries presented a very well produced and articulate brief to the committee. None of their recommendations were taken into consideration. There is an arrogance on the part of some of the government committee members and certainly on the part of the minister that the complaints or concerns of Canadians are not taken into consideration.

It is absolutely necessary and extremely important that any waste management organization which is set up to deal with nuclear fuel waste and the advisory board that goes with it be completely open, transparent and accountable. In order for this process to be accountable, it has to be open to access to information. However, this process is not open to access to information. The difficulty is that Atomic Energy Canada Ltd., which is a crown corporation, puts $2 million a year into the organization with an initial investment of $4 million and still there is no access to information even though federal dollars are going into it.

When we reviewed the bill at committee, we tried to change that by introducing amendments. The PC/DR coalition introduced a number of amendments, as did the Bloc, the New Democratic Party and the Alliance Party. All of the opposition parties introduced a number of amendments. One amendment by the Alliance and one amendment by the PC/DR coalition were accepted.

The purpose of committee stage is to look at legislation, to review and understand that legislation and, not just for opposition members but for all members sitting on the committee, to offer constructive changes to the legislation. The amendments we brought forth were not accepted. They were never looked at.

It is not just on this legislation that the amendments were not looked at; we could go back over a long list of government legislation. One example is the anti-terrorism bill. Closure was forced on that bill. We did not have time to debate the issue in the Parliament of Canada and the very next day the Liberal government did not have enough speakers to continue the debate on Bill C-27.

The problem is not going to go away. Many of us may disagree on how to deal with it, however I think we would all agree that we have to deal with nuclear waste. We cannot pretend it is going to go away by itself because it will not. We have to deal with it in a timely fashion. However the process in place not only is not being done in a timely fashion as it is two years, but it does not have openness, it does not have accountability and it does not have parliamentary review. It is not open to access to information.

It is obvious the government was not listening to committee. It was not listening to the opposition members of parliament. Nor was it listening to its own government backbenchers on committee, who simply should not be there to sit on committee for 10 days and on the 11th day when the vote is taken be moved out so someone who does not know anything about the issue can come in and vote the government party line. That is an abuse of process. That process has been abused for far too long in this place.

I listened to the member who spoke before I did. If we look around the world, without question the dependence on nuclear power is going to continue, especially in third world countries with burgeoning populations. Therefore, the issue of nuclear fuel waste is going to continue. We have to find a way to deal with the issue fairly quickly.

The issue should not be, as the bill allows, for on site management of nuclear fuel waste for perpetuity. That is one of the options that could be recommended by the waste management organization. That is one of the options it could choose. It may decide to store nuclear fuel in Canada at sites on surface for perpetuity.

I would suggest that is a mistake. It is part of the legislation that has been poorly crafted and hurried through parliament when it simply did not have to be. We have a much greater responsibility than that.

It is the same difference here. There is a budget coming down, but there are no surprises. The budget has been leaked. We have a nuclear waste management bill that the opposition members are not satisfied with. A bill on terrorism was passed. It was hurried through parliament and will have to be corrected. We passed an immigration bill and now there is another bill before the House to correct the mistakes in the first one. It is one thing after another.

Surely the government should figure out what its agenda is and what specific legislation it plans to pass. The government should let the committees do their job and craft legislation that comes to the House in a manner that we can improve on, if needed, or we can pass it with reasonable debate. Instead, parliament is not doing its job. We are not able to do our job. We continue to have a government that uses closure like a hammer: no more debate; debate is finished, and it forces closure.

I repeat that the issue with Bill C-27 which I find most problematic is that it does not prevent the importation of nuclear fuel waste into Canada. The bill should specifically prevent the importation of nuclear fuel waste. If Ontario Hydro, Hydro-Québec, New Brunswick Power or Atomic Energy of Canada Limited chose to build a reactor in another country, there is nothing specific in this legislation that prevents them from bringing back that nuclear fuel waste for deposit in Canada.

[Nuclear Fuel Waste Act, December 10th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to continue the debate on Bill C-27, to set up a waste management organization for nuclear fuel waste. I had a few moments left in my time in the last debate and it is important to have the opportunity to finish that today.

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

Exactly. The point was raised and is worth repeating. It is not Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. but Canadian taxpayers who are reaching into their jeans pockets to come up with those dollars.

On an annual basis, Ontario Hydro will fork over $100 million to keep this waste management organization active. Hydro-Québec will fork over $4 million. New Brunswick Power will give $4 million. Atomic Energy Canada Ltd., with somehow no responsibility for nuclear waste, will still fork over another $2 million per annum.

We are talking about significant dollars going into a waste management organization. I cannot help but think that we have it backward. Perhaps Atomic Energy Canada Limited should be putting in the primary dollars. The subsidiary dollars should be put in by the industry itself because it certainly is responsible for nuclear waste.

I found a number of issues in this piece of legislation to be problematic. The bill pretends to deal with the issue of nuclear waste but it does not satisfy the problem. Nor does it completely deal with the issue. We end up with a piece of legislation which would allow for on surface or on site management of nuclear fuel waste for perpetuity.

There is absolutely nothing in the legislation which would force the nuclear energy sector in Canada and Atomic Energy Canada Limited to come up with an option. We must consider one option which is on site storage if we are to deal with the problem.

My colleagues mentioned earlier that we could recycle the fuel, run it through reactors so that it would become inert and the radioactivity would be taken out of it. Perhaps science will find a way of dealing with this through transmutation. Those are not options that are realistic at this time but they are still options. They are worthy of debate and that debate was curtailed in committee.

It should be noted that prior to our last debate at report stage on Bill C-27 there was a piece of legislation that was important to the security of Canada. Bill C-36 was as important to our security as this piece of legislation. Yet the government forced closure on Bill C-36 because it did not have time. It was an emergency. We did not have time to debate it. The next day there were not enough government members to continue debate at report stage of Bill C-27. Debate failed on Bill C-27.

What is important and what is not important? Canadian voters will make that decision a few years down the road.

It is true that the issue has been around for 50 years. We need to deal with it in a timely manner. This does not necessarily allow us to deal with nuclear waste in a timely manner because it does not preclude on surface and on site storage forever.

There is the issue of accountability to the public. It is also important for the bill to establish a waste management organization and an advisory council that would be reflective of Canadian society.

The member for Windsor--St. Clair talked about the amendments that were put forth by Ontario municipalities which have nuclear reactors in their midst. The PC/DR coalition put forth amendments on behalf of those municipalities as did other members. There was unanimous support for the amendments on the opposition side. That speaks to some unity that we found as we all worked together on this piece of legislation.

The government claims to represent Ontario because it has a lot of members from Ontario. However it does not represent Ontario when push comes to shove and we are trying to get amendments passed that were proposed on behalf of the people from Ontario. They wanted their concerns reflected in legislation that will affect them more than any other group in Canada.

The bill does not mention property values in municipalities that have nuclear reactors or on site storage facilities. People tend not to like to be near radioactivity. They tend to have doubts, concerns and worries about radioactivity. They tend not to buy houses and properties or to build businesses there.

It is a cheap source of power. We would not see that reflection in the property values if we assured Canadians that it was safe and if we dealt with the issue in a timely fashion. A municipality that has a nuclear reactor in its midst would benefit from it because it would be an immediate source of electricity and corporations would come to the area for that reason.

I want to talk about the issue of foreign waste being deposited at some type of a waste management facility in Canada. That issue is neither dealt with nor precluded in this piece of legislation. Most Canadians do not understand that.

The legal authority from the department stated in committee that the intent of the bill did not cover the question of the import of nuclear fuel waste. Another piece of legal advice was that the scope of the bill did not touch upon the importation of nuclear fuel waste from outside the boundaries of Canada. It did not speak to that point.

That is important to me and is one of the reasons, if not the main reason, that the PC/DR coalition will not support the bill. It does not preclude Hydro-Québec, Ontario Power Generation, New Brunswick Power Corporation or any corporation from setting up a plant in the U.S. It does not preclude them from producing nuclear fuel waste at a foreign owned plant and bringing that waste back to a depository somewhere in Canada. It is unfortunate that the legislation was drafted so poorly that we will not be able to support it.

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

Mr. Speaker, it had been my intent to split my time with the member for Saint John. Unfortunately it appears there will not be enough time today to split it, so I will continue with the remainder of the time allowed for debate.

There are several issues involved in speaking to third reading of Bill C-27. The first comment I would like to make is addressed to the member for Windsor--St. Clair, the member for Sherbrooke and the member for Athabasca who sat on the committee. We all worked diligently in attempting to improve this piece of legislation by putting amendments forward but unfortunately we were not successful. We did manage to get in two amendments. The member for Athabasca and I were able to get in amendments to improve this piece of legislation. They certainly improved it, but unfortunately they did not go far enough to allow the bill to be a workable bill that our party, the PC/DR coalition, could support.

It is very unfortunate when a piece of legislation that is needed and requested reaches third reading stage and cannot be supported because it is simply poor legislation. This bill is not unlike my Christmas tie with a grinch on it, the difference being that the grinch story is about evil turning good. The grinch becomes a good member of society and enjoys the fruits and pleasures of the holiday season.

This piece of legislation is just bad legislation, which we attempted to improve so everyone in this nation could enjoy it and benefit from it, but unfortunately we were not able to do that. Even members in the lobby are wearing their festive stockings and holiday gear at this time when we should be working together in the House to improve legislation and pass legislation that is seriously needed so the country as a whole can benefit.

Members who spoke earlier raised very cognizant and real points that needed to be raised. However, there are a number of other points that need to be raised. One of them is the discussion of the significant dollars being put into this waste management organization by industry, and we are not talking about a couple of million dollars. The initial down payment comes into effect 10 days after the bill is passed. Ontario Hydro will put up $500 million. That is not small change. New Brunswick Power will put up $20 million. Hydro-Québec will put up $20 million. Atomic Energy Canada Ltd., which claims to have no responsibility for any nuclear fuel waste, and in fact a lot of responsibility for nuclear fuel waste, I think, and which is the very perpetrator and supporter of the industry, put up $10 million.

[Parliament of Canada Act, November 30th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to my colleague from Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore. This is an issue that merits debate in the House and I agree with him on that.

I am not necessarily in agreement with making it votable. My colleague has raised the debate but there are a lot of issues here. If we went back and looked through the history of this place, I suspect that every political party in the House has had members who have crossed the floor. I would not have named the bill the floor crossing bill. I would name it anything but that.

However, for lack of a better name, the bill has to be called something. Floor walkers and all kinds of other analogies can be drawn from that. Certainly we could not use those analogies in this place.

A number of things are problematic with the principle. We must raise those issues and questions. It hurts for a political party to lose one of its members, for a member to lose a colleague or for any party in this place to lose one of its colleagues. We have been through that. It is difficult and hard to accept.

Yet at the same time should we take away the rights of the House to recognize a member who is duly elected by the constituents of a riding in Canada to represent those constituents? As much as we may like to think otherwise, there are many factors that affect each of us being elected to the House of Commons: the ability of the individual, the political party he or she runs for and the political climate of the day.

The reality is that most of our constituents do not belong to a recognized political party. Most of our constituents vote for a political party most of the time but not all the time. If only 2% of Canadians belong to and are affiliated with political parties that is not saying the system is wrong. It says that all Canadians do not participate in the political party system. Not all Canadians are members of the PC/DR coalition, the New Democrats, the Liberals, the Alliance or the Bloc Quebecois. That is a fact we have to deal with.

For members of the House to tell members of parliament duly elected by their constituents that for reasons perhaps beyond their control they cannot cross the floor becomes an ideological issue. They may not agree with the ideology that the party has accepted or has perhaps changed.

The NDP went through that this past weekend. What would happen if that party changed its name? Would we expect all members of that political party to stand down and stand again for re-election if its name or constitution were changed? I somehow do not think so. That would not be responsible action as members of parliament.

I recognize the angst and the anger caused when members of a party move to another party. As difficult as it is to say, I also agree with those individual members having that right. We do not have the right to control the thought processes of a person's mind.

There are a number of other issues. The member spoke about consultation, openness and transparency. The member spoke about parties and MPs and how they stand for re-election. The reality is that every member of parliament who crosses the floor, if they run again in another election, has to stand for re-election. They are judged by their peers and by the people they represent. Whether or not they made the right decision to leave one political entity for another does have a judgment day. It may not be that week or that month but a judgment is made.

Another statement made was that everything we say and do will be held against us in the court of public opinion. It also may be held in our favour in the court of public opinion.

I have sat in this place with colleagues who have crossed the floor. I understand the bitterness that arises from that but somehow or another we hopefully have to rise to a higher level. An individual member of parliament who moves from one party to another and accepts that party's values, its leader or its ideology, and who runs again, is judged again. We cannot nor should we control that.

The member for Sackville--Musquodoboit Valley--Eastern Shore made the statement that 137 members have crossed the floor. I would judge they were all held accountable for their actions. Only their constituents and their immediate electorates have that right.

The other question that arises is how we account for other political systems and other jurisdictions. We work on a first past the post jurisdiction. I have heard many of my NDP colleagues in the House praise the idea of proportional representation. With that system members of parliament could be appointed to this place. I was always of the opinion that proportional representation had no place in the Parliament of Canada, yet when we look at that process and talk to people from other countries, especially the Scandinavian and European countries such as Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Finland and Germany, they all have proportional representation. It is a matter of thought. To be honest, if we had proportional representation in the House today we would not have a majority government. We would have a government that would be much more reflective and would more closely represent the thought processes of the general public in Canada.

If we had proportional representation, could we apply that process? I would argue that it would not be fair to apply that process because now we have members who may belong to a political party but are appointed by that political party to the position they hold.

I am not trying to trivialize the member's presentation. I recognize why he brought the bill to the House but I would hope that it is not brought back to parliament again. I hope we can debate it and put it to rest.

It is important for members of parliament to not only stand for our political parties, our positions and our jobs, but we also need to recognize that it is always, although it is argued by the parties that lose a player, opportunism when members cross the floor. Sometimes it is a personality conflict and sometimes it is a real issue which the member of parliament simply cannot accept.

In closing, I will summarize some of the points I have made. We are all elected to this place, not by political parties but by our constituents, and they always have the opportunity to judge us again.

[Nuclear Waste Act, November 29th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to participate in the debate today on amendments brought forth by the member for Sherbrooke to Bill C-27, the nuclear fuel waste act.

I agree with the member for Athabasca. The bill is not transparent enough, there is not enough accountability and it does contain too much ministerial and privy council discretion. That has been the position of the PC/DR coalition from the very beginning.

I want to speak specifically to the amendments. Several were put forth and a few were not allowed at this stage. I would have preferred to speak to all the amendments because I believe all amendments were very good. Although there are a couple of amendments that I will not support, they were put forth in a manner and a tone that was meant to improve the bill and to bring more accountability and transparency to the process.

I think it would benefit everyone if I were to review the bill and what it establishes. Bill C-27 would see the establishment of an independent waste management organization, or WMO, which has been referred to by other members, and would require the WMO to provide recommendations to the minister on long term nuclear waste storage possibilities. Some of those possibilities could be and are expected to be deep geological disposals somewhere in the Canadian shield.

The reports, statements and studies done by the WMO would be made public, and that is important. We fought diligently to make sure that occurred. The bill should ensure that Canadian taxpayers are not liable for the long term management of nuclear fuel waste, which again is extremely important. It is important to note that the industry players who fund the WMO, Ontario Hydro, Hydro-Québec and New Brunswick Power Corporation, would not only put funding in place but they would have some say in what happens. These rates, however, would be arbitrarily established by the minister, which I do not think any industry player or any corporation in Canada would be comfortable with.

I think what needs to be said and what I will say again at third reading is that the bill does not preclude foreign waste from being deposited or disposed of in Canada. The bill does not require aboriginal, environmental or municipal representation on the advisory council. It speaks in a very general way that it would be nice and warm and fuzzy if there were representation from the aboriginal community, the municipal players and the environmentalists but it does not make that an absolute. The bill does not establish the WMO at arm's length from industry. I have some qualms about that. Industry is funding this so I think it needs some control in the process but the Seaborn panel did recommend that it be at arm's length from industry.

One of the really serious failings of the bill is that it would continue to place power in the hands of the minister and the governor in council, and provides little role for parliament in decisions on the long term management of nuclear fuel waste.

There could have been a number of things that would have improved this particular piece of legislation and I will speak to some of those amendments now.

Amendment No. 1, which was amendment No. 3, would prevent nuclear energy corporations, including Ontario Power Generation, Hydro-Québec and New Brunswick Power Corporation, from being members on the waste management organization. As the bill currently reads, the nuclear energy corporation shall not only be members of the WMO but always remain members of the organization. It would allow one of the recommendations made by the Seaborn panel when it studied the issue of nuclear waste disposal. That was the arm's length relationship which I have already mentioned.

The PC/DR coalition will not be supporting this amendment, although we would have considered supporting it had it provided for some nuclear energy corporations to be members of the waste management organization. When the power companies appeared before committee, they were clear about the need for active involvement in the WMO, given that they were the ones supplying the hundreds of millions of dollars for the management of nuclear fuel waste. The coalition supports industry on that point and cannot agree with this amendment.

The other question becomes one of liability. If industry could, and I expect it will, have some liability in this process, for example contamination of ground water, then it should be more directly involved in the process. Maybe the process could be nuanced so that industry would not have all the members, but it should certainly have some representation.

We totally agree with amendment No. 2, which was previously amendment No. 6. The amendment would require the minister to engage in public consultations on the disposal method recommended by the waste management organization. That is quite a bizarre thought I am sure for the government to engage upon. However it would be a nice way to give Canadians a Christmas present that does not cost them anything, by letting them know that it is looking at the bill, that it wants to make the bill more accountable and that it wants to involve and allow Canadians to participate in decisions that will concern them. Therefore, members of the PC/DR coalition support this. We supported a similar amendment at committee and we continue to support it now.

The last amendment would see the act come into force on January 1, 2003, instead of a day to be fixed by order of the governor in council. I think the amendment is meant to allow a little more time in the process and I understand why the member for Sherbrooke put it in, but it is not an amendment that I would tend to support. There has been enough time, studies and work on this. The bill is delinquent in a number of areas, but I do not see the day that the act would actually come into force as being one of those areas. This would not be an amendment that we would support.

However, I commend the Bloc member for Sherbrooke for his participation at committee and involvement in the bill. He, like many of us on the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs, Northern Development and Natural Resources, has really quite serious doubts and problems with this specific piece of legislation, not the least of which is the fact that the legislation is just plain and simply poorly crafted, not unlike other legislation that has been gone through the House as of late. There has not been enough input from the parliamentary process and certainly not enough input from committee.

[Nuclear Waste Act, November 29th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I appreciate that the hon. member wants some intervention on the bill and would like to speak to the bill in parliament, but he has had other opportunities to do that. This course of action that we are setting upon today is to speak to the amendments brought in by the member for Sherbrooke and I have not yet heard the hon. member speak to any of the amendments.

[The Acadians, November 22nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would like to ask for unanimous consent to add my name to the list of speakers since this is the last opportunity to speak on the bill.