Omar Alghabra

[Business of Supply, May 28th, 2008]

Mr. Chair, is the minister aware that his government estimates that the price on carbon under its mandate will go up as high as $65 a tonne by 2018?

[Business of Supply, May 28th, 2008]

Mr. Chair, that is good. I am establishing a pattern here. Is the minister against putting a price on carbon?

[Business of Supply, May 28th, 2008]

Mr. Chair, will he admit that he is the highest spending finance minister in Canada's history?

[Business of Supply, May 28th, 2008]

Mr. Chair, could the minister tell us who is the highest spending finance minister in Canada's history?

[Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act, May 28th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to thank the hon. member for her question and also thank her for the excellent work that she does at committee.

This is a question that I have been focusing on and I would like to focus on more. Let us for the sake of argument assume that it was the right decision to suspend or cancel the MAPLE project. Let us for the sake of argument say that it was the right decision. However, what is of concern is that the government did not take the time to devise a plan B, to tell us how it is going to maintain the supply of isotopes for the next 30 years.

AECL has a contract for the next 30 years to supply isotopes. If the government plans to get out of that business, it should be honest and tell Canadians so they know not to expect isotopes from AECL. However, it is not telling us. All it is doing is cancelling the project.

[Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act, May 28th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I must have touched a nerve with this member, but rightly so. He did not answer any of the questions. We know that the government fired the nuclear safety regulator but to this day we still do not know why. It has not been able to provide any reasonable justification for that decision.

We know that the government suspended the MAPLE project, but it did not tell us how it is going to secure the supply of isotopes for the next 30 years. We know that the National Bank Financial report is done because the minister told us that in committee, but the government has not shared that with Canadians. We know that the government is planning on some form of privatization, but it is not telling Canadians.

This hon. member, especially given the performance of the minister last December, needs to understand that we will continue to ask these questions. We have every right to doubt the government's ability, skill and competence in managing that file because it has proven that it is incompetent and incapable of managing nuclear safety.

[Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act, May 28th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have the opportunity to speak to the bill again. Bill C-5, the nuclear liability bill, is an important bill. It is a culmination of years of examination and review of the old bill and is a concise overhaul of the old bill.

I want to take this opportunity to echo what the parliamentary secretary said earlier. I want to thank members of the natural resources committee for their diligent work in reviewing the bill, for listening to various stakeholders and for offering constructive discussion throughout our hearings. I also want to thank the officials at Natural Resources Canada for their diligent work and for offering an insightful presentation of the bill.

This is an administrative bill that overhauls the 1970 act . It offers new and tighter definitions, clearer objectives, a new liability limit and defines financial security. It also proposes a new tribunal for claims.

We heard throughout our study that Bill C-5 was very much needed for the industry and for Canadians. Nuclear suppliers, host communities, independent professors and stakeholders offered our committee very comprehensive thoughts on the bill.

While there were many legitimate questions about what the limit should be, what type of financial security there should be and how the tribunal should be structured, the overall consensus was that the bill was needed. Host communities, industry and many Canadians are waiting for it. We will be supporting the bill as presented to the House.

However, I cannot miss the opportunity to speak about the nuclear energy situation in our country.

Earlier this year we witnessed a lot of issues with respect to Atomic Energy and the government's management of AECL. We had a national health crisis when the NRU reactor at Chalk River was shut down because of a licensing issue. As a result, we had a severe shortage of nuclear isotopes. Many Canadians, in fact many citizens around the world who depend on the supply of isotopes, were left scrambling for alternative medicine. Some people had their appointments or examinations delayed. I remember the minister at the time saying that many lives were at stake, and I agreed with his comments. Many lives were at stake.

That problem resulted from the Conservative government's mismanagement of the situation. The fiasco was blamed on the Canadian nuclear safety regulator who was doing her job. The government accused her of partisanship. It claimed to consult independent experts, who, by the way, happened to either be a Conservative or a former AECL employee. Rather than address the root cause of the problem, which was the shortage of isotopes, the government placed the blame exclusively on someone else and, in fact, ended up firing her without any justification.

It is important to raise this issue today because we were just reminded of this a week ago when the government again showed its incompetence by announcing that it would stop the MAPLE reactors, which were supposed to replace the old NRU reactor that produces isotopes, without providing Canadians with a plan on how the supply of isotopes will be supplemented.

In December of last year, Canadians witnessed what could happen if the NRU reactor were to go out of production: severe shortages that could potentially cost Canadian lives.

The minister, after hiding for a month and getting training from a media consultant, told Canadians that he had to fire the nuclear regulator because Canadian lives were at stake. Now he has the gall to say that the government will end the project of replacing the NRU reactor and that we should not worry about it because everything is under control. By the way, we do have a 30 year contract to supply isotopes but we will keep the 50-year-old reactor to produce those isotopes.

Any reasonable observer can be forgiven for not trusting the government's word on having any sense of reliability or competent management of the situation. If the government had presented a plan at the time of its announcement of shutting down the MAPLE project, it would have been excused for its decision. However, the fact that it has announced that it will no longer pursue the MAPLE reactor but has offered no real plan to supplement the production of isotopes, leaves those questions in the minds of many Canadians.

I would not be doing my job here today if I did not ask those questions and raise those points. My Conservative colleagues cannot disagree with me. At the time, supposedly they justified the firing because lives were at stake. Now they cannot claim that there is no risk involved here.

There is another issue here. The Conservatives are secretly considering the privatization of AECL but they are not sharing their plans with Canadians. They are not telling us what they are working on. Instead, they want to do the write-off of the MAPLE reactors on the backs of taxpayers so that if they want to privatize it, taxpayers will pay for that write-off.

It is important that the government, the Minister of Natural Resources and his parliamentary secretary tell us here today what their plans are for AECL. It is not just important for me. It is important for Canadians. It is important for the Ontario government, which is looking to hire AECL to build a nuclear reactor, but right now the Ontario government is skeptical about the future of AECL because the federal government has said nothing about it. There are jobs at stake and talent at risk. We need to know what the Conservative government plans to do with AECL.

I do not think anybody can attack me for asking these questions. This is my job. This is what Canadians are asking for and the Conservatives are failing Canadians. They are not explaining what they are doing. They are not assuring us that they are worried about nuclear safety. They are not telling us that they concerned about the supply of isotopes. In fact, they are not even telling us what their plan is for the future of nuclear energy.

We know that nuclear energy has a bright future, not just in Canada but around the world. We know that AECL has a wealth of talent, people with high degrees of experience and education that have been inventing and creating products unparalleled around the world and they deserve an honest answer from the government. They need to know what the future holds for them. They need to know what the government plans to do. The Conservatives need to do it transparently, apolitically and publicly. They cannot do it in secret.

I want to take this opportunity here today to urge the government to consult publicly and share with us its plans for AECL. Again, future projects depend on it, jobs depend on it and our nuclear energy future depends on it.

[Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act, May 28th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Thunder Bay—Rainy River.

[Canada-EFTA Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, May 27th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, as we always do, Canadians have a discussion about our trade dependence on the United States. As the United States is going through a recession these days, we are witnessing a significant impact on Canadian jobs and on the economy. There are always discussions on the need to diversify our trading partnerships, our exports and our imports so we are not that dependent on a single state.

I am not saying that we should not nurture, maintain and increase our trade relations with the United States, but could the hon. member comment on the value of Canada's diversification, of identifying trading partners, removing trade tariffs and the value that this expansion would have for Canadians and Canadian jobs?

[Price of Petroleum Products, May 26th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I know the hon. member works hard for her constituents and I thank her for the question.

I talked about the broader idea of our policy and I encourage her to stay tuned for the details, but I want to repeat what I said. The idea is that we want to less tax on the things that we want, such as income, investment and jobs, and we want to tax things that we do not want, such as pollution, greenhouse gases and waste.

The details, I am confident, will please her just like they will please her constituents. Stay tuned.