Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the invitation to appear before you today to discuss certain aspects of Bill S-9, the Nuclear Terrorism Act, and how they relate to the mandate of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. I'm accompanied by Mr. Raoul Awad, di

Justice committee  Thank you, Ms. Boivin. Regardless of the comparison of threats within Canada to those of some of our international partners, we can assure you that all nuclear materials in Canada remain in a safe state and are for strictly peaceful uses. We rely upon some of our partners in th

Justice committee  Thank you for reminding me to respond to that. In the reporter's article there's some allusion to highly secretive operations that would be taking place. In fact, that is just standard security protocol. For shipments of this nature you would not publicize in a paper that this

Justice committee  I'll answer your questions in sequence, and in a moment I'll turn it over to Mr. Awad to talk perhaps about some of the more detailed aspects of security planning for such shipments. To start with, yes we do have a formal manner in which we interact with our partners, so we'll r

Justice committee  They're absolutely safe. The upgraded Canadian security regimes started after the 9/11 events. We have very highly secured facilities. I can't go into a lot of details in an open forum such as this, but suffice it to say that the full range of standard security techniques are put

Justice committee  Our number one priority is to ensure that no threat is posed to these nuclear materials in the first place. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, our activities are largely preventive in nature. We do have some limited ability to fine individuals for contraventions of our regulat

Justice committee  Bill S-9 is required to allow us to ratify because there are specific requirements to have acts of nuclear terrorism considered as Criminal Code offences.

Justice committee  Certainly, they must assure that at all times while the nuclear materials are in their possession, they remain in a safe and secure state. There would be requirements to specify, among other things, the level of protection when the materials are in place, as well as transport sec

Justice committee  Sir, that's one of the principles Canada has always acted by. I would suggest that ratifying the two instruments affected by Bill S-9 is an important step towards reaffirming our commitment to be 100% compliant with the international system. As to the physical protection, I want

Justice committee  In particular, we have formalized arrangements for pre-notification of shipments across our borders. Before any such materials leave the U.S., we're notified and vice versa. We cooperate quite frequently with the U.S. in training and exercises: we'll observe some of their secur

Justice committee  This would be the last step in the broader sense of harmonizing. The physical arrangements are already in place. This just allows us to conclude the legal arrangements.

Justice committee  Thank you. I will answer first, and then I am going to ask Mr. Awad to provide a few details. We work in lockstep, particularly with our U.S. colleagues. In fact, our training program and protection requirements were largely modelled on the U.S. Department of Energy requirement

Justice committee  I would offer that we have a very free exchange of information with our partners, but of course security items are on a need-to-know basis. I do want to assure you that in terms of evaluating the constantly changing threat environment, there's an absolutely free flow of informati

Justice committee  Again, I would offer my opinion that these facilities, the nuclear power plants and the Chalk River facility, are protected probably to the best extent and the best practical extent that they can be protected. I think this is evidenced by the fact that there has never been an att

Justice committee  In terms of the number of containers that are inspected, of course a 100% inspection can't be achieved, but there is scanning on virtually 100% of these containers as they leave the major port facilities in Canada. The scanning is very effective to the point that containers with