Science and Research committee  That's a difficult question. The argument against it is, why should public funds be put to help out the industry? Why doesn't the industry step up and do this? That's what they're doing. The disadvantage, of course, is that they are not perceived as fair and impartial. We have

Science and Research committee  Yes, I would quickly give two answers to that. The first is that I don't think you can get away from having some kind of broad, open engagement, whatever it may be. I started out as a young researcher in forest policy at the time of clear-cutting controversies—as you can probabl

Science and Research committee  The first piece that we have in place is an arm's-length regulator. I think that's very important and we should not do anything to jeopardize the independence of that arm's-length regulator. The CNSC has been involved since 2014 with the International Atomic Energy Agency's SMR

Science and Research committee  Thank you. Those are very important questions, but I'd like to distinguish between those kinds of questions with respect to first nations that arise because of previous developments. There are legacies of poor engagement. On Chalk River, I'm afraid that I don't know enough to sa

Science and Research committee  Yes, waste management is very interesting in that respect. We tried once to do this and did it very poorly and had to start all over again, but when we did start all over again, I actually think that in Canada—especially compared with other countries with which I'm familiar—we've

Science and Research committee  Yes, the nuclear waste question is a very interesting one, because as we know...until now, we have stored nuclear waste on site. When you have relatively few relatively large reactors, that is a solution for a long time. The question then of how we will deal with the waste that i

Science and Research committee  I think we have a reasonable record in terms of protection. Again, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has worked on this. I myself have done some work on the dangers of low levels of radiation, and policy and regulation around that are quite strong. Remember, of course, that

Science and Research committee  That's a very important question and, you know, I'm neither an economist nor do I have access to the information that companies have about costs. In fact, they don't even have very strong information right now until they build one.

Science and Research committee  Again, one of the very interesting things about SMRs, which I'm sure this committee has gone into in some detail, is the huge range of applications, from pushing the envelope of an SMR with over 300 megawatts to put on the grid and putting it on a site that's already licensed for

Science and Research committee  Certainly. Thank you for the question. The U.K. and much of the rest of Europe are also interested in SMRs, and for the same reason as Canada. They have mature nuclear industries, they have a great deal of expertise and they had very little prospect, until recently, of very larg

Science and Research committee  Certainly. I think you are, of course, correct that in terms of the amounts of fissionable materials and the amounts of radioactivity that might be released and so forth as the result of an accident from a small reactor, the advocates of small reactors are quite correct that they

Science and Research committee  Thank you very much, it's a great pleasure to be here this evening. My name is Jeremy Rayner, I'm a political scientist by training and a professor at the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Saskatchewan. My research on the public policy implica