1986-05-15

Mr. Girve Fretz (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State (Mines)):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 106(8), I have the honour to table in both official languages the Government's response to the following three petitions: Nos. 331-474, 331-478 and 331-483.


Mr. Barry Turner (Ottawa-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, it is my honour and duty to present a petition signed by 81 residents of the National Capital Region who humbly pray and call upon Parliament to make no changes to the Canadian Forces Superannuation Act without first consulting fully with annuity recipients and those presently contributing to the fund.


Claude Girvin (Girve) Fretz: Mr. Speaker, if question No. 365 could be made an order for return, the return would be tabled immediately.


Mr. Speaker:: Is it the pleasure of the House that question No. 365 be deemed to have been made an order for return?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Malepart: 1.	Since September 4, 1984, how many (a) professional (b) other services contracts, were awarded by the Department of Public Works and what is the name and address of each individual or company?
2.	Which contracts were awarded (a) to the lowest bidder (6) without tender?
Return Tabled [English]


Claude Girvin (Girve) Fretz: Mr. Speaker, I ask that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.


Mr. Speaker:: Shall the remaining questions stand?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Mr. Jim Fulton (Skeena) moved:: That this House urges the Government to immediately initiate a full public inquiry into the future of nuclear power.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to lead off the debate today. As I am sure Hon. Members have noticed, the wording of the motion before the House today is taken from the PC Campaign Handbook for the 1984 election in which it is very clearly stated:
We advocate a full public inquiry into the future of nuclear power-
That is precisely what we will be debating today. It goes on further to state:
-and have opened the nuclear power approval process to the public.
I think that today's debate is really the debate of our times. It is something which involves the survival of all life. It really depends on our will to learn, to understand and to act on this issue if we are to survive the rest of the century.
On October 22 of last year my colleague, the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-Birds Hill (Mr. Blaikie), introduced a Private Members' Bill entitled the "Nuclear Power Act" which provides for three specific Acts to be taken by Parliament. The first is to invoke a moratorium on the new construction of nuclear facilities in Canada; the second is to hold a public inquiry; and the third is to hold a national referendum on the issue of nuclear power and nuclear energy in Canada.
Why have a full public inquiry? I think the Chernobyl accident has raised the concerns of many Canadians and made many of us realize why it is so important. I think that today it is important in the debate to hear what the alternatives are in terms of energy alternatives in the soft energy path. We should consider why we should be looking more carefully at the issue of safety and why we should be looking at the issue of mining and its affects on workers who have been involved throughout the whole of the nuclear cycle from cradle to grave. We should

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consider the issues of transportation, storage, disposal, nuclear power itself, the movement of a lot of this material into nuclear weaponry and the effect of accidents.
I would like to begin my remarks this morning by dealing with the Chernobyl accident. I think it has raised the interest of many scientists and certainly of many people around the world.
When I first contacted the Department of National Health and Welfare and, in particular, the Atmospheric Environment Service, I was advised that because there are 28 atmospheric testing sites in Canada which had demonstrated an ability during the 1950s to give fairly accurate readings when atmospheric bomb testing was taking place in the Soviet Union, the United States or elsewhere, that, similarly, those 28 sites would provide accurate atmospheric and rainfall information throughout Canada. We found out that that, in fact, has not been the case.
In fact, just yesterday the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Epp) rose in the House to indicate that new test sites will be opened in Terrace, Prince George and Revelstoke. Up until now the only information available from British Columbia, for the whole of British Columbia, has been from the tests taken in Vancouver. The majority of those tests were brought here to Ottawa to be tested, the information then being made available through the so-called hot line. As those who work on the hot line have pointed out, many of the staff members are left with the same basic information for two days. So if a person calls on two consecutive days they are getting essentially the same information. As I pointed out yesterday small communities in Alaska, such as Ketchikan, have had installed on-site equipment which can provide background readings, both atmospheric and rainfall, on a five-hour basis to be provided to the residents of Alaska.
Clearly, the proposal which was put forward by the Government on May 5 has not been adequate in terms of providing accurate information to Canadians. However, I must say that the information which has come to be available is not something about which Canadians should be overly alarmed, at least not enough to cause them to go out and drink iodine or take similar measures.
What we have to do is learn from what has happened in Chernobyl and take the type of intelligent steps which we should as a Parliament, particularly in light of the promise made by the Conservative Party prior to the last election. These promises were carried in headlines across the country in Toronto, Vancouver and elsewhere. They stated that one of the priorities of the new Government would be to call a full public inquiry into the nuclear industry, something which is very much needed.
As I learned under the administration of Mr. Trudeau from committees and in the House, it was impossible to obtain updated information. Every attempt taken by either the Conservatives or by the New Democrats to have an inquiry or to obtain accurate, updated information on what AECL and
AECB were really up to was blocked by the Liberals. I do not think many of us have forgotten the amounts of money which have historically been squandered in this area of concern, and the heavy water plants in Cape Breton are an example of that. Over $100 million of taxpayers' money went to keep those heavy water plants going while there was no use for that heavy water in Canada and no sale for it offshore.
The Conservatives seem to be changing ground rather quickly on the issue-


Mr. Friesen:: I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The Hon. Member for Skeena (Mr. Fulton) has just said that Canada was testing in only one place in Vancouver and planned to test in three others. I would quote from yesterday's Hansard wherein the Minister stated that-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: I am sorry to interrupt the Hon. Member. I would point out to him that in this debate there are 20 minutes allowed each speaker to be followed by a ten-minute period of question and comments. I am sure the Hon. Member for Surrey-White Rock-North Delta (Mr. Friesen) will take a great deal of interest in the question and comment period.


James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, in reponse to the campaign promise made by the Conservatives the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Miss Carney) wrote to one of my colleagues on June 4, 1985, and indicated the she did not intend to broaden her consultations beyond the industry and the provinces in relation to a full public inquiry into the nuclear industry. She went on to state:
-it is my view that a national inquiry on this topic is not a high priority at this time.
That is what the Minister of Energy had to say on behalf of a Government which clearly ran on a campaign promise to have a public inquiry into the nuclear industry.
It is also interesting to look to see what the present Minister of State for Science and Technology (Mr. Oberle) had to say in a wire story which states:
Progressive Conservative MP Frank Oberle (Prince George-Peace River) said handling nuclear wastes from other countries could become a "lucrative business".
Now we can see why the Conservative Government is tending to shy away from the very important campaign promises which it made.
I would now like to quote from a 1982 issue of The Canadian Business Review. It is an excellent article written by Gordon Edwards, someone who long ago should have been given the Order of Canada for his work in relation to the nuclear industry. In his article he quotes from the draft of an internal Government review which states:
-it is doubtful "whether the nuclear industry will survive the 1980s".
The chart provided in The Canadian Business Review points out what the energy consumption by fuel type is in Canada. It

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is well worth taking a look at these figures. Energy consumption directly from oil accounts for 52 per cent of our energy. With respect to natural gas, the figure is 23.5 per cent; coal is 3.9 per cent; and wood pulp 4.1 per cent. The total with respect to electricity is 16.5 per cent. Hydro is 11.4 per cent and coal-fired is 2.4 per cent. Nuclear power accounts for 1.3 per cent while oil-fired accounts for 0.7 per cent. Gas-fired accounts for 0.6 per cent and wood and others account for 0.1 per cent. Nationally, it is interesting to note how small is the amount of energy provided by nuclear power. Yet there are tens of billions of dollars which go into directly subsidizing this particular industry.
Under the section on energy in The Canadian Business Review article Mr. Edwards points out a number of key points, around which I think the debate should revolve, as to why there should be a full public inquiry. I refer to reactor safety studies. I think we must learn from Chernobyl and Three Mile Island that although many people for many years have told us that CANDU is the safest and best protected nuclear fission technology in the world, it is an area about which we need to study more closely. This should be done in a public inquiry where witnesses can be protected in giving evidence.
With regard to radioactive waste disposal, I recently had a chance to listen to Morris Udall, as did you, Mr. Speaker, who is now putting together what he himself describes as probably the largest, grandest scale project in the history of the United States. This project is the movement of nuclear waste from their sites to storage areas perhaps immediately below your own constituency, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. McDermid:: That has been ruled out.


James Ross Fulton: The issue of radioactive waste disposal is very important. It is a crucial issue in the United States. The Americans are trying to deal with it by the year 2000. We have no plans like that and there is certainly nothing before Parliament to deal in a parallel way with what is going on in the United States.
Regarding the issue of the highly radioactive wastes produced by the reactors, there exists in excess of 100 million tonnes of highly toxic low level radioactive waste called tailings. The amount of tailings at Elliot Lake alone would cover the Trans-Canada Highway three feet deep from Vancouver to Halifax. Those tailings are sitting there waiting for Canadians to come up with a way of dealing effectively with radioactive waste.
Regarding the decommissioning of nuclear facilities, there is a requirement to develop techniques and tools for the dismantling of the highly radioactive structures left at the end of the useful lifetime of a reactor. We know, for example, that Gentilly I is awaiting that kind of proper decommissioning. The argument about workers being thrown out of work if we were to have a moratorium on nuclear power and start decommissioning our nuclear industry simply does not stand
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up under the scrutiny of economists and scientists who have looked at the amount of work required in the decommissioning of the existing sites. Similarly, specialized tools and skills would be needed to simply retube reactors during the period of a moratorium in order to keep the operations going as safely as possible.
Regarding energy self-sufficiency, Dr. Edwards made an important comment about evidence given by Sir Brian Flowers. He said the following:
Canadians should carefully weigh the advice of Sir Brian Flowers, a prominent British nuclear physicist, who warned in 1976 that "a major commitment to fission power and a plutonium economy should be postponed as long as possible." The reason for this is fundamental.
Plutonium appears to offer unique potential for threat and blackmail against society because of its great radiotoxicity and its fissile properties.
The construction of a crude nuclear weapon by an illicit group is credible. We are not convinced that the Government has fully appreciated the implications of this possibility.
That evidence was given in Great Britain before a royal commission. Many years ago, the Britons took this issue much more seriously than we do.
The Select Committee on Ontario Hydro Affairs took a look at the issue of accidents recently and had the following to say about the devastating and irreversible consequences of a major accident in a CANDU reactor:
It is not right to say that a catastrophic accident is impossible.
-The worst possible accident would involve the spread of radioactive poisons over large land areas, killing thousands immediately, killing others through increasing susceptibility to cancer, risking genetic defects that could affect future generations, and possibly contaminating large land areas for future habitation or cultivation.
Dr. Edwards goes on:
According to the Ontario Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning, the most realistic probability for a complete core meltdown in a CANDU reactor is about 1 in 10,000 per reactor per year.
It is interesting that that is precisely the same figure used by the Soviets in relation to Chernobyl, a state of the art graphite reactor built only a few years ago. The quote goes on:
With 23 reactors now committed in Canada, each expected to operate for 30 years or more, the over-all probability that a catastrophic meltdown will occur at one of these plants in the future is greater than 1 in 15-more than twice the probability of rolling a twelve with two dice-
Even non-catastrophic accidents can have a crippling impact. The cleanup following the Three Mile Island TMI accident in Pennsylvania is expected to take about ten years and cost $1 billion to $2 billion, but there is no assurance that cleanup efforts will be successful.
It is also interesting to look at the calculated probabilities for accidents in CANDU reactors. This information comes from the Atomic Energy Control Board itself as given to the Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning. The calculated probabilities for accidents are as follows: for loss of coolant, with one reactor it is one in 100 annually; with one reactor it is one in four over the reactor's lifetime; with 20 reactors, it is one in five annually, and with 20 reactors it is 99.7 per cent over their lifetimes. On core meltdown, something which has already occurred here in Canada, the probability is one in 10,000 for one reactor annually; one in 300 for one reactor's

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lifetime; one in 500 for 20 reactors annually, and one in 15 for 20 reactors over their lifetimes.
The probability calculated by the Atomic Energy Commission itself is that one is as likely to roll a 12 with two dice as we are to have a meltdown at some point during the life of the reactors we have here in Canada. Again, that is a very important reason why there should be a full public inquiry into the issue of safety of existing complexes and wastes in Canada.
The only legislation for the protection of Canadians in and near nuclear sites, places like Toronto, is the Nuclear Liability Act passed by this House limiting off-site liability to a maximum of $75 million for each nuclear site. Comparable legislation in the United States, the Price-Anderson Act, an Act which is in the process of being amended, provides $560 million per site. It is now being suggested by the U.S. General Accounting Office that that liability should be increased far above $1 billion. That certainly appears to be a good example for us to follow. Financial institutions, not only in North America but in most of the world, are now reticent to finance nuclear reactors. As well, there are no insurance companies of which I am aware that are prepared to give liability insurance to any facilities in the world.
In British Columbia, the very excellent Bates Commission looked into the whole issue of uranium mining particularly but looked at the nuclear cycle as well. It had a number of interesting suggestions to make in relation to that. Regarding radioactive material in relation to Chernobyl and others, the U.S. geological survey had this to say:
High-level radioactive wastes produced by reactors are capable, in principle, of causing "millions to billions of fatal cancer doses... an admittedly unlikely scenario." The U.S. Geological Survey has pointed out that there isn't enough fresh water in the world to dissolve these wastes to "acceptable" levels of concentration.
That is something that concerns many Canadians right now, even though the addition of radioactivity from the Chernobyl accident is only one-twentieth of background levels. However, it is that amount that is added to already existing background levels that is of concern. This clearly raises the possibility of serious medical problems for people throughout Canada.
Dr. Edwards goes on:
The B.C. Medical Association considers it "irresponsible in the extreme for the Government of Canada to allow the further development of uranium mining and reactor construction until a safe, proven, permanent waste disposal technology is developed for the wastes that have already been produced."
If we as legislators do not listen to the evidence given by physicians before a Royal Commission on the effects of these kinds of contaminants on the general health and wellbeing of Canadians, to whom are we supposed to listen? Should we only listen to those who are promoting the technology? I think not, and I think for that very reason we should be moving vigorously and quickly toward the full public inquiry that was promised by the Government before the election.
The issue is very crucial. I know that my time is running out so let me end by reading what Dr. Edwards said about Dr. Bernard Feld:
Dr. Bernard Feld, Assistant Leader of the Critical Assembly Group in the World War II Atom Bomb Project, is one of many who have warned that the spread of nuclear technology will soon advance beyond the ability of human societies to control it:
Let me tell you about a nightmare I have. The mayor of Boston sends for me for an urgent consultation. He has received a note from a terrorist group, telling him that they have planted a nuclear bomb somewhere in central Boston. The mayor has confirmed that twenty pounds of plutonium is missing from Government stocks. He shows me the crude diagram and a set of the terrorists' outrageous demands ... I would have to advise surrender.
The issues surrounding the nuclear fuel cycle from cradle to grave are vast and important. I would like to end my remarks by talking about what I consider to be the other part of this issue that is rarely looked at by Parliament, parents, schools and physicians, and that is the effect of nuclear fear on young people in Canada and around the world.
According to a recent poll taken in British Columbia, 80 per cent of students fully expect to die a nuclear death and 80 per cent of them want to do something about it but do not know what to do. Clearly, during this period of time in the history of the world, one of the things this Government can do, in good faith since that is its policy, is hold a full public inquiry to investigate what is happening to uranium miners, nuclear wastes and the wastes being stored at CANDU facilities. That alone would fill a hockey rink waist deep with highly radioactive waste which is being improperly stored. Also, it should deal with the questions of radiation, its effect on individuals and its effect on the psyche of young people and people around the world.
Generally Canadians are not people who will get out and march, although in Vancouver close to 100,000 or more march year after year on the issue of nuclear energy. They demonstrate their desire for some kind of realistic investigation of it by the Parliament of Canada.
In my closing remarks I want to stress that it is important to understand the nuclear nightmares of young people, to understand the nuclear fear out there, and to act responsibly rather than irresponsibly and unresponsively to this very real issue, one of the most crucial issues of our time.


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, I would like a clarification from the Hon. Member for Skeena (Mr. Fulton). He seemed to mix two things today. He talked about nuclear war and tried to tie it in with the peaceful use of nuclear power in Canada. As he knows, there are no nuclear weapons on Canadian soil. In fact, we use nuclear power for peaceful purposes, such as the generation of hydroelectricity and isotopes which are used in the health field. If the NDP had its way, we would not have any of that expertise in Canada. By the way, we are a leader in that field.
Is the Hon. Member really being fair when he tries to tie in the peaceful use of nuclear energy with the phoney issue of it somehow being tied in with nuclear war?
May 15, 1986


James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, I will deal first with the issue of nuclear medicine. As a matter of fact, the last time there was an opportunity to debate the issue in the House, 1 was unfortunately in hospital in Ottawa. Fortunately I had the opportunity for nuclear medicine to be of great assistance to me. It proved to be of great benefit. There is no one in my Party or in any Party who opposes the peaceful use of nuclear technology for medicine in particular. However, in tying the issues together, I think we have to understand that so far as we know the Chernobyl reactor was being used for peaceful purposes as well. It was being used to provide power to the City of Kiev and to the outlying area.
The issues before us are mixed. Approximately 85 per cent of the uranium mined in Canada is exported. A great deal of it goes to the enrichment plants in the big four-in France, Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States-for enrichment to weapons grade material. The overwhelming majority of that is going into the 50,000 plus nuclear weapons which are constantly being upgraded around the world.
The Hon. Member said that there were no nuclear weapons on Canadian soil. That is a bit of a shell game. The Hon. Member knows full well that nuclear weapons are frequently tied up in downtown Vancouver, in Esquimau, in Halifax, and in various areas. The only difference is that there is a rope tying the boat to the dock. Often there are nuclear weapons in the downtown areas of many Canadian cities. That has never been denied by any Minister in the House or by anyone in the United States. In fact, those weapons are being brought in.
The reason there is a link between the issues is partly because of the Chernobyl incident. It is also because of the evidence which came forward from the Royal Commission in Great Britain. The expert evidence given by witnesses there such as Dr. Feld and others was that the real concern was that Governments were not scrutinizing as carefully as they should the highly radioactive plutonium waste which is sitting, for example, next to all our reactors in Canada. It is not being moved to be stored carefully and properly, perhaps in plutons or perhaps in other areas. I am sure we will have to develop a technology, a routing, and a system to get that waste to a proper long-term storage basin.
As those witnesses pointed out, there is linkage between peaceful sites or the peaceful utilization of nuclear material for electrical energy and for other uses and the no longer so remote possibility that terrorists will make use of plutonium and highly radioactive materials associated with peacefully used plants around the world. It is precisely for that reason we require a full public inquiry.
As the Speaker and myself learned at a meeting in the United States from Morris Udall, who is carrying this process forward for the U.S. Congress, probably the largest single industry between now and the turn of the century in the United States will be the decommissioning of reactors and the removal and safe containment of waste. It will be larger than the industries involved in the construction of highways and
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buildings in the entire United States. It will be a massive industry.
For a variety of reasons our country is not looking at the possibility of terrorist activity. We are not looking at the need to deal with the hundreds of millions of tonnes of low-level radioactive waste or at dealing effectively with the whole concept of technology for decommissioning and proper longterm safe storage of the nuclear waste we already have at our nuclear sites.


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question. I think the Hon. Member really does not have his facts together. He knows full well that probably one of the finest research projects is ongoing now in Canada on the safe storage of nuclear waste, and that the Americans, thank goodness, have contributed to and are participating in that research. We want to assure ourselves in Canada that not only do we have safe storage of nuclear waste but that they have the same technology and are storing it as safely as we are and in areas which are safe. I think the Hon. Member is being very unfair when he says that there is none of this going on. One of the most extensive research projects is going on in Whiteshell now on this very matter. Had he come to the Standing Committee on Energy, Mines and Resources to hear what was going on, as did his hon. friend behind him, maybe he would change what he just said. I wish he would correct the record.


James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, I have not seen the Hon. Member in my committee for years and years and years; "ta, ta, ta". This issue is a very important one. Government Members constantly want to slide away from the real issue. They ran an election on having a full public inquiry, and now they are thumbing their noses at the public of Canada and saying "ta, ta, ta".


John Horton McDermid: Answer the question.


James Ross Fulton: I have looked at the budget, what is being spent in this country and in the United States on investigating technologies for safe and proper storage. It is piddling, compared with the taxpayers' money being spent to prop up a basically bankrupt industry. There are many other ways of providing energy safely over the long term in Canada, such as wind, tidal, peat, oil and gas. We have all kinds of alternatives which are far better. Even in Ontario there are far better alternatives than nuclear.
Because of the centralized control of a number of Financial institutions and certain vested interests, that Government over there is not prepared to live up to its campaign promise. That is the root of this debate. There are Canadians from coast to coast who want a full public inquiry into the safe and proper utilization of technologies for the storage of the waste, the decommissioning of those reactors, and dealing from cradle to grave with the whole issue of the nuclear cycle in Canada. That is what the debate is all about.

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Mr. Kempling:: Mr. Speaker, would the Hon. Member be kind enough to advise the House of the financial institutions and industries which he says are sort of combining and cooperating to keep the nuclear industry going? Who are these people about whom he is speaking? What information does he have, or is it just another blatant rumour which the NDP is trying to throw out at the people of Canada? Name them.


James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, I am surprised that the Hon. Member for Burlington (Mr. Kempling) is not aware of the large number of small and large contractors which are directly involved in creating and providing all the technology to keep these existing facilities going. Their concern, whether it is in relation to the tube reactor systems, the cement work or any of the work that has gone on at the site for construction and revamping, is about how Parliament is going to respond to the issue of decommissioning reactors and how Parliament is going to respond to the safe, proper storage and handling of uranium on its way to the sites and the wastes, to be stored properly over the long term.
I am saying that a full public inquiry is the way to go about providing assurances to those tens of thousands of workers in small and large corporations that are associated with the nuclear industry which, as the Member knows well, has been almost entirely funded by public dollars through Ontario Hydro, through AECL, or through our own public watchdog, the AECB.
I am talking about the need to provide accurate information to those small and large corporations associated with the industry so that the old red herring: "If we have a full public hearing and they talk about decommissioning, all you guys are going to be thrown out of work" will not be hurled. It is not true at all, as Morris Udall pointed out at our meeting in the United States. This is going to be an enormous project in the U.S. that will employ not just tens but hundreds of thousands of Americans in the process of decommissioning and the proper safe storage of nuclear waste in the United States.


William James Kempling: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member in his remarks before replying to my question implied that there was a conspiracy of financial institutions, of contractors, of engineering firms and so forth to keep the nuclear industry going. I want him to define and name the people in the conspiracy.


John Horton McDermid: Yes, name who is in the conspiracy.


James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, it is not a deep hidden secret or conspiracy. Those are the words of the Hon. Member for Burlington. Perhaps he would like to pursue that a little further. What I am saying is there a deep vested interest in the nuclear industry to preserve and expand it.
When I went after the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Clark) last year about the issue of putting nuclear reactors in the North he tried to downplay it, but that
information came out of the general accounting office and the budget from the United States. The Minister denied it in committee, but then he wrote to me a little while later and said: "Oh, yes, the information that you were pursuing in the committee was all factual. AECL has been operating with the United States."


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: Order, please. Debate.


William James Kempling: The Member shifts his ground.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: Debate. The Hon. Member for Algoma (Mr. Foster).


Mr. Maurice Foster (Algoma):: Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to the debate back and forth. It is all very interesting. When the Tories were in opposition, according to their handbook, they called for a public inquiry in words something like this, to be found, I think on page 113 of the handbook:
We advocate a full public inquiry into the future of nuclear power and have opened the nuclear power approval process to the public.
In a summary of promises kept and not kept, according to the June 8, 1985 issue of The Toronto Star, one of the broken ones was to provide continued support for Canada's nuclear industry. In the article it said that there were severe cut-backs of the order of $50 million or $100 million, especially at the AECL facilities at Deep River-


John Horton McDermid: Chalk River.


Maurice Brydon Foster: -at Chalk River. This is unfortunate because the nuclear industry in Canada has played a vital role and will continue to play a vital role in providing electrical energy.
AECL has done an excellent job in nuclear medicine and in giving assistance to industry. When you include mining and refining, the nuclear industry employs 36,000 people. AECL designs reactors and supplies heavy water. It takes the lead in export marketing. Provincial utilities, like Ontario Hydro, New Brunswick Hydro, Quebec Hydro make the decisions on new capacity and undertake management of these facilities.
When the present facilities are completed and into production around the end of this decade, Ontario will have some 50 per cent of its hydro provided by nuclear energy. It will provide the base load of energy for the Province of Ontario for close to 10 million people by that time. Balanced against that 50 per cent, which will be provided by nuclear reactors located at Douglas Point in Bruce County, at Pickering and Darlington, another 50 per cent of the energy required will be provided by hydro.
These two forms of energy are compatible. They are probably less harmful to the atmosphere than oil fired or coal fired thermal generating stations. The base load is provided by nuclear energy; the peaking power by hydro. In Ontario that is especially important. We have vast supplies of hydro and uranium which fuel nuclear reactors.
Private sector industries throughout Ontario have provided the principle components for the CANDU reactor and they
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perform the engineering services in Canada and abroad. In 1982 the Government undertook an extensive review of the whole nuclear industry. A 359 page report was issued called "Policy Review. Background Papers." There were 16 papers covering a range of reviews of public concern including questions of health, safety, environmental impact, waste management, reactor exports and non proliferation treaties.
In the nuclear industry as in the petroleum industry we have seen dramatic cut-backs in the amount of electricity needed, just as we have seen dramatic cut-backs in the amount of petroleum needed in the past eight or 10 years since the energy crisis. We have seen cut-backs in the number of nuclear reactors constructed.
At the Lennox generating plant, a massive 2,000 megawatt oil fired generating plant which has never produced any electricity for any sustained period of time was under construction in the early 1970s. It was completed in the mid-1970s. This oil fired electrical generating plant was designed to use bunker C or heavy residual oil which would have created enough electricity to provide half the needs of the City of Toronto. It was made obsolete because the price of oil went from $2 a barrel in 1971 or 1972 to $35 to $38 Canadian in the years 1979-80-81-82, which has dropped back to $13 or $14 U.S. I do not know what the cost of that plant was, but several billions of dollars were spent. It was made totally obsolete as a result of oil prices. We see Ontario moving to a supply of nuclear energy balanced by hydro electric energy.
My constituency has always been especially concerned about nuclear energy because Elliot Lake, a town of some 20,000 people, was developed and built around the nuclear industry. The plant at Elliot Lake produces vast quantities of uranium which is sold, not only to Ontario Hydro, and the United States in past years, but as well to Japan, France, the United Kingdom and West Germany.
That industry in Elliot Lake is facing fairly severe cut-backs over the next few years because the present contracts established in the mid-1970s will not all be needed. A couple of weeks ago we received word that a factory in Algoma will have to cut about 200 jobs during this calendar year. That is as a result of the restructuring of the contracts between Ontario Hydro and Rio Algoma mines. I hope that that cut-back can take place over a 12 or 18 month period so that the lay-off of 200 people at Stanley Mine can be accomplished through attrition with people taking early retirement or taking up new careers in order to avoid dramatic lay-offs, especially of young workers.	,
I call upon the Minister of State for Mines (Mr. Layton), who is very concerned about these workers being laid off, to put a great deal of pressure on the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Miss MacDonald) to change the UI regulations. If there is a generous program provided by Rio Algoma mines and Ontario Hydro, a lot of older workers would probably take early retirement. However, with the
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present regulations they would have to sacrifice unemployment insurance benefits for a year. We just went through that in Sudbury where the youngest person in the labour force will probably end up being 45 years of age. If we had left the old provisions in place, allowing people to receive severance pay and early retirement benefits as regular income, older workers who are approaching 60 or 64 years of age would take early retirement, thus allowing younger workers in their 20s and 30s to retain their jobs.
Surely we need a more satisfactory method of making those large industrial adjustments. I cerainly hope that that provision of UI will be changed so that if Rio Algoma and Ontario Hydro come forward with a policy for retirement the benefits will not be treated as regular pay. They should not be. We are making adjustments for early retirement to facilitate industrial adjustments such as we are seeing in the nuclear industry.
People opposed to the nuclear industry will talk about the number of reactors which have been spun out over a longer period of time. That is happening in all energy industries. Although we do not like to see people laid off in any industry, we know that the conservation methods which Canada and other countries have implemented are in the best interest in the long term. We use so much petroleum and we know that resources of petroleum are finite and will eventually be used up.
Eldorado Resources, a uranium refinery in my constituency at Blind River, Ontario, is very active in the nuclear industry. It employs 180 people. It refines uranium from yellowcake to uranium dioxide which is then transported to Port Hope for upgrading to uranium hexafluoride. That industry is very, very dependant on the further upgrading policy of the Government of Canada which has been in place for many, many years. That is why I was very pleased by the Minister's comments which were carried in The Toronto Star on November 8, 1985. He indicated that the Government was going to toughen its policy. Elliot Lake, Ontario, and northern Saskatchewan are the two principal uranium mining areas in Canada and they are very dependant on that industry for jobs with the United Steel Workers of America at the various refineries. The Minister indicated that he was going to toughen his stand and ensure that those jobs were retained in Canada. That was very good news.
I am glad that the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Miss Carney) happens to be in the House today. I was very concerned when I read an article in the April 21, 1986, edition of NuclearFuel, the main journal of the nuclear industry. The headline is very disturbing to people in the uranium mining communities in Saskatchewan and Ontario. The headline reads: "Canada may drop uranium upgrading policy". The article suggets that Canada is changing is negotiating position on that. The article reads:
The Canadian government is apparently moving to drop its upgrading policy for uranium exports. According to sources, Canadian government officials agreed in principle at a meeting with U.S. officials in Washington April 16 that the upgrading policy should be abandoned. "Both sides felt satisfied," according to one knowledgeable source. He did not say definitely that the upgrading policy

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would be abandoned or when, indicating only that the action is "more likely to happen now."
Late last year, the Mulroney Government reaffirmed its commitment to the upgrading policy, which requires Canadian uranium to be exported as UF6 unless there are "exceptional circumstances," such as a customer's prior contract for conversion with a non-Canadian converter-
Although both the Mulroney and Reagan administrations are eager to negotiate a comprehensive free-trade agreement, the discussions of abandoning the upgrading policy are not directly tied to that effort, sources said. The U.S. has been pressing Canadian officials for almost two years to modify its upgrading policy. But only in March of this year at a meeting in Canada with U.S. officials did the Canadian government indicate a willingness to consider the issue, according to a U.S. source.
According to sources, Canadian officials are concerned that the existence of the upgrading policy is providing ammunition to Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and others who want to restrict Canadian uranium imports to the U.S. Sources also indicate that the U.S. side raised for the first time at the March meeting its concerns that the upgrading policy may violate the General Agreements on Tariffs & Trade.
That article was written by Michael Knapik of Washington. 1 certainly hope that when the Minister of State for Mines speaks in the House today he will be able to indicate that this report is false, that the policy, as he announced it last November, is the policy that the Government will pursue, that it will maintain the 500 jobs which are being created in the riding of the Hon. Member from Port Hope and the riding of Algoma, and that there will be no secret deals made to trade off that nuclear upgrading policy.
The jobs are the most important aspect but, as well, the Government has spent some $200 million through Eldorado in developing state-of-the-art uranium refining facilities in Blind River and Port Hope, Ontario. They are world class facilities which can handle some 18,000 tonnes a year. There are about 175 or 180 jobs in Blind River and 340 jobs in Port Hope, a total of approximately 500. The economic activity generated by those two uranium refining and upgrading facilities amounts to about $100 million. There is the additional benefit of $16 million worth of exports. I hope that that will not be walked away from. To trade off those excellent facilities in some secret negotiations, as the report in NuclearFuel of April 21 suggests, would be a very bad action by the Government.
Of course, there is ongoing concern in all of those communities that somehow the uranium refinery and upgrading facilities in Blind River and Port Hope will be traded off in the free trade negotiations. That would be a disaster. We have often been accused of being hewers of wood and drawers of water. If we make that trade-off, we will become just that. We will be selling yellowcake to the U.S., Japan and West Germany in its unprocessed state and we will lose some $100 million worth of economic activity and 500 jobs. I must say that I have a very personal commitment to seeing those jobs saved.
Those are the concerns I want to put before the House today. The nuclear industry provides some 36,000 jobs. In Ontario by the end of this decade nuclear energy will provide fully 50 per cent, as I understand it-


John Horton McDermid: Sixty per cent.


Maurice Brydon Foster: -of our energy. In other provinces like New Brunswick and Quebec it will provide cheap, reliable and efficient electrical power for the future.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: Questions or comments?


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the Hon. Member for Algoma (Mr. Foster). I might assure him that the report he referred to regarding upgrading is false. There is no intention on the part of this Government to follow along those lines. So I will set his mind and those of his constituents at ease in that regard.
The NDP would like to stop all research and other work going on into the peaceful use of nuclear energy. They would like a moratorium on the building of nuclear reactors to provide electrical power. They would like to freeze everything right now and have this full-blown inquiry. The Hon. Member did not quite come out and say it but is he for or against that?


Maurice Brydon Foster: Mr. Speaker, I am impressed with the Hon. Member's comments that our uranium upgrading policy is not going to be bargained away in the free trade negotiations. Although I do not think he went quite that far.


John Horton McDermid: No, I did not go that far.


Maurice Brydon Foster: I would be much more reassured if he or the Minister could indicate that there will be no more exemptions to the upgrading policy this year. During the past year and a half there has been a massive number of exemptions and that destroys the viability of our facilities. They are designed with a 15,000 tonne or 18,000 tonne annual capacity. If they are operating at only 6,000 tonnes capacity, you do not even meet your overhead costs. I would really be pleased if that announcement were made, and I hope we will hear it. Not that 1 doubt his word, but the Minister could add to the strength of his comments.
The Hon. Member was asking about the Liberal Party's commitment to nuclear energy. It was the Liberal Party that provided most of the funds since 1947 for research and development into the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The CANDU reactor has played and is playing a leading role in electrical power generation in Canada. Certainly it will supply at least 50 per cent of that power generation in Ontario by the end of the decade, and the Hon. Member suggested it may be more.
Of course the Liberal Party supports the peaceful use of nuclear energy. We think it was a bad decision to cut back research. I have forgotten the exact figures, but I think it was something around $50 million or $100 million in cut-backs. The Hon. NDP Member from B.C. indicated in his comments that we have to continue our research, not only into the peaceful uses of nuclear energy but to develop a solution to the problem of nuclear waste disposal. If we cut back on that
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research, then we of course inhibit our ability to come up with an adequate solution.


John Horton McDermid: He still did not say whether he was in favour of what the NDP wanted to do, Mr. Speaker. Apart from that, I can tell him that research is ongoing. The amount of money has been increased because those who are going to benefit from the research are now paying for it. 1 think that is only fair. We should not expect the Canadian taxpayer to foot the Bill for research which will benefit other countries. The U.S. is now participating in the major research project at Whiteshell on the safe storage of nuclear waste. They are putting millions of dollars into it and we are pleased they are doing so. Although Government expenditures may have been cut back, funds are coming from elsewhere for research which we think is beneficial. The ones who benefit should help pay for it and I think the Hon. Member would agree with that.


Maurice Brydon Foster: I certainly agree with that, but I recall quite a violent reaction from the people who work for AECL in the Chalk River research facilities over the massive cut-backs. It seems to me that Ontario Hydro has a great deal of responsibility for the research into development and improvement of reactors. However, much of the medical research into isotopes, which are used in industry as well, tends to lend itself more to Government support.
Clearly the research into the development of safe nuclear waste disposal really boils down to being the responsibility of the Governments of Ontario, New Brunswick and Quebec. However, the federal Government still has a lot of responsibility in this field and 1 would be surprised if adequate research is carried out if the federal Government bows out. It seems to me that practically all of the research is being done by the Ontario Government, the Department of Energy, and the federal Government. I do not see the nuclear supply industry being coerced into doing very much research in that regard. If Canada cuts back Ontario will probably not do it on a 50-50 basis, or even less. They will not likely take up the slack. Although they do not envisage, as I understand it, actually planning to commission such a nuclear waste disposal facility until around the year 2000, clearly doing the research now and reassuring people that such a facility and technology is adequate should be done now. The cut-backs in AECL research are probably very harmful to the industry. I would caution the Parliamentary Secretary that, although he may be very happy with the research cut-backs, many people in the industry are not.

I wish it was closer to Black Thursday, November 8, 1984, when these cut-backs were made, because it was very clear in my mind exactly the level of cut-backs which had taken place. I recall that they were quite massive.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: A very short question.
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James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to make sure that the House was aware that the early remarks of the Parliamentary Secretary were, of course, misrepresentative and false about the NDP position. My question is to the Member who was previously speaking. I would like a clear definitive answer from him on the Liberal Party's position on a full public inquiry into nuclear power in Canada; are they for it or against it?


Maurice Brydon Foster: Mr. Speaker, our Party has not called for a full public inquiry. The NDP has, and the Tories did so before the last election. There have been many inquiries in the nuclear industry. There was a massive review completed in 1982. There were extensive public inquiries; one of the most massive that I can recall was into uranium mining carried out by the Ontario Government back in the 1970s, into the whole question of the development of those mines, to which the Ontario Government was putting some $700 million of investment. That inquiry had to be complete before that mining could go ahead.
The Hon. Member has mentioned the public inquiry in British Columbia which has been carried out. There has been a public inquiry in Nova Scotia. It seems to me-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: Order. Period for questions and comments is now over. Debate.


Hon. Pat Carney (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Mr. Speaker, like many Canadians I have concerns about some of our advanced technology, such as nuclear power. The tragic accident at Chernobyl brings home to all of us that no technology is entirely free of risks.
Before we launch a new and extensive public inquiry we have to look at nuclear power in a comparative way. We have to look at the benefits they bring, such as those that have been enunciated by the previous speaker, the Hon. Member for Algoma (Mr. Foster). We must look at the risks, and try to reach a balance.
We must focus on specific situations. The nuclear power program in Canada is different from those in other countries, and in many ways more successful. Nuclear power reactors in Canada achieve a level of safety comparable to the best reactors in the world. They are licensed by an effective independent regulatory agency with expert staff, the Atomic Energy Control Board.
Reactor operators, such as Ontario Hydro, are responsible for the safety of their nuclear plants. They must also convince the AECB that they meet stringent safety requirements before they are allowed to operate those plants.
There are some basic differences between the CANDU reactors and the Chernobyl reactors and the way in which they are operated. I think we need to focus on those differences. The Chernobyl reactor would not meet the AECB safety requirements, and could not and would not be licensed in Canada. The Chernobyl reactor has a graphite moderator which can and did burn. The CANDU reactor has a cool

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water moderator which removes heat. In contrast, the Chernobyl reactor does not have a containment building which would satisfy Canadian safety requirements. CANDUs have effective containment.
Nuclear power reactors in Canada embody defence-indepth. All systems must perform to high standards. Major failures are still assumed to be possible, but highly reliable safety systems are included to ensure that, even with those assumed failures, workers and the public are still protected.
An accident identical to Chernobyl cannot happen in Canada. The CANDU reactor is different in many ways from the Chernobyl reactor. Serious nuclear power reactor accidents in Canada are extremely unlikely. The stringent Canadian safety requirements, such as effective containment, ensure that Canadians are adequately protected against accidents. There is always some residual risk with any endeavour, but it is extremely low for the CANDU reactors developed by Canada.
The benefits from our nuclear power program are large, and they more than offset that very small risk. The Government of Canada is fully committed to sustaining the CANDU reactor as a safe, reliable and competitive nuclear power system.
Some critics have noted that the authorities in the Soviet Union told their people that a serious nuclear accident was extremely unlikely, and so these critics asked why we should believe ours when they say the same thing. My response is that the Soviet Union has a highly secretive regulatory practice.


Mr. Waddell:: So does Canada.


Pat Carney: The Canadian nuclear system has operated in an open and public manner. Information about it is widely available. It is regulated by an independent body with an expert staff.
The Hon. Member for Vancouver-Kingsway (Mr. Waddell) is overreacting to my speech, Mr. Speaker. I should point out to him that for the last six years the AECB has made available, upon request, information dealing with all licensing decisions and the supporting safety analysis, but there has been very little demand for that kind of information.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Why did Joe Clark sue them once for information?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: Order.


Pat Carney: May I continue, Mr. Speaker? All unusual incidents at nuclear power plants, however minor, are reported to the AECB, and the reports are available to the media and the public, including even the NDP should it ask for them. In the reactor safety field there is an ongoing review to ensure that we work with lessons learned from normal operation and accidents.
Although Chernobyl is very different from the CANDU reactors, Canadian officials will study that accident, along with their international partners, to determine if there are any lessons for Canada. This is one reason why we have requested
information from the U.S.S.R. on the accident. Until we have received more complete information on the causes of the Chernobyl disaster no meaningful review is possible.
A great deal of technical analysis of the accident and its consequences will be necessary before conclusions can be drawn. I am asking the AECB, and other responsible Canadian agencies, to participate in the international assessments of the Chernobyl accident, and to report fully on its implications for us.
The resolution calls for a full and immediate public inquiry into the nuclear industry in Canada. I understand there are serious public concerns about the Chernobyl accident, and we must deal with them in an effective way. The Government has already taken the following steps. It has offered assistance to the U.S.S.R. and extended our sympathy to the victims, while expressing serious concern about the lack of timely information provided. It has ensured that Health and Welfare Canada is monitoring conditions to protect the health of Canadians. It has decided that Canadian reactor safety experts will participate in international reviews on the Chernobyl accident to determine if there are lessons to be learned and applied for Canada. It has requested information from the U.S.S.R. to enable review by Canadian experts.
The Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) and his colleagues at the recent Tokyo Summit called for international measures to strengthen systems for early warning and mutual assistance in cases of severe accidents like Chernobyl. The Russian proposals yesterday seemed to support these initiatives. We must deal with these problems through international co-operation.
I think these actions speak loudly for the Government's concern and that they represent an appropriate response. The decision to proceed with the public inquiry into nuclear power should properly await the conclusions of the work in progress. The CANDU nuclear power system has already been the subject of two extensive public inquiries, as the Hon. Member for Algoma has noted. The Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning in Ontario, the Porter Commission, found that the CANDU was safe. The select Committee of the Ontario Legislature on Ontario Hydro Affairs found the CANDU was acceptably safe. Parliament and its committees provide an adequate forum for public discussion of issues such as this. The Government in turn will accept its responsibilities and make appropriate decisions. Further public inquiries into nuclear power are not likely to add significantly to our knowledge of the safety of the CANDU nuclear generating system at this time. The Government believes that the system was safe before the Chernobyl accident and it is safe now. Nevertheless, we want to learn as much as possible about the accident, and the proper procedure is for Canada to participate in international studies of the accident and its implications, then to draw the right conclusions and apply them.
I appreciate the concerns of the public about the tragic reactor accident at Chernobyl. We dealt with the immediate
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consequences of that accident and there is no threat to the health or safety of Canadians. Our own nuclear power program is very different in design, operation, regulation and public scrutiny from that of the Soviet Union. The Government believes that the CANDU reactor is a safe and reliable generating system and that it is properly regulated. We want to learn as much as we can about the Chernobyl accident. We will work together with our international partners to do just that.
Nuclear power has become an important part of Canada's energy mix. We have abundant energy in Canada and most of our electricity comes from hydro power. It is the main source in Labrador, Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia. We have cheap lower sulphur coal in Saskatchewan and Alberta. Coal from Cape Breton is the main source of electricity in Nova Scotia. These areas may not need nuclear power for many years to come.
In Ontario and New Brunswick, for example, most of the low cost, large-scale hydro power sources are already used. In those provinces, nuclear power is the preferred source. It provides over 40 per cent of the electricity. It saves over $400 million each year compared to the cost of coal. The federal Government has worked with the private sector and with the provinces, especially Ontario, to develop nuclear technology for Canada. The scientists and engineers at Atomic Energy of Canada and Ontario Hydro can be proud of their achievement. The CANDU reactor is a Canadian success story. It uses Canadian technology and resources, adding diversity and security to our energy supply. In today's volatile energy world that is not something to be lightly dismissed.
In Ontario, when the Darlington Station is finished, nuclear power will provide 60 per cent of the electricity for Canada's industrial heartland. Nuclear power helps to keep Canada's electricity costs among the lowest in the industrial world. Electricity is an efficient and productive form of energy and it will continue to increase its share of the energy market. As the Hon. Member for Algoma has already noted, it also provides some 36,000 jobs for Canadians.
Nuclear power is a high technology industry which attracts other advanced industries such as General Motors' proposed $2 billion high tech Autoplex Plant in Ontario. Modern factories need cheap and reliable electricity and nuclear power supplies it in Ontario.
The CANDU reactor is an extremely safe and reliable technology. Ontario Hydro's CANDU's have been among the world's top performers in terms of reliability and electricity costs. Their high performance is not just due to the operational skills of Ontario Hydro. The CANDU at Point Lepreau in New Brunswick was second in performance among over 100 large power reactors in the world in 1985. The CANDU in South Korea was fifth in the world in terms of performance. The CANDU can be operated reliably by smaller utilities as well.
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In most of the industrial countries, nuclear power supplies a larger share of electricity than it does in Canada. The nuclear share is over 30 per cent and increasing in France, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, Finland and West Germany. Nuclear power is the leading source of power in Japan. Nuclear power plants in industrial countries displace the equivalent of six million barrels of oil per day. This has been a major factor in reducing oil demand and bringing down the price.
A recent study by the OECD showed that nuclear power was cheaper than coal in most of the industrial countries of the world by a margin of 40 per cent or more. The only exceptions were the western regions of Canada and the United States where coal plants can be built closer to load centres. The industrial countries will have to make sure that nuclear power plants are built and operated safely but they have indicated they are not going to give up that energy option. Nuclear power is here to stay on a worldwide basis.
There have been cases where nuclear power has not worked out well. Some projects in the Unites States have run into cost overruns and some have been abandoned. But many utilities in the United States have very successful nuclear power programs. Like any technology, it has been managed properly, and in Canada we have done it well.
In conclusion, I want to stress that we have a safe, reliable nuclear industry in this country. I do not believe that a public inquiry into nuclear power is useful until such time as we have the product of our reports on the disaster in the Soviet Union.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, I have two questions. I would like to ask a simple question first, and then ask a supplementary, if I can. The Minister was instrumental in writing the Conservative energy policy. Why did she put in the energy policy these words: "We advocate a full public inquiry into the future of nuclear power"? Why is she now saying we do not need an inquiry when she put those words in then?


Pat Carney: Mr. Speaker, I should report for the record that the New Democratic Party's motion is almost word for word lifted out of the Conservative campaign material.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Exactly.


James Ross Fulton: You are really wide awake today.


Pat Carney: 1 have already noted that I am not ruling out a full-scale inquiry at this point, but I made it very clear in my speech that that decision should await the work we are doing with other international experts in assessing the Chernobyl incident. We assume that all countries can learn from the fact that this disaster happened. Our system is very different from the system used by the Soviet Union. As I pointed out, the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl would not be licenced, nor could it be operated in Canada. It seems to me it would be much more useful to await the conclusions of the work we have committed before proceeding on the basis of the motion of the New Democratic Party.

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Maurice Brydon Foster: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources could comment on an article in Nucleonics Week Magazine of April 21, written by Michael Knapik of Washington? It states, and I quote:
The Canadian Government is apparently moving to drop its upgrading policy for uranium exports. According to sources, Canadian Government officials agreed in principle at a meeting with U.S. officials in Washington April 16 that the upgrading policy should be abandoned. "Both sides felt satisfied," according to one knowledgeable source. He did not say definitely that the upgrading policy would be abandoned or when, indicating only that that action is "more likely to happen now."
Would the Minister indicate whether the policy of the Government of Canada has changed and if there will be any exemptions given to the upgrading of uranium this year, that is, upgrading outside of Canada?


Pat Carney: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member has already been told in the House by my Parliamentary Secretary that the article he has quoted from is not accurate. I presume he is quoting from the same article?


Maurice Brydon Foster: Yes.


Pat Carney: It is not accurate. We have no plans to drop our upgrading policy in Canada and I think the Hon. Member knows that. In terms of exemptions, I can only add that I do not know whether there will be exemptions granted this year. However, the policy does provide for exemptions under specific and very constrained circumstances.


Mr. Kindy:: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a specific question of the Minister. Yesterday, I was in attendance at a meeting of the Standing Committee on Justice at which time a Freedom of Information Commissioner appeared before us. I asked the commissioner whether the Atomic Energy Control Board releases information to the public. Last year there were some eight requests made for information. I was told that some of the information was not given out because it was classified. Does the Minister feel that this information should be released to the public? I believe that the public has the right to know what is happening in the area of atomic energy.
My second question for the Minister concerns the price of oil. The Minister said that she believes nuclear energy is a source of energy on which we should be working. As an Albertan I believe we should be looking to oil and other sources of energy to power our electrical power stations.


Pat Carney: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member's second question was not really in the form of a question but in the form of a statement. I can reply to it, however. As I said in my speech, and as I have said on many other occasions, we have a balance of energy resources in Canada. I do not know whether the Hon. Member was in the Chamber when I made my speech. However, I noted in my speech that we have a variety of energy resources, including oil and gas, coal, hydroelectricity and nuclear power. I pointed out that some provinces are more dependent upon nuclear power than are others. It is my
belief that nuclear power will continue to be an energy resource, particularly in areas such as Ontario where it supplies the industrial heartland and where there is already a market served by natural gas.
In terms of the AECB, I cannot specifically reply to the Hon. Member's question concerning the eight requests for information since I do not know what those requests were. I will look into the matter and report back to the Hon. Member.


James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, now that the Minister has admitted that the position of the Conservatives during the last election campaign on which they garnered front page headlines across the country advocating a full public inquiry into the future of nuclear power is false, I would like to ask her a question. It concerns comments she made in her speech concerning the fact that the Atomic Energy Control Board is wide open and that information is easy to obtain and so on. In 1976 the Auditor General's report revealed that on top of the $100 million loss, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited had committed major financial indiscretions. During the last Parliament the House brought officials of AECL before the Public Accounts Committee. At that time the committee launched an investigation which was blocked by the Liberal majority which denied the power of subpoena to the committee. AECL refused to present its books and its top officials refused to answer questions. Members of the committee called the AECL witnesses "reluctant, evasive and unco-operative". The committee concluded:
-the successful concealment, by complex and sophisticated payment and banking procedures in foreign countries, of the identities of the ultimate recipients of the funds and the nature of services rendered, leads your Committee to suspect that some of the payments were indeed used for illegal or corrupt purposes.
Does the Minister not think that in light of that comment there was a great deal of support across the country for the Tory promise to hold a full public inquiry? The Minister is now backing down. In fact, what the Conservatives ran on during the campaign was false.


Pat Carney: Mr. Speaker, in view of the heated rhetoric of the Hon. Member from the NDP, I should point out that I have not made the statements which he has attributed to me. If he had listened carefully to my speech, he would have learned that that is not my position.
In terms of 1976, I remind the Hon. Member that this is 1986. As I have already explained in my speech, the operations of the AECB are much more public. In terms of AECL, I personally tabled in the House the annual reports and the corporate plans for AECL. I believe that Mr. Donnelly, the President, has been made available, or will be made available, to appear before committees should they want to call him before them. I cannot recall from memory if he has appeared before the standing committee or not, however, that is my understanding.


James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, the Minister says that the reason she is not calling a full public inquiry into nuclear power in
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Canada now is because she wants to find out what happened at Chernobyl. 1 would like to remind the Minister that at Chernobyl it was a graphite cooled system. The CANDU reactor systems in Canada are heavy water cooled. There is absolutely no relationship between the Chernobyl accident and the 1984 campaign promise of the Minister and her Party. Does the Minister stand by the promise for a full public inquiry? She promised it two years ago. Her Government is now halfway through its mandate. Will there be a full public inquiry or is this just another false Tory promise?


Pat Carney: Mr. Speaker, I am amazed that the Hon. Member is asking me questions without having listened to my speech. I pointed out in my speech that the CANDU reactor is quite different from the one in Chernobyl. I also pointed out that our system uses heavy water and not graphite. I am surprised that the Hon. Member should feel it necessary-


James Ross Fulton: So why did you deceive Canadians?


Pat Carney: -to raise this matter at this time.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: When are you going to have the inquiry,
then?


Pat Carney: Mr. Speaker, if members of the NDP are not interested in my answers, I do not see why I should be required to supply them.


Mr. Simon de Jong (Regina East):: Mr. Speaker, 1 too wish to participate in this very important debate. It is a debate on a system-a very dangerous and expensive system-which essentially boils water. It is dangerous because accidents-and accidents do happen-result in radiation being spread across the planet. It gets into the ecosystem and into the food system and can last for thousands and thousands of years. It is an additive process. It is a system in which one cannot afford to make mistakes. It is a system which has to be 100 per cent mistake proof. Unfortunately, as we know, there is no technology which is 100 per cent safe. As well, there are no social institutions which can deal with this technology.
I find that the Minister and spokespersons from the Liberal Party are arrogant in assuming that they, their bureaucracies and our technologies in this country and in others are sufficiently developed that we can place at risk the generations and generations yet to come. I find it arrogant that these Hon. Members are able to rise in the House with such tremendous confidence to speak as though we have the ability and the capacity to ensure that generations to come will not be put at risk. It is this type of arrogance which makes me doubly convinced that the uraniuman and nuclear option is not a proper option for development at this time. When one listens to the speeches of Hon. Members, such as the Minister, one begins to realize that thinking has not developed to a point where it can even deal with technology such as nuclear technology, let alone social institutions.
Hon. Members have spoken about the Chernobyl accident. Indeed, it is a catastrophe, a catastrophe for the whole human
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race. There are important lessons to be learned from this accident. First, I would point out that there are some similarities between the bureaucracies which are in charge of nuclear power plants in the United States and in democratic countries, and the bureaucracies which are in charge of nuclear development in Soviet countries and in the centrally planned economies. We begin to realize that there is not much difference between them. It is essentially a policy based on protecting one's ass.
The people who were in charge of the plant in Chernobyl thought that they could contain it and that they would not bother to tell the guys up top. That began the cycle of misinformation and lack of information. It was a natural human and bureaucratic response designed to protect the bureaucracy and its jobs. It is not much different from the events surrounding the accident that occurred at Three Mile Island. It took quite awhile, in fact I understand almost three days-


Claude Girvin (Girve) Fretz: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I wonder if you could make a ruling on suitable language to be used in the House of Commons. During his speech, the Hon. Member used a phrase which I think is unacceptable in the House.


Mr. Keeper:: What phrase?


Claude Girvin (Girve) Fretz: He said "covering one's ass", and I think it is unacceptable for Hon. Members to use a phrase such as that in the House.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: I am informed that the expression itself has not been ruled, per se, to be out of order.


Pat Carney: So rule, Mr. Speaker.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: No, I do not intend in this specific case to rule. However, I do think that the Hon. Parliamentary Secretary brought up a very legitimate point about the level of language used in the House of Commons, a level that applies generally in all debates. All Members should be reminded of the level of language that we are all expected to use.


Simon Leendert de Jong: Mr. Speaker, let me withdraw the remark.


Claude Girvin (Girve) Fretz: Thank you.


Simon Leendert de Jong: You're welcome. Let me also point out that if that is what concerns the Hon. Member about this very important debate, I would suggest that he should go somewhere else. That pettiness in the midst of a very important debate is, I think, very unbecoming of the Government Member.


Claude Girvin (Girve) Fretz: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The use of words is part of debate. If the level of debate is lowered to the point at which we are using gutter language, then that affects the quality of the debate.

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Simon Leendert de Jong: That's not a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Make the guy shut up and sit down.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: Order. Having already ruled on the issue, I address myself to both Hon. Members. I think we would do well in pursuing the substantive arguments of debate.


Simon Leendert de Jong: Mr. Speaker, the point I was trying to make was that it really does not matter very much what type of bureaucracy is in charge of nuclear power plants and development. Whether it is the centrally planned type of bureaucracy found in the Soviet Union or the bureaucracies found in the United States, France, Sweden and the more developed industrialized, technological and democratic societies, the attitude is essentially one of protecting the bureaucracy. Because of this, generally misinformation and lies occur. Reassurances are given by the industry on a continuous basis.
The lesson to be learned from the major accident at Chernobyl is how similar the bureaucracies are and how irresponsible and incapable they are of dealing with nuclear technology. The essential point is the inability of those bureaucracies to deal with nuclear technology. Whether it is the case of the United States, where the low bidder gets the contract, or the case of the bureaucratic state, in which the bureaucracy at times produces unsafe structures, it is all the same.
There was a tremendous amount of hysteria in the western press when the Chernobyl accident first occurred. Again, it is unfortunate that Washington chose to use this as an instrument of the cold war. Certainly Washington was in no position to level the types of charges it did when the accident first occurred.
Now Washington and the international community are condemning the Soviets, and rightly so, for not giving proper information to neighbouring states and for not giving that information fast enough. Again, 1 would ask the same question about Three Mile Island. It took the Americans around three days to inform Congress that a major accident had occurred. It took the United States several days to inform the world that a major accident had occurred. I wonder if the United States ever informed Canada of the danger of a radiation plume moving north and affecting Canadian soil. Certainly Canada is much closer to Three Mile Island than Sweden and Norway are to the site at Chernobyl.
I repeat the point that the bureaucracies and Governments on both sides have shown their irresponsibility and have proven that as a human institution, they are not capable of dealing with nuclear matter.
The other aspect of this accident which makes it so tragic for all of us is the amount of nuclear radiation that has now spread throughout the world. We hear continuous assurances that certain levels of radiation are safe because those levels are compared to what is called the background radiation. They tell us that we are always exposed to radiation, that the rocks and
the soil have radiation and that there is natural radiation. It is true that this natural radiation exists. However, I wonder what the natural radiation level was at the turn of the century before there were above ground nuclear explosions in the testing of bombs and all the nuclear accidents of which Chernobyl is now the latest. The background radiation has increased and the accident in Chernobyl will increase that background radiation even further.
Our generation and the generations to come are guinea pigs. We do not know what effect this accident will have on the health and wellbeing of the world population. I am amazed when I hear members of the Liberal Party and the Minister rise to tell us that everything is all right with the nuclear industry. What gall that these Hon. Members can rise in the House to say that everything is safe while generations yet to come have been placed at risk.
I want to deal as well with the whole question of nuclear proliferation. This is tied very closely to the nuclear industry. We know that Iraq wants its own bomb. In fact, it came pretty close to developing a bomb until it suffered a pre-emptive strike.
When I read about the development of the bomb in Iraq, I found some of the factors involved very interesting. The leverage Iraq used on France and Italy was that it promised those countries a long-term, secure supply of oil in exchange for which it got the nuclear technology. It is interesting to see how this blackmail occurs and how the transfer of material for peaceful uses can very easily be used in the production of war materials.
The case of Iraq is a classic case, but of course Iraq is not the only country involved. Through the use of Canadian technology and our good friends who developed the CANDU reactor, we know that India was allowed to develop its bomb. Pakistan wants to develop its own bomb. Rumours have it that Israel has its own bomb. South Africa wants its own bomb. Brazil and Libya want their own bombs. From where will they get the technology and the material to develop these bombs, if not through companies and countries involved in "the peaceful development of nuclear energy"?
The proliferation of nuclear weaponry is a real threat to the human race. One can only shakes one's head in fright and fear at what the development and usage of nuclear weaponry in the Middle East would do. We are concerned about the effects of radiation in Canada coming from the accident at Chernobyl. Let me tell the House that that accident is child's play compared with what would happen if a bomb were exploded anywhere in the Middle East. It would have effects on the milk and food we eat in Canada, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of people who would suffer and even die in the Middle East, in Europe, and in other surrounding regions.
Another area of concern is nuclear proliferation and how the peaceful use of nuclear energy leads to the use of nuclear
May 15, 1986

material for weaponry. It is a major concern which a public inquiry should address. It should also address what is the nuclear cycle, for example, how uranium mined in Saskatchewan is refined and shipped somewhere else. It should inquire into how the networking occurs and how, on occasion, shipments of these materials become lost or stolen. There are holes in the system through which countries can illegally obtain questionable material, obviously to be used for the production of bombs. It is another area which has to be properly investigated, and hopefully a public inquiry will do that.
I should now like to deal with the economics of nuclear energy. We heard the Minister tell us of the need for expanding nuclear energy. It is the same type of bureaucratic mentality which was supplied to her by her Department and her bureaucrats that overestimated the demand for oil and the price of oil, so that we are now stuck with the many big lemons we will be paying off. It is the same type of mentality as that endless, boundless growth which now saddles Ontario Hydro with billions of dollars of debt and has the entire utility industry in the United States on the verge of bankruptcy. It is bad business planning. Yet from listening to the Minister, no lessons have been learned; it is gung-ho ahead with a mentality which will mean more losses in the future.
I wish to place some figures on the record from the World Watch Institute report of 1986 on how the demand for nuclear energy has diminished. For example, in 1970 the OECD projected that its members would have 568,000 megawatts of nuclear capacity by 1985. The actual total was only about 180,000 megawatts. Plans for nuclear plant construction world-wide levelled off in the mid-70s, and the expected capacity has dropped by more than 100,000 megawatts since 1978. This is largely due to the cancellation of 111 plants in the United States. However, orders have also slowed in Europe, in the Soviet Union, and several Third World countries. The 30 or so U.S. nuclear plants now being completed will have an average cost of close to $3 billion, or $3,000 per kilowatt. The bill for the power they produce will be approximately three times the average wholesale cost of electricity in the United States today.
If we were to decide the fate of nuclear energy just on its economics we would shut it down so fast it would not even be funny. It is amazing that the so-called business-minded Conservatives cannot appreciate the simple fact that the nuclear industry has been a boondoggle. In fact, the estimates are that by the year 1990 the Canadian nuclear industry will have run up a debt of some $60 billion.
Alternatives are available. I am reminded of the statement that if we took the same amount of money it would cost to build a nuclear plant and put it into conservation, we would save more electricity than that nuclear plant would ever produce. However, we have two different lines of development. One is capital intensive. It produces very few jobs. Consumers
Supply
do not benefit, only the banks and utilities benefit. The other choice is to go the soft path to alternate energies and conservation. Consumers benefit from increased conservation and the saving of that electricity. It is not the banks, but it is the consumers or the people. It makes us as people more selfreliant and self-sufficient rather than dependent upon the nuclear industry. It is environmentally much sounder, yet this Government and the Government before it decided for and continues to place its bets on the nuclear industry. It is a shame and a tremendous mistake for which we will continue to pay in the years ahead in terms of a wasted environment, as we have in northern Saskatchewan where uranium is mined, and in terms of ongoing high charges for our electrical power just to pay off the debt. It will be the people who pay, and it will be the banks and the industry which benefit.
A proper inquiry into the cost, the safety, and the whole question of proliferation is urgently needed. I urge Hon. Members of the House to support our motion.


Benno Friesen: Mr. Speaker, I listened with care to the Hon. Member's speech, and I must say that I enjoyed it. I felt it was thoughtful. While I may not agree with all his points, at least he dealt conceptually with the issue. I agree with him that bureaucracies are totally self-serving. It does not matter whether they are in industry or in government, whether they are Tory or NDP, bureaucracies are self-serving.
I want to come back to the motion which his colleagues pointed out was lifted from the Tory campaign promise. It reads:
That this House urges the Government to immediately initiate a full public inquiry into the future of nuclear power.
Both he and his colleagues have made the point very strongly that they are opposed to nuclear power, the use of nuclear energy, and inferred that the purpose of that campaign statement was to end nuclear energy, and that would be the purpose of the public inquiry. However, let me read the rest of the campaign statement.
We advocate a full public inquiry into the future of nuclear power and have opened the nuclear power approval process to the public.
We believe that there are good markets for CAN DU technology but that the means of achieving entry into these markets must be re-examined.
We would work with industry and provincial utilities to find new markets in the United States for our surplus electricity.
Since they have taken the first phrase of our campaign statement to infer that our purpose for a public inquiry would be to end the use of nuclear power and, in effect extrapolated it on to our campaign promise, are not the motion and their statements misleading Canadian people?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: It being one o'clock, I do now leave the chair until two o'clock this afternoon.
At 1 p.m. the House took recess.

May 15, 1986


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.


Mr. Sergio Marchi (York West):: Mr. Speaker, the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants has drawn attention to some serious shortcomings in the Canadian Jobs Strategy for new Canadians who are unable to take advantage of the various employment programs.
Immigrants are not designated as a target group and the criteria for their participation are highly restrictive. Applicants for job development must be out of the workforce for 24 of the past 30 weeks, while for the job re-entry program they must have been out of work for three years. These mandatory lengthy periods of unemployment effectively exclude numerous immigrants since many of them experience high turnover of short-term work.
The Government should expand its programs to account for the employment reality which faces thousands and thousands of people each year. To ignore this sector of Canadian society is to ignore an integral part of Canada today and the Canada of tomorrow as long as immigration remains a national building force in this country.



EXTERNAL AFFAIRS


Mr. Stan J. Hovdebo (Prince Albert):: Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House today to offer best wishes to Norway, the country of my ancestors, and to the Democratic Socialist Labour Party Government led by Gro Harlem Brundtland. Gro is a female Prime Minister in a world which has far too few women leaders. She has chosen eight women in her 18 person Cabinet, and there are 30 women in the 71 member Labour Party caucus.
I, and Members of the New Democratic Party, wish Dr. Brundtland well in the difficult tasks which lie ahead. All Members of the House will congratulate Norwegians on being leaders in the western world by bringing women to positions of the highest power and public responsibility.



THE ECONOMY


Mr. Marcel R. Tremblay (Quebec East):: Mr. Speaker, dynamic, ingenious, honest and efficient, those are the adjectives that come to mind when I think of the small business sector in my riding. Since the 1984 election campaign, I often visit small business people in my riding, and I find those visits very rewarding. Last month, I went from door to door on Plante and Third Avenue, where I was given a warm welcome.
As we all know, operating a small business is not an easy matter. It means working long hours, the competition is intense and risks are high. It is the kind of work that requires a great deal of endurance and tremendous self-confidence. I therefore want to take this opportunity to give them the assurance that they have a colleague here in the Conservative Government and that he is always ready to defend their interests, at any time.
Mr. Speaker, small business people are the cornerstone of our economy, and should be encouraged to pursue their dreams and ideals and make them come true. Again, I want to give them the assurance of my dedication and support. Keep up the good work! The people of Quebec East are proud of you!
Small is beautiful, Mr. Speaker.



THE PRIME MINISTER

Mr. William G. Lesick (Edmonton East):: Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) is returning from Asia today where he distinguished himself as a true statesman and the best international ambassador Canada has had in a long time.
Over the course of his visit to the Asia Pacific region, a number of significant developments in the area of international trade and economic co-operation were initiated. Among the Prime Minister's many achievements were his commitment from Japan that its building codes would be revised to facilitate exports of Canadian lumber, the signing of a science and technology co-operation agreement, and the opening up of the Korean market to Canadian coal and canola.
These initiatives will be of substantial benefit to Canada as a whole, and to western Canada and Alberta in particular. As an example, the opening up of Korean markets to Canadian coal exports and the slashing of tariffs on canola will inject new vigor in the West's economy. Jobs will be created in the primary production sector, in processing, in transportation, and in many other sectors of the economy.
May 15, 1986



SHIPBUILDING


Mr. Jean-Claude Malepart (Montreal-Sainte-Marie):: Mr. Speaker, last Friday, the president of the union at the Sorel shipyards informed us of the contents of a letter written by the president of Versatile Vickers to the Hon. Daniel Johnson, a Minister in the Quebec Cabinet, about rationalizing the Sorel yards of Marine Industries. Wednesday, the Minister of State for Small Businesses (Mr. Bissonnette) confirmed to the House that the former Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion had authorized Mr. Saunders to carry out this operation. Yesterday, Mr. Johnson, the Quebec Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce, refused outright to rationalize the shipyard operations of Marine Industries in Sorel.
Mr. Speaker, I think all Conservative Members should ask the Government not to get involved in a rationalization operation and to set up a marine policy that would create jobs in all shipyards, instead of closing down the yards and creating unemployment.



FISHERIES


Mr. Roger Clinch (Gloucester):: Mr. Speaker, Canadian fishermen are once again faced with a critical situation with respect to the herring fisheries. The Gulf is full of herring but no fishing is allowed until May 22, since they have already reached their quota and did so in only two days.
Fishermen with over 20 years' experience say there is enough herring to justify doubling the quota.
Fishermen on the northeast shore of New Brunswick should therefore be entitled to continue their operations, which are their sole source of income.
Workers in the fish processing plants are also being deprived of a chance to earn a living. One plant was forced to close after a day's work, while another did so after only two days.
I therefore ask the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to intervene and allow the fishermen to go back to their fishing grounds so they can earn a living.



AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY


Mrs. Anne Blouin (Montmorency-Orleans):: Mr. Speaker, since September 1984, 630,000 jobs have been created in Canada, and more than 127,000 in Quebec. Quebec Members intend to continue this trend by promoting the development of our industries.
As part of the strategy for promoting job creation, we urge the Bombardier company to persevere in its efforts to reach an agreement with the Japanese Daihatsu corporation for setting up another automobile plant in Quebec. Such an agreement would help diversify our economic infrastructure and increase our exports.
We therefore urge Bombardier to continue its efforts, and we certainly intend to give the company our full co-operation.
Furthermore, Mr. Speaker, I hope that Canadians will take this opportunity to demonstrate their economic nationalism by buying a car manufactured and designed in Canada.



NUCLEAR ENERGY


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, I would like to read into the record a letter I wrote today to Mr. Ronald Reagan, President of the United States, and Mr. Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. It reads:
Dear Mr. President and Mr. General Secretary:
All citizens of our world can breathe a little easier now that the worst has passed at Chernobyl-just as we breathed easier in 1979 after the Three Mile Island reactor was stabilized.
Marshall McLuhan, a distinguished Canadian, once said that we now live in a "global village", meaning that we all share the problems of nuclear radiation. This goes beyond borders.
Perhaps something really positive can come from the incident at Chernobyl and that you, the leaders of the two world superpowers, can meet to discuss mutual ways of preventing such incidents in the future and of achieving a nuclear test ban.
Both your countries have joined together at Expo 86 in my home city of Vancouver to exhibit your technology to the peoples of the world.
Why not use this occasion to come to Vancouver, Canada in the early Fall to meet on these momentous issues?

May 15, 1986



THE ECONOMY


Mr. Nic Leblanc (Longueuil):: Mr. Speaker, the Bank of Canada has again announced a reduction in the bank rate.
A few minutes ago, the bank rate was set at 8.59 per cent, which represents a drop of 13 percentage points since last week and 3.79 points since the election in September 1984. The chartered banks have just announced a one-half point drop in the prime rate. Falling interest rates are saving Canadian consumers, governments, businesses, and anyone who has to finance purchases and business operations, hundreds of millions of dollars.
Mr. Speaker, it is a foregone conclusion that this reduction in interest rates will increase consumption and trade. Thanks to our Government's policies, our economic growth is continuing, and we are creating more jobs for Canadian men and women.



PRIME MINISTER'S VISIT TO JAPAN, CHINA, AND SOUTH KOREA

Mr. Gabriel Desjardins (Temiscamingue):: Mr. Speaker, if we take the time to read Hansard for the last two weeks, we find very few references to the trip to Asia made by the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney).
Mr. Speaker, it seems the House, and especially the Opposition parties, had more urgent matters to attend to.
Nevertheless, I think it is important to stress the extraordinary job done by the Prime Minister in Asia. As always, in these circumstances, he has shown he is a worthy ambassador of our country. In Japan, China and South Korea, he had meetings with the highest political leaders, inviting them to invest and buy more in our country. I am sure that in the months and years to come, we will reap the fruit of these meetings.
Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is returning to Canada this afternoon, after a long and exhausting two-week tour, and I hope that when he returns to the House, all parties will give him a welcome that is, at the very least, respectful and worthy of us as parliamentarians.



ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS


Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, it is a bad decision on the part of the Minister of the Environment (Mr. McMillan) to cut Environment Canada support to the groups that we all, including him, need as friends. By removing this support which the Department has offered over many, many years, the Minister is making it clear that Environment Canada is abandoning the advocacy role it has become known for all over the country for the past decade.
The contribution to environmental groups was minor in comparison to other expenditures such as the $600,000 the Minister is spending on advertising for Environment Week, but far more effective. Environmental groups which benefited from travel funds, access to long-distance telephone lines, photocopying or postage services through regional offices, rely heavily on volunteer support and operate on shoestring budgets. The removal of this support is a spiteful and petty move, not a very fitting show on the part of the Government of Canada.



CANADIAN COAST GUARD


Mr. Ray Skelly (Comox-Powell River):: Mr. Speaker, 1 wish to call to the attention of this House a very serious matter, that of the automation of 10 lighthouses on the coast of British Columbia. The LeBlond Commission said these lighthouses were doing an excellent job on search and rescue, communications, and weather reporting. To save $4.3 million by 1990, the Government intends to automate these lighthouses, remove the search and rescue capability, communications, and effective weather broadcasting, and place the lives of British Columbians who travel the sea in jeopardy. 1 urge the Minister of Transport (Mr. Mazankowski) to hold a public inquiry into this matter and stop any further action toward decommissioning and automating these lighthouses.
There is no doubt that the Government considers its only function is to provide light during bad weather conditions. Two thousand failures have occurred in automated lighthouse stations on the coast of British Columbia. This cannot continue. The Minister of Transport must stop it and begin a public inquiry.
May 15, 1986



LUMBER EXPORTS TO UNITED STATES-THREAT OF COUNTERVAIL

Mr. Lome Greenaway (Cariboo-Chilcotin):: Mr. Speaker, there is good reason to believe that, next Monday, U.S. lumber interests will launch yet another countervailing duty action against softwood lumber imports. No greater proof can be found that we desperately need to negotiate the bilateral agreement initiated by our Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) and President Reagan. This is the third effort by U.S. lumber interests to block Canadian access to their markets, and despite continued failure they persist in this harassment.
It should be noted that under U.S. law these American lumbermen have the right to petition the U.S. Government, but their action does not necessarily reflect administration policy. Our position must be to hold firm in our intention to restore stability in our trading relations and not allow this gesture to endanger this historic accord.



CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION


Mr. Bob Pennock (Etobicoke North):: Mr. Speaker, Pierre Juneau claims that the CBC will have a $48 million budget shortfall this year. Here are a couple of examples of why.
The CBC had a high profile at this year's Parliamentary Press Gallery dinner, purchasing 73 tickets for its staff, picking up the tab for tuxedo rentals, a pre-dinner reception, and airfares. The total cost to the taxpayer was $7,000 for the evening's festivities.
Would you like to travel to Cannes on the French Riviera? Join the CBC. They sent 15 representatives and a secretary to the annual MIP-TV market. I do not question that the CBC should be represented at this important international event. What 1 question is the number of people, and a bill of $ 130,000 to the taxpayer for a five-day trip.
Between Juneau's junket to China and these two items, he has spent approximately $170,000 of the taxpayers' money. I suggest to him that this money could be better spent in providing quality programming for which the CBC is famous.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
Oral Questions



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Bob Kaplan (York Centre):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Acting Prime Minister. For two weeks now my Party has been calling on the Government and the Prime Minister to enforce the guidelines against conflict of interest against the former Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion. Yesterday the Acting Prime Minister indicated for the first time that the outside inquiry the Government is intending to use will not only examine the facts, but will apply a judgment about whether the conflict of interest guidelines have been violated or not.
I want to ask the Acting Prime Minister how that function of deciding whether the conflict of interest guidelines have been violated or not can possibly be delegated by the Prime Minister to an outside person.


Hon. Erik Nielsen (Acting Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, before any circumstances can be resolved as fact there is an element of judgment that has to be applied. With respect to the intention to conduct an impartial inquiry, that is in keeping with demands that have come from the hon. gentleman's own Members. He should know, if he does not, that the instruments that are necessary in circumstances such as these have already had parliamentary imprimatur and are there to be used.


Robert Phillip Kaplan: Our Leader and our House Leader have already clearly spoken for us in favour of a parliamentary inquiry, not an independent inquiry in this matter.


ROLE OF INVESTIGATOR
Robert Phillip Kaplan: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the following question. Does this mean that the person who will conduct this independent inquiry will merely analyze the facts and report on the matter, or will that person pass judgment and make a decision? What is this person's role, according to the Government?


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, as I said Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and now it being Thursday I say the same thing to the hon. gentleman, there are two elements to any inquiry. One is the inquiry process, and the other is the reporting process. There are numerous precedents to indicate the kind of processes that are contemplated to be set in motion.
13312

May 15, 1986
Oral Questions


ATTENDANCE OF PRIME MINISTER DURING QUESTION PERIOD
Robert Phillip Kaplan: Mr. Speaker, I want to direct my question to the Deputy Prime Minister. Will he assure the House that the Prime Minister, who is returning to Canada tonight, will be here tomorrow during Question Period to answer for the disasters that he, the Deputy Prime Minister, inflicted upon the Government?


Mr. Speaker:: Order. It is a little hard to find that supplementary to the question. I think the Hon. Member already knows that. Does he have a supplementary question?


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, I can respond by asking the hon. gentleman if the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition will be here? He is not here today.


LUMBER EXPORTS TO UNITED STATES-THREAT OF COUNTERVAIL
Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Winnipeg-Fort Garry):: Mr. Speaker, I would like direct my question to the Minister of International Trade. At the same time I would like to assure the Deputy Prime Minister that our Leader will be in the House, as he has been all week. The Minister for International Trade has now publicly stated that he would be planning to undertake counter measures against the United States if they introduce countervail on the lumber issue.
I would like to ask the Minister for International Trade what he means. What other measures is he now contemplating? What other initiatives does he plan to take to fight on behalf of the Canadian lumber industries? What change in policy is he now announcing?


Hon. James Kelleher (Minister for International Trade):: Mr. Speaker, I can advise the Hon. Member that if, indeed, countervail is applied by the Americans, that Canada has the right to compensation under GATT, and we would certainly pursue that remedy.


GOVERNMENT POLICY
Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, we are fully aware of those facts, but that is not what the Minister is reported as saying. He said he is planning to undertake other measures in response to any countervail action by the United States. We would like to know what those measures are, and does this represent a fundamental change in policy from the previous position taken, which was that the Government would negotiate all these irritants under a comprehensive free trade negotiation? Have we now changed the policy and will we be dealing with these irritant problems one by one, sector by sector? Is this now a fundamental change in the Government's stand?


James Francis Kelleher: Mr. Speaker, there is no fundamental change in the policy of the Government. To relieve the mind of the Hon. Member I can advise him that my colleague, the Minister of State for Forestry, and I are meeting with all the provincial Trade Ministers and Forestry Ministers this evening in Toronto at the Constellation Hotel. We will discuss the possible countervail action which may be brought by the United States producers against Canadians. We believe in the full involvement of the provinces before we do anything.


THE ADMINISTRATION
Mr. John R. Rodriguez (Nickel Belt):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Deputy Prime Minister. By now he will be aware that the government Members on the Standing Committee on Elections, Privileges and Procedure rejected both motions-


Mr. Hnatyshyn:: Order.


John R. Rodriguez: -to look at the specific conflict of interest-


Mr. Clark (Yellowhead):: Order.


John R. Rodriguez: -and the broader question. What method would the Deputy Prime Minister propose so that the House can look at both the specific issue of the ex-Minister's conflict of interest and the broader question of the guidelines for conflict of interest?


Erik Nielsen: Perhaps I should have been aware, as the hon. gentleman says, of what transpired in the committee today. I believe the Hon. Member said I was not aware of it. With respect to the matter of a reference to a committee and the hon. gentleman's outright accusation, that option is there and I have been saying that all week.
I would urge the Hon. Member to be cautious in stating as an outright accusation that there has been a conflict of interest, and have the decency to await the outcome of the investigation as to facts.


REQUEST THAT INVESTIGATOR'S REPORT BE REFERRED TO COMMITTEE
John R. Rodriguez: Mr. Speaker, in light of the answer of the Deputy Prime Minister, will he give the House an assurance that the report from this impartial investigator as to facts will be referred to the Standing Committee on Elections, Privileges and Procedure?
May 15, 1986


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, that is certainly an option which is open. But surely we should have the prudence and sense to await the appointment of an impartial person, the terms of reference, and the report itself, before coming to a decision which the Hon. Member wants the Prime Minister to make at this moment.


REQUEST THAT COMMITTEE EXAMINE GUIDELINES
John R. Rodriguez: Mr. Speaker, my final supplementary question is also directed to the Deputy Prime Minister. Despite the investigation which will go on, the adequacy of the process of conflict of interest remains. Can the Deputy Minister give the House some assurance that there will be a method whereby the Standing Committee which has traditionally looked at these matters will in fact look at those guidelines?


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, if the hon. gentleman is asking me to commit the Prime Minister and the Government to make a selection now of options based on something which has not yet been produced, namely, the report, surely that is simply not intelligent.


John R. Rodriguez: You're looking at fact.


Erik Nielsen: The options arise only after the report has been produced. Does not reason compel the Hon. Member to the conclusion that we should await the report in order then to select the option as to which way to proceed from that point on?


PUBLIC WORKS
Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Public Works and concerns the letting of contracts for the Museum of Man in Hull. What steps does the Minister intend to take to give this House and the Canadian people the assurance that the contract-letting process used by his department, and especially in the case of the Museum in Hull, remains worthy of the trust of Canadians?


Hon. Roch La Salle (Minister of Public Works):: Mr. Speaker, I think I can give the House that assurance and I want to say first of all that almost all contracts were let by the previous Government. As the Minister of Public of Works, I have been responsible for museums only since May 1985, and I can again give the Hon. Member the assurance that everything is being done by public tender, in the best interests of Canadians.
Oral Questions


REQUEST THAT ROBERGE COMMITTEE BE ABOLISHED
Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the Deputy Prime Minister. Is the Deputy Prime Minister now intending to abolish the Roberge patronage committee, which meets at the Ritz-Carlton, and other patronage organizations which exist within the Government and, more particularly, those that we saw reflected in the letter from the Hon. Member for Quebec East when he wrote concerning patronage-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. 1 have trouble finding that question supplementary to the first question the Hon. Member addressed to the Minister of Public Works. Does the Hon. Member have a supplementary question?


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I will direct my question to the Deputy Prime Minister. Does he intend to end whatever committees there are involving patronage contracts from the Department of Public Works and any other Department to ensure that the credibility-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I still find it difficult to find that question supplementary to the contract process which was the subject of the first question. The Hon. Member for Winnipeg North Centre.


INTEGRITY OF CONTRACT PROCESS
Cyril Keeper: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Public Works. In light of the events of today, the charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, and without commenting in any way whatsoever on the innocence or guilt of an individual, will the Minister tell the House what he is prepared to do now to preserve the integrity of the contract letting process for public contracts?
[ Translation]


Roch La Salle: Mr. Speaker, I think all Members of this House are familiar with the usual workings and structure of this process, and we continue to make public calls for tender, and the best bid is usually the one selected by the Government. Now in the circumstances, I do not think I have anything new to announce. I think we should maintain the system of public contract-letting, and ensure that competence and cost considerations remain our fundamental criteria for letting contracts.


REQUEST THAT MINISTER EXAMINE PROCESS
Cyril Keeper: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the same Minister. Surely on a day when enough evidence has been gathered for 50 charges to be laid

Oral Questions
against an individual it is time for the Minister to take another look at the contract letting process to assure us, once again, that this process can take place without political influence?


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Roch La Salle: Mr. Speaker, I don't think I can comment on the Hon. Member's remarks, considering the fact that the matter is before the courts. About the contract-letting and the procedure being followed, I would like to remind the Hon. Member that our procedure observes the criteria of competence, quality and cost in selecting the best bid, in the interests of all Canadians.


AIRPORTS
Ms. Sheila Copps (Hamilton East):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Acting Minister of Transport. As a follow-up to his investigation, can the Acting Minister of Transport tell us whether he sticks by the Minister of Transport's statement that there has been no conlict of interest in the case of the instant security companies which were awarded an untendered airport contract worth more than $2 million, given that we now know that they are operating under a licence for a company which involves the wife of a Conservative cabinet Minister?


Mr. J. M. Forrestall (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, if the Minister of Transport was here in the House today he would reaffirm his observations of the last two days and confirm that in his belief there was no conflict of interest.


SECURITY DISCUSSIONS IN CABINET
Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is also directed to the Acting Minister of Transport. Given that the Minister of Transport himself announced in the House on April 9 that he and his cabinet colleagues were undertaking a complete over-feel of the security system at airports, can he tell us whether or not the cabinet Minister whose wife has shares in a company which is now benefiting as a result of the-


Some Hon. Members:: Order, order!


Sheila Maureen Copps: -untendered contract absented himself during the course of those security discussions?


J. Michael Forrestall: Mr. Speaker, the allegations made are completely unfounded. The Hon. Member is fully aware of that. The distinguished Senator has very clearly indicated that he took
every human and possible step he could to remove any appearance of conflict of interest at the time of this event. That is certainly in the record and is well recorded.


SHIPBUILDING
Mr. Mike Cassidy (Ottawa Centre):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, and it has to do with the conflict of interest stemming from the decision of the Minister and the former Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion to ask the president of a Quebec shipyard to plan the closure of another Quebec shipyard. Can the Minister explain why he refused to answer this question last Tuesday and tell us where he stands with respect to the conflict of interest in this industry?


Hon. Andre Bissonnette (Minister of State (Small Businesses)):: Mr. Speaker, I thought I made it quite clear last Tuesday that there is no conflict of interest in this case. On the contrary, we have asked the spokesmen for the shipbuilding industry in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada to get together with a view to discussing a rationalization process and making recommendations concerning the future of this Canadian industry.


PREPARATION OF CLOSURE PLAN FOR SHIPYARDS
Michael Morris Cassidy: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker. Considering that again the answer is coming from the Minister of State for Small Businesses, can he explain, first, why Versatile Corporation Chairman Saunders has been asked to develop a plan involving the closure of the Sorel Marine Industries Limited shipyard, without the knowledge of MIL, and, second, why has the Hon. Member for Richelieu-who was directly involved-been totally ignored in this matter?


André Bissonnette: Mr. Speaker, I do not know which language to use to explain this. It has been made very clear that the Versatile chairman is one of the interested parties, so it is altogether normal that he should be involved in the discussions. What more can I say? There are three major shipyards in Quebec. Since the Versatile chairman owns two of them, it stands to reason that he has to be in on this.


Michael Morris Cassidy: To close the third one. Exactly.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.


André Bissonnette: Mr. Speaker, we are not talking about closing down shipyards at this time, we are talking about discussions on the future of Canadian shipyards.
May 15, 1986


HUMAN RIGHTS
Hon. Donald J. Johnston (Saint-Henri-Westmount):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. We read that the Prime Minister is reserving judgment on the question of human rights violations in South Korea. Could the Secretary of State tell us if he is expressing the official view of the Government and a view which the Secretary of State himself supports?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member should take it as a given that the reports he reads in the Toronto Globe and Mail do not express the view of the Government.


AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORTS
Donald James Johnston: Mr. Speaker, I take it that the Secretary of State is aware of the reports of Amnesty International which offer us examples of recent violations of human rights, the torturing of political prisoners and so on. Would he take it upon himself to issue a firm statement which makes it clear that the Canadian Government does not reserve judgment but in fact condemns these actions of the South Korean regime?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, not only am I and the Prime Minister aware of the position of Amnesty International, I am also aware of the position taken by the Prime Minister of Canada when he was in Korea, both publicly and privately. In public fora which were not recorded, and privately to the leaders of the Government of that country, he made the case very strongly of Canada's deep concern and recommendation for change about the human rights situation in South Korea. I am advised that he made representations much stronger than those that have ever been made on that issue by any other Canadian Prime Minister visiting South Korea.



SHIPYARDS


Mr. Ernie Epp (Thunder Bay-Nipigon):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. Could the Minister confirm to the House that Mr. Peter Paul Saunders, president of Versatile Corporation, was asked by the Government to find a way to shut down the shipyards of Marine Industries Limited, while in return, his
Oral Questions
own company, Versatile Davie, would receive a second construction contract from CN Marine, the Crown corporation?


André Bissonnette: Mr. Speaker, we asked Mr. Saunders to hold discussions with the other interveners in Quebec in order to know what the new policy for Canadian shipbuilding can be.



RATIONALIZATION PROPOSAL

Abram Ernest Epp: Mr. Speaker, how does the Government believe that it is fair to ask the man who is in charge of two of the yards to undertake rationalization which involves closure of the third yard? Why is the Government not seeking ways to ensure that the ships required by Canadian interests are built in Canada, rather than finding ways of shutting down yards and putting workers out of work and on to the unemployment insurance rolls?


André Bissonnette: Mr. Speaker, I answered this question just before, and I will repeat my answer. We have asked the parties concerned to get together. Should we ask outsiders to get together to tell us what the prognosis is for this industry or should we ask the parties concerned? We never mentioned closing a shipyard. We talked about the possibility of a national shipbuilding policy.



RATIONALIZATION

Jean-Claude Malépart: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of State for Small Businesses.
Mr. Speaker, in his letter, Mr. Saunders, who received a mandate from the Government, asked the Government of Quebec to rationalize the shipyards at Sorel. Yesterday, the Minister said no. Today, which shipyard is going to be phased out, the one in Lauzon or in Montreal, since Quebec refuses to rationalize the shipyards in Sorel?


André Bissonnette: Mr. Speaker, once again, the Hon. Member for Sainte-Marie is alluding to a letter sent by Mr. Saunders to a Minister in the Quebec Government, and not to a mandate given by the Department of Regional Industrial Expansion-


Jean-Claude Malépart: You said he had a mandate.


An Hon. Member:: Can't you listen?


André Bissonnette: I never said we gave him a mandate. I said we asked him to get together with his colleagues in the industry. That is what I said, and I maintain what 1 said.

May 15, 1986
Oral Questions REQUEST FOR NEW POLICY


Jean-Claude Malépart: Mr. Speaker, the Minister is contradicting himself. I have the proceedings of the committee, and the Minister said: Mr. Stevens gave Mr. Saunders a mandate to rationalize shipyard operations.
Doesn't the Minister think it would be preferable to establish a shipbuilding policy and create jobs in all our shipyards instead of trying to close some of them?


André Bissonnette: Mr. Speaker, that is exactly what 1 am saying. We must find a way to upgrade our shipyards in Canada, and we have asked the parties to submit new ideas with a view to upgrading existing shipyards across Canada, to make them more profitable and more productive. We can't ask any more than that.



CANADA POST CORPORATION


Mr. Neil Young (Beaches):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister responsible for Canada Post. Senior citizens and disabled Canadians, probably more than any other group, rely on the mails not only in order to receive pension cheques but to keep in touch with family and friends. Can the Minister tell me how he can possibly consider reducing mail service to three days a week in view of the importance of the mail to seniors and disabled Canadians as well as many other Canadians?


Hon. Michel Cote (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Canada Post):: Mr. Speaker, I think I have already answered that question in the last two days. I have said that we are examining alternatives in order to come to self-sufficiency in the next two years. In all honesty we have to examine all possible alternatives, and alternate day delivery is just one alternative that has to be examined. It might not be retained but it has to be examined.



REQUEST FOR PUBLIC HEARINGS ON ALTERNATE DAY DELIVERY PROPOSAL

Neil Young: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the same Minister. Would the Minister assure the House that before he goes ahead with any of the options he is considering, there will be full public hearings on the impact of his actions so that programs such as Seniors Alert, carried out by the letter carriers to protect and look after the interests of seniors, will not be dismantled or damaged?


Michel Côté: Mr. Speaker, I can assure my colleague of one thing, that whatever the decision will be, it will be in the best interest of all Canadians.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!



ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS


Mr. Alan Redway (York East):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of the Environment. During the last week the Minister was in Washington to discuss the question of the future clean-up of the chemical dumps along the Niagara River. Apart from any discussions relating to the future clean-up, did the Minister obtain a firm commitment either to stop up, or to divert immediately, the sewer in Buffalo, New York, which is pouring dioxins into the Niagara River? If he did not, why not?


Hon. Tom McMillan (Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, as the Hon. Member will appreciate, my negotiations and discussions with the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency focused upon the broad picture of the Niagara River and the need to reduce very substantially toxic loadings there. We did not get into individual sources, whether industrial, municipal, or disposal sites. But I mentioned this particular one as an exception because of the topicality of the data Environment Canada made available to the public last week. I arranged for them to receive that data. They have now received it, but the agency have yet to have a chance to analyse it. They promised me, however, that they would do so, and that they would address the problem in the context of the global agreement we reached in Washington this week.



MINISTER'S RELATIONS WITH PROVINCIAL COUNTERPART

Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, my question is also directed to the Minister of the Environment. On the eve of his departure for Washington, and in Washington, why did he publicize his disagreement with his Ontario colleague on how to handle toxic pollution in Lake Ontario, thus telling the U.S. Government, in a way, that the Government of Canada would settle for a second-rate clean-up plan? Why did he do that?


Thomas Michael McMillan: Mr. Speaker, the fact is that it is not a second-rate plan. It is the first time the Government of Canada has ever been able to reach an agreement with the United States on substantial toxic loadings reductions in any trans-boundary waterway. It sets a specific target, 1995. It sets a specific schedule by which to reduce toxic loadings by 50 per cent. We agreed that it would


:
May 15, 1986

serve as a general bench-mark by which we will take individual decisions for that purpose. We are mobilizing top teams of scientists to help us refine the targets and schedules. We hope to have in place by July, 1987, the best toxic reductions program ever arranged between the two countries.



MINISTER'S POSITION

Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that the Minister is more apt at taking photo opportunities or in participating in sing-songs on how to clean up toxic chemicals than in arriving at what he calls an agreement, about which nobody knows because it is kept secret.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.


Mr. Caccia:: Why is the Minister condemning his Ontario colleague for taking a position which the Minister himself took in the House on March 24 when he said: "we think the only solution for the disposal sites on the American side along the Niagara River is excavation and incineration"?


Thomas Michael McMillan: Mr. Speaker, the agreement that we reached with the Americans- and after all it is an American plan, not a Canadian one, because 90 per cent of the toxins come from American sources-addresses itself to that very point. It says, and I will quote briefly, "the basic objective is the extraction and destruction of the toxic contents of the dump sites to the maximum extent technologically feasible, taking into consideration public health and safety". We wove right into the fabric of the document the very point for which the Hon. Member has called.


Charles L. Caccia: Why don't you table it, then?



NATURE OF CLEAN-UP

James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of the Environment. Yesterday the Minister agreed with his U.S. counterpart, Lee Thomas, to hold off on any serious clean-up of Niagara River pollution for at least another year. Would the Minister tell the House exactly what clean-up and reduction in chemicals, both from the dump sites and from the sewer systems, will take place between now and July, 1987?


Thomas Michael McMillan: Mr. Speaker, I think the Hon. Member misunderstands. We are to begin immediately to clean up the toxins in the Niagara River from industrial sources, from municipal sources, and from dump sites. We have set 1995 as our target, by which time we hope to reduce toxic discharges by 50 per cent. In the meantime, because we hope to be able to advance the date and increase the amount of toxins we will be able to get out of the river, we have said that we will mobilize scientists to tell us whether by July, 1987, we will be able to refine the date. In the meantime we are using that general date as our target in our schedule.
Oral Questions



TOXIC DUMPS1TES IN UNITED STATES

James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, the Minister's mind seems to be like jello in a sieve on this matter. Is it his view- and those are his words-that the Love Canal, Hyde Park, S Area, or 102nd Street dump can be made safe without all the material within them being totally excavated and incinerated? What exactly is his view on those dumpsites?


Thomas Michael McMillan: Mr. Speaker, if the Hon. Member were genuinely interested in pollution, he would not resort to such expressions in the House of Commons. Nevertheless, my own preferred position is excavation, and I have said that. The Americans have some technological difficulties with it because the area concerned includes about 66 dump sites which, combined, are equivalent to the size of Prince Edward Island. They have a real problem finding anywhere in the United States to locate the excavated material, let alone develop the science quickly enough to incinerate without making the problem worse, because the incineration process itself contributes to environmental pollution, especially in the production of dioxin. Short of that, we favour extraction-taking the chemicals right out of the dump sites and destroying them through various means.



CLOTHING IMPORTS-GOVERNMENT POSITION

Mr. Jean-Guy Guilbault (Drummond):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of International Trade. At their annual general meeting the management of Celanese Canada asked for federal Government intervention to negotiate a new multi-fibre agreement and endorse bilateral agreements with other countries.
Does the Minister intend to negotiate these agreements to reduce imports, considering that between January and April this year, clothing imports were 13 per cent higher than during the same period in 1985?


James Francis Kelleher: Mr. Speaker, I assure the Hon. Member and all Members of the House that our Government is extremely concerned about the welfare not only of the workers but of the companies in that particular industry. In recent months, I am happy to advise him, we have entered into restraint agreements with Bangladesh, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Turkey. We are presently in the process of renegotiating a multifibre agreement with the aim of reducing growth levels, overhang, and surges.

May 15, 1986
Oral Questions SOCIAL SERVICES



CHILD CARE-ONTARIO PREMIER'S STATEMENT

Hon. Douglas C. Frith (Sudbury):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of National Health and Welfare my question is directed to the Deputy Prime Minister. Does he agree with the statement of the Premier of Ontario in which he said that child care should not be part of the welfare system but in fact is a social service that should be available to the Canadian public?


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of National Health and Welfare, who is out of Ottawa on important government business, may 1 be permitted to take that question as notice? I will have the Hon. Minister write to the Hon. Member in some detail, expounding his view of the statement by the Premier of Ontario.



COST SHARING INQUIRY

Douglas Cockburn Frith: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question on the same subject matter is for the Minister of Finance. Now that the majority of the provinces appear ready to cost share universal access to day care, is the Minister prepared to do the same in terms of the budgetary process for next year?


Hon. Michael Wilson (Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, as the Government House Leader indicated, this is a matter which the Minister of National Health and Welfare has under review. He will get back to the Hon. Member in due course.



NUCLEAR ENERGY


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. It specifically concerns the Handford nuclear reactor which is located in Washington State not far from the British Columbia border. Given that this reactor is contained with a design similar to the one at Tchernobyl and has been described by a consultant to the U.S. Regulatory Commission as "an accident waiting to happen", has the Minister specifically requested that the U.S. Government close down the Handford facility?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, I will have to see if the unnamed individual consultant cited by the Hon. Member reflects a consensus or an eccentric view. I will certainly inform myself on the question. The Hon. Member may be assured that, if there is any danger to Canadians, I will, as I always do, act to defend the Canadian interest.
[DOT] <1450)



CANADA-UNITED STATES DISCUSSIONS

Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, I am sure the Minister does not want to make British Columbia the Ukraine of North America, so I will take him up on that offer.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Would the Minister confirm that his Department has had discussions with the American Government concerning this reactor?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, I will have to inform myself on whether or not there have been discussions on the matter and I will advise the Hon. Member.
I would implore the Hon. Member, and all others in the House, not to abuse their positions as Members of this House to create false fears among the people of Canada.



DISASTERS


Mr. Bob Brisco (Kootenay West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Secretary of State for External Affairs. As the Minister is well aware, a number of students from my constituency are currently in the Soviet Union attending a one-year study course in the City of Kiev. As a result of a recent accident at the nuclear power generating station in Tchernobyl the majority of those students have left Kiev and are now in Moscow. Three of them, however, are still in Kiev.
Will the Minister inform the House of his Department's up to date assessment of the health risk to those students from Kootenay West, and does he feel the need to continue to encourage those Canadians who remain in Kiev to leave the area?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, I thank the Hon. Member for his question and know of his very active interest in the situation of his constituents in the Kiev region. Our consul was the first non-resident consul into the Kiev region after the disaster. He spoke to all of the students there. He encouraged those who were prepared to leave to leave, and helped them to do that. We are remaining in touch with those who are still there. Our information, which we cannot regard as being absolutely reliable because no one can, would suggest that there is some stabilizing of the situation in Kiev. We are keeping in touch both with the consul and with the students there to try to ensure their safety is well protected.
May 15, 1986



EMPLOYMENT


[Stage Direction]
Hon. Warren Allmand (Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine
East): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Acting Minister of Employment. Earlier this week I asked the Minister to explain why so many of her regional offices were reporting they had no funds for job development when there were many outstanding applications, but she did not answer. Today I have an internal memo from her Associate Deputy Minister to all regional directors in which he says:
You will appreciate that we face a challenge in meeting the Minister's direction to implement a more controlled flow of program activity throughout the year.
Does this explain why many regional offices have frozen their job development funds and have no money for job applications now?
Hon. Bill McKnight (Minister of Labour):: Mr. Speaker, as the Hon. Member has addressed his question to the Acting Minister, I will take that as notice and inform my colleague who is away from the House of Commons on Government business. I would think, however, the Hon. Member should recognize that since this Government took office in September, 1984, some 630,000 new jobs have been created, that the youth unemployment rate is down to the level it was in 1981; that mortgage rates are down; that economic activity is up, and therefore employment is up. I am sure the Hon. Member would like to recognize that in the House.



GOVERNMENT POSITION

[Stage Direction]
Hon. Warren Allmand (Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine
East): Mr. Speaker, the Acting Minister is indeed an actor. Why is the Government spreading these job development funds over an extended period when jobs are needed now in many areas of the country, including Atlantic Canada, Quebec, British Columbia, and even Alberta? Why is the Government spreading it out over a long period when jobs are needed now?
William Hunter (Bill) McKnight: Mr. Speaker, I am sure the Hon. Member will appreciate the answer from my colleague when she returns to the House. It will be given to him in the fullest. The ability of this Government to create employment, to endeavour to help those who need employment, is well known and well recognized. It is spread across this country from one end to the other where employment has increased since September, 1984.



THE ADMINISTRATION


Mr. Ian Deans (Hamilton Mountain):: Mr. Speaker, if it be true that the Government intends to proceed with this
Oral Questions
independent inquiry into the problems of the former Minister of Regional Economic Expansion, will the Government include within the terms of reference that the Opposition Parties in the House of Commons will have official standing before such an inquiry in order that they can be represented in the questioning and the providing of evidence?


Charles Joseph Clark: Will they refrain from jumping over tables?


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, I do not know whether the hon. gentleman, when he describes problems of the former Minister, wants his problems brought before such an investigation. I am sorry I must have entirely missed the point of his question. The investigation will be conducted in accordance with due processes that have parliamentary imprimatur.



ROLE OF OPPOSITION PARTIES IN INVESTIGATION PROCEEDINGS

Ian Deans: I do not quite understand what it is that the Deputy Prime Minister has difficulty with, Mr. Speaker. Let me ask him, so that even he might understand it, will the opposition Parties have standing before the chairman or the commission, or the board, or whatever it is that is struck to conduct this so-called impartial investigation?


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, the conduct of the investigation is surely a matter that would be left entirely to the impartial person who is going to be appointed.


Ian Deans: That is ridiculous. You set the terms of reference.


Erik Nielsen: The hon. gentleman, if he knew anything about this place-


Ian Deans: I don't need lectures from you after the last two weeks-


Erik Nielsen: -would know that there are ample precedents for proceeding along these lines.


Mr. Nystrom:: Doberman.


Erik Nielsen: They have been in place for the almost 30 years I have been here.



PUBLIC SERVICE


Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the President of the Treasury Board. On April 17, 1985 the Minister proudly told the House he had

May 15, 1986
Point of Order-Mr. Caccia
signed a pension agreement with the Public Service unions. A year has gone by, so would he tell us where we stand today? Was an agreement concluded, so that pensioners might know what to expect?


Hon. Robert de Cotret (President of the Treasury Board):: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to respond to the question of my colleague. In keeping with the general principles included in the agreement I tabled in the House in April 1985, we have continued to work both within the Treasury Board and in consultation with the unions. A document has been submitted to Cabinet and discussions with the unions on the final draft will be completed in the next few days. I will certainly be in a position to report to the House before the end of the session.



INQUIRY WHETHER PENSIONERS WERE REPRESENTED DURING NEGOTIATIONS

Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, were pensioners represented at the negotiations? If so, at what level?


Robert René de Cotret: The pensioners' association has a representative on the pension advisory committee. Their viewpoint was taken into consideration during the discussions, and I can assure my colleague that our 1984 election campaign commitment concerning the protection of vested rights will be honoured in the agreement which will be presented to the House.



REGULATIONS


Mr. Gabriel Fontaine (Levis):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the President of the Privy Council and Minister responsible for regulations.
On March 6 the Minister presented his code of ethics concerning regulations. Can he now give the House a report progress on this matter?


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, again my colleague shows interest in the matter of regulations. I am pleased to inform him that the Government has finalized the action plan to put order in the regulations. I will unveil the details of this plan on May 27.



AIRPORTS


Mr. Les Benjamin (Regina West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport. Yesterday the Minister informed us that he was investigating this new security company in regard to the provision of the security services at Mirabel and Dorval and that he would report back. Does this lucky two-week old company have completely separate assets? Does it have its own security licence, assets, and insurance? Is it bonded? Does it have an office of its own, or is it simply a shell company put together only for the purposes of receiving money from an untendered contract?


J. Michael Forrestall: Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Minister of Transport undertook to secure for the Hon. Member the answers to a series of questions which he posed. I am pleased to advise today that the two companies are separate. There are no common assets, fixed or otherwise. Yes, in fact the companies are bonded through the usual national bonding services. Yes, in fact they are either fully licensed or in the process of the approval of those licences both in the Province of Quebec and the Province of Ontario. Without any question, neither the Senator nor his wife has any interest whatsoever-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. It is three o'clock. The Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia) has given me notice of a desire to raise a point of order.



POINT OF ORDER


Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, during Question Period in reply to a question of mine the Minister of the Environment (Mr. McMillan) read from a document. I wonder whether, in conformity with customary practice in the House, the Minister would have any objection to tabling the document.


Thomas Michael McMillan: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member referred to a document which I personally sent to his office upon its release from Washington. He had it 24 hours ago. I simply quoted from that document which he probably has in his own pocket.


Mr. Guilbault (Saint-Jacques):: That doesn't answer the question.
May 15, 1986


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The Hon. Minister is indicating that he quoted from this document? He, therefore, has no choice under the rules but to table the document.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, I would like to seek your advice on this matter. My understanding is that it is one thing to quote from documents which may be in the form of press releases or notes. However, if 1 am not mistaken, I believe the rules only require the tabling of documents which are documents of state.


Sheila Maureen Copps: The ruling has already been made.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: If that is not the case, I would be interested. I think it is an important point to take under consideration.
I do not think that the tabling of documents and notes used by Ministers to assist them with statistics is contemplated by the rules or the precedents.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I am prepared to hear arguments from the Hon. the President of the Privy Council or the Minister. However, I did hear the Minister say that he quoted from a document which he had sent to the Member.


Thomas Michael McMillan: Mr. Speaker, I referred to a document which is a public news release. It was issued by me out of Washington. I sent a copy of it to the Hon. Member in his capacity as environment critic for the Official Opposition. 1 referred to it only by way of replying to a question, the answer to which was obvious.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The table advises me that the Minister has sent the document to the table, in which case I take it he is volunteering to table it. What is the Minister telling me is his position on the point of order raised by the Hon. Member for Davenport?


Thomas Michael McMillan: Mr. Speaker, I am telling the Hon. Member that I have no problem tabling the document from which I quoted. However, the broader principle stands. The President of the Privy Council (Mr. Hnatyshyn) has stated, and I agree with him, that because a Minister quotes from a piece of paper does not necessarily mean it need be tabled if it does not fall into certain categories.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Oh, no.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The Chair has ruled on that question many times and as recently as two weeks ago. I have to deal with the point of order that is raised. I take it the Hon. Minister is tabling the document voluntarily. I take it that is what has happened. Therefore, it is done.
Point of Order-Mr. Bissonnette



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE


Jacques Guilbault: This being
Thursday, Mr. Speaker, may I ask the Government House Leader, the Hon. the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Hnatyshyn), if he would tell us what Government business he plans to bring before the House next week?


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, I will announce the business of the House tomorrow because, following Oral Questions Period, we will have a meeting with the Hon. Member and the Hon. Member for Hamilton Mountain (Mr. Deans).

We know that tomorrow is an allotted Opposition Day. Perhaps it would be easiest and most convenient for us to discuss the business and then I can announce the business for next week during Routine Proceedings tomorrow, with the leave of the House.



POINT OF ORDER


André Bissonnette: Mr. Speaker, during Oral Question Period, the Hon. Member for Montreal-Sainte-Marie (Mr. Malepart) mentioned that this week I said before a committee that we had given Mr. Saunders a mandate. I would ask him to withdraw those words, and I would like to quote page 3 of-


Some Hon. Members:: Point of order!


Mr. Speaker:: I believe the Minister is saying there is a difference of opinion about the facts. That is a matter for debate, not a point of order, and we have established this many times.


André Bissonnette: Mr. Speaker, could I ask you ... could the Hon. Member-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Does the Minister have another point of order?


André Bissonnette: Mr. Speaker, may 1 ask you a question at this point?


Mr. Speaker:: No.


André Bissonnette: Maybe if... Can a Member-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The Minister has informed the Chair that he disagrees with something another Member said.

May 15, 1986
Supply
That is what he said. It is not a point of order. It is a difference of opinion concerning the facts. That is a matter for debate.


Jean-Claude Malépart: Bye! Bye!


Mr. Speaker:: It is not a point of order.


Mr. Lewis:: Bring back Sauve.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please! I will require the Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Lewis) to withdraw that. The Hon. Parliamentary Secretary deliberately said that for the Chair to hear. I must ask him to withdraw his comment.


Philip Derek Lewis: I withdraw.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Fulton:
That this House urges the government to immediately initiate a full public inquiry into the future of nuclear power.
Mr. Speaker:: When the House rose at one o'clock there were eight minutes remaining in the period for questions and comments. If I remember correctly, the Hon. Member was about to answer a question from the Hon. Member for Surrey-White Rock-North Delta (Mr. Friessen). Therefore, I will recognize the Hon. Member for Regina East (Mr. de Jong).


Simon Leendert de Jong: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member had asked me to make clear the position of the Conservative Party vis-a-vis its call for a full public inquiry into the future of nuclear power. As well, he pointed out that in the position paper they also restated their belief that there were good markets for CANDU technology and that there was some possibility of exporting surplus electric power to the United States. I am concerned about those two aspects, the sale of the CANDU reactor and our technology.
I noted as well that the Conservative statement was somewhat critical of the Liberal Government for selling the Canadian technology to Romania in exchange for Romanian strawberries. I am still concerned about the sale of our nuclear technology to other states. I continue to be concerned about the possible sale of CANDU reactors to Romania, South Korea, Venezuela, Argentina, and all the other places to which our salesmen have gone. Certainly the conditions under which we have made these past sales have been questionable.
As I pointed out in my address, I am concerned about numerous instances in which technology, sold for peaceful purposes, has ultimately been used for the production of warlike materials. A public inquiry should address that question as well.
It is important that we again look at the economics of the nuclear industry, particularly as they relate to sales to the U.S. of our surplus electrical energy. It seems to me that the economics are just not there. For us to get into large-scale production of nuclear power plants in the hope of making some profit by selling the electricity to the U.S. just does not make sense.
In earlier debates, when the Government chose to shut down all the conservation and off-oil programs, I pointed out the per barrel cost of energy equivalents. Venture gas, for example, comes in at $35 a barrel equivalent; Hibernia is $30; Point Lepreau No. 2 reactor is $70 per barrel equivalent. On the conservation side, we have oil which is equivalent to $5 per barrel. I was trying to point out that it is much cheaper to conserve at a cost of around $5 per barrel equivalent rather than going the nuclear route which, at around $70 per barrel equivalent, is the most expensive route. I think it is ludicrous to suggest that we can build nuclear reactors, with their associated problems of waste disposal and environmental protection, and still sell the power produced to the U.S. at a profit. However, if Hon. Members opposite are serious, I plead with them to allow a public inquiry to determine whether these are indeed viable options. Is it viable economically? Is it environmentally safe? Let there be a public inquiry.
One of the things which saddens us is the secrecy surrounding the nuclear industry.


John Horton McDermid: Nonsense.


Simon Leendert de Jong: The Hon. Member says "nonsense".


John Horton McDermid: I certainly do.


Simon Leendert de Jong: I can relate my own personal experience. A number of years ago we had a very serious spill in northern Saskatchewan.


John Horton McDermid: A number of years ago! Things have changed since then.


Simon Leendert de Jong: Not too many years ago. Two or three years ago. A group of my colleagues and I wanted to visit Key Lake and other mines in northern Saskatchewan. We had real difficulty getting into the federal Government controlled mine. We had real difficulty getting the environmental reports. We had real difficulty getting the health and welfare reports. In fact, I still have not received some of the reports I requested. There were difficulties here in Ottawa and in Saskatchewan with the Conservative provincial Government. For them to tell me it is an open society and anything we want is available I say
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is bunk. When 1 attempted to get important data relating to the environmental and health and welfare effects I was stonewalled. For Hon. Members across the way to suggest that it is all open means they are being hoodwinked by the industry itself.
There is one phrase which should really sum up this debate: Remember the Titanic.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: A short supplementary.


Benno Friesen: Mr. Speaker, in all honesty, that Member can never criticize cabinet Ministers for the way they answer questions because he has certainly not answered my question. The NDP presented a truncated version of our campaign statement. In the process, including in the remarks they have made today, they have tried to convey to the Canadian people that the purpose of our policy statement was to stop nuclear energy from being produced in Canada.


James Ross Fulton: Point of order. What the Hon. Member is saying, as is often the case, is totally false and misleading.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: Order, please.


Benno Friesen: Their entire debate has been based on the presumption that our campaign promise, in the truncated version they presented, was designed to stop nuclear power generation. It was not that at all. It was a matter of bringing order to the process. The question was: Is the NDP, in its resolution, not misleading the Canadian people in that sense?
I would now like to ask my supplementary question. The Hon. Member suggested an alternative, and it was a good one. Because there would be a shortfall in electrical power generation it would have to be replaced with something. He suggested there should be economies. I think that is a good suggestion, but it would not apply everywhere in the world. There are certain places where cutting back and economizing is not an adequate solution.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: Questions and comments are now over. Debate.


Simon Leendert de Jong: Surely I have an opportunity to answer that comment?


John Horton McDermid: You were too long in your last answer.


Simon Leendert de Jong: Does the questioner have the last say?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: Order, please. 1 recognize the point the Hon. Member is making. It is a 10-minute period for questions and comments and sometimes Members tend to forget that if they ask a question they should be able to expect an answer. Certain Members, while commenting or answering a question, should also bear in mind that other Members may want to make comments or put questions to them. It is not a period for speeches. We are now way over the period for questions and comments and the Hon. Member will have other opportunities during the afternoon, if he
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wishes, to reply, perhaps indirectly, or to participate in the debate. The Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia).


Simon Leendert de Jong: Mr. Speaker, does this not then destroy the spirit of this-


Benno Friesen: I will have another question afterwards.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: Let me say to the Hon. Member, indeed all Members of the House, that I understand full well the point he is making. I think the decision I have come to is in conformity with that point. I take this opportunity to remind all Members that when they put questions or make comments they should bear in mind that other Members will make replies, and they should allow time for such replies. The Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia).


Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, the motion before us today reads as follows:
That this House urges the Government to immediately initiate a full public inquiry into the future of nuclear power.
In putting that motion forward, I suppose the mover and his Party intended to put to the test a commitment made by the Progressive Conservative Party during the last election when, I am told, they said that the Progressive Convervative Party would advocate a full public inquiry into the future of nuclear power and open the nuclear power approval process to the public. That was certainly a substantial commitment. Apparently this is one of many promises that were not kept. In this particular field it is a promise which should not be made lightly, considering the implications and the rising expectations which follow a promise of that kind.
I would have preferred that the mover of the motion had added four words to his motion so that it would read, "That this House urges the Government to immediately initiate a full public inquiry into the future of nuclear power at home and abroad".
Why do I say that? Because the picture emerging is far from reassuring. There are 26 nations with nuclear power operating a total of some 374 reactors around the world.
As a civilization we have adopted in North America, Europe and other continents, this kind of technology. We must, sooner or later, ask ourselves whether we want to strengthen and accelerate this process, whether we want to examine it, and, if so, what are the options, and whether we want to reduce our dependence on nuclear power.
I would have preferred a motion that had been global rather than limited to the situation in Canada. I do not know whether we can launch an investigation of this kind, ignoring what is happening around us on this continent and in other parts of the globe. Why is that? I am saying that because the recent serious incident in Tchernobyl has demonstrated the consequences of an explosion or a meltdown is such that it affects the global community. It is not like a railway accident or a fire

May 15, 1986
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in an urban centre. It is an event that has far reaching and long-term consequences well beyond the boundaries of the nation where the melt down or accident occurred.
How can we preserve the human race and ensure the health of present and future generations? I must tell you that the present situation leaves very much to be desired. We have created, in an effort through the United Nations in Vienna some years ago, an organization called the International Atomic Energy Agency. That organization was created with a very clear purpose in mind. It was created in order to ensure that nuclear reactors built for peaceful purposes, anywhere in the world, would not be used for military purposes. In that respect I suppose the Atomic Energy Commission in Vienna has performed reasonably well. It has probably fulfilled its mandate, but only within that very narrow scope I mentioned earlier.
The question is, how can we use this existing agency for the protection of health in case of accidents, explosions and meltdowns of this nature in the future? Number one, there are at the present time no internationally agreed upon standards of safety. Every country sets its own standards, and hopefully enforces them, evidently not always with great success, otherwise we would not have had Chernobyl, we would not have had Three Mile Island and we would not have had other known or even perhaps unknown accidents in the history of the nuclear industry.
The question is raised, how do we as a global community develop standards of safety that can be accepted by all nations and become the basic rules of acceptable performance in the nuclear industry all over the world, not just in one country? Secondly, is who is going to enforce them? Although we have the Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna we do not have in that agency the muscle or the teeth required to perform that policing role. Until there is an enforcement agency that ensures that the standards which have been agreed upon are enforced, respected, and put into place, we will be living in an uncertain world. We have 26 nations, as I mentioned to you earlier, with 374 reactors as a global total, each one happily operating independently from the others with different standards, which may be good, but which may also be very shaky, and with no international co-operation to ensure that these operations are safe.
If Chernobyl has taught us anything, it is that whichever nation operates nuclear reactors it has a responsibility to its own citizens, as well as to the neighbouring nations. Otherwise you would not have at the present time, as is the case in Europe, the stopping of cattle and food products at the border between east and west. You would not have grazing prohibitions in some countries until a certain date in the month of May in order to prevent the radiation from moving into milk, and therefore, into the human body. You would not have a number of measures that have been taken in the last 10 days in order to protect health outside the Soviet Union from an event that has taken place inside. You can see the implications and the repercussions that take place in neighbouring nations as a
result of actions taken in one nation and crossing the oceans, so to speak, without respect for boundaries in other continents.
It would seem that an examintaion of the future of nuclear power, limited to Canada, would serve a very limited purpose at this stage, considering how many countries have advanced, considering how many countries have committed themselves, like France, for instance, to having some 400 nuclear reactors in place by the end of the century in order to meet their energy requirements.
There is a global situation here that requires some attention. This is why in recent days I have urged the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Epp) and the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Clark), to take an initiative in Canada's name at the UN to see whether there are ways in which we can perform a leading role-considering also the reputation that we have in the global community-in bringing all the interested nations to the table. These should include not only those with nuclear reactor nations, 26 of them, but also the others. We could in this way attempt to produce the regulations and the enforcement standards I referred to earlier as a global initiative. Canada could perform a first class role in this respect. I submit that it has an opportunity to do so. I submit to you that it should also take this opportunity in the name of all those who are very preoccupied, and quite understandably so, as a result of the Tchernobyl event.
That is one observation which comes to mind in reading this particular motion by the Member for Skeena (Mr. Fulton), whom I congratulate for having taken this fine initiative.
The second thought which comes to mind when reading this particular motion is that I would prefer a public consultation, rather than an inquiry, in a forum where over the next couple of years we would consider the future energy needs of Canada, looking at perhaps the year 2020. If you like we could look at the year 2010. The Government of Canada, in an unusually enlightened manner, considering its performance these days, could somehow reach out and say to the public, "We want to know what your thoughts are as to our energy requirements by a certain year?". That would probably correspond with the emergence of a new generation, the youngsters who are now in school.
We would like to know how much we should depend on oil or gas or nuclear energy and how much we should depend on renewable sources, biomass and other sources of energy about which I am not very knowledgeable.
We should somehow focus the attention of the nation on a projected date and eventually, after having carried out public consultation and consultations with various industries and all the sectors interested in energy, the matter will come to rest in Ottawa and the Government would then eventually publish a plan for Canada's energy needs by, let us say, the year 2010. Through that plan we would have an indication of what our requirements are, which would not be a bad thing to know-
May 15, 1986

we do not seem to know it today-and how these requirements should be broken down into the four or five categories I mentioned previously.
I suspect with that kind of consultation, Canadians would be able to tell us as a Parliament and as a Government whether we should maintain our dependence on nuclear energy, whether we should reduce our dependency or whether we should even phase it out. It is quite possible that many interesting ideas would emerge in that process. That has always been our experience when we were in Government whenever we launched a broad public consultation process.
The plan which has emerged in Sweden for its energy requirements by the year 2010-I am just going by memory- has led that country to conclude it should gradually phase out its dependence on nuclear power. That was a wish expressed by the population in consultation with the various sectors. What would happen in Canada? We do not know. However, it certainly has merit as a process, for any democracy at a certain point to look at its long-term requirements and the future and listen to the public about how we should specifically target our requirements by a certain date with respect to oil and gas, nuclear power and renewables such as sun, wind and biomass at large. I think that would be a very healthy exercise and would be very revealing.
I noticed in the Montreal Gazette of May 10 an article by Warren Caragata of the Canadian Press entitled: "Candu reactors are not meltdown-proof'. Mr. Caragata quotes Mr. Domaratski, director general of reactor regulation at the Atomic Energy Control Board, as acknowledging that. He said:
-a meltdown could produce a "catastrophe" involving thousands of deaths.
But he said the risk of a meltdown is so remote, and the chances of major releases of radiation are so small, there's no point in trying to engineer a reactor building to guard against those possibilities.
I learn about these things from the newspapers as does the public and I find statements of this kind a bit unsettling because of the confused message they deliver. I suspect that Canadians at large when they read reports like this would wonder as well. Thank God, so far in Pickering, we have a nuclear plant which has a record of regular performance without accident. The production in Ontario of nuclear power alone corresponds to some 30 per cent of the total requirements of the people in that province.
Over the years, the source of nuclear electricity has become of major importance. We have progressed quite a lot in our dependency on nuclear power in certain parts of the country. But all of a sudden, and I suspect this is the reason we have the motion before us today, the whole dependency on nuclear power has become questionable, and understandably so in the light of the consequences which can be caused by a major disaster. I do not know how well we can change our course of action at this point, having already built what we have built, but certainly we are still in time to determine our future and decide whether we stay where we are without adding to the
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number of nuclear reactors, some of which are being planned in some quarters.
Even if we continued with our dependency on nuclear power, we could still begin a policy of gradual reduction of that dependence over the long term, if that is the will of Canadians. That could be achieved if we were to have a sufficiently long span of time. If we do that, we will have to be quite sure of the alternatives on which we will depend. I am told by scientists that in the long term there are opportunities shaping up in the field of energy by way of fission, that technology is advancing in the direction of producing energy by fission. This will permit the production of energy in the quantities we need without having to engage in processes like nuclear power, which are so disturbing in terms of realities.
I would imagine that the nuclear industry at this stage would do itself a great favour if it were to come finally to a conclusion in its research on how to dispose of spent fuel rods. There is a substantial quantity of these fuel rods accumulating at reactor plants in Ontario. This is temporary disposal in expectation of permanent disposition, which is the subject of intensive studies by the relevant authorities. I think the concern of Canadians would be partially allayed if the disposition of spent fuel rods could be resolved soon, so as to at least demonstrate that the industry is capable of disposing of its waste in a proper and environmentally acceptable manner.


Mr. Riis:: Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the Hon. Member's presentation. I found myself agreeing with a great deal of what he had to say. I would like his view on the following. With regard to the whole area of nuclear energy we keep hearing from various sources, officials who represent the industry and now, most recently, from the Government, that everything is fine. The Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Miss Carney) indicated that the matter is being studied, but to date she and her colleagues have confidence in our own nuclear reactors as they operate in Canada.
I could not help but think back to a time, not many weeks ago, in the House when the Minister of Finance (Mr. Wilson) stood up and said that everything was fine with the two western banks, that the depositors and so on need not worry. He said: "Everything is fine. I am the expert. I am the Minister of Finance and I know these things". The Minister of State for Finance (Mrs. McDougall) then stood up and said: "I am second-in-command here. I have expertise in banking. The banks are sound and stable. There is no worry at all". Even the Inspector General of Banks, the top-ranking public servant in banking matters, said on many occasions: "There is nothing to worry about. These are fine, upstanding, strong and stable banks". Then the Governor of the Bank of Canada stood up and said: "The banks are fine". These were statements made by the most senior financial officials in Canada. They said that our banks, in this case the Canadian Commercial Bank and the Northland Bank, were perfectly sound. They were absolutely and totally wrong.

May 15, 1986
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When we hear officials in the nuclear industry now stand up and say: "Everything is fine and safe, there is no need to worry, we have all safeguards built in", and when the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources stands up and says: "Everything is fine, we have full confidence in the system", one begins to realize why we are less than confident in their words.
This is what L want to ask the Hon. Member, is not the nuclear industry existing on a whole set of lies in which people say that the industry is, in fact, safe when no one knows for sure if it is or not? This is why we are arguing that, not knowing for sure, we should not proceed to develop such, if you will, a horrible industry in terms of what it can do to humanity. Is this not an industry based on lies, lies from whatever country, at whatever level of the bureaucracy, either here or in other international spheres?


Charles L. Caccia: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member for Kamloops-Shuswap (Mr. Riis) attributes to me a greater knowledge than I have in my capacity to analyze the industry's qualifications. I am inclined to think that the industry is comprised of professionals who believe in what they are doing. They have produced energy for Canada according to a technology which has its good features and its negative features. Therefore I do not think it would be wise to describe the people in that industry in the way in which the Hon. Member has, although I can understand that he wants to make a point.
The fact is that the industry in Canada is not operating in isolation. There are nuclear reactors which have been built, are being built and which will be built outside Canada, in substantial numbers. While all this is taking place there is no international set of rules on how to protect ourselves as a species while all this is going on. I do not consider this to be a Mephistophelean plan being undertaken by a few evil-minded individuals, but by technicians who are pursuing a certain technology which is available, which mankind has discovered and which-


Nelson Andrew Riis: Which they say is safe.


Charles L. Caccia: -they claim is safe.
Having said that, there is nothing wrong with politicians displaying a healthy degree of scepticism on behalf of the public. Judging by the competent questions the Hon. Member for Kamloops-Shuswap asks of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Wilson), I am sure that is something of which the Hon. Member is capable. I say that it is good, particularly in the Opposition, in order to demonstrate that we want to probe and press any statement which comes from the government side, including statements with regard to this particular sector.
In conclusion, as I understand the issue at this stage at least,
I am more pre-occupied with the horrendous vacuum which surrounds these 26 nations which have 374 reactors, in that there are no game rules for international protection in view of the international consequences of disasters. Perhaps I am somewhat narrow-minded, but we all have our weaknesses.


James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, I have a brief question to ask of the Hon. Member who gave what I thought was a very good and interesting speech. I am sure he is aware that motion before the House is for Parliament, and in particular for the Government, to consider having a full public inquiry into nuclear power, as was promised during the election campaign. We have heard and seen in the press differing views from different members of the Hon. Member's Party. I would like to know whether the Liberal Party has a solid position in relation to having or not having a full public inquiry into nuclear power.


Charles L. Caccia: Mr. Speaker, I hope that at the next convention, which will be held here in Ottawa in November, we will tackle this very important issue. I would also like to add that in tackling it I would like to see it approached as an over-all issue; that is, one with respect to the importance of determining for Canada the elements of an energy plan with a certain date in mind. In this way it can be established how much we want to depend on each of the components within an energy plan, including nuclear, as opposed to singling out one.
Why am I saying this? I think that it is a more productive exercise to look at a distant date. This will make the issue less political, since we do not know who will be in power in the year 2010. Therefore the exercise can be somewhat cooler. It can include the examination of the four or five components which I mentioned, oil and gas, biomass, solar, wind, nuclear and so forth. The Canadian public can be actively engaged in the exercise in an attempt and read what our requirements will be as a total. Then we can break that requirement down by sector and get a reading, a sense of direction from the public that we would consult. I hope that we might be able to do that, although I cannot give the Hon. Member a guarantee that it will occur at our convention here in Ottawa.


Mr. Ravis:: Mr. Speaker, I do not have a question for the Hon. Member, but I would like to make a comment as someone who hails from the largest uranium-producing province in this country, if not in the world, that is, Saskatchewan. One thing I found decided after listening, not only to the Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia) but the other two speakers from the NDP Party who preceded him, was that if in fact the industry is made up of a lot of people who tell lies, then I guess I have to ask the following rhetorical question. What happens to someone who spends $600 million of public money in Saskatchewan to open up these mines and who encourages the investment of literally millions of dollars from the international market-place, and from the mining industry, when we now hear from the Leader of the NDP Party in Saskatchewan that maybe these mines might be closed down? It is no wonder that the industry is in a great state of confusion.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I think my hon. friend made an inadvertent error when he referred to the NDP Party-
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The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: Order, order.


Nelson Andrew Riis: NDP Party would mean the New Democratic Party Party.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: Order, please. Has the Hon. Member for Saskatoon East (Mr. Ravis) finished his comment?


Donald Paul Ravis: Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to make a comment.
I did not have a question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: Very rapidly, the Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia).


Charles L. Caccia: Mr. Speaker, the comment requires a quick clarification. The Hon. Member for Saskatoon East (Mr. Ravis) attributed to me a statement which I did not make when describing the industry. Therefore, it was made by someone else. Second, I am not aware of any decision made in Saskatchewan by the NDP to eliminate or even reduce its use and dependence on nuclear energy.


Hon. Bob Layton (Minister of State (Mines)):: Mr. Speaker, in listening to the presentations made by my colleagues today, I was taken back only a few days to the visit I made on behalf of the Government of Canada to Romania last week. The President of Romania, President Ceausescu, is an outspoken world leader for peaceful use of nuclear energy and power-


Charles L. Caccia: But he hasn't got the money to pay. That's his problem.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Put his money where his mouth is.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: Order.


Robert E.J. Layton: In the last 15 or 17 years, the Government of Romania has examined the energy needs of that country. Let us just imagine having lived in Bucharest last winter and having been permitted only one 40-watt light bulb. This was done in order to bring that country's economy into balance with its ability to pay. It is reducing its international debt. In putting themselves through that, Romanians have made a decision, with all of the technology at the disposal of that country and with the Government's capability to negotiate, to acquire the technology which Canadians developed, the CANDU nuclear reactor.
Our visit was coincidental with the accident at Chernobyl. Romania is within the 500-kilometre ring that was uncertain for public safety. Notwithstanding this, that society is totally committed to its need for nuclear energy.
We visited one single site at which four units of CANDU capacity are being constructed at the same time. There is confidence that Canadians and Canadian technology are capable and safe.
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You will recall, Mr. Speaker, having shared in those discussions with the Romanian leaders, that the one thing they were looking for from Canada was the reassurance and reminder that, when dealing with danger, quality control in all its elements, including design, construction, equipment, installation, operation and supervision, will become more and more essential. Canadians working around the world, particularly in such a strange environment as eastern Europe, are looked to with confidence for that kind of quality.
We as a Government are concerned with safety for workers. We are concerned with safety for the public. We are doing this by demanding and rigidly applying all of the standards we have developed along with the Atomic Energy Control Board. It would be very easy to say: "Let's put a moratorium on the nuclear energy industry. Let's close it up. Let's go to some other alternative". However, all of the soft alternatives like solar, wind and wave energy are, as anyone with an engineering background will conclude, very limited resources compared to the demands our society today makes on its energy systems. Low-cost oil and gas is inevitably limited. Alternatives such as coal introduce other environmental concerns and costs.
When Canada shares its advanced, reliable and Canadian developed technology with Romania, Korea or Argentina, we do it with a sense of responsibility. The Government and the business community work together to ensure that the country that is applying that technology will receive our best counsel. We have confidence in our skills and technologies. That includes not simply the front end of the cycle at mining.
I was happy to hear the Hon. Member for Algoma (Mr. Foster) refer to the tremendous uranium mining industry and our ability to refine uranium for the market-place. I will reassure the Hon. Member that it is our policy to refine our resources as much as possible here in Canada.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Including uranium?


Robert E.J. Layton: Including uranium.
I was a little puzzled by the speeches by representatives of the New Democratic Party. They seem to be out of step with reality.


John Horton McDermid: You shouldn't. It's the same old wacky-


Robert E.J. Layton: Same old NDP. They talk as if there were not a nuclear energy industry in Canada. A few moments ago, the Hon. Member for Saskatoon East (Mr. Ravis) said that Saskatchewan is without any doubt the most richly endowed resource centre for uranium in the world. That is something that has been given to Canada to share safely with the world.
I welcome the opportunity to speak on this opposition motion. It is a motion that allows us to put the facts on the table, and the facts are clear when it comes to the issue of nuclear power in Canada. First, let us look at the differences between Canada's CANDU system and the nuclear systems of the Soviet Union.

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Over the past 26 years since Canada entered the nuclear age, the CANDU system has constantly out-performed almost every system in the world, both in terms of generating capacity and safety. Of the 212 large power reactors in the world, six of Canada's 18 CANDUs were in the top 10 in terms of lifetime performance.
Our capacity of 11,000 megawatts exceeds that of the entire James Bay hydro-electric complex and ranks Canada sixth in the world ahead of Great Britain and 15 other OECD countries. Nuclear power met 13.5 per cent of all Canadian electrical demand last year and almost 40 per cent of Ontario's demand in 1985. In other words, we believe that nuclear power in Canada is here to stay.
Nuclear power provides direct employment for 35,000 people. It generates well over $1 billion worth of electricity each year at costs considerably less than the next best alternatives, imported coal or oil.
The Canadian nuclear industry has always been aware of the potential hazards of producing energy from nuclear fission. It has always met the strict regulations of its licensing authority, the Atomic Energy Control Board. As a result, the CANDU nuclear reactor has a safety record virtually unequalled by any other industry. In 133 reactor years of CANDU operation in Canada, there has never been an injury of any kind to a member of the public. There has never been a release of radioactivity of a measurable exposure from any Canadian nuclear station to the public. In over 100 million person-hours of work carried out, no one has been killed or injured through the production of nuclear power.
Since the early 1970s, Ontario Hydro has tried to keep radioactive emissions from CANDU nuclear plants to 1 per cent or less of the regulatory limit set by the AECB.
The AECB annual regulatory limit has never been exceeded, and generally Ontario Hydro has met its self-imposed limit. Regular monitoring shows that radioactive emissions from nuclear power stations are only a fraction of emissions from natural sources and have a negligible effect upon the environment.
A person living on the boundary of a CANDU station would receive only one millirem of radiation per year. This compares with about 100 millirem per year from natural sources. The maximum permissible annual dose for an individual member of the public is 500 millirem.
The CANDU safety approach recognizes that systems and human beings are not perfect. CANDU plant design minimizes the effects of such failings. In practice, good design ensures that an accident is unlikely to occur. This is coupled with strict quality control during manufacture and installation, and with periodic inspection of the major components during the lifetime of the plant.
Information about Canada's nuclear system is widely available. The industry is regulated by an independent body
with an expert staff, the AECB. All unusual incidents at nuclear power plants, however minor, are reported to the AECB, and the reports are available to the media and the public. There is a continuing review of reactor safety to build in lessons learned from normal operation and accidents.
The Chernobyl reactor is different from CANDU reactors. Nonetheless, our officials will study that accident, looking for ways to improve our safeguards.
There are serious public concerns about the Tchernobyl accident. Health and Welfare Canada is monitoring conditions to protect the health of Canadians. Radiation is considered a particular hazard in many peoples' minds, perhaps because of its association with cancer. Critics insist that there is no safe level of radiation; even small doses carry some risk with them. In order to be on the safe side, regulators accept this as true and set their permissible levels accordingly. However, it takes a significant dose of radiation to produce a significant risk of cancer. In the same sense, there is absolutely no safe level of doing anything, even driving to work.
The impact of low level radiation on health is so small that it is very difficult to measure. We all receive a dose of about 300 millirem each year from natural and medical sources. This is much more than the few millirem we could receive each year from living next door to a nuclear plant or a uranium mine.
By comparison, a cross-Canada return jet flight would give an additional dose of a few millirem. This is equivalent to the health risk incurred by smoking a single cigarette. A larger additional dose could be received by simply moving from one location in Canada to another because of the variation in natural radiation background.
Finally, let me come to the question of whether we need a royal commission to investigate all the implications of uranium mining and the nuclear fuel cycle in Canada. There has been a large number of public inquiries into nuclear power in Canada in recent years, and their proceedings and reports have contributed to the information and analysis available to the public.
The Ontario Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning, known as the Porter Commission, published a comprehensive set of reports after five years of work and several million dollars worth of expenditures. The Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry has also reported. These two bodies have taken a very broad view of their mandate and have considered international implications, as well as the moral and ethical aspects of the entire nuclear fuel cycle. In each case they have endorsed the use of nuclear power.
In Ontario a parliamentary select committee on hydro affairs investigated a number of aspects of the nuclear industry-electrical demand, reactor safety, and waste management practices, including the joint Canada-Ontario program for the management of spent reactor fuel wastes and the problem of uranium mine tailings. The committee found that Ontario's nuclear reactors were acceptably safe, thereby justifying the confidence the Government has in the future of
May 15, 1986

the CANDU nuclear industry in Canada and around the world.
Uranium mining and upgrading are important sectors of Canada's great mining industry. After iron ore, copper, zinc, nickel, and gold, uranium is the most important mineral mined in Canada. Canada has a reputation for reliability and quality in terms of its deliveries around the world. We do not only sell the technology which permits the peaceful use of nuclear energy, we also have that great raw material, uranium, which can go into making those plants work. Safe and secure disposal of radioactive waste is a commitment of the Government. We are taking action on this commitment.
On behalf of the Government, I believe that the proposal of the opposition Party for an urgent and immediate study of the nuclear industry is unnecessary at this time.


James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, the Minister seems to make it sound as if he has absolute, total confidence in the Atomic Energy Control Board and in the industry saying that there is nothing to worry about, that no one should blink an eye. Ele and other members of his Party ran on a platform which indicated that they would call for a full public inquiry into nuclear power. I should like to ask the Minister whether or not he agrees with the following quotation. I remind him that he ran on it and was elected on it. In part the book entitled Myth of the Peaceful Atom reads as follows:
The power base of the Canadian nuclear lobby originates in the upper echelons of the AECL and Eldorado. Most of the key figures in the Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB) come from these two Crown corporations, as do most of the top Canadian government advisors on nuclear policy. In 1970, the Canadian Senate Committee on Science Policy declared that it was "startled to learn that most of the members of the AECB prove to be senior representatives of the very agencies" which the AECB is supposed to control.
The AECB has, as a result, come under heavy criticism. The Paris-based Organization for Co-operation and Development has complained that the cozy relationship with the nuclear industry is an "implicit conflict of interest". The OECD also pointed out both the AECB and the AECL reports to the same Minister-Energy, Mines and Resources. The British Columbia Medical Association called the Board "unfit to regulate" and before the B.C. Royal Commission on Uranium Mining stated: "It is obvious Canadians cannot continue to allow vested interest ministries and regulatory bodies to promulgate maximum permissible dose limits ... A review of the appropriateness of current radiation exposure limits in effect in Canada is long overdue".
The Minister is responsible for mining. He was elected upon calling for a full public inquiry into nuclear power. Does he not think that we should have one in relation to this evidence?


Robert E.J. Layton: Mr. Speaker, I should like to respond to the Hon. Member for Skeena (Mr. Fulton). Yes, there is an element of risk, and that was certainly carried through my remarks earlier. There is no activity in which mankind engages involving equipment or movement that does not involve some element of risk. I believe we have the capacity-and we have demonstrated it-to control that risk to acceptable levels. We constantly learn from experience, our own and others, to introduce more safety into our lives. Despite the risks to which we are exposed today, radiation being among them, we all live longer. I think mankind, all human beings, has a particular
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capacity to learn from and grow with the changes which we face.
It is not an absolute confidence. It is a confidence in our ability to respond with the skills we have to control the environment in which we live. This does not mean that there will not be some mistakes. I believe in the Canadian approach to this. I shared these feelings and found myself to be in harmony with the others who were engaged in the discussions a week ago in Romania. They have a confidence in the way Canada presents itself, the way our technology is developing, and the way it is administered. They are in a hurry to have that power. The one thing they would like more than anything is to turn on the machines. Our advice is that they can do so only when everything has been properly quality controlled and inspected. Our Romanian partners are accepting those conditions.
It is a confidence that is based on a recognition that there is always a risk. I do not know when there would not be some reference to a risk. This one is a particular risk and you have to learn to live with it. Some Members have heard the discussions that we have had in past months on the asbestos industry. Is it ever absolutely without risk? No, it isn't but there is a controlled use approach which makes it safe for the worker, the miner and the public. I believe the same principle applies here.


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister a question. The Hon. Member for Kamloops- Shuswap (Mr. Riis) made the statement that the nuclear industry was made up of people who tell lies.


James Ross Fulton: Unfit to regulate.


John Horton McDermid: Let me ask the Hon. Minister if that is not attacking some of the most able scientists, engineers, medical practitioners who are involved in the industry. Also, doesn't his comment bring into disrepute the hearings on the nuclear industry carried out by the churches in Toronto as late as 1984?


Nelson Andrew Riis: In support of it?


John Horton McDermid: An impartial panel concluded that nuclear power was an important and viable option among available energy resources. Also doesn't the Member's comment attack the Vatican which four years ago supported nuclear power as an alternate source of energy?


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, I have a comment and a question. I heard the Minister talk about Romania, Korea and Argentina. There are fine engineers, no one is disputing that. We have come down a long slope to where we are scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to sell reactors. How does the Minister feel about that? We have to go to these regimes which are perhaps not the most stable regimes in the world desperately finding sales for a bankrupt industry. I would like

May 15, 1986
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the Minister to address that point. Would he also address another problem? Does he deny that he ran on the Conservative Party platform which advocated a full public inquiry into the future of nuclear power? Did he or did he not run on that platform? Did he fraudulantly run on that platform? If the industry is so safe, so productive and so needed for jobs why are the Tories afraid to have an inquiry into how good it is?


Robert E.J. Layton: Mr. Speaker, it appears to me that the call for a public inquiry at this time-


Nelson Andrew Riis: It was your call two years ago.


Robert E.J. Layton: Members will recall, as read out by my colleague earlier today, that the Party policy included the reference "-and have opened the nuclear power approval process to the public".


James Ross Fulton: You haven't done that either. You are a hypocrite.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: Order.


Robert E.J. Layton: We believe there are good markets for CAN-DU technology, but that means achieving entry into those markets.


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, I have a point of order. The Hon. Member called the Minister a hypocrite. I believe that is unparliamentary language and the comment should be withdrawn immediately.


James Ross Fulton: It isn't unparliamentary.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: Order, please. Would the Hon. Member for Skeena (Mr. Fulton) like to withdraw that comment immediately.


James Ross Fulton: I will, if it is unparliamentary, Mr. Speaker.


Robert E.J. Layton: Mr. Speaker, in the excitement of debate, it was not noticed. I accept the withdrawal.


James Ross Fulton: You ran on a fraudulant basis.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: Order.


Robert E.J. Layton: The people of Canada and around the world are having their full inquiry right now into nuclear energy. The Tchernobyl disaster has brought the matter to the forefront.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Is that what you meant in the campaign?


Robert E.J. Layton: As for Canada having to scrape the bottom of the barrel, Mr. Speaker, we have developed the finest technology, in my opinon, in this field.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Prove it.


Robert E.J. Layton: It has been proved in the market-place.


Nelson Andrew Riis: You can buy drugs in the market-place.


Robert E.J. Layton: It has right now been proved in performance. As to competing with other interests, be they French or American, there is no question we are in international competition. We don't win them all. We are not the biggest players. We do not have the resources to put behind our marketing that some other countries have, but we are doing a good job.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Even bribery didn't work.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: A very short question or comment by the Hon. Member for Algoma (Mr. Foster).


Maurice Brydon Foster: Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment the Minister on his statement that he would stop exemptions to the further upgrading. Another Minister this morning said that the article in the NuclearFuel magazine of April 21, 1986 was not accurate, that the Government was not negotiating to get rid of the further upgrading of uranium in Canada policy. Could the Minister just clarify under what set of circumstances he will give exemption? Will it be less than 5 per cent or 10 per cent of the uranium exports? What assurances can he give to the uranium refining industry that this policy will not be bargained away in the free trade negotiations with the United States?


Robert E.J. Layton: Mr. Speaker, let me start by correcting something. There has not been a statement that says there will be no exemptions to the upgrading policy that we would like to see applied. The three Ministers responsible have agreed, after discussions with the industry at the mining level and at the processing level, to find a formula to do away with all of the delays coming into the system. They agreed to this some months ago. It was put into effect last fall and all Parties are living with it. In particular, El Dorado Nuclear. Let me read two passages as follows:

"whose sale to the private sector is now under consideration, is one of Canada's major uranium producers. Our company . .. ", said one of their directors, " . . . was not overly affected by the recession and stagnation of the market of nuclear plants. We will continue to sell our uranium, in addition to processing foreign natural uranium into nuclear fuel used in foreign electrical power plants."

El Dorado Nuclear Corporation is quite prepared to meet the international competition. It has told us so.
May 15, 1986



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 66, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia)-Environmental affairs- (a) Niagara River-Toxic chemical dumps sites, (b) Request for ministerial statement; the Hon. Member for Burnaby (Mr. Robinson)-Royal Canadian Mounted Police- (a) Reported allegations made by Superintendent, (b) Request for inquiry; the Hon. Member for Algoma (Mr. Foster)- Agriculture-(a) Effect of reduced initial price, (b) Request for 1985 initial price.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Fulton:
That this House urges the government to immediately initiate a full public inquiry into the future of nuclear power.
Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, as the preceding New Democratic Members have pointed out, and as the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Miss Carney) has been forced to acknowledge, the motion before the House today is taken verbatim from the Progressive Conservative 1984 Campaign Handbook. At page 113 it outlined the Conservative position on nuclear power. It reads:
We advocate a full public inquiry into the future of nuclear power-
We think that was written solely for the purpose of getting elected. When the Conservatives actually got into office they quickly forgot the solemn promises they had made to the people of Canada. They got power for themselves-their only real goal-and everything else went by the boards. Another sacred trust bit the dust.
Why does the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources think we used these words in our motion today? We used them because they are precisely the same words as were in the Conservative campaign promise. We in the New Democratic Party now find ourselves pleading with the Government to live up to the promises it made to the people of Canada. At a minimum, the Government should live up to its promises.
This is nothing new. It seems that Canadians are now coming to expect this kind of dishonesty from the Conservative
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Government. Nowhere has this transparent reneging on campaign promises been shown up more clearly than in the actions of the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. Immediately after the September, 1984, election, Energy Probe, the Toronto-based watch-dog group which has for years vigorously monitored energy policy development in Canada, wrote to the Minister to encourage her to follow through with her Party's clearly enunciated promise to launch a "full public inquiry into the future of nuclear power". The Minister rebuffed Energy Probe.
My colleague, the Member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Keeper), then took up the cause of Energy Probe, and on April 1 of last year wrote to the Minister of Energy requesting yet again that the Conservatives honour their promise to have a "full public inquiry into the nuclear industry". That was on April 1. Perhaps the response of the Minister was more akin to an April Fool's joke. She replied:
I (do) not intend to broaden my consultations beyond the industry and the provinces in order to arrive at a decision on this matter. I have consulted with these sources and it is my view that a national inquiry on this topic is not a high priority at this time.
That is a complete reversal. It is a complete and total repudiation of the promises on the basis of which the Conservatives had made their grab for power only a few months before that. This is a sorry track record. We had hoped that perhaps the events of the last few weeks in Ukraine, to which the Minister of State for Mines (Mr. Layton) has just alluded, might have impinged upon the Minister's consideration of what constitutes, in her words, "a high priority at this time". The disaster at Chernobyl, and the even greater catastrophe of a reactor core meltdown which was so narrowly avoided there, has driven home to all sane people the horrendous dangers inherent in reliance on nuclear power.
The Minister of Energy talked about risks. There are risks in everything in life. There is the risk of getting hit by a car when you walk across the street. Look at the risks of having a reactor meltdown in Pickering or somewhere like that. It means death for the people around Toronto. You die.


John Horton McDermid: What nonsense.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Let's not mince words.


John Horton McDermid: You fear-monger.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: If there is a reactor meltdown in Canada people will die. Whole cities could die. The world could die. I see Members laughing. They think it is a joke. It is no joke.


John Horton McDermid: You are absolutely irresponsible.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: It means death if there is a major accident in this country. The world came close in Chernobyl and we thank God that that did not go any further. We still do not know all the ramifications of that. I am not mincing words here. That is what it means.

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It appears that the only result of the Chernobyl incident is that the Minister has used it to stall on the Party's promise. We all listened to her speech today in the House. She said that any decision about the need for a public inquiry into the role of nuclear energy in Canada must await reports from scientists about Chernobyl. I find this very strange. Is the Minister laying claim to some special Conservative ability to look into the future, some ability to see that when they wrote their campaign promise in 1984? Was there some small print that we missed in that campaign promise in 1984? Did they decide then that they would not implement their promise until a major nuclear disaster occurred some two years after they made their promise?
I have in front of me the appropriate page from the Conservative handbook which contains the campaign promise. It does not read: "We advocate a full public inquiry into the future of nuclear power following receipt of a full report on a major nuclear accident that will occur at a graphite-lined reactor at Chernobyl in Ukraine in the spring of 1986". I cannot find that anywhere. The position which the Minister of Energy enunciated in the House today was plainly ludicrous. As I understood it, she said that while we may still have an inquiry we have to wait to see what happens in Chernobyl. That is a fraud. That is treading water to get out of this debate because the Government is embarrassed about reneging on its campaign promise.


James Ross Fulton: That's why their Members are quitting.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Or going to jail.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Much has been made in some quarters of the tardiness with which the Soviet Government came to terms with the scope of the Chernobyl disaster and the delays in the Soviets getting vital information to other governments and atomic control agencies. This is an important matter.
Those who watched The Journal on CBC television a couple of weeks ago may recall an interview with a British nuclear scientist who observed in this connection that the top Soviet leadership had reacted with considerable dispatch once they had been fully acquainted with the nature and import of the problem. He, of course, defined the problem as the bureaucracy, the politicians and leaders getting to know the extent of the problem because they must go through various levels of bureaucracy. This is a phenomenon which we have in Canada. A couple of Members on both sides of the House have alluded to that in this debate.
It was suggested that we were doing something bad when we raised the secrecy of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited and the Atomic Energy Control Board. I ask Members opposite to recall when, in 1977-78, the present Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Clark) had to sue Atomic Energy to get information.


John Horton McDermid: Give him credit. It's available today.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: I give him credit. It was so secret that he had to go to court. A House of Commons committee has talked about AECL witnesses as being reluctant, evasive, and uncooperative in many ways. This is the nature of bureaucrats in this particular field. There is a tendency toward this in bureaucracy.
We have also seen another tendency, and that is to always have a kind of Pollyanna approach that there is not going to be an accident. I want to read to you from the Louisville, Kentucky, Courier-Journal of Monday, April 23, 1979. This is an account of a meeting in Moscow by American Congressman Michel of Illinois who was talking to the Soviets. Michel said:
-the Soviets do not plan to curtail construction of their nuclear power plants, which they feel are safer than those in use in the United States.
"They feel their safety provisions are such that they can proceed not only with the current model (of reactors) but with a fast breeder reactor.
During the Three Mile Island crisis the Soviet press said their nuclear power plants have a safer cooling system and are run with a better view toward safety than are the American plants.
Does that not sound familiar?


John Horton McDermid: Who said that?


Ian Gardiner Waddell: This is the Soviets commenting on Three Mile Island.


John Horton McDermid: Yeah, and they told us there wasn't an accident for a week after it happened.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: They told us they had safe plants and that they would not have an accident. Is this not the same kind of stuff that we are hearing from the Government today? Make no mistake, we do not want to have a nuclear accident, but we want to ensure that it does not happen in Canada.
We are having this debate today because in this way the Canadian public can see the dangers. People in my constituency are afraid of the rain that is falling. People in Ottawa were afraid of that. There are real fears. They are examining food in Europe. This is the time for the world to think about what is going on. While we are talking about the much vaunted superiority of the North American nuclear reactor design we should recognize that it is generally acknowledged that the Three Mile Island reactor came within a half hour of suffering a full-scale reactor core meltdown. I quote John Swaigen, an environmental lawyer from Toronto who said:
There are many uncomfortable parallels between the situation in the Soviet Union and in Canada. Both are Arctic countries with similar climates. Both have nuclear facilities sited near major cities.
Our scientists assure us that our nuclear plants are safe. So did theirs. In this field at least we share the Soviet Union's preoccupation with secrecy.
There is a reactor in Hanford, near the Columbia River in the State of Washington, just south of British Columbia. I raised this in the House today. It is a graphite reactor like
May 15, 1986

Chernobyl. It is uncontained like Chernobyl. It is 40 years old and has been described by Dr. Rosalie Bertell, a research scientist and consultant to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as an accident waiting to happen. She wants to have this reactor closed. She says it is "so old anything can happen". I asked the Secretary of State for External Affairs about this today. He did not even know that his Department had been talking to the Americans about this reactor. Those are the kinds of things we would like to see in the inquiry. Are we prepared for a disaster in Canada? Are we talking to the Americans about their old reactors? Are we looking into the safety of our reactors as well as theirs? Are we looking into the burial of spent fuel? Are we looking into the dangers of low radiation tailings, as my friend from Skeena pointed out? How much are we paying for these reactors? What are the alternatives? Can we get into energy conservation? All these questions need to be addressed.
The NDP have put forward other Bills on this subject. The Hon. Member for Winnipeg-Birds Hill (Mr. Blaikie) put forward a Private Members' Bill to establish a moratorium on the continued development of nuclear power in Canada. We have been trying consistently to get a full inquiry into this matter.
I want to reply to something raised by some Conservative Members. They have said it is going to be difficult to take us out of the nuclear system. I agree that some hard decisions will have to be made. Jobs are on the line. Scientific prestige is on the line. However, leadership means that you have to face these kinds of decisions. There are other answers. The Hon. Member for Skeena (Mr. Fulton) talked about alternative jobs involved in cleaning up the tailings and decommissioning the plants. Working people do not have to be put out on the street. Sweden has had to face this problem. Like Canada, Sweden has developed a reliance on nuclear-generated electricity. As a matter of fact, over 40 per cent of Sweden's electricity is currently nuclear generated. In Canada in 1983, it was about 12 per cent to 13 per cent. Sweden is far more heavily dependent than Canada on nuclear power, and any movement away from nuclear power would cause far greater economic dislocation than that facing Canada.
In saying that, I take into account the severe impact such a decision would have on particular regions of the country. I fully recognize that Ontario projects that by 1990 nearly 60 per cent of electricity produced by Ontario Hydro will be nuclear generated. However, I think the Swedish experience is directly applicable to Canada, particularly Ontario. In Sweden the major commitments to proceed with nuclear power were made between 1956 and 1970. Then questions emerged as to the wisdom of doing this. A public debate ensued. That culminated in 1980 with a national referendum in which the Swedes decided to abandon nuclear energy. This, of course, is the reason the Government is afraid to have an inquiry. The powers that be do not want an inquiry that would lead to a public debate which might in turn lead to the Canadian people doing something about nuclear power.
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As a result of that referendum, the Swedish Parliament set up guidelines for the phasing out of nuclear-generated power. The guidelines stipulated that no further construction of nuclear reactors would be undertaken beyond the 12 existing or under advanced construction at the time. The last reactor would be taken out of service by no later than 2010, after an estimated operating period of 25 years. They set a sunset period. A National Board for Spent Nuclear Fuel was also established to oversee the management and disposal of waste generated by the Swedish nuclear program up to its termination. They have tried to start dealing with nuclear waste. An important consequence of this decision is that by limiting the nuclear program in time and size, the Swedes also set limits for nuclear waste production.
The importance of the Swedish experience in providing some guidelines for Canadian nuclear policy lies in the thorough technical follow-through which they have constructed to deal with the fallout of these fundamental policy changes. Even before the 1980 referendum their Parliament had passed, in 1977, a Stipulation Act under which permission to load a nuclear power reactor for the first time can be given only if the owner had shown that the spent fuel could be quite safely disposed of. After the referendum the Swedish Parliament unanimously passed, in 1981, a law concerning the financing of future expenditures for spent nuclear fuel. In this legislation, in which the main principles for the present day Swedish waste management policy were laid down, they dealt with the planning and financing not only of long-term waste management, but of the ultimate decommissioning of existing nuclear reactors. That is what my friend from Skeena was talking about.
What are the lessons for Canadians that emerged from the Swedish experience? How does that experience relate to the motion before us today? First of all, we in the NDP recognize that decisions must be made in the real world where major shifts in energy development cannot occur overnight. However, at some point a first step must be taken if somewhere down the road we are to arrive at a desired destination. That is all we are asking for. A first step by this Government was promised two years ago, which it has not yet taken, and which, according to the Minister's statement today, it is going to continue to postpone on the flimsiest of pretexts, that of an inquiry into the future of the industry. Can you believe the gall exhibited by the Minister's position? A campaign promise ought not to be dealt with because an event totally unforeseen when the promise was made, the Chernobyl disaster, has not been fully reported on. That is ludicrous. Who does the Minister think she is kidding with this trite, facile evasion?
I want to conclude by replying to the speech of the Minister of State for Mines. He is a decent man and he gave a decent speech. He raised the question of why are we not up-to-date. I think we are really up-to-date. I think the issues in the 1990s are going to be health, peace, environment, leisure, and technology. Who is out of step? I think we are in step. We are dealing with those issues today. We are not asking for the

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decommissioning of all the plants. We have suggested the way the Swedes have dealt with the problem. We are not asking to even stop the expansion of reactors. We are simply asking the Government to live up to its campaign promise, which was that there would be an inquiry into the future of nuclear energy. After Chernobyl, I cannot think of any inquiry which is really more essential than this particular one. 1 cannot think of anything. The Conservatives are just not listening to the Canadian people. Who is out of step? Not us, Mr. Speaker, but the Conservative Government.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Leblanc):: Questions or comments. The Hon. Member for Skeena (Mr. Fulton).


James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, when the Minister was speaking, he painted the issue of safety concerning the nuclear industry, the questions of radiation and storage of waste and so on, as comparable to smoking a cigarette and driving a car. 1 find that ludicrous. I would like to ask the Member who just spoke to comment on the following, which relates directly to the matter of radiation.
No amount of radiation is considered safe. Despite this, the exposure levels for uranium and nuclear workers is 10 times the limit set for the general public. Many questions remain about the scientific basis for these levels. The Atomic Energy Control Board, which the Minister of State for Mines (Mr. Layton) and the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Miss Carney) spoke about, the federal Government's nuclear watch-dog, says a worker exposed to the limit runs the risk of dying of cancer caused by radiation seven to eight times the average risk for workers in safe industries, and two and a half times the highest accidental death rate found in mining and quarrying. Even these figures are now considered conservative.


Gabriel Fontaine: A point of order, Mr. Speaker.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Leblanc):: The Hon. Member for Levis (Mr. Fontaine) on a point of order.


Gabriel Fontaine: Mr. Speaker, that is neither a question nor a comment. It is a second speech. Other Members on this side of the House have been seeking the floor. This is the time for questions or comments, not to listen to a second speech by the Hon. Member.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Leblanc):: Order, please. The Hon. Member for Skeena (Mr. Fulton).


James Ross Fulton: 1 will carry on after that unfortunate intervention, Mr. Speaker. Much of the evidence for risk comes from the study of survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing.


John Horton McDermid: Oh, oh!


James Ross Fulton: In the past three years, new evidence indicates survivors were exposed to less radiation than previously believed. Ever since the early post-war years, scientists have been meticulously recording the development of cancer and other diseases among the 80,000 survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Scientists have been relating cancers to the doses that the victims received. The original estimates of those doses are now recognized to be too low, which means that the cancers observed were caused by lower doses than originally thought.
Doctor Edward Radford, Chairman of the U.S. National Sciences Committee on the biological effects of ionizing radiation, said that the radiation risks are at least 10 times worse than generally accepted. In terms of the radiation levels alone, aside from the other questions of safety-here I am talking about the safety of the workers that the Minister of State for Mines claims to represent so carefully-here is evidence from the U.S. National Sciences Committee saying that our level of risk in Canada is perhaps 10 times higher than the AECB is prepared to admit. I would like to ask if that alone is not grounds for a full public inquiry?


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Yes, of course, it is. We are finding out more and more about nuclear radiation. A group of Japanese doctors visited Vancouver this year. They examined the survivors of Hiroshima. I will make the report available to the House if some Members would like to see it. In the report they show that there are increased cancers, increased levels of tension and various heart problems. They are just beginning, after 20 years, to really learn about this. We are dealing with different risks and we are dealing a lot with the unknown, all the more reason why we should have an inquiry into this matter. I do not think we have had a federal inquiry. The Government keeps mentioning provincial inquiries. We want a federal inquiry.


Gabriel Fontaine: Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the comments made by the Hon. Member for Vancouver- Kingsway (Mr. Waddell), in a very quiet House, because in the last half-hour we haven't had a single Liberal Member here representing his or her riding. So I listened to his comments, and on the basis of what he said, I tried to find some indication of some kind of philosophy. I heard him say some very negative things, but I wonder whether he is not forgetting the Canadian economy, an economy that annually produces $500 billion in goods and services.
I also wonder whether he can appreciate the economic context of this question and realizes what would happen if his shortsighted ideas were implemented. If the entire nuclear industry were paralyzed in this country, the effects would be felt, because you Members of the socialist party depend on Canadian industry as well. And if you keep on destroying that industry the way you are now, you will no longer be able to enjoy its benefits, and you will only have the international
May 15, 1986

unions left to make representations ... So 1 ask you to stop insisting on killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, and to try and contribute to the development of our economy and discuss ways of doing this.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: The New Democratic Party didn't promise an inquiry into the nuclear industry in Canada, the Conservative Party did, and perhaps I could put a question to the Conservative Member from Quebec, and ask him why he ran for the Conservative Party. Ele promised an inquiry into our nuclear industry. Why isn't he speaking in this debate and why doesn't he ask his Minister for an inquiry?
Now, as far as the Canadian economy is concerned, that is a good question. I gave the example of the Swedes who have the same problem, with a country that is very industrialized, like Canada. They have decided to deal with the problem and phase out their nuclear industry after a certain time. As far as we are concerned, we are asking for an inquiry, and perhaps the problem you mentioned could be discussed within the framework of that inquiry. I understand that the Elon. Member may be speaking in this debate now and may support the position of the New Democratic Party, and after that, perhaps he could join us.


Gabriel Fontaine: Mr. Speaker, as for the last comment by the Hon. Member for Vancouver-Kingsway (Mr. Waddell), he can wait until Hell freezes over. Before I cross the floor to join a socialist party, the radioactive isotopes released two weeks ago by the nuclear accident in Kiev will have long disappeared.
When the Hon. Member talks about an inquiry into our nuclear industry, 1 think our departments have sufficient experience to be able to deal with this important question on their own, and when he talks about what is happening in Sweden, we as Canadian parliamentarians are here to represent our respective ridings and not to comment on Sweden's problems. We are here to protect the interests of Canadian citizens, and we will do so by helping to develop our Canadian industries, something you in the socialist party have always tended to forget. And I wish you would repeat this tomorrow to our Liberal colleagues who are not here today.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: I agree with the fact that the Liberal Members are not here. The Conservative Member is right, and it is because the Liberal Party can never decide what position to take on this question or on any other question.

Let me say that there are alternatives to jobs in the nuclear industry. I ask the Member to look at that. A conference was held yesterday in Toronto and the Minister of State for Mines spoke there. 1 was there the other night and I looked at the fantastic machinery in the solar industry, the heat pumps and in conserving energy. There are a lot of jobs in a conserver society. Amory Lovens, the American expert in this field, says there are more jobs by far for the dollar in the conserver society than in the nuclear society.
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I think the nuclear society is passe. I think it is finished. I said in my speech that the Government must be strong enough to recognize what is happening. This Government should not get down on bended knee to Romania and Argentina-we'll be selling them to Libya next-to try and sell the reactors. We should go into the conserver society in a whole different way. In any case, the Member may not agree with me, but-

-but I would still say today that this matter deserves an inquiry.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Leblanc):: Order, please. The time allotted to the Hon. Member has expired.


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, I have been sitting here all day listening to the excuses and the arguments that the New Democratic Party has put forward. I want, at the outset, to say to those people who may be watching on television, to those in the House and to those who may read Hansard, that the New Democratic Party is opposed to any form of nuclear energy, period. That is their policy, it has been for a very long time. As long as we understand where they are coming from in this debate, it probably puts it into a much better perspective. They are against anything nuclear.


James Ross Fulton: That's false.


John Horton McDermid: It is not false, it is very true. That is the stand they have taken here. We have one experimental reactor in the Hon. Member's City of Vancouver, by the way, which the city council calls a nuclear free area, and there is a reactor at the University of British Columbia. I do not know what they are talking about. I have not heard them talking about getting rid of that.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: It's not a reactor.


John Horton McDermid: It certainly is. There are a number of them throughout Canada being used in universities on an experimental basis. They are being used for medical reasons and so on and so forth. The New Democratic Party is opposed to anything nuclear. The Hon. Member for Kamloops-Shuswap (Mr. Riis) stands up and says everyone in the industry is a liar.


James Ross Fulton: Point of order.


John Horton McDermid: That was exactly his statement.


James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, a great deal of what the Hon. Member is putting on the record is patently false. I think people should be aware of that-


John Horton McDermid: That's not a point of order.


James Ross Fulton: -although that is often his way.

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John Horton McDermid: That is not a point of order, it is debate, and the Hon. Member knows that full well. Hon. Members of the New Democratic Party talk about campaign promises, but in the election campaign that Party said it was against NATO, NORAD and Canada should withdraw and not participate.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Tell us why you broke your campaign promises. Why did you lie to the people of Canada?


John Horton McDermid: Those Hon. Members said: "If we were the Government, we wouldn't do that".


James Ross Fulton: It is your campaign promise you are debating today. You are the one who is a fraud. You're a fraud.


John Horton McDermid: But what are those Hon. Members doing now? They are reconsidering their position.


Nelson Andrew Riis: You lied to the people of Canada.


James Ross Fulton: You don't know anything about what you are talking.


John Horton McDermid: I have them going now. We have rattled their chains a little, Mr. Speaker. We have them hollering over there. The Hon. Member for Skeena (Mr. Fulton) is upset all of a sudden because-


James Ross Fulton: Because you don't tell the truth.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Leblanc):: Order, please.


Nelson Andrew Riis: You have no respect for the Chair.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Leblanc):: Order. The Parliamentary Secretary.


John Horton McDermid: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is very kind of you to let me speak. The NDP, with its screaming meemies over there, are getting a little agitated. It hurts them a little bit when the truth comes out.


James Ross Fulton: That's because you were elected fraudulently.


John Horton McDermid: They cannot stand to hear the truth.


Nelson Andrew Riis: We don't change our policies.


John Horton McDermid: They try to shout me down. They cannot stand to hear the truth and that is a real shame.


James Ross Fulton: Oh, come off it. You sound like a mina bird.


John Horton McDermid: We sat and listened patiently to their speeches. We sat and listened patiently to the Hon. Member for Vancouver-Kingsway (Mr. Waddell), who screamed about death and how terrible it is going to be. The Hon. Member for Skeena himself talks about a nuclear bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That is a red herring and nonsense to bring into a debate on the peaceful use of nuclear energy in this country.


James Ross Fulton: That's what Canadian radiation standards are based on. It just shows you don't know what you're talking about.


John Horton McDermid: It shows how insecure the New Democratic Party's position is when it brings in all these red herrings. If I have to stand here and try and speak over the screaming of the Hon. Member for Skeena, who called this debate-


James Ross Fulton: We are talking about your campaign promises.


John Horton McDermid: -who is not gentlemanly enough to sit there and listen to other opinions, I will. People of this country have opinions other than opinion of the the Hon. Member for Skeena. There are other opinions. If the Hon. Member would be polite enough to sit and listen to some other people's position-


James Ross Fulton: Oh, you are Mister Polite now. You have been barking and honking all day long.


John Horton McDermid: I sat here all day and listened to-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: Order. Order. I remind all Members that manners are not a subject matter of this Opposition Day.


James Ross Fulton: Well, one of the Muppets is talking.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: Order.


John Horton McDermid: In many instances I would much rather be a Muppet than an NDP, that is for sure. They make a lot more sense. I would like to cover three items, if the Hon. Member for Skeena will allow me. First, I want to talk about conservation and security of supply, which has been discussed here, second, the study of the nuclear industry and, third, the safe storage of waste from the nuclear industry. Those are three subject which have been broached by both Members of our Party and the Opposition. The Hon. Member for Vancouver- Kingsway and I agree wholeheartedly on the importance of conservation within the energy sector. There is no question but that conservation plays a very important role in conserving the finite supplies we have. I can tell the Hon. Member today that the Minister and I witnessed the signing of a contract on solar energy with the Government of China and one of our companies here in Canada, Petrosun. It is a SI million contract. The conservation technology which was developed in this country is being shared with others around the world. Of course, that means jobs and income for Canadians. In Canada, as in other parts of the world, there must be an energy mix. The NDP would have us believe that we can rely solely on conservation.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: No, we never said that.


John Horton McDermid: Those Hon. Members want us to wipe out nuclear energy and the generation of hydro-


Ian Gardiner Waddell: What about oil and gas?
May 15, 1986


John Horton McDermid: That is fine, but the Hon. Member knows full well it is a finite commodity. That Party is the one constantly preaching conservation. The NDP is the Party asking us to look for alternative energy sources. This happens to be one energy source which is alternate from our oil and gas. It is one of many. It has a place in the mix of energy. We certainly support conservation. We support the industry.
If the Hon. Member had stayed at the conference and listened to the Minister's speech, he probably would have learned something. This Government wholeheartedly supports the conservation end of things. But we also support the nuclear industry because it plays a very important role in our energy mix. The NDP tells us not to burn coal because it creates acid rain, not to burn oil because it is disappearing, not to dam up any more rivers because we flood much needed land, not to do all this. That is fine, but where does our power come from? One of the advantages of Ontario, and Quebec for that matter, is an abundance of cheap power. That is why industries are attracted to Ontario. They know the energy is there and they know it is cheap. Forty per cent of Ontario's power is generated by nuclear energy, soon to be 60 per cent. That is very important for the economy of Ontario.
I would like to list the studies of the industry which are going on: the Environmental Assessment Review on New Brunswick's Point Lepreau nuclear generating station, and the Federal-Provincial Environmental Assessment Review on Point Lepreau; the National Energy Board hearings on the export to the U.S. of electric power from Point Lepreau; the Royal Commission on the Health and Safety of Workers in Mines, Ontario's "Ham Commission"; the Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning, Ontario's "Porter Commission"; La Commission Parlementaire sur I'Energie, Quebec's "Joron Commission"; the select Committee on Ontario Hydro Affairs; the Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry, Saskatchewan's "Bayda Inquiry"; the Ontario Environmental Assessment Board hearing into the expansion of uranium mining at Elliot Lake; the Committee on Nuclear Issues in the Community, a cross-Canada effort by the Science Council and Royal Society; five hearings under Canada's environmental assessment and review process regarding a proposed uranium refinery, four in Ontario and one in Saskatchewan; the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Uranium Mining in B.C., the "Bates Commission"; the Energy Committee of the New Brunswick Legislature; the Key Lake Uranium Mine hearings in Saskatchewan; the Northwest Territories legislative hearings into uranium exploration and mining, and the uranium inquiry under Judge McCleave in Nova Scotia.
Hearings into Canada's domestic nuclear industry were arranged by a group of churches in Toronto, completely independent, at the end of 1984. That group is not known to be the greatest supporter of nuclear energy. An impartial panel heard evidence from both sides. It was a good hearing. We followed it very carefully. It concluded that nuclear power was an important and viable option among the available energy resources.
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This industry has been studied to death. We are concerned about what happened at Chernobyl. I believe all thinking people are concerned about that. To compare the Chernobyl incident with what could happen in Canada is like comparing apples with oranges. The process at Chernobyl is an entirely different one. It does not have the safety features built in. The Hon. Member has stood up and said that the Soviets told us that it was safe. He knows the system of Government there. He knows how the public is informed there-they are not informed. The accident was not reported until three days after it occurred. The only reason it was reported was because it was being monitored by another country and that other country blew the whistle. So, to compare what is going on in Canada with what is going on in the U.S.S.R. is completely unfair. The Hon. Member knows that. It is a red herring.
He is right when he says that at one time in Canada everything was secret. I agree with him, I too think it was a mistake. It was a mistake on the part of Atomic Energy of Canada and on the part of the Atomic Energy Control Board.
I think it was a mistake on the part of the Government of the day. Today, I think the industry realizes that it was a mistake. It was foolish to try to keep these matters from the public. The public has every right to know what is going on. It has every right to try to understand the complexity of the industry.
I have been involved in this sector rather intimately for the past year and one-half. I think I have learned a great deal from it and about it. It is a very complex issue. Today, everything is public. The reports of the AECB are public. If there is the slightest incident, no matter how minor, it is immediately reported to the press and to the public. We have seen these reports come out from time to time when it has been necessary to close down a reactor because of a leaking valve or whatever.
I agree with the Hon. Member when he says that at one time the situation was not satisfactory. But today, thank God, it is. Thank God that the Governments and the control boards are open with the public. People fear the unknown and that is a fact. The more open and honest we can be with the public, the more information and facts we can give to show that all possible safety precautions are being taken in regard to this valuable industry, the less fear there will be.
Members opposite have talked about Argentina. I can tell Hon. Members that the CANDU reactor in Argentina is under the strict control of the International Atomic Energy Board. It keeps a close eye on the situation. We do not or will not deal with a country unless a non-proliferation agreement is signed. The reactors are for peaceful purposes.
The countries to which I have travelled, and those which are interested in the nuclear option, are starving for power. One of the main problems is that they do not have enough power; they cannot get it. Romania was also mentioned earlier. The Romanians have been pumping oil for 70 years and the

May 15, 1986
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resources are dwindling away. They do not have an opportunity for hydroelectricity. They are looking at and proceeding with the nuclear option. The problem with most of these countries is that they are cash-short. However, they desperately need energy. In Romania, there are no street lights and only one 40-watt light bulb per home can be on at any one time. Restaurants are forced to close at six o'clock in Romania. The country is power-starved. In its wisdom, it has chosen as an alternative the nuclear route.
Indonesia is now looking at the same option. South Korea, which has one of our CANDUs, and which is operating very efficiently-in fact I think it is number five in the world out of 200-odd-is looking at purchasing another reactor. The Dutch are considering going to the nuclear option. Of course, we are very interested in being invited to bid on these nuclear requirements. Yugoslavia is another country which has out an invitation to tender.
I will tell Hon. Members that if Canada does not participate in this field then the French, the West Germans, the British and the Americans will. It just so happens that Canada has the Cadillac of nuclear reactors. We have the best in the world. I will shout that from any roof-top. I am proud of the CANDU and the technology which has been created here in Canada. I do not think that we should hide it under a barrel. We should assure ourselves-and to date I am assured-that we have all the safety requirements built in to our CANDU system which can possibly be built in.
The Atomic Energy Control Board, in co-operation with its international partners, is at this time very carefully examining the Tchernobyl accident with the information that is available. It hopes to obtain more. I am pleased that the Russians are now more forthcoming with information concerning the accident. If there are lessons which we can learn from the accident which can be incorporated into our system, then by all means let us incorporate them.
I am not sure of how much time I have left, Mr. Speaker, since I did not keep an eye on it. I have covered conservation and the study of the industry. I now wish to talk about safe storage for the waste from the nuclear industry.
There are three federal programs under way in Canada concerning the storage and disposal of radioactive wastes. These programs are related to three different types of radioactive wastes produced in the country, namely, irradiated fuel wastes, uranium mine tailings and low level radioactive wastes. The goal of these programs is the eventual transfer of the wastes from the current storage mode where their safety is assured by means of active monitoring and control. Since there were all sorts of innuendoes that there is not safe storage today, I can tell Hon. Members that there is safe storage on site at the generating stations. It is monitored on a minute-byminute basis. There is enough room at those sites to store all wastes produced for the next 75 years. However, we are not happy with that. We are proceeding with these programs to assure the long-term safe storage for waste from the nuclear industry.
The major program deals with the irradiated fuel wastes. It is a co-operative research and development program with the Province of Ontario and the United States. It is budgeted at a current level of some $37 million per year. The program is managed by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment in Manitoba. The Hon. Member for Vancouver-Kingsway knows that there is an open invitation to him and his colleagues on the Standing Committee on Energy, Mines and Resources to visit the site and to see the work going on. The disposal concept being assessed in this program is the burial of the fuel wastes 500 to 1,000 metres deep in the crystalline rock of the Canadian Shield.
The first report on the assessment of this concept was issued in September, 1981, for public content. It was followed in March, 1982, by an initial regulatory statement from the Atomic Energy Control Board-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: Order, please. I regret to interrupt the Hon. Member but-


John Horton McDermid: With the unanimous consent of the House, could I continue, Mr. Speaker?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: Is there unanimous consent to allow the Hon. Member to continue?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


John Horton McDermid: I appreciate having the opportunity to finish my remarks. I thank my colleagues for allowing me to do so.
The final AECB regulatory requirement was issued in January of 1985, and a second set of concept assessment documents from AECL was released in 1985. The final set is to be released in 1988 at which time the concepts are to be evaluated by: an inter-agency review committee, including staff representatives of the Atomic Energy Control Board, Environment Canada and the Ontario Ministry of the Environment; public hearings; the AECB; and the Governments of Canada and Ontario.
Approval of the concept by all of these bodies represents a full acceptance of the concept. Such acceptance, together with a decision by the owners of the irradiated fuel to actually implement disposal, is required before site selection for a commercial repository can be started. The July 1985 concept assessment document concludes that the total occupational risk, radiological and conventional, associated with the construction, operation and decommissioning of a disposal facility will be no greater than the risk in comparable industries.
While the main focus of the report is on evaluating the possible risks due to the facility, a part of the analysis also addresses the potential benefit to a variety of community types. The report states that an increase in employment and in
May 15, 1986

the economic base generally would be beneficial to every type of community. There would be direct, indirect and spin-off employment. In addition, revenue in the form of property taxes or grants in lieu of taxes would be generated for community development purposes.
I do not wish to take advantage of the time that was given to me by the Opposition and for which I am grateful. However, I would like to sum up that particular part by saying that the Canadian program is held in high regard internationally. It supports the collective opinion of the experts in the nuclear energy agency of the OECD. They said that there is a high degree of confidence in the ability to design and operate geological disposal systems which will assure long-term isolation for high-level waste or spent fuel and meet the relevant long-term safety objectives.
I mentioned two other programs. Briefly, the second program initiated in 1983 deals with uranium mill tailings. That program is being undertaken by the Canadian Centre for Mineral and Energy Technology within the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Resources. The third program was also initiated in 1983 and deals with all other forms of radioactive waste produced in Canada.
I can assure Canadians that the Government is doing absolutely everything to ensure safety in the peaceful use of nuclear energy within Canada and in fact outside of Canada. Our expertise is now being recognized around the world and people are appreciating our work in that regard.
We have an industry of which we in Canada can be very proud. I always hear members of the NDP complaining about chasing research dollars out of the country and losing good research people. I happen to think that this is a very important industry for Canada in many ways. Some 30,000 workers agree with me and thousands of those who receive indirect spin-off benefits also agree with me. The general public agrees as long as-


Ian Gardiner Waddell: They do not.


John Horton McDermid: Excuse me. As long as they can be assured, and we are giving that assurance, that every possible safeguard has been taken when it comes to the use of nuclear energy. I stand by that. I want to assure the Canadian people of that today.


Abram Ernest Epp: Mr. Speaker, a countenance of self-assurance is very useful to Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. McDermid) is no exception to that generalization. Whether in blandness or in bluster, it is useful to be most self-assured about things.
Among the assertions offered to us by the Parliamentary Secretary is the assertion that the Government or the Conservative Party-for our purposes, the same thing-is at the moment in favour of conservation. The Canadian Home Insulation Program and the Canadian Oil Substitution Program were valuable programs for conservation and for
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seeking alternatives to the use of resources we already have in Ontario, particularly nuclear power. All of those who were interested in those programs must frankly doubt what the Parliamentary Secretary had to say.
When the Government, in its very first economic and fiscal statement, indicated its attitude toward conservation, it was to axe those programs at a conveniently early point in time and to bring to an end the public support for conservation of energy in Canada. How can the Parliamentary Secretary, with the bluster with which he began this afternoon, have the gall to talk about being in favour of conservation when the only kind of favour that counts is putting up money? This Government got out of the area of conservation as fast as it could. That is just plain contradictory and hypocritical.


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to answer that. That is a very good question. We campaigned by saying that we did not think Canadians needed to be bribed with their own money and did not need to be convinced that conservation is important.
One of the programs to which the Hon. Member referred existed for five years and the other for some seven years. A million homes converted from oil to gas. There were very few conversions left to be done, quite honestly. Most people now understand the economic benefit of conservation. We have gone from handing taxpayers' money back to them in order to bribe them into doing something to educating them to the importance of conservation. I think that comes first and is most important.
Second, we have set up a conservation program which relies on research, development and demonstration. This is demonstrated by the R-2000 home program, which this Government supports fully, and by the National Conservation Program, which goes under the acronym NCAEI. That program is going extremely well in co-operation with the provinces. We have now signed agreements with three or four provinces and two more provinces will be signing agreements very shortly. When a few disagreements are straightened out, other provinces will be signing also.
We consider conservation to be very, very important. We do not believe that we have to bribe Canadians with their own money to let them know how important conservation is. There are other ways of doing that. The Hon. Member belongs to a Party that believes that the more money we throw at things, the quicker we solve the problems. If that is so, then we wonder why so many problems still exist after the huge deficits and the money that was thrown at problems by the previous Government. Those problems are still haunting us today.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, between 1960 and 1986, the Canadian Government subsidized offshore oil and gas production to the tune of about $10 billion. Compared to that, a pittance was put into alternate forms of energy. Can the Hon. Member tell us how much money the Canadian Government put into nuclear energy, considering that about 40 per

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cent of the nuclear industry is directly subsidized by the Canadian Government?


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, 1 cannot give the Hon. Member the figure today because I do not have it with me, and am sorry. I will get that information for him and make sure that he receives it.
In all fairness, when the Hon. Member says that Governments have been throwing billions of dollars at the oil and gas industry, they have also been taxing it very unfairly through the PGRT. I believe the Government received some $7 billion in a tax regime that is entirely foreign to any other industry in Canada. When we balance one against the other, it is not quite fair to say that they were subsidized.
Also, I think the oil and gas industry is important. Of course we are getting off the subject of the motion, but that is fine; I do not mind discussing energy because we are in a country with a very good mix of energy. It is important to maintain our supply of oil. It is a very important commodity to our economy. Conventional oil is becoming scarce. We must continue to find oil. I am really excited about Gulf Oil and its find in the Beaufort Sea. It is proving to be a very good one, and I think there will be more exciting news this summer on that project. That type of thing has to be continued.
Every area of the Canadian energy industry must be supported. That is also very important. The Hon. Member and I have had discussions on the energy industry before. Oil and gas are important parts of our industry. Approximately $3 billion to $4 billion in export payments come into the country, which are very important to the entire Canadian economy, not just the economies of the producing provinces. The same holds true in the conservation industry, the nuclear industry, and hydro generation. We are now seeing more small hydro generation stations literally coming back on stream because hydro companies are now allowing individuals to sell into the hydro grid. There are all kinds of exciting things happening in the field of energy in Canada, nuclear being one of them.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the Parliamentary Secretary. The Hon. Member cited a number of studies which were conducted of the industry. Presumably he and his Party were aware of most of those studies by 1984 when the PC handbook indicated that they advocated a full public inquiry into the future of nuclear power. Would the Parliamentary Secretary tell us whether he ran on that platform, whether he stands by that platform, and why he has changed his mind?


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, I do not have the handbook here, so I cannot comment on it.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Here it is.


Benno Friesen: I have a copy of it.


John Horton McDermid: The service is fabulous, Mr. Speaker. If it was in our handbook and stated the way-


Ian Gardiner Waddell: It is right in the handbook which I have just given you.


John Horton McDermid: "The NDP statements make it appear that they are opposed to nuclear generation of electricity, but they have not proposed any alternatives".


Ian Gardiner Waddell: That is the PC handbook.


John Horton McDermid: The Hon. Member just handed it to me, and that is what it says. It also says that we advocate a full public inquiry. We are looking at the situation to see whether or not it is required at this time. Why have we changed our minds? We are looking very carefully at the other studies which have been made to see if in fact it is necessary. There are times when political Parties change their minds. God knows it, when we look at the NDP and some of the promises it has made and some of the back-pedalling it has done. That happens in political life. We know that and we understand that.
This policy still stands. We are taking a long look at it. The NDP would like the Government to do everything in the first six months, and it knows full well that is nigh on impossible.


Abram Ernest Epp: It is some 18 months now.


Maurice Brydon Foster: Mr. Speaker, I am glad the Parliamentary Secretary indicated that he was willing to support the nuclear industry and research. With his powers as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources, would he be willing to re-establish the level of research which the Government had been doing in the past, especially in view of the need for a safe nuclear waste disposal regime to be put in place sometime toward the end of this century?
I was really impressed with his comments about the agreement on renewable energy which was just signed with the Province of Nova Scotia. I commend the Government for doing that. I just hope that it will re-establish all the funds which were taken away in the last two Budgets and economic statement with regard to conservation and renewable energy. If there is anything on which we have made great progress in the last few years, it has been renewable energy and conservation.


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, I can tell the Hon. Member that the research at Whiteshell to which he referred is not suffering. It is going ahead as planned and on schedule. As a matter of fact, we have attracted the Americans to participate in that research. They are contributing a very large amount of money to research for the safe storage of nuclear waste. It is only right that those who will benefit from the research should participate in it. We welcome their participation.
I cannot say that we will reinstate the amount of dollars; no, that would be foolish. The Government is spending taxpayers'
May 15, 1986

dollars much more wisely. We are getting more value for the dollar than did the previous Government, which threw it around and displayed no responsibility whatever. We are getting results from fewer dollars because we are spending smarter.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, is there more time to ask questions?


Douglas Cockburn Frith: Is it debate time, Mr. Speaker?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: It is debate time.


Douglas Cockburn Frith: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to participate in this debate. Provided that I do not need too much filler time, I will not get into what I think is the red herring part of the debate-the PC handbook and the broken promises which were made during the last election campaign. Frankly I think Canadians have come to expect that the Government will never live up to the promises it made in the election campaign of 1984. I do not think reference to that red herring will do much to enlighten the Canadian public in respect of the motion before the House.
All three political Parties recognize that the major catalyst which led to the present debate on the floor of the House of Commons was the nuclear reactor disaster at Chernobyl. All of us would agree that the events following that disaster have made us aware of the need for a co-ordinated international plan of action to deal with this kind of crisis in the future. It goes without saying that we live in a very interdependent world. It is not only an economically interdependent world. In terms of the ecological system, clearly it is a world which is so fragile and interdependent that we can no longer afford to have take place in the future what took place in the immediate days and weeks surrounding the disaster at Chernobyl.
Even to this day I find it difficult to believe that an international power, namely the Soviet Union, would be so irresponsible that it would not inform its other world neighbours of the potential harm to the atmosphere and the ecolology as a result of that nuclear reactor disaster. It was almost as if the Soviets hoped that the high radiation levels which would be emitted into the atmosphere would never be detected. It is incredible, in the year 1986, that any country would attempt to throw a blanket of misinformation over a nuclear disaster of that magnitude.
The fact that it took a Swedish Government Ambassador to approach the appropriate authorities in Moscow to determine if any nuclear accident took place speaks volumes for the problems and the way in which the Soviet Government went about dealing with the disaster.
I should like to refer to the fact that it took several days for our own Government to respond. I say with all sincerity that the Department of National Health and Welfare has done what was expected of it and with the resources available to it in an attempt to cope with the repercussions from the nuclear accident at Chernobyl. As the House will recall, in the days
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following the accident, warnings were issued by the Department of National Health and Welfare concerning rain-water and concerning the uptake of radiation in our food supply or cycle. This illustrates the problem in an interdependent world when a nuclear accident occurs.
It simply cannot be contained within the area immediately surrounding or adjacent to the reactor site. It pointed at the weakness of the international agencies in responding to that kind of an emergency. Last night I witnessed the normal reaction among people in the free world. There was a two or three minute segment concerning the American doctor, I believe from the State of California, whose specialty is bone marrow transplants. He recognized that neither the Soviet Union nor anywhere else in the world could cope with a disaster of the magnitude of Chernobyl. On his own volition, together with a number of U.S. companies, the doctor managed to get together 136 bone marrow transplants for transfer to the Soviet Union. The expertise made available by that physician and his team speaks volumes for the way in which Canadians or any free thinking intelligent person would respond.
The Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Epp) made a statement in the House. I believe my colleague, the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-Birds Hill (Mr. Blaikie), responded for the New Democratic Party and I responded for the Liberal Party. We both talked about the need to improve the response plan to a disaster at the international level and at the national level here in Canada. That is where the focus of debate should be.
The use of nuclear power will increase in the future. When one looks at the industrial giants, such as Japan, one has to come to the conclusion that nuclear power will be part of the energy options that will be made available to them. As long as that is the case, there exists the potential for disaster, similar to Chernobyl.
As a country that has played a significant role in the development of nuclear energy, we must take a leadership role. The international community must be in a much better position to respond to disasters like Tchernobyl.
When the Minister of National Health and Welfare made his statement, I said that I thought we should be doing more than warning Canadian citizens in the immediate vicinity of Chernobyl. Canada should be taking a leadership role at the international agency in Vienna that deals with nuclear power and issues. We should be telling the Soviet Ambassador here in Canada in very strong terms that Canadians deplore and will not stand for the kind of misinformation the Soviet Union attempted to dish out in the days following the disaster. With respect to the defence ramifications of how we view the Soviet Union, outside of the NATO pact and the Warsaw pact, the Soviet Union, whether we like it or not, is a member of the international community. We deal with the Soviet Union at the United Nations and on a bilateral basis.

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We should be speaking openly to the Soviet Government about how we feel it mismanaged the Chernobyl crisis. The Soviet Union must realize Canadians were upset that it took Soviet authorities seven to eight days to inform the international community about the disaster. We have learned since then, even after the Soviet authorities acknowledged the existence of the problem at Chernobyl, but refused to acknowledge the severity of it, that until five or six days ago the Russians were still in danger of having a meltdown, an out of control reactor disaster, and yet their authorities still did not ask the international community for aid.
If we are going to have nuclear energy as an alternate source of energy in my future and my children's future, we should be asking Governments at the international level to have plans of action. We need international medical teams and international nuclear experts ready to respond to whatever country is in trouble. Canada has been at the forefront in the development of nuclear energy. I am sure Canadians would want the Government to lead that kind of a discussion at the international level.
I believe the Chernobyl disaster points out the inadequacies of many of the existing response programs we have in Canada. The Minister of National Health and Welfare responded. He told us he had established a special task force to review the procedure of dealing with disasters of the same magnitude as Tchernobyl. We need programs to deal with crises in the nuclear energy field. We should make sure that at the end of this exercise of review we can as a Government assure Canadians that we have done everything possible to deal with a nuclear crisis in the event of one.
I come from an area of the country that has and will maintain an economic interest in nuclear energy. I do not represent the City of Elliot Lake. My colleague, the Hon. Member for Algoma (Mr. Foster), has that honour. In the years from the mid 1950s into the 1960s and 1970s, the advent of the nuclear industry led to a significant economic improvement for those people on the north shore.
I recall very well the debate on the location of the El Dorado refinery when the decision was made to put the refinery in the Blind River area adjacent to Elliot Lake. Even our own Liberal Government at the time was considering putting the Eldorado refinery in southern Ontario in the Port Hope area. I recall the discussions we had with the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources at that time. We told him as a northern Ontario caucus that if we were going to have nuclear energy, then surely the resources mined in northern Ontario should be refined in the North. That was our basic argument. We were successful in making sure the economic spin-offs to that industry were concentrated in the area of the resources.
As you can recall, Mr. Speaker, the Canadian Government became involved in the nuclear field in the 1940s. This was done in a joint effort with the United States. It began with a military application of the use of nuclear energy. Since that time, nuclear technology has been used by nations to deal with their energy requirements. Nuclear technology is used in
medicine, and in altering the ways in which we view our world. There have been some very important spin-offs to the advent of the use of nuclear technology since its inception some four decades ago. Even the Province of Saskatchewan, held successively by New Democratic Governments for several decades, recognized the need for alternate uses of energy, as does the present Government in Saskatchewan.
Any person who objectively and intelligently addresses the issue of nuclear power recognizes it as a form of technology that creates energy. We are asking to make sure that the energy choice is done in a safe way. That is the issue. I do not think we can hide our heads in the sand and with the wave of a magic wand eliminate nuclear power stations in Canada. That is simply not going to happen. Considering the percentage of hydroelectricity in the province which is generated by nuclear stations, it is obvious that the province has a vested interest. If the Province of Ontario has a vested economic interest, so has every citizen of the province.
I do not think we should be focusing on the elimination of nuclear energy as a source of power. We should be focusing research and development on technology to deal with the waste products of nuclear energy. The debate should be focused on the need for safe maintenance and operation of nuclear plants in the country. The Canadian public demands and is entitled to resources at all levels of government to respond in the event of an emergency. That is where this debate should be focused.
If people, for one moment, believe that that is the proper way to approach the issue of nuclear energy, then we must direct more and more resources toward the research and development in the three areas about which I have spoken. That must be the commitment of any government. Regardless of what political party sits to the right of the Speaker, those are the issues with which it will be faced when in government.
The one area with which I have some dispute is the cut-back in R and D which occurred after the 1984 election. The people of the riding of Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke have a right to be upset. I am speaking of the people who are involved in the nuclear industry and live in that riding. They had a right to believe that the proper amount of R and D would be done. The questions which are asked by the Canadian public deserve answers. If the debate is focused in that area, it is a justifiable debate. However, to engage in rhetoric by talking about another broken Government promise takes away from the level of debate which the public deserves to hear in the House of Commons.
Those are my thoughts with respect to this issue. I am sure that in the last 10 days to two weeks, due to the magnitude of the disaster at Chernobyl, all Canadians have had cause to rethink their concerns about the use of nuclear power. I think they would like to have their representatives here in the House of Commons debate the issues in the areas which I have outlined. The public needs those answers. I have listened to some of the debate here this afternoon, albeit not much. I
May 15, 1986

could not be accused of that. In order to have a full debate about the use of nuclear energy, alternate uses of power must be put into the equation.
The Liberal Party has not committed itself to nuclear power, but it has committed itself to ensure that the proper safeguards are in place for the maintenance and use of nuclear power. The Liberal Party is committed to the improved use of moneys for research and development into methods for handling waste products. Those long-term answers are required in order to live comfortably with nuclear energy. To my knowledge, there is no form of energy in the world which does not have some malicious side effects. If we were to remove suddenly all of the energy power stations in the world and replace their energy output with energy derived from coal, the result would be a problem with the atmosphere. Every form of energy has problems. The debate must be intelligent and informed. If we can achieve that, I think we will have advanced the debate which the people have so badly wanted.


Mr. Hamelin:: Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a short comment and put a question to the Hon. Member about nuclear power.
Naturally, the Hon. Member has denounced the delay of the Soviet Union in informing its own population and the other countries which are now affected, and this includes Canada, albeit not too seriously.
I would like to ask the Hon. Member why it is usually the leftist groups who organize protest marches against nuclear energy, and especially against the United States and other countries of the free world. How does the Hon. Member explain the fact that there were so few demonstrations in this case? Where are all the leftist groups which are gaining ground in nearly all parliamentary institutions, especially in Europe? Where are they? How can the Hon. Member explain their reaction to the events in the Soviet Union?


Douglas Cockburn Frith: Mr. Speaker, I did not have any problem with the question asked by the Hon. Member for Charlevoix (Mr. Hamelin), but I do have one in trying to explain the absence of many people who do not want nuclear power in this country.
In view of the urgency of the situation, I think that everyone in this case wanted an answer to a two-part question. First, internationally, they wanted an answer by the international community about the problem in the Soviet Union. Second, in our country they want to see the development of an emergency plan of action in case of a similar problem. I think that in this case the response of people the world over was indeed to obtain the necessary information concerning the crisis created by the Soviet Union.


Abram Ernest Epp: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to join in this debate and to conclude it. The motion before us this afternoon, which calls for a public inquiry into nuclear power, is one of enormous
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importance to the well-being of the entire country and, potentially, to the good health of individuals and communities in selected parts of our country where nuclear power is already important.
Nuclear power as an energy source deserves recognition for the enormous dangers which are inherent in that industry. We have all been watching, with a horrible fascination, the unfolding of the disaster at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union. We wonder what its consequences will be. One hardly need point out to people-although in the debate which we are having this afternoon it is worth doing-that when a disaster occurs at a nuclear power plant, it will not lead only to a loss of energy for people in the immediate area. It is not something which will affect only those persons who are in the plant in the way of immediate consequences of the accident. It is not a matter of physical injury and that is that. Quite clearly what happens or can happen in one of these disasters is a spreading of potential death for large numbers of people at considerable distances from the reactor itself. What the consequences are for those people beyond the immediate vicinity of the plant is something that only time will tell. It will take statistical studies to clarify the consequences.
What is so often forgotten when considering these things is that the question of safe levels of radiation is not a subject on which there is agreement in the scientific community. We live with the standards of the 1940s and 1950s. We live with the thought that it is high levels which are dangerous. Yet there are sneaking suspicions among some epidemiologists and other researchers that quite low levels of radiation can have equally harmful effects in the long term on human beings. The effect on workers in the plants, the effect on thousands of people at some distance from the plant, the spreading of radiation around the globe, the warnings not to drink rain-water even though it is safe for children to splash around in it, the need to check for radiation levels in milk, all underscore the fact that we are dealing with a quite unusual form of energy.
We take comfort from our technology. We have been fortunate in the Western hemisphere in not having any of our nuclear plants affected by earthquakes or similar disasters. Yet what would happen to that technology in the event of that kind of disaster? How widely would the consequences be felt? It is for those reasons that my colleagues and I are emphasizing the importance of a public inquiry on nuclear energy. I suggest that the need to do this can be underscored by the fact that we have built societies and developed economies on the basis of two kinds of dubious energy, the first being petroleum and the second being nuclear energy. Dependence on petroleum has made it possible for the producers to shock our economies and bring us near the brink of economic disaster several times. Because of the failure of their price program recently, there is the possibility of a new kind of disaster. We are in a most perilous economic situation these days because of our petroleum-dependent economy.
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Then we have the consequences of dependence on nuclear energy which has developed in some parts of Canada. I am a Member of Parliament from Ontario and it has already been suggested by others that Ontario Hydro is a major user of nuclear energy. It is worth underscoring the importance of that dependence. In Ontario, 40 per cent of the energy being used is nuclear-generated. That 40 per cent is the base of the Ontario Hydro system. The reason is quite simple. Nuclear energy is a form of energy best used at a steady rate over long periods of time. It is much easier to control hydroelectric facilities by shutting off the water at night and then lifting the gates when morning comes and the energy is needed. It is relatively easy to fire up thermal plants of one sort or another. They are used as supplements.
What is running day and night, week after week, year in and year out, are the nuclear power plants which provide the base. The other power sources are called in as required to meet the demands of industry and the ordinary consumer. That is the reality in this province. As a Member of Parliament from northwestern Ontario, living on the Canadian Shield in an area on which Atomic Energy of Canada has fairly obvious designs for burying its waste, I appreciate the opportunity to address this matter.
There are so many aspects of the use of nuclear energy by Ontario Hydro that it boggles the mind. Surely planting those great stations so close to Metropolitan Toronto has to be an act of corporate lunacy. The cynics, or the tough-minded, I am not sure which they are, or the merely stupid, say that if it is going to be the basis for Metropolitan Toronto's power supply, then let the plants be close to hand rather than far away. I suppose suggesting that it should be in the Bruce-Grey Peninsula or somewhere up there-


Mr. Gurbin:: Point of order, Mr. Speaker. The Bruce-Grey area contains the Bruce Peninsula. It is the Bruce Peninsula, not the Bruce-Grey Peninsula, and it is approximately 40 miles away-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: Obviously that is a point of debate.


Abram Ernest Epp: From the head of the lakes these things sometimes look a little closer together than they do down here. I might remind my friends from southern Ontario that the provincial Government has had the gall for years to publish a map which puts northern Ontario, some 87 per cent of the land area of Ontario, on a piece of paper the same size as southern Ontario.
The decision to build these power plants near Metropolitan Toronto is one of the highly dubious decisions which the Ontario Government made or allowed Ontario Hydro to make as it moved into the use of nuclear energy. We heard the Parliamentary Secretary, the Hon. Member for Brampton- Georgetown (Mr. McDermid), arguing strenuously a few minutes ago in defence of nuclear energy. That makes sense. Who was the MPP and Premier of the Province who allowed
Ontario Hydro to do this? It was the MPP from Brampton. So there is a certain logic to that Hon. Member defending a decision which was never made by the people of Ontario. It was never made by the legislature of Ontario. It was Premier Davis and his colleagues who allowed Ontario Hydro to move into this deadly system of energy generation and who are now part and parcel of the system of research which anticipates the possibility of burying the waste in northwestern Ontario or other parts of northern Ontario and the Canadian Shield.
Let us remember the half life of this material, some 75,000 years and more. What are we going to do with that stuff in the future? Those are the kinds of things that deserve inquiry and that is why I speak in support of this motion.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: It being six o'clock, it is my duty to inform the House that, pursuant to Standing Order 82(12), the proceedings on the motion have expired.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

[Stage Direction]
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 66 deemed to have been moved.

Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, to put the intervention tonight in the proper context, I would like to cast your memory back to October, 1984, when the Niagara River Toxic Chemical Committee produced a report on toxic chemicals and emissions into that water body. In May of 1985, the then Minister of the Environment made a glowing promise about obtaining from the United States Government a plan of action for the clean up of emissions, particularly the toxic chemical emissions, into Lake Ontario. It was quite a commitment that the then Minister made. It raised our hopes. I was pleased to hear that because it indicated that the then Minister intended to take pretty vigorous action and to make the United States authorities realize that there must be, on their part, an action that would enforce the commitment they made with us when they signed the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement in 1978.
In October of 1985, when the head of the Environmental Protection Agency visited Ottawa and submitted a report, the Minister of the Environment (Mr. McMillan) was fuming and very upset over a criticism that was levelled by me because he felt I had not seriously approached and studied the proposal that had been brought here to Ottawa. The fact is that that proposal was kept secret in Canada and was made available
May 15, 1986

south of the border. I had to rely on whatever information I could get to express my views on that.
My views at that time were fairly consistent with what the Minister himself said in March of 1986 in the House of Commons, which triggers this exchange tonight. I am quoting from page 11809 of Hansard. In answer to a question, the Minister of the Environment said the following:
I did state categorically on behalf of the Canadian Government that we think the only solution for the disposal sites on the American side along the Niagara River is excavation and incineration-
That is a position that we support. It comes as a great surprise to realize that the Minister has departed from this decision, and has come to some kind of understanding in Washington about which we have to guess because of the secrecy that surrounds that particular understanding, the plan about which we read in The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and other newspapers. There is secrecy, therefore, about the proposal of the EPA to Canada last October. There is secrecy about the understanding that was reached in Washington a day or so ago. There is secrecy within that understanding about the substances that would be removed, reduced and cut, by a percentage that is speculated upon, and by a date that is also speculated upon.
In addition, there is a strange notion on the part of the Minister of the Environment, as revealed this morning, whereby he seems to believe that the United States Government is doing Canada a favour by acceding to our requests and by looking at our proposals. What this Government and the Minister do not seem to realize is that there is an agreement and the United States Government is bound by that agreement, as we are, for the recovery and the quality that has to be improved, hence the name the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, in Lake Ontario and other lakes.
Therefore, there is an international understanding and an agreement signed by the heads of two nations which binds the Americans to look at the Niagara River with the same seriousness as we do. There is no room for interpreting this as a particular favour or nicety. There is a commitment. I hope this will get through the thick skull of the Minister of the Environment once and for all because he does not seem to understand. That is a very serious conceptual flaw in his approach to his American counterpart in dealing with this particular matter. He does not speak up for the Canadian interest with the determination and authority which this agreement gives to him.
I could not believe my eyes when I read in the newspaper about the difference of opinion between the Minister of the Environment in Ottawa and his counterpart in Ontario. The fact that the disagreement was made public is an indication of a poor negotiator, making public a disagreement on the eve of a meeting with the other side. It is also an indication of a poor player who does not understand the importance of having the
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full support of all the Canadian Ministers of the Environment on the eve of meeting with his counterpart in Washington.


Gary Michael Gurbin: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia), as usual, has some very firm points with respect to some of the issues which surround the agreement which has been reached by the Canadian Minister of the Environment (Mr. McMillan) and the head of the EPA in the United States, Mr. Lee Thomas. Having been able to participate in some of the discussions and deliberations, I have a full sense of the format and conditions under which those agreements were approached. We are now in a position, for the first time since the Love Canal became a national issue, where we in fact have made real solid progress. It is progress which the four million Canadians who drink water from the Niagara region can count on to achieve some results. We could have sat and talked, as former Governments have, for a long time and achieved very little.
Although some of his points have some validity, one of the critical flaws in the approach of the Hon. Member for Davenport to this whole problem is his lack of understanding and appreciation of the information which is available to anyone, and which we must have in order to get the type of firm, hard, clear figures which all of us want inevitably. What I can say is that we have a firm date of July 1, 1987, when we have a commitment with the United States to arrive at those clear-cut targets and loading.
That information is not available to the Province of Ontario, to the American Government nor to the Canadian Government as of today. We have an objective which Mr. Lee Thomas, on behalf of the United States, and the Minister of the Environment of Canada have undertaken together, and perhaps we can exceed the objective of 50 per cent reduction by 1995. That is a major objective on the part of both Governments.
The Hon. Member for Davenport has mentioned the visit by way of the comments made by the Minister of the Environment in Canada insofar as the actions of the Province of Ontario are concerned. Having participated in the meetings with Mr. Thomas, it is unfortunate but there is no question that both Canada and the United States, wanting to co-operate with all parties, have some major concerns regarding the willingness of the Province of Ontario to do anything other than make headlines for its Minister of the Environment.


Charles L. Caccia: Shame on you!


ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE-REPORTED ALLEGATIONS MADE BY SUPERINTENDENT. (B) REQUEST FOR INQUIRY
Mr. Svend J. Robinson (Burnaby):: Mr. Speaker, in 1973 a joint operation of three police forces, the Montreal Police Force, the Quebec Provincial Police Force and the Royal

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Adjournment Debate
Canadian Mounted Police, resulted in a break-in at a small news agency in Montreal, VAgence de Presse libre du Quebec.
Five years later the Solicitor General of Canada, Francis Fox, assured the House that this break-in, this breach of the law, was an exceptional and isolated incident and that the directives of the RCMP to its members clearly require that all their actions take place within the law. The statement of the then Solicitor General, Francis Fox, was clearly and utterly without foundation. As the McDonald Commission Report documented, there had been a whole series of breaches of the criminal law by the RCMP prior to 1977.
In late October of last year, a very senior and respected member of the RCMP, Superintendent Nowlan, indicated that the present Commissioner of the RCMP, Commissioner Simmonds, who was the Commissioner Designate in April of 1977, misled the Government of the day and, in particular, misled the Solicitor General with respect to the extent of criminal wrongdoing by the RCMP.
Superintendent Nowlan's allegations are very serious. In many ways they are unprecedented. What he suggested in his allegations was that some 17 days before the Minister made his statement in the House of Commons he, Mr. Nowlan, was ordered to begin an internal inquiry into allegations that . members of the RCMP were involved in illegal operations other than the break-in at the VAgence de Presse libre du Quebec. Those allegations included barn-burning, including involvement of the force in the theft of dynamite, and the use of heavy-handed and illegal tactics to recruit informants in the FLQ.
According to Mr. Nowlan, at least three officers were well aware of the fact that the APLQ incident was not simply an isolated one. Those officers included the then Commissioner Maurice Nadon, the Director of the Security Service Michael Dare, as well as the Commissioner Designate, the current Commissioner Simmonds. Superintendent Nowlan suggested that Simmonds knowingly allowed the Minister to be misled and that because he was not asked the proper questions by the McDonald Commission, the McDonald Commission, as well, allowed the Commissioner Designate to get off the hook with respect to this very serious matter in April of 1977.
On October 31 I asked the Solicitor General (Mr. Beatty) to conduct an inquiry into these very serious allegations by Superintendent Nowlan. I note that my own Leader, based on the information that he had at the time, suggested that Superintendent Nowlan was responsible for misleading Fox. It is very clear now that that allegation was not well founded. In fact, Superintendent Nowlan was sticking out his neck to make sure that the Solicitor General was well aware of exactly what was going on and it was others, perhaps including the current Commissioner, who chose to deliberately deny access to that important information.
I asked the Solicitor General what action he intended to take with respect to these very serious allegations. The Solicitor General said that he intended to take no action whatsoever. Why was this? Because he had spoken with Francis Fox and Francis Fox said that he was not aware of being misled.
One must ask who in fact is in charge. Surely the Solicitor General had an obligation to meet with Commissioner Simmonds and put these allegations to him directly. How would Francis Fox know if he had not been given the information in question? Instead, the Solicitor General refused to conduct an investigation.
I have sought to have the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee give Superintendent Nowlan an opportunity to appear before it to present evidence. I suggest that the call of the former Superintendent who retired recently for an independent inquiry with the power to examine documents at National Headquarters is one which I fully support. Yet it has been stonewalled and denied by the Minister.
Who in fact is in charge? We have heard the rather contemptible suggestions made by the Commissioner that Superintendent Nowlan had certain mental problems, so his allegations should be discredited. While it is quite accurate to suggest that Superintendent Nowlan does suffer from manic depression, his doctor has made it very clear that he is a man of integrity and sound judgment. In addition, the former Solicitor General, Francis Fox, spoke very highly indeed of Superintendent Nowlan and called him a very honourable and a very thorough person.
In view of the seriousness of these allegations and in view of the fact that Superintendent Nowlan was well aware of what was going on and the extent of knowledge within the RCMP, particularly at the senior levels, 1 call upon the Minister once again to allow this matter to be examined. After all, what does he have to hide? Allow the Justice Committee to invite Superintendent Nowlan to appear before it. Appoint an independent investigator to get to the bottom of these very serious allegations.
I suggest that Superintendent Nowlan should be commended by Canadians and by the House for having the courage to speak out before he retired with respect to these matters. I would hope that instead of continuing to cover up these allegations which after all affect the Commissioner himself and his position, they should be fully investigated.


Mr. Gordon Towers (Parliamentary Secretary to Solicitor General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member for Burnaby (Mr. Robinson) has raised newspaper accounts of allegations made by an officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police concerning the conduct of senior officers of the force. These allegations related to matters which were the subject of deliberations of the Royal Commission of Inquiry established
May 15, 1986

in 1977 under the chairmanship of Mr. Justice David McDonald and assisted by D. S. Rickard, Q.C., and Guy Gilbert, Q.C.
The key components of the mandate of this commission were to conduct such investigations as were necessary to determine the extent and prevalence of investigative practices involving members of the RCMP that were not authorized or provided for by law and to report the facts and to advise as to any action deemed necessary in the public interest about such matters.
Hon. Members will recall that in discharging its responsibilities, this Commission operated from July 1977 until August 1981, four years and 50 days. During that time, Mr. Justice McDonald and his colleagues searched for and heard testimony about these matters at a level of intensity and detail unprecedented in respect to the activities of the RCMP, its personnel or this general sector of Government operations.
The facts are clear. There were hearings of two kinds, evidentiary and those requiring briefs. Evidentiary hearings were held both in public and in camera. One hundred and sixty-nine public hearings and 144 in camera hearings were held at which 149 witnesses were examined and 105 exhibits received. Superintendent Nowlan was one of those witnesses. Public briefs were heard twice in Vancouver and some five times in Regina, Toronto, Montreal, Fredericton, and Ottawa. There were several volumes of public reports, and to supplement hearing information, the commission met informally with many groups and individuals.
What then of the allegations about the conduct of the present Commissioner of the RCMP, Robert Simmonds, relating to the matters examined by the royal commission? I refer Hon. Members to the second report, Volume I entitled "Freedom and Security Under the Law", where at page 7, paragraph 23, the Commissioners concluded the following:
Robert Simmonds became Commissioner of the RCMP on September 1, 1977, almost at the same time as this Commission was established. Before that, since 1976, he had been the Deputy Commissioner responsible for administration, and his brief time in that position was his only prior experience at headquarters; all his earlier career, from the time he joined the RCMP in 1947, was spent in Alberta and British Columbia. Managing a police force the size of the RCMP is a difficult task at the best times. Commissioner Simmonds' burden has been increased greatly during the past three and one-half years by the activities of our inquiry and those of the provincial inquiries. His stance vis-a-vis this Commission has been, throughout, one of total co-operation. We are conscious of the fact that he has put on hold certain plans and proposals that he had for change within the Force, pending receipt of our report, and also that he has felt constrained to suspend or terminate certain practices merely because to continue them might have meant to continue unlawful conduct. Our inquiry and report touched only occasionally upon Commissioner Simmonds. He inherited the situation which led to our inquiry and participated in neither the formulation nor the continuation of the policies which have been its substance.
This royal commission had unrestricted access to every RCMP and almost every other Government record it wished to examine, and to any RCMP officer and other Government official it wished to question including the then Prime Minister. It was in full possession of the facts and thus in the only position to draw the appropriate conclusions. In this context,
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these allegations directed at Commissioner Simmonds seem particularly ill-advised, to say the least. This point brings me to the last observation which I wish to make on this issue.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is justifiably a well-respected institution in Canada. I say justifiably because of the way it links us to our past, because of the unparalleled record of service its personnel has provided to Canadians, and because of the universality of the regard and recognition it affords for Canada abroad. These are the facts, no less conclusive than the commission of inquiry's estimation of Mr. Simmonds.
In conclusion, I wish to state the Government's view that the facts as reported by the McDonald Commission speak for themselves, and that the call for another inquiry into these allegations is totally unjustifiable.
AGRICULTURE-EFFECT OF REDUCED INITIAL PRICE, (fi) REQUEST FOR 1985 INITIAL PRICE


Maurice Brydon Foster: Mr. Speaker, on April 10, I directed a question to the Minister of State responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board (Mr. Mayer). I asked him how he expected farmers in western Canada to survive when just a day or two before he announced the lowest initial prices for wheat, barley, and other grains in real dollars since the 1930s. The Minister's response to that request was essentially to slough off the question. He ended his response by saying:
The problem we face is a larger problem, that is, very depressed world grain prices.
Was that a brilliant response to a serious question about how Canadians would survive?
The fact of the matter is that Canadian grain producers will be receiving about $1.50 per bushel for No. 1 wheat. Of course we have to take into account the cost of handling and transportation. The net return will be something over $3 Canadian, whereas United States farmers in the mid-West will be receiving over $6 Canadian per bushel this year regardless of the world price. For example, if the world price is $3.50 or $2.50 per bushel, they will still receive $6 plus per bushel.
Again I ask the Minister how he expects farmers in western Canada to survive when they are receiving about half as much per bushel of wheat as their American counterparts.
The doom and gloom hanging over western Canada is unprecedented, I believe, since the 1930s because the United States and the European Economic Community are engaged in an agricultural commodity price war. The United States Congress has voted sufficient funds to fight the war for the next three years. Its law provides funds for five years. The visits of the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) to Washington produced no results, assistance or backing off by the United States Government on the impact of that stablization, subsidization and bonus program.
When the Prime Minister went to the Economic Summit in Japan, he said he was going to raise the matter. I believe he

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did. There was no indication in the communique from the conference that the seven heads of Government would take any action with regard to the grain and agricultural commodity price war. The communique indicated that they would not even refer the matter of agricultural commodities to the negotiating table at the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade talks. That is a disaster for Canadian farmers. Everyone will have to hunker down to the prospect of a trade war. If the seven nations do not press to have agricultural commodities on the negotiating agenda in the GATT conference in Uraguay this fall, it means the agricultural commodity price war between the European Economic Community and the United States will go on. Not to have it on the agenda is a tremendous failure on the part of the Prime Minister.
I appreciate the fact that he raised the matter, met with farmers and their representatives in Vancouver, but the farmers are left defenceless. The Prime Minister and the Government must announce immediately a deficiency payment program to stabilize and secure the western economy. At the moment the western economy, especially in Alberta and Saskatchewan, is reeling from the impact of low oil prices. Not to provide minimum support for the grain industry will be devastating.
When the Parliamentary Secretary speaks tonight, it is essential that he immediately announce at the bare minimum financial assistance which the three prairie pools, the Western Grain Growers Association and other western farm organizations have asked for. They need a stabilization deficiency payment adequate to secure and maintain that industry during the coming crop year and in years ahead. One approach might be to reinstate the 1985 grain prices which would tell the farmers that the Government was not prepared to provide as much financial assistance as the United States Government does, but that there would be some financial assistance to stabilize and secure the whole western economy during the coming year.
If action is not taken now by the federal Government, there will be a serious financial crisis on the Prairies. There will be bankruptcies and farm losses. There will be a loss of the entire rural economy. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will come forward and make that commitment tonight so that western agricultural and grain producers will know where they stand. They will know what their future is going to be and that the Government is going to support and assist them.


Mr. Pierre Blais (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, I am always a little bit surprised when I hear my colleague the Hon. Member for Algoma (Mr. Foster) echo day in and day out the same fears and concerns expressed over the past 18 months by members of his Party about the farm industry. Given his considerable experience, he is well aware that Canadian grain producers are caught in a cross-fire of sort, in the war that is being waged between the European Economic Community and the United States.
Canada is the innocent victim of the large scale war which two of the world economic powers are waging through massive subsidies to their respective agricultural industries.
We have tried to ease the burden of grain producers by reducing to 19 per cent the cut in initial prices which could have been a lot worse and which is a lot less than that made in the American prices.
When initial prices were announced, it was also announced that tariffs administered by the Canadian Grain Commission have been frozen at last year's levels. These include cleaning, elevation and storage charges at terminal and county elevators. The Government is acting in other ways. It is studying domestic wheat prices. A special parliamentary committee chaired by the Hon. Member for Crowfoot (Mr. Malone) is studying ways of increasing returns to wheat producers. The committee is expected to report to Parliament in mid-June.
When Members opposite call on the Government to do more for prairie farmers, they seem to have lost sight of the fact that the Government has done a lot for farmers already. It has announced policies and programs which have resulted in $4 billion in benefits to farmers, of which $1.5 billion has been channelled to western farmers in particular.

The Hon. Member should not disregard this fact nor ignore the efforts which our Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) has made. He has described this as a defeat. Is it possible to speak of a defeat when for the first time a Prime Minister, at an international meeting of seven world powers, has managed to have it appear on the agenda and convince these powers that it is absolutely necessary to do something to end this price war? On the eve of his departure for Tokyo, the Prime Minister had met all the Canadians representatives of the farm industry to seek their advice before meeting the representatives of the seven major powers.
Something else that had never been done in the past, Mr. Speaker, is that our Minister, the Minister in charge of the Canadian Wheat Board (Mr. Mayer) is going to meet with representatives of other wheat exporting nations in Vancouver in a few weeks from now.
I therefore feel, Mr. Speaker, that this Government has made every effort, everything it could in the current farmers' crisis of which we are well aware, to make sure Canadian producers are well represented and get the best deal in the circumstances.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Charest):: The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 11 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 3(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 6.35 p.m.
[Stage Direction]

Friday, May 16, 1986