Conservatives Back Liability Limitations Sought by Industry

Garnering little notice in the press, in early November members of the House of Commons were debating changes to the inadequate liability legislation covering the nuclear industry. Like the stock market passes risk off from insiders to a largely un-knowing public, the nuclear industry wants to pass practically all the risk off on to you and me. In other words, they keep the profits, we keep the waste and future problems. The potential liability is virtually immeasurable - hundreds of billions of dollars - but money means nothing when nuclear accidents can leave vast areas of geography uninhabitable.

U.S. Driven Nuclear 'Partnership'

In tandem, Stephen Harper's government has been quietly pursuing the Canadian nuclear industry's agenda on the international stage, a stage largely controlled by the United States.

According to censored documents obtained by The Canadian Press through an access-to-information request, the federal government has been "very interested" in the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) since 2006 when Canadian and American officials began discussions "to consider possible parameters of Canadian involvement."

Canada signing onto GNEP would be a "wet dream" for the country's nuclear industry, said Dave Martin, energy co-ordinator for Greenpeace Canada.

"It would mean a dramatic increase in nuclear exports and reprocessing, which is something they've wanted for a long time," he explained from Toronto. "But the cost in terms of proliferation and security risks is going to be enormous."

One obstacle to membership in the GNEP, Mr. Martin pointed out, is that Canada has a long-standing policy against repatriating radioactive waste–which contains plutonium–from the sale of uranium and CANDU reactors, designed and marketed by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. [3]

A Disturbing Change of Position

Embassy Magazine in its September 12 editorial quotes UBC professor Michael Byers who has detected since the Harper government was formed a significant shift in Canada's stated policy towards nuclear weapons.

In January 2002, Canada's policy called for "the complete elimination of nuclear weapons...through steadily advocating national, bilateral and multilateral steps," Mr. Byers points out in his new book, Intent for a Nation: What is Canada For?

[Recently the] foreign affairs website has been amended to say that Canada's nuclear weapons policy is now "consistent with our membership in NATO and NORAD, and in a manner sensitive to the broader international security context." As Mr. Byers rightly points out, this clause strips Canada's policy of any real meaning. [4]

I don't recall Stephen Harper stating anywhere during the 2006 election that a Harper government would be more, not less, tolerant of nuclear weapons. Did voters give Harper a mandate to expand our country's contribution to the arms race? To nuclear proliferation? Are we prepared to take on the worlds nuclear waste, as GNEP effectively mandates? [5]

If you disturb the land, terrible illnesses will happen in retribution. Disrupting one part of your life knocks the whole system off balance. Traditional Navajo Healer's Philosophy

Perhaps our native population can stand up and speak about the issue with a powerful voice.

Labrador's Inuit government is considering suspending all uranium mining and development on its territory because of concerns over the safe disposal of the radioactive element's waste. "The tailings disposal is a very big concern. How do you dispose of it and store it for hundreds and hundreds of years afterwards safely?" said William Barbour, Nunatsiavut's minister of land and resources. More >

Seems to me there ought to be a serious debate on this issue, not the pablum that is Question Period or most elections.

The Past

Fenced in by history on one side, and his support base on the other, Harper has no room to wiggle on policy even if he wanted to.

But the “battle of Kyoto” is just beginning. Ratification is merely symbolic; Kyoto will not take effect unless and until it is implemented by legislation. We will go to the wall to stop that legislation... Stephen Harper, 2002

Harper has for years championed the cause of the climate-change denial machine, an engine driven by big oil and big business. Confidants and supporters include noted climate-change denier Dr. Barry Gordon and his ineptly-named Friends of Science group, and Gwyn Morgan, former CEO of EnCana, the country's largest independent oil and gas company. Morgan too is a long-time foe of Kyoto, as well as a supporter of the Conservative Party. Unsurprisingly, Morgan was one of Harper's first appointment choices after becoming Prime Minister.

It is my earnest submission that signing the Kyoto Protocol would go down in history as one of the most damaging international agreements ever signed by a Canadian Prime Minister. Gwyn Morgan, former CEO EnCana Corp

In 2002 Harper, then Opposition Leader in the House of Commons, was squaring off daily against former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. Kyoto, deeply unpopular (as are all things Liberal) in Alberta, wrote a fund raising appeal letter (attached) to tens of thousands of his Canadian Alliance party members. In it Harper said that Kyoto was nothing more than a socialist scheme, and, in lock-step with the organized denial machine, called climate change science tentative and contradictory while ridiculously suggesting that carbon dioxide (one of only many greenhouse gasses) shouldn't be a target for reduction because it "is essential to life". [1]

There is of course nothing tentative or contradictory about climate-change, despite the denial machine's attempt to blur reality, much in the same way that tobacco company executives used to testify that smoking was safe. Implanting doubt in the minds of Canadians - for we do try to be fair people - is an age-old technique of propagandists and marketers alike.

The Present

Riding to a minority election win in part on the coattails of Western angst over Kyoto, Harper delivers presents to the climate-change denial machine lobby. Immediately Harper's intentions are signaled as the inept, Alberta oil industry connected, Rona Ambrose - Ralph Klein's own Kyoto fighter - is appointed environment minister figurehead. With Ambrose fed to the press as a distraction, Harper proceeds with his long-stated plan to sabotage any real action on climate change. He said he'd scrap Kyoto [2] and he has.

Several months after the 2006 election, COMPAS completed a poll of business leaders for BDO Dunwoody (PDF attached) which underscores a truism that business is generally behind Harper in his crusade to abandon the mandatory GHG cuts that the Kyoto agreement calls for.

By a margin of at least 2:1, the COMPAS panel of CEOs and business leaders embraces the Asia-Pacific Partnership over the Kyoto treaty.

Why is business behind the so-called Asia-Pacific Partnership? Because it won't force them to change. Period.

The Bush nuclear program would turn Canada into an international radioactive waste dump. Greenpeace

In the late summer of 2007 we were treated to a photo-op of the APP ringleaders - Australia Prime Minister John Howard, U.S. President George Bush, Prime Minister Stephen Harper - and other world GHG producers agreeing to nothing more than aspirational targets, a euphamism for no hard targets, no limits, no penalties and no curbing of GHG emissions growth. Bucking the party line, John Howard's own minister of environment has been quoted as saying that an aspirational target is not a real target.

Canada has essentially operated under voluntary industry aspirational targets for two decades now, and the result: our emissions are way up.

Understandably, environmentalists are not happy with the direction Canada is headed.

In the face of environmental calamity, we have political cowardice. John Bennett, executive director of ClimateforChange.ca

[Our] new federal government seems bothered not a whit by such details. Instead, it has said that the Kyoto targets are too hard for Canada, so it won't even try to meet them - essentially thumbing its nose at the international community and the other Kyoto signatories (the majority of whom have already reached their targets or are on track to meet them by the 2012 deadline). David Suzuki [3]

Intertwined with rising GHG emissions are the rising expectations of the global nuclear industry, of which Canada, Australia, and the United States are major players. Canada and Australia have together a large percentage of the planet's Uranium reserves.

GNEP promotes the export of uranium and nuclear reactors, along with the return of the radioactive waste (spent reactor fuel) to the supplier countries for disposal and reprocessing. Canada, however, has a long-standing policy against repatriation of radioactive waste from uranium and CANDU reactors sold abroad.

“The Bush nuclear program would turn Canada into an international radioactive waste dump, and the Harper government has not allowed any public debate,” said Dave Martin, energy co-ordinator for Greenpeace Canada. [4]

Election 2006 should have been the environment election, but was instead focussed on the infighting between Liberals and the ineptness of Paul Martin's election team.

The Future

The next time Canadians head for the polls to elect any government - municipal, provincial, or federal, lets not allow politicians to spin other less important issues as distractions.

Stephen Harper's bunch truly are in bed with the large polluters and producers of GHG's; the Liberals have demonstrated over many years that they lack the political will, or capital, to make tough, meaningful, choices.

There are no easy answers to the dual problems of climate change and clean, sufficient, energy; but our current and traditional political leaders aren't even interested in asking the right questions. Its time to put motivated and un-beholden people into our House of Commons, our provincial legislatures, and city halls.