Today's workshop is organized on behalf of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, which in turn has been established by Canada's nuclear utilities.  According to the Nuclear Waste Act of 2002, the NWMO is to advise the Federal Government on what course of action should be pursued with regard to the management of High-Level Radioactive Waste, also referred to as Used Nuclear Fuel.  Without any further democratic process, the Government will then select a course of action by Order in Council, and the NWMO will be directed to implement the chosen course of action.

Many groups in Quebec see this entire process as fatally flawed because it is politically tainted.  It is well known that the Government of Canada and the Nuclear Power Industry are committed to the continuation and the expansion of nuclear power technology.  Taxpayer's money is used as needed to prop up the industry here at home and to spread it overseas.  But when nuclear power is promoted, the continued production of high-level radioactive waste is also promoted.

Over the years, spokesmen for the nuclear industry have frequently stated in public that "nuclear waste is not a technical problem, it is a public relations problem."  These statements highlight a very significant fact: as the creator of high-level radioactive waste, the nuclear industry has a built-in conflict of interest.  It can be expected to advise Government to adopt a policy which solves its own PR problem.  But this is not good science, and it is certainly not good public policy.

Although we can all agree that the high-level radioactive waste we have must be properly managed, a large number of Canadians believe that the further production of this highly toxic material should be phased out: reduction of risk at the source should be the number one priority.  This is simple common sense.  In Quebec,
when the dangers of PCB's became evident, a political decision was taken to stop the production and use of this material so that society could focus its efforts on safely containing or destroying the PCB's that had already been produced.  In this way, we avoid making the problem worse.  In a similar way, many citizens believe that an industrial enterprise, like nuclear power, which routinely mass-produces large quantities of persistent toxic materials should be phased out if at all possible.

Such views are not welcomed by the Government of Canada.  Experience has shown that the Federal Government and the Nuclear Industry often act together to silence Canadian citizens -- including elected representatives -- by preventing them from judging the alternatives to nuclear power in any official forum, preventing them from discussing nuclear waste policy options in a holistic way, and preventing them from having a genuine input into the nuclear policy decision-making process.   This bias on the part of the Government is so apparent, and so unfair in a democratic society, that public acquiescence is highly unlikely as long as the process is controlled and manipulated by and for the nuclear industry.

The organizers of this meeting have cited two documents as background material for today's workshop.  One is the Hare Report, published in 1977; the other is the Seaborn Panel Report of 1998.  These reports are politically tainted.  In both cases, before, during, and after the preparation of these two reports, the Government of Canada took steps to nullify the views of Canadian citizens and parliamentarians.

The Hare Report was written in three months by three men, appointed by the Government.  There was no public consultation.  The three men were all nuclear enthusiasts.  One was a retired Vice-President of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.  Not surprisingly, the report reflected the views of the Canadian nuclear industry

Two other inquiries into High Level Nuclear Waste were underway in 1977-1978; they were the Ontario Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning and the Standing Committee on National Resources and Public Works.  Unlike the Hare Report, both of these two other bodies held extensive public hearings and received hundreds of submission on the subject of High-Level Nuclear Waste.

Yet the Government of Canada did not even wait to hear their recommendations.  In June 1978, without any advance warning, Ottawa signed an agreement with the Government of Ontario authorizing AECL and Ontario Hydro to proceed to study the "Geological Disposal" option preferred by the Hare Report and the Nuclear Industry.   This undemocratic decision was to cost Canadian tax-payers $600 million over the next 15 years, without the benefit of any input from those same taxpayers.

The Ontario Royal Commission's First Report was released a few months later, in the Fall of 1978.  It was entitled "Nuclear Power: A Race Against Time".  One of its principal recommendations was that, if significant progress on the problem of managing high-level radioactive wastes were not made by the year 1985, a moratorium on the further use of nuclear power would be justified.  In the Final Commission Report, that deadline was postponed until 1990.  Ottawa paid no heed.

Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Committee on Natural Resources and Public Works was thrown into confusion by the Federal Government's sudden action in June 1978.  The Committee hearings were finished, and the report was about to be written.  At the final meeting of the Committee on this topic, anger, outrage and frustration was expressed by many of the Committee members.  All their work had been made useless by the Government.  The hearings had become a mockery.  The Committee never wrote a report because of the Government's anti-democratic act.

Many years and $600 million later, an Environmental Panel was struck to review AECL's Concept of Geologic Diaposal.  The Minister of Natural Resources, Jake Epp, informed the Minister of Environment, Lucien Bouchard, that the environmental review would not allow for a consideration of the role of nuclear power.  Thus Canadian citizens would be prevented from proposing the phase-out of nuclear power as a way of limiting the problem of High-Level Nuclear Waste.  Minister Bouchard insisted that it was absurd to study the question of High-Level Nuclear Waste without considering the technology that produces that waste, as well as alternatives that might be used to reduce or eliminate the source of the problem.

Because of M. Bouchard's unwillingness to approve Mr. Epp's narrow terms of reference, a solemn promise was communicated in writing to Minister Bouchard that the Government of Canada would conduct a parallel set of hearings -- a wide-ranging public inquiry -- into Canada's energy policies, with a particular focus on the role of nuclear power and the potential for non-nuclear alternatives.  On this understanding, the Environmental Review Panel was appointed and set to work.

For the first couple of years, Mr. Seaborn -- the Chairman of the Environmental Panel -- took pains to reassure all Canadian citizens, time and time again, on the record, that the Government of Canada was committed to holding official public hearings into the role of nuclear power.  For that reason, and only for that reason, he said, such considerations were to be excluded from the Nuclear Waste hearings.

Before long it was revealed by the Government that this promise was not going to be respected.  No public hearings into energy policy or the role of nuclear energy would take place.  Mr. Seaborn, the Chairman of the Environmental Panel, was compelled to publicly apologize for the false assurances he had given and express his regrets that he had been misled.  He had not been miseld, but betrayed, as had all those participants who desired a meaningful discussion of all the options.

When the Seaborn Panel finally produced its report after ten years of effort, it recommended the creation of a Nuclear Fuel Waste Management Organization
•  that would operate "at arm's length"  from the utilities and AECL;
•  that its Board of Directors should  include representation from all stakeholders;
•   that an advisory council should be formed  consisting of a variety of people from different perspectives;
•   that public accountability should be guaranteed  by frequent public review, preferably by Parliament.

Instead, we have an organization run by the nuclear industry, and a law which specifically excludes further parliamentary review.  This will never be seen as acceptable to the Quebec  population; nor, probably, to other Canadian citizens.

Any plan for the long-term management of highly toxic materials must be related to the scope of the problem.  If the intention is to continue and even accelerate the production of these wastes, then the safe long-term management of such wastes becomes a nearly impossible task.

Since used fuel bundles cannot be put into geological storage until they are ten years' old, there will always remain 10-years worth of high-level radioactive waste at each reactor site.  A simple calculation shows that the radioactivity in this unburied spent fuel is approximately 20 times greater than the radioactivity of all the buried spent fuel from the same reactor.   Thus, as long as the reactors continue to produce high-level radioactive waste,  the geologic disposal program cannot dispose of more than about 5 percent of the problem.   To deny the Canadian public an oppportunity to explore such questions is the height of folly on the part of the Government.

In the event of a growing nuclear power program -- something which the Government and the Industry seem to earnestly desire -- the unburied inventory of radioactive material will also grow.  Thus, even if the geologic disposal program were 100 % successful, the radioactive hazard at the surface of the earth would continue to increase, keeping pace with the expansion of the nuclear industry.

To support the Industry, the Government has stifled public opinion, broken its own promises, undermined a Parliamentary Committee, and gone completely against the spirit of the recommendations of the Seaborn panel.   The Canadian public has no reason to trust either Industry or Government when it comes to nuclear waste.