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80 CANADIAN ORGANIZATIONS CALL ON FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO RESCIND APPOINTMENT OF NUCLEAR REGULATORY AGENCY PRESIDENT.

Ottawa, 17 July 2024 .-  www.nuclearwastewatch.ca 

Over 80 civil society organizations from across Canada are speaking out and calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Governor General Mary Simon to rescind their recent appointment of Mr. Pierre Tremblay, a long time senior nuclear industry executive, as President of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC).

In a joint letter citing conflict of interest and failure to adhere to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) guidelines, the groups -a range of organizations that include in their ranks scientists and retired nuclear officials- also call on the Federal Government for an urgent reform of the CNSC and nuclear governance in Canada.

Mr. Tremblay has been a long-time senior business executive at Ontario Power Generation (Canada’s largest nuclear operator and contractor of nuclear businesses), reported co-owner of a private nuclear business involved in the Plutonium trade, and most recently president of AECOM Canada Nuclear Services -a key contractor for two questionable projects expected to report billions of dollars to the nuclear businesses involved, and impact populations for centuries: a nuclear waste dump (“Near Surface Disposal Facility”) by the Ottawa river and a project to abandon high-level nuclear waste underground in Northern Ontario, both of them expecting CNSC licenses.

The groups also call on the Federal Government to take the opportunity to initiate a long-needed reform of the CNSC, which has often been described by observers as an “industry-captured regulator”.

The request notes that the CNSC has a communications branch with 60-plus staff but no dedicated human health and environmental protection branch, and has not turned down a single nuclear industry application in more than a decade. It has also actively lobbied to weaken impact assessment legislation to exclude a range of nuclear reactors and processing facilities.

Mr. Tremblay’s appointment follows other appointments to the Commission of industry insiders, and two troubling assessments of the CNSC’s performance by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) -a June 2024 follow-up to an initial 2019 IAEA mission highlighted several problem areas; despite the CNSC’s positive spin on the IAEA missions, the findings are a cause of deep concern for independent observers and experts.

Given the CNSC’s often-stated priority and legal mandate to protect the environment and the health of Canadians, the groups are requesting the Federal Government consider recruiting CNSC senior ranks from within the health and environmental protection communities, including perhaps Environment and Climate Change Canada and the federal Health Portfolio.

The signatory organizations note that the appointment contravenes both IAEA guidelines and the Federal Government’s own guidance on the independence of regulatory bodies, and compromises the public’s expectation of neutrality, objectivity and independence of Canada’s nuclear regulatory body and reinforces the public perception of industry capture of that body. Rescinding the appointment would be a significant step towards a much-needed reform of the CNSC and towards restoring public trust in that critically important agency.

Quotes: The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is supposed to be a neutral body, carefully safeguarding the health of the Canadian public and the environment from the risks associated with the use of nuclear energy. Senior executives from the nuclear industry should be disqualified from positions at the CNSC.” – Dr. Ole Hendrickson.

“Having a nuclear business executive whose companies have pushed for questionable projects placed in charge of the very agency that would now regulate and approve them, is an obvious conflict of interest” – J. P. Unger, science writer and policy analyst. “The Government should abandon any pretense of having a watchdog and true regulator for nuclear matters -or carry out its urgently needed reform.”

July 21, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, politics