This letter to the editor was published on June 12, 2023~ 

Canada’s failed radioactive waste policy is no surprise given our country’s deficient nuclear governance regime: letter writers

Natural Resources Canada recently announced the release of a new federal radioactive waste policy. It was three years in the making and was only undertaken because of pressure from civil society groups and criticism from an international peer review team who visited Canada in September 2019 under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In our view, the new radioactive waste policy is a failure on several counts. For example:

• It fails to include a requirement to keep radioactive waste out of the biosphere;
• It fails to incorporate input from thousands of Canadians who participated in good faith in the review process. For example, the policy does not include a prohibition on plutonium extraction and it also fails to address calls from citizens and NGOs from across Canada for an independent authority to oversee nuclear waste management and decommissioning;
• It fails to address serious problems identified by the IAEA in 2019; eg. the IAEA explicitly said defunct nuclear reactors should not be entombed in place except in extreme circumstances, yet the new policy allows for this and enables projects to abandon reactors beside the Ottawa and Winnipeg Rivers to move forward;
• It fails to require that “free prior and informed consent” be obtained before radioactive waste is stored or disposed of on lands or territories of Indigenous Peoples as laid out in Article 29(2) of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In 2021, Canada affirmed the UN Declaration as a universal international human rights instrument with application in Canadian law. However a proposed giant radioactive waste mound alongside the Ottawa River in unceded Algonquin traditional territory is close to approval and would violate this principle. The new policy will do nothing to stop this. The final licensing hearing is scheduled for June 27.

Canada’s new radioactive waste policy appears to provide the nuclear industry with exactly what it wanted – license to abandon radioactive waste quickly and cheaply –  and to afford Canadians with little protection from radioactive wastes that will remain hazardous for thousands of years.

Our letter of March 2021 to the Hill Times noted that Canada’s nuclear governance regime is inadequate, consisting of one captured, pro-industry regulator, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, and one pro-nuclear government department, Natural Resources Canada. Other OECD countries have much more robust nuclear governance regimes that include checks and balances, and multiple, multidisciplinary oversight committees and councils, often including high ranking officials such as the President in the case of France. A detailed review of shortcomings in Canada’s nuclear governance was provided to the Auditor General in 2019 in the form of Petition 427 from our respective citizens’ groups, Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area and Concerned Citizens of Manitoba and colleagues in Quebec.

We should not be surprised that Canada’s new radioactive waste policy is a failure, as it is the product of a sorely deficient nuclear governance regime. 

In 2021 we asked who would fix Canada’s nuclear governance gaps. Now we must also ask “Who will correct the serious deficiencies in Canada’s new radioactive waste policy?”  If these problems are not corrected, the nuclear industry in Canada will proceed to implement bargain basement nuclear waste projects that are out of step with international safety standards. This will lead to permanent radioactive contamination of major Canadian water bodies including the Ottawa and Winnipeg  Rivers. 

Lynn Jones, MHSc
Ottawa, Ont., Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area

Anne Lindsey, OM, MA

Winnipeg, Man., Concerned Citizens of Manitoba