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Comm it t ee Transcr ip ts : Se lec t Comm it t ee on HydroNuc lear Af fa i rs - November 05, 1997 - HydroStakeho lders

Hydro Stakeholders

TOWN OF PICKERING

NUCLEAR AWARENESS PROJECT

SALLY MCLEOD

JOE PACIONE

SUZANNE ELSTON

KAREN PAUL

CANADIAN NUCLEAR WORKERS' COUNCIL

MAURICE BRENNER

JOHN WELLS

DAWN ROPERSHERRY SENIS

KEVIN ASHE

CLARINGTON HYDRO ELECTRIC COMMISSION

ONTARIO HYDRO EMPLOYEES

FRANK ADAMEK

RICK MARSHALL

CONTENTS

Wednesday 5 November 1997

Town o f P icker ing

Mr Wayne Arthurs

Nuclear Awareness Pro jec t

Mr Dave Martin

Mrs Sal ly McLeod

Mr Joe Pac ione

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Ms Suzanne Elst on

Mrs Karen Paul

Canadian Nuc lear Workers ' Counc i l

Mr David Shier

Mr Maur ice Brenner  

Mr J ohn Wel ls

Mrs Dawn Roper 

Ms Sherry Senis

Mr K ev in Ashe

Clar ington Hydro Electr ic Commiss ion

Mr George Van Dyk

Mr Dave Clark

Ms Pauline Storks

Ontar io Hydro employees

Mr Peter Falconer

Mr Bob Peters

Mr Dave Milton

Mr Frank Adamek

Mr R ick Marsha l l

SELECT COMMIT TEE ON ONTARIO HYDRO NUCLEAR AFFAIRS

Chair / Présiden t

Mr Derwyn Shea (High Park-Swansea PC)

Vice -Chair / V ice -Prés ident

Mr Monte Kwinter (Wilson Heights L)

Mr Sean Conway (Renfrew North / -Nord L)

Mrs Barbara Fisher (Bruce PC)

Mr Doug Galt (Northumberland PC)

Mrs Helen Johns (Huron PC)Mr Monte Kwinter (Wilson Heights L)

Mr Floyd Laughren (Nickel Belt ND)

Mr John R. O'Toole (Durham East / -Est PC)

Mr Derwyn Shea (High Park-Swansea PC)

Clerk / Gref f ière

Ms Donna Bryce

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Staff / Personnel

Ms Anne Marzalik, research officer, Legislative Research Service

Mr Robert Power, legal consultant

The Chair (Mr Derwyn Shea): Let me bring the select committee on Ontario

Hydro nuclear affairs to order. We have a long afternoon and a bit of an evening

before us as well.

A special thanks to the members of the Atomic Energy Control Board for the

briefings this morning, and also to Ontario Hydro management and staff.

As you know, the committee had chosen to meet here at a midway point because

of a number of deputations that are coming in both from Darlington and Pickering.

This was seen as a reasonable meeting point, although I have just very quickly

glanced at comment from one of our deputants who, I think fairly, points out some

concerns about location, and I understand and respect that point of view. But at

least I think we've made a case of why we are here and the interest we have in

hearing from the residents surrounding both of the facilities. It is very important.

I'd also like to thank Mr Ouellette -- we are in his riding -- and Mr O'Toole, who is

also a sitting member nearby, for his courtesies and his welcome into thiscommunity. We appreciate that very much.

Are there any comments you want to make, Mr O'Toole, before we begin?

Mr J ohn O'Toole (Durham East) : I'd just like to welcome members to the

community. We're in Jerry Ouellette's riding, and I know Jerry would like to observe

the behaviour going on here today. It's good to see the community involved, and

Mayor Arthurs, and I'm pleased to hear the response from the community.

The Chair: There are a number of deputants, as I mentioned. There are different

time frames for some. There are a number, as you'll notice, as we get towards the

latter part of the day that have voluntarily clustered together so they can make apresentation, facilitate their presentation and give a little more time to the

committee to ask questions. Whatever time is allocated, whether it be 30 minutes

or 10 or 20, includes the question-and-answer period, and I will as usual be

reasonably crisp with the gavel.

TOWN OF PICKERING

The Chair: Let me being with welcoming to the witness stand His Worship

Wayne Arthurs, the mayor of Pickering. Mr Mayor, if you would be good enough to

come forward, and for the purpose of Hansard, although I have introduced you, if

you would be good enough to mention your name so we have it on the record.

Mr Wayne Arthurs : My name is Wayne Arthurs and I am the mayor of the town

of Pickering.

Mr Chairman and members, thank you very much for the opportunity of presenting

before you today, and to Mr O'Toole, whose riding is within the regional

municipality of Durham. We've had the pleasure of sitting together on regional

council for a period of time.

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. For the record, I have served on Pickering

council for some 15 years now and have been the mayor and a regional councillor

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for the past nine years. I'm here to represent the views of the residents of the town

of Pickering and my council.

Before I go any further, I would like to point out that while we all know why I am

here in respect to speaking to the Pickering nuclear generating station, I

understand why this committee chose to convene this meeting in Oshawa. Surely,

though, this committee must recognize that the serious issues surrounding the

continued operation of the Pickering nuclear station are of some considerable

interest to the residents of its host community. A more appropriate location for

today would have been in Pickering, yet here we are in Oshawa.

Against a background of an ever-increasing list of incidents directly related to the

safe operation of the Pickering station, all of which have contributed to a growing

mistrust, the residents of Pickering and their elected representatives believe they

have a right to expect that the government of Ontario would be keenly interested in

these concerns. At the very least, they have a right to express these concerns in

an accessible location within their own community.

While one might consider the location of this meeting to be a small issue when

contrasted against the mandate of this committee, it is one that only serves to

increase the public's perception that their voices are not being heard. You shouldknow that there is a complete collapse of public confidence in Ontario Hydro in

respect to its nuclear operation within the town of Pickering. The residents of

Pickering don't know who or what to believe or whom or what not to believe.

The simple fact is, Ontario Hydro cannot be counted on to provide answers. A

cursory review of recent history is evidence enough that there continue to be

problems at the Pickering station and that the list of questions needing answers is

growing exponentially. I would draw your attention to the attachment within the

submission referencing the Durham Emergency Measures Office Incident Report

to give you but an example of the number of incidents being reported to our

constituents. That only addresses the period from mid-1995 until mid-1997. If wewere to step back to December 1994, you would see the magnitude of the concern

when the major incident occurred at that point in time.

How do we get the questions on the table and how do we get the answers when

Ontario Hydro and, might I suggest still at this point, the provincial government

seem intent on maintaining a fortress mentality? The barricades remain up and we

are left knocking on the door. We're left to try to sort fact from fiction. It almost

appears that there is a considered information management plan in place that is

designed to keep the facts from the public. This fortress mentality leaves us all to

deal with the negative impacts that are the result of conjecture, rumour,

misinfommation and an increasing number of unattributed information leaks.

Without question, the overwhelming need to provide a vehicle that will result in

clear answers has to be a priority of the government of Ontario. At this critical point

in time, when the entire future of nuclear generation is under review, surely the

need to open and sustain a meaningful dialogue with all the stakeholders has be

priority number one.

To that end, as the mayor of the town of Pickering, I met with the then Minister of

Environment and Energy, the Honourable Norm Sterling, on June 16 of this year. In

that meeting with the council of the corporation of the town of Pickering, I urged Mr

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Sterling to undertake and initiate a broad public review of all the issues

surrounding the continued operation of the Pickering station. I was not alone in this

request. I had the support of my council and of numerous community-based

organizations which have been active in reviewing various aspects of the operation

of the station.

When I had not received a response from Mr Sterling in early July, I wrote to him

reinforcing our need to have that response. Again that communication merited no

response. Subsequent communications, including a letter dated September 10,

also met with no response.

I must say that recently I was advised that a letter sent to me in the latter part of

August referencing the establishment of this committee as a result of Mr

Andognini's report was presumably the response to my request for a broad public

review. I certainly didn't interpret it as being such. You'll find the various

correspondence attached from those months both to Mr Sterling and to his

successor.

1440

I somehow can't imagine that Mr Sterling felt that my requests were completely

without merit, yet I find myself before you today literally making that same request

while incidents continue to occur at Pickering, rumours continue to circulate and

questions are left unanswered. I don't need to remind the members of this

committee of what transpired in August this year, but I can't help thinking that if Mr

Sterling had demonstrated a sincere interest in our request for a review and

subsequently acted on it, the impact on the residents of Pickering of Mr

Andognini's report to the board of directors of Ontario Hydro somehow might have

been lessened. Had Mr Sterling responded in the affirmative, the residents of

Pickering would have had a forum through which to express their concerns, ask

their questions and get their answers.

I am not here today to conduct a lengthy review of past history. You've had that

already. I am here to let you know that we have taken an initiative that hopefully

will help us to get that positive response from Queen's Park. In a bylaw passed by

my council, we have authorized the following question to be placed on the ballot of

the regular municipal election to be held next Monday. It will read, "Are you in

favour of the Ontario government holding a full public review under the

Environmental Assessment Act of Ontario prior to any decision being made to

restart the Pickering A nuclear generating station as well as during the continued

operation of the Pickering B generating station?"

I fully expect to get an overwhelmingly affirmative response from my constituents to

this question. I fully expect that the individuals who are elected to serve on the next

council will continue to demand action from the government of Ontario.

It is clear, it is simple: Pickering demands an independent review wherein all the

questions can be asked and all the answers received, an open review wherein all

interested parties will have an equal opportunity to have their voices heard.

Ladies and gentlemen, time is ticking away. Confidence in Ontario Hydro is at an

all- time low and we are left to sort fact from fiction. We need leadership from the

province, we need clear direction from the province and, above all, we need to

have the assurance that we will be heard.

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While we are on the subject of time, I want to share with this committee some

information that has come to me directly. Perhaps, given the subject matter, we

should spend a few moments synchronizing our watches. The information I have

been given is specific to the infamous year 2000 problem. It deals with the age and

condition of the computer systems and their programs in use at the Pickering

station. I am told that the year 2000 problem, if not solved, could result in system

failures.

Perhaps even more disconcerting is the fact that the information I have tells methat the year 2000 problem was raised earlier this year, early this summer, as I

understand it, with the board of directors and senior management of Ontario Hydro

and they are fully aware of it. I am not aware that any substantive action has been

taken to address the problem as of this date.

I strongly suggest to this committee that they recall Mr Farlinger and ask him when

and how Ontario Hydro intends to deal with the year 2000 issue. Time is tick, tick,

ticking away. I thank you for your time and interest and I look forward to your

questions and comments.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Arthurs. We appreciate your deputation.

There are 10 minutes for each caucus and we will ask the questions in rotation. I

will begin today with the Liberal caucus.

Mr Sean G. Conw ay (Renfrew Nort h): Thank you, your worship. I take it

that you still have no communication from the Minster of Energy to your letter of

some months ago about the matters raised.

Mr Ar thurs : The only response I have received was a letter in late August which I

assume was merely a recognition of the establishment of this committee. The only

way I could establish that it was intended for the purpose of response to my earlier

correspondence was from the Office of the Ombudsman because our council had

asked the Office of the Ombudsman to intervene to seek support, and theresponse coming back was, "The letter you received in August was the minister's

response."

Mr Conway : Your submission has about it the general tone of exasperation.

Would that be a fair --

Mr Ar thurs : Yes.

Mr Conway : You have been around Durham region and Pickering for some time,

I take it?

Mr Ar thurs : I've been a Pickering resident since 1975 and have served on

council for 15 years.

Mr Conway : How would you characterize the relationship between Ontario Hydro

at the Pickering station particularly and the community of Pickering over the course

of that 15-year time that you've been on council?

Mr Ar thurs : I think there was a tremendous amount of early confidence in the

professional operation of the plant, the expertise that one assumed was there

operating, managing, running the facility, the senior management, I guess, of

Ontario Hydro, although people didn't think of that. They thought of the plant.

People who live in our community work there. We trust their judgement. We know

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their families are there.

During the past number of years, and I would suggest starting in particular in

December 1994, that confidence began to erode quickly. I would suggest that as of

this summer, as I have said, it is at an all -time low, if not entirely collapsed. It is the

topic of conversation at the doors in this municipal election. People want answers.

They are not suggesting that they are afraid for their health or safety today in an

imminent way, but they are concerned. They want answers, they want the truth

and they want a process whereby there are people at the table they can identify

with.

Mr Conway : You've told me that over the last 15 years the relationships were

pretty positive, and quite positive in the beginning of that 15-year cycle, but they

have worsened appreciably in the last two or three years. What explanation, from

your point of view as the mayor, would you have for that positive relationship

deteriorating? What kind of analysis have you made as to why it has gotten worse?

Are there some changes in the personnel down there?

Mr Ar thurs : There certainly have been changes in personnel coming rapid- fire in

the past couple of years. The number of incidents has increased. Hydro's response

to those, or lack thereof in many cases, until very recently was: "Everything is okayno matter what occurs. Don't worry. We'll take care of you. Everything is all right.

It's not a problem."

Mr Conway : Did you see the CBC television news program of about 10 days

ago, two weeks ago?

Mr Ar thurs : I had the opportunity to review it on video. I didn't see it when it was

presented.

Mr Conway : Has that program given rise to much comment around the doors

you've been visiting in this municipal election campaign?

Mr Ar thurs : The doors I have been at haven't made much specific reference to

any particular incident or documentary or news release. It has been more of a

general statement of concern, wanting access, wanting a process, not wanting to

abandon the community out of fear in any way nor to sit back and simply say that

things are still okay. People want access. They want a process.

Mr Conway : Thinking about issues like fire protection and emergency

preparedness, how would you characterize your confidence level, as a municipal

politician in Durham region, about the state of emergency preparedness and fire

protection?

Mr Ar thurs : I would suggest, based on the information we have, that the plant inand of itself is inadequately prepared for any major fire-related activity. They are

extremely dependent upon the ability of the local fire service to do that on their

behalf.

More particularly on the emergency preparedness issue, I am exasperated -- the

word you used earlier -- in my dealings with Ontario Hydro, with Emergency

Measures Ontario in the emergency planning area. Some time ago -- I can't recall

the date, but we'd certainly be happy to provide the documentation -- I met with

Ontario Hydro, with Emergency Measures Ontario, with the CAO of the region of

Durham, Mr Garry Cubitt, to impress upon Ontario Hydro their responsibility for

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along well with the local folks and not so well with the head office too?

Mr Ar thurs : I wouldn't say it's a matter of not getting along with people; that has

never been an issue for us. The local people we deal with who work within the

environment they work in are quite positive about it. They feel strongly about what

they do and about their ability to manage what they do. But when we have our

attention drawn to issues such as the year 2000 problem, which apparently has

gone unaddressed by the board of directors when it was presented directly to

them, it leads one to question. Those ladies and gentlemen who are working in that

organization might be scratching their heads at this point too, going: "Have we

addressed it? If so, who addressed it and when? Because it hasn't happened in my

terminal this week."

Mr Laughren: The reason I'm trying to get at this is that I would categorize your

brief as being a very tough one. It's a very strong, tough brief --

Mr Ar thurs : It's meant to be.

Mr Laughren: -- about Pickering nuclear. I'm trying to get at what underlies that

very serious concern, almost anger, that you have about Pickering. I'm trying to get

at what it is that's leading to that. I'm having difficulty.

Mr Ar thurs : Our experience in the town of Pickering over the past 20-odd years

is that our constituents often make reference to our community as a dumping

ground. They make reference to it when we see the issues on Hydro as a dumping

ground for a nuclear operation, a dumping ground for waste in the Brock West

landfill site, with efforts to establish other landfill sites by a number of governments,

regional and provincial.

That anger emanates from the dominance of senior levels of governments upon

the local community, expropriations of 25 years ago, both provincially and

federally, an underlying sense of wanting to have ownership for what goes on in

your community and it being denied you on an ongoing basis, and the frustration atthis point in time that we are seeking a legitimate process under the Environmental

Assessment Act or some type of broad public review so we can get all the

stakeholders to the table and share openly to rebuild the confidence, if warranted,

and it's being ignored. That's the anger, that's the frustration that exists.

We want to ask the questions that demand answers, but we don't have an

adequate forum to do that. You and I as elected representatives singularly and

solely will not provide the degree of public confidence. Others have to be at that

table whom people can feel connected to. You do your job extremely effectively,

but the broad public will not take just your word for it. There are others they want to

hear from around the table. They want to feel that it has been shared. Ourcommunity is one that has been through airport expropriations, provincial

expropriations, multiple landfill issues and the Hydro issues. It's a microcosm, I

guess, of issues that would be a concern to any community. We understand and

have been involved in those. We want ownership for what goes on in our

community and it's being denied.

Mr Laughren: I don't want to reopen old demands that were made before this

committee was struck, but what would satisfy you more? Would it be an

independent inquiry with experts on a panel? Is that what would give you and your

community more satisfaction?

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Mr Ar thurs : No, I think what we're asking for at this point is to use the legislation

that's in place, to take from that legislation a process that would bring together an

environmental assessment process that would look not only at the continuing

operation of B and the activity during the shutdown of A, but would do the

environmental assessments they're supposed to do, look at alternatives, seek the

advice of community and others about alternatives.

Where are we going in energy? I think this is a real opportunity for the government

to show substantial leadership in how we deal with issues as significant as energywithin our communities, how we engage our community, how we seek answers to

where we're going next, share the responsibilities with community, and if we do

that, then we will have the type of buy-in and the outcomes that come from that

process. I think the processes are there under the legislation that's currently

available.

Mr O'Toole: Thank you, Mayor Arthurs, for your presentation. I certainly

understand the frustration. You've expressed it very well. Just for the record, I want

to clarify that my intention respects and recognizes the points you've made with

respect to where these public meetings were held. For the record, I would also

state that I think of the two sites in Durham as completely different. The issuessurrounding those sites are different and I wanted them to be treated differently,

that is, to be given a specific day for each community. That has been my position

all along. As a member of this committee, I think there has been a thorough review

of the locations. In fact, we're visiting Darlington tomorrow.

This morning at the Pickering plant we heard a litany of cascading events from the

AECB, that they more or less chronologized the issues with respect to the

deterioration. They kind of categorized it as this: Between the late 1970s and early

commissioning of A and B and into the late 1980s they were optimum plants, they

were world-class and well-respected operations. Then they went on to cascade

that down into a series of both long-term and short-term incidents, many of whichhave not been addressed today, a great degree of frustration similar to what you've

expressed, and it was made clear to us that you and your council entertained the

AECB back in June, I gather, pretty much the same report we had.

1500

I want to assure you, though, that the litany of deterioration I think was heard -- not

in defence. We're not here, and certainly I'm not, to defend Ontario Hydro's action,

but I think clearly the current chair, Mr Farlinger, and Mr Andognini, and for that

matter Mr Kupcis, all of whom we've met before this committee, took command,

took charge of the broader issues and more specific issues as well.I am wondering if you think that the actions taken by Mr Andognini and his

turnaround team, if you will, show the kind of leadership you referred to that was

somewhat missing?

Mr Ar thurs : First, Mr O'Toole, I find it interesting that AECB has suddenly begun

expressing the same frustrations constituents are, and they're the guys who are in

charge of licensing and ensuring that the plant is well monitored. I find that to be

intriguing and very interesting.

Is Mr Andognini in his initiatives showing the type of leadership we're talking

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Awareness Project. Welcome to the committee.

Mr Dave Mart in : Thank you very much, Chairman Shea. My name is Dave

Martin. I'm the research director for Nuclear Awareness Project. We are a public

interest group which deals with nuclear issues and promotes alternative energy

strategies. We have been intervenors before numerous regulatory bodies. We have

about 500 supporters around the province, about 200 of whom reside in Durham

region. Durham Nuclear Awareness, or DNA, which addresses nuclear issues

specifically within Durham region, is affiliated to Nuclear Awareness Project, as is

Energy Action Project. We can be reached by e-mail at nucaware@web.net.

I have given the clerk a collection of materials which I ask to be placed as an

exhibit before the committee and which I urge you to peruse.

The bottom line of my presentation here today is that the Pickering A and Bruce A

nuclear stations should remain shut down permanently once they are shut down,

or laid up, as Ontario Hydro would refer to it. In addition, we don't believe that

heroic measures should be taken to rehabilitate the Pickering B, Bruce B or

Darlington stations, and that implies an early shutdown of those stations.

The immediate problem, however, in our view is the Pickering nuclear station,

since Ontario Hydro intends to begin rehabilitation work, according to Mr

Andognini, on January 1, 1998. This in our view is extremely ill advised. There are

numerous environmental, safety and economic problems at the Pickering stations.

1510

Aging is the overall factor here. At 25 years of age and over, Pickering has the

oldest power reactors in the country. As with any machine, the older these reactors

get, the more they tend to break down. However, with nuclear reactors, unlike a

car or some other machine, a mistake can have disastrous consequences.

Some of the other problems at Pickering include:

The absence of a second fast shutdown system at Pickering A.

Inadequate fire protection, including the use of flammable silicone firestops. I would

note that the Ontario fire code should be applied to Ontario Hydro nuclear stations

just as it's applied to any other building.

Emergency plans are inadequate. I note the absence of a direct alerting system

and Ontario Hydro's continued opposition to the expansion of the evacuation zone

size and its opposition to the pre-distribution of potassium iodide tablets.

There is inadequate seismic qualification for the Pickering stations. Ontario Hydro

does not acknowledge the full risk of earthquakes in the Pickering area.

The Pickering site is a high-risk location. There are 1.5 mill ion people within a 30-

kilometre radius.

There is an ongoing problem of tritium contamination and other radioactive

emissions. Ontario Hydro refuses to adopt a zero emissions policy, as have other

large industrial corporations in this province. In our view, the drinking water

guidelines for tritium are not strict enough.

I'm sure that recently you've heard about the significant problems relating to the

emissions of over 1,000 tonnes of copper and zinc from Pickering. There were also

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emissions from Bruce. We know as well that Ontario Hydro has covered up for

many years the tritium contamination of groundwater and surface water onsite at

Pickering.

We disagree very strongly with Ontario Hydro's assessment that the problem is

solely managerial. The problems at Ontario Hydro are fundamentally linked to

Candu technology and it is a severely flawed technology. In 1996, Candu had the

worst performance of all major reactor types in the world. The average Candu

performance around the world was 61.5% capacity factor or load factor. Compare

that to 77% for pressurized water reactors, 79% for boiling water reactors, 76% for

advanced gas cooled reactors. The Pickering A station, to put it in perspective, had

a 36% capacity factor and Pickering B 49% -- pathetic. There are numerous

generic problems associated with Candu technology.

On the economic side of things I want to note that the IIPA report made absolutely

no mention of financial matters. The failure of Ontario Hydro to provide financial

information I think speaks volumes, and you've had to drag it out of them. Hydro

deigned only to provide at its August 13 announcement a back-of-the-envelope

estimate of costs which they pegged at $5 billion to $8 billion. We now know that

these figures bear very little relation to the reality.

According to the Ernst and Young review, which you've received, costs will total a

staggering $22 billion for the period 1997-2009, and this does not include the $3-

billion cost of replacement power. It doesn't include potentially huge costs such as

PVC replacement at Pickering or seismic modifications at Pickering. In fact, it's

going to be much higher.

Aside from the colossal cost, there is also the shocking revelation that Hydro has

made no contingency plans if their assumptions do not prove to be attainable.

They've done no sensitivity analysis and they've not looked at alternatives.

Perhaps the most alarming assumption I've seen that they've made is that they can

achieve an 86% capacity factor, on average, for their nuclear facilities. If you thinkthey can do that, then you probably think that pigs can fly. If they don't achieve that

nuclear performance level, something which they've never been able to do in the

past, then the plan is a shambles.

What's the solution? My scepticism, with respect, about the ability of the select

committee to solve this problem is a matter of public record. Your time line is very

short before you and your resources are relatively limited. I don't think you can get

to the bottom of the problems that are facing Ontario Hydro. I think you therefore

have to look at some procedural alternatives.

I would also note in that vein that the government's restructuring proposal, the

long-awaited white paper for the electricity sector, is finally being made public

tomorrow. Since public presentations to the select committee -- at least this is my

understanding -- end this week, then clearly the public is not being allowed to take

the white paper recommendations into account in their submissions to you.

I conclude by saying that you cannot rely upon the Atomic Energy Control Board.

The AECB, in our view, has been a lapdog, not a watchdog. They've been asleep

at the switch and they've not been willing to get really tough with Ontario Hydro. In

any event, the AECB deals only with safety issues in isolation; they're not dealing

with economic issues or planning issues such as whether there are viable,

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cheaper, safer, cleaner alternatives to nuclear power. We conclude that you should

recommend an immediate halt to all expenditures for rehabilitation in the nuclear

division as well as approvals for expenditures.

As you are now aware after hearing Mayor Arthurs, a referendum is being held on

the ballot of the November 10 municipal election in the town of Pickering. The

referendum question asks residents whether they support an environmental

assessment being held prior to any decision to restart Pickering A and prior to the

rehabilitation of Pickering B. The Nuclear Awareness Project supports this

assessment because it is an opportunity for all parties to come to the table in a fair

and balanced decision-making process. We believe that in the final analysis, with a

fair review, the conclusion would be that Pickering A should be permanently shut

down and that we should have an early shutdown of Pickering B and other nuclear

stations.

I think we owe a debt of gratitude to Mayor Arthurs and the Pickering council for

recognizing the magnitude of this problem and for giving the people of Pickering a

chance to have their say directly, because they are on the front line.

It's time to take all of these decisions out of the backroom. It's reprehensible that a

public entity such as Ontario Hydro should once again be allowed to steamrollerover a government and over the public. Ontario Hydro has made phenomenally

disastrous decisions in the past, and the fundamental mistake and decision it made

was its commitment to nuclear power.

This is by no means a partisan criticism. Governments of all three parties have

allowed the construction of the Darlington nuclear station to proceed despite the

really insane cost overruns that were taking place and despite the fact that it was

not, and is still not, needed. Environmentalists were right when we said that

Darlington should be stopped, and I can assure you now that we're right when we

say that Ontario Hydro is about to make yet another disastrous mistake.

I think the August announcement has led some people to think there's been a

change of heart at Ontario Hydro. This is a wakeup call because nothing has

changed at Ontario Hydro. The corporation remains committed to nuclear power. It

remains committed to coal generation. It wants to proceed with yet another

massive investment in nuclear power to the tune of $22 billion, and probably much

more, with no adequate public review. This is a megaproject proposal and it's a

mega-mistake. Stop it now and submit the whole thing, the whole nuclear asset

optimization plan to a public review under the Environmental Assessment Act. We

believe you should do it for the health and safety of the people of Ontario and for

the economic welfare of the province. Thank you. I'm sorry if I went over a bit.

1520

The Chair: No, as a matter of fact, I appreciate that, Mr Martin, and there's

actually time for one very, very crisp question per caucus, emphasis on "crisp."

We'll begin with Mr Laughren.

Mr Laughren: Holy moly.

The Chair: I took up your time.

Mr Laughren: I'm glad you didn't put it in the form of a question. First of all, when

you are answering I hope you will tell me when you learned that the white paper

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was coming out tomorrow. I agree with you on the short time line for this

committee. I'm not happy with that either and I think your comments in that regard

are appropriate.

What I'd really want to ask you though is, if as a committee we were to take our job

seriously -- and I agree with Mr O'Toole's earlier comments that members of the

committee will do the best they can given the time frame and the knowledge we

have and so forth -- we would need to have a package of alternatives if we were to

accept what you recommend. It would have to be a package of serious alternatives

with the appropriate time lines in them. I notice that's absent from your

presentation. I wonder if you could comment on that.

Mr Mar t in : The alternative scenarios are absent from Ontario Hydro's

documentation. I think that's the salient observation to make.

Mr Laughren: You don't have to.

Mr Mar t in : I would suggest to you they should be and certainly that was the

conclusion of Ernst and Young, Ontario Hydro's own auditor in their September 7

study.

Mr Laughren: No, I'm not agreeing with what they've done; that's not my point. Ithink that we as a committee, if we are to come down hard on all the nuclear

installations, we have to have an alternative package that we propose to the

government or we'll look pretty foolish as a committee.

Mr Mar t in : I think the alternative is a procedural suggestion, because I don't think

you have the resources to provide those alternatives; I know I don't. Ontario Hydro,

although I think they should have, have not provided you with an adequate range

of options. That is why I think the solution is a procedural one; ie, a referral of this

entire issue to a process that could give it due diligence, that could provide an

adequate review with allowance for public input. I would suggest that process

should be under the Ontario Environmental Assessment Act in the form of a fullpublic review.

Mr Doug Gal t (Northum ber land): Thank you for your presentation. It was

most interesting. I'd like to just query you a little bit about the AECB and some of

your concerns there. Certainly they operate differently in some other countries.

Some regulatory bodies, such as in the US, really point the finger -- "There's a

problem; fix it" -- whereas they seem to look at it and then give a licence. How

would you rearrange the AECB? There's been some criticism there. They've given

us some confidence that the place isn't going to blow up, that kind of thing. But

you're not trusting them. Why are you not trusting them? What should be done to

make that organization give you more confidence in the community?

Mr Mar t in : Other nuclear regulatory agencies, such as the Nuclear Regulatory

Commission in the US, take a more prescriptive approach to regulation. In other

words, they get involved at a more hands-on level than the AECB does, which

basically delegates responsibility to the operator, to Ontario Hydro. That just isn't

working and I think the evidence is there in just how bad things have gotten,

particularly at Pickering.

Mr Ga l t : You're recommending more the American style, where they're more

prescriptive. They're there all the time. I don't know what they're doing from day to

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day when they're not being prescriptive like that, but you would recommend that

style?

Mr Mar t in : I think that is going to part of the solution. I think it's also a matter of

political will at the time. I think some serious questions need to be asked about the

AECB and I certainly hope the federal government is doing that.

Mr Monte Kw in te r (Wi lson He igh ts ) : Mr Martin, I just wanted to get your

explanation of the $22-billion figure, the breakdown. I know the figure that appears

in the Ernst and Young report, but that's an accumulative one over a number ofyears and not all of it is really attributable to the recovery plan. If you could just

expand on that.

Mr Mar t in : Yes. I refer you to the table on page 20, schedule 2, of the Ontario

Hydro nuclear asset optimization plan assessment of financial estimates,

September 7, by Ernst and Young. That's where the $22-billion figure is located. It

includes costs from 1997 through to 2009, it includes maintenance and it includes

what Hydro refers to as capital expenditures. It does have various other

allowances. That's very clearly the bottom line here for the nuclear asset

optimization plan. I haven't been able to review the substance of the presentation

from Ontario Hydro on the financial aspects. Maybe they gave you more detail.This is the most detail I have seen.

Mr Kw in te r: What I'm saying, though, is that $21.672-billion figure that's in there,

that is one number, but what I have a problem with is, you're trying to equate the

$5-billion to $8-billion recovery plan, to say that really isn't the number, the number

is $22 billion. I am suggesting to you that the overall operation of the nuclear

division from now to the year 2009 -- and that's maintenance, capital and all of

those things -- will be $21 billion. But that is not an incremental cost. The recovery

plan is an incremental cost of about $8 billion, more or less. Andognini admitted

that they're still plumbing the depths of the problem and we don't know the final

costs.

I just wanted to clarify and make sure. I wanted to get it from you where that $22

billion -- if that's the $22 billion you're referring to, that is for ongoing operations that

would be incurred with or without the recovery plan, not all of it, because some of it

contains that $8 billion.

Mr Mar t in : The reason I think it's valid to use the $22 billion is that you've, I'm

sure, heard this plan referred to as the 12-16-20 plan. Of course, that implies that

the A stations will be brought back, that they will be restarted; that's the

fundamental basis of this plan. I would suggest to you that it also involves a life

extension for the B reactors in Darlington as well. So to suggest that $22 billion

really isn't the incremental costs, that that's what we would have paid otherwise, I

don't think that's so. I think this represents the basis of, in effect, rebuilding the

nuclear fleet in Ontario.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Martin. We appreciate the evidence you've

given today and you're excused.

SALLY MCLEOD

The Chair: I call upon Sally McLeod for a 10-minute presentation. Welcome to

the select committee. You have 10 minutes to use as you choose.

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Mrs Sal ly McLeod: Thank you, Mr Chairman. My name is Sally McLeod. I am a

resident of Pickering, Ontario. As a resident of Pickering for the past 10 years, I am

the citizen who, without agenda, organized the first ever community public hearing

on the Pickering nuclear plant.

I hadn't planned on doing this. In fact, I had very few concerns about the plant, our

nuclear neighbour, until of course this past summer, and really what a terrifying

summer it has been as a citizen: Hydro's admissions of negligent operational

procedures; Hydro's admissions of major mechanical breakdowns; heavy water

spills; the illegal dumping of 40,000 barrels of some substance on their property;

the continuing copper and lead contamination of Lake Ontario; the failing report

card, the IIPA; tritium in the lake, a lake shared by the GTA and our American

neighbours; tritium in our drinking water; flammable gas leaks, September 6, to be

exact. These are not human errors, they are mechanical. I think that's the most

important thing to look at: they are mechanical.

1530

What are we to think as citizens when we hear these things? It seemed every

week this past summer we'd open up the paper and there would be another

incident that happened at that plant -- always mechanical. Sirens going off, withdiffering explanations to the community. I lived this one, and you know what? At

this moment I'm very happy I did because that's why I got involved. It made me, in

a sense, come to arms with this whole debate about nuclear and who is in our

community.

I was down on Kinsmen field. This is a soccer field that sits directly beside the

plant, where no houses can be erected but where Pickering children must play if

they want to participate in community sports. It was a beautiful September

Saturday morning, 600 families out in the fields, the sun shining, lovely day, and

out of nowhere this air raid siren went off, right next door beside these playing

fields. It was very loud, very shocking to hear, and then the next thing we knew,this loudspeaker went off and someone was telling all of the employees some

message which we could not hear. We all looked at each other and wondered,

what do we do? Do you actually get in your car and drive away? Do you just stay

calm and try not to tell your children that something's up? They are out there

playing. They're not sure what to do. Do we stop our game? They're looking at you

for an answer.

This siren is carrying on, and at that moment that's what galvanized this movement

in the community. Several of us who had never met each other before looked at

each other and we swapped phone numbers and said: "This is it. We have to find

out what's going on." We waited. Nobody came from Hydro down to this park,where they know the community is there probably five times a week playing, 600

families, always. We waited for an explanation. Nothing happened. That week we

made three phone calls and we got three different answers.

There was also no press coverage for this gas problem, this gas rupture -- that's

what it turned out to be. What we found is there is a state of continual mechanical

problems; that is the fact. It is also a state of deception, perhaps collusion, when

leaks have been going on for 18 years and the public is not made aware. When we

made three phone calls attempting to find out what the sirens were for, three

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different answers came forward. We were first told it was a change of shift. We

were then told it was a fire drill. Finally, when we threatened that we were going to

the press -- and these are three different people who called -- we were told, finally,

that it was a gas leak. We got three different answers. Earlier a question was

raised, you wonder why the community is feeling this way: It's because of these

situations. We are never told the truth. We have to keep digging for the truth. At

that moment, when we got these three different answers, that's when I said, "That

is enough."

I will not sit at the back of Hydro's bus any more. That's where they have put this

community, at the back of the bus. That's when I decided to organize the public

meeting where the community could come together. We would not wait for Hydro

to invite us to tell us what was going on. We were going to take it upon ourselves to

find out some answers, so we gathered together in September.

What has happened since our public meeting? Well, we've heard revelations of

negligent fire protection exposed by the CBC -- not by Hydro. They had those

reports; they've probably had them for months. They chose not to come forward to

tell us they were going to employ is it 80 firemen? It took the CBC to go and get

that. They did not come forward with goodwill to tell the community.

This community, the entire GTA and our government have been treated with such

arrogance: that only nuclear people understand nuclear; that they are superior to

us; that they are all good people, and they all go to church, so how can they

possibly be involved in something harmful? That there are no alternatives but dark

and cold; that the Ontario taxpayer will always foot the bill; that they are not

accountable to anyone at any level; that their mission statement is not to provide

electricity but only nuclear electricity. That was then and this is now.

I am not here to debate nuclear power. I am here to challenge an old, mechanically

unsafe money pit of a nuclear plant, and I stand not alone. The Pickering

councillors, under the courageous leadership of Mayor Arthurs, have placed anuclear referendum question on the November 10 election ballot. They chose not

to go with my question: "Do you want the Pickering nuclear plant closed? Yes or

no." I would prefer this question; however, I am happy to support the compromise

of an environmental assessment question. All of us in the GTA have the

democratic right to know if the Pickering nuclear plant is safe environmentally. We

must know before any more money is spent on extending the life of this old plant.

These are machines. We can't forget that. That is what they are. They have a finite

lifespan: some say 25 years, which is where we are right now; some say perhaps

40. They are not immortal, they are not divine. They will be decommissioned some

day, no matter what, so let's make "some day" today.The people need a voice. We have a wonderful window of opportunity at this point.

The licence expires in March 1998 and we can make a change. The people, as I

said, need a voice. They will answer the referendum question, but the real question

is, will we be heard? Will the community of Pickering be heard? If we all vote yes

on this referendum question, that we do want this environmental assessment done,

will it actually be done? That's where you people come in.

I'm asking this committee for your leadership, to join us, to lead us. I'm asking that

you demand a full environmental assessment of the Pickering nuclear plant today,

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a completely unbiased public review with intervenor funding. You people initiate

this, this committee. Our community wants the same and we do it in tandem. The

three million people who are affected by this nuclear plant demand their due

diligence. It is our democratic right. We must have the courage to ask the questions

to seek the truth.

The Chair: Thank you, Mrs McLeod. That brings you right on the button of your

time, and I appreciate your evidence. Thank you very kindly for being with the

select committee.

Mr Laughren: On a point of order, Mr Chair: I'd appreciate very much a copy of

that presentation. Perhaps some time you could tidy it up and mail it in to the

committee.

Mrs McLeod: Sure, my pleasure.

The Chair: That's not a point of order. It is a decent request and I'm sure

Hansard will be happy to make sure you get a copy as well, Mr Laughren.

JOE PACIONE

The Chair: Joe Pacione, please come forward and take the witness stand. You

have 10 minutes for your presentation and questions and answers.

Mr J oe Pac ione: Thank you very much, Mr Chairman. My name is Joe Pacione.

I am a resident of Pickering. I'm coming to you today as a concerned citizen. My

story picks up from where Sally left off, in a sense. Presently I am seeking a

position as ward 1 local councillor. In August I was out canvassing and I started to

hear the concerns of a lot of the citizens, and sure enough, one of the top concerns

was the nuclear power plant. As time progressed, it became one of the top three

issues that were out there.

My wife and I have lived in Pickering since 1991 and the nuclear power plant was

never a big issue or concern when we moved there six years ago. The leaks and

the different reports we read in the paper were of concern, but at the same time it

was always in the back of my mind. I always presumed that things were being

taken care of there. That was always the perception I had. As time went on, in the

last three months I've met about 4,000 people at the door, and this is just ward 1.

So I have a different perspective. I'm hearing different things, and what I'm hearing

is very, very distressful. The nuclear power plant seemed to be the one issue that

constantly came up -- constantly. I heard stories that I just couldn't believe, all

kinds of stories, and that's one of the reasons I came today, because I wanted to at

least relay to you that there is a deep, profound belief that the life expectancy of

this plant has seen its time come.

Many of the people whom I've met at the lower end of ward 1 are long-time

residents who have been there 35 years, 40 years, 27 years, and they remember

the area before the nuclear power plant even came there.

1540

Just a simple story: One woman I met was a 30-year resident and she remembers

when there was no nuclear power plant. Within three years, the newspaper articles

started to come out that a nuclear power plant was going to be built. She was

excited at that prospect and she started collecting all the newspaper clippings; she

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and her husband did that as a hobby. Her favourite pastime was to take her dogs

just down the street, in full view of the power plant, and the dogs used to swim in

the lake etc.

She said to me that about 10 years ago she started really to think more and more

about the safety aspect of this nuclear power plant. I asked her why. She said,

"Over the course of 25 years, I had three different dogs and each dog died within

five years of the same problem." So I said, "What's that got to do with the nuclear

power plant?" "Well, the dogs all swam in the park just down the street, they all

jumped into the water and they all died of cancerous lymphoma of the throat," or

some area in here. She said, "It's my belief that there's something wrong with the

water." This is just one woman saying this. She has a deep, profound concern from

these newspaper reports that they are probably leaking more, from her

perspective.

There are all kinds of other stories. Another story I heard was that a woman said

that she lived near Frenchman's Bay Yacht Club and she kept reports. She

remembers newspaper articles. When the plant was first built, the articles were

saying that the plant only had a life expectancy of 25 years. She remembers those

things. She told me that just a week ago. She said to me: "That 25-year period of

time is now. That plant is probably worn out. Why rebuild it? We've been hosting

this plant for 25 years. We don't need to have it rebuilt."

These are just two simple little stories and they were just constantly telling me

these stories. These are from long-time residents; these are not necessarily from

people who have just moved there. All these people who have just moved there

recently, who have come into this area, have said to me consistently that that is the

number one issue with them.

My belief is that the public perception out there is that this plant is mismanaged, it's

mechanical, there are breakdowns constantly. No matter how much you spend, it's

not going to make a difference in the perception out there.

I believe this government, yourselves, should put forward an idea out there of

decommissioning this plant once and for all. It will probably take a long period of

time, but I think that's what the government should be doing. I think the perception

out there is that this plant is not safe, that no more money should be spent on it. I

believe in the ability of government to do positive things and I believe shutting

down this plant would be perceived by Ontarians as a positive thing.

There are many other alternatives. I think spending any more money on this

nuclear power facility would be just redundant. I don't think it's necessary. I think

the constituents, at least where I've talked to them in ward 1, feel the same way.

An environmental assessment is essential, and even after the assessment is done,

it will probably conclude that this plant has seen its time come. That's all I have to

say.

The Chair: There is time, and I emphasize the word "crisp" this time. That will

include the answers too, please. Very quickly, one question from each. We'll begin

with the government caucus.

Mrs Barbara F isher (Bruce): I happen to be the member who represents the

riding of Bruce. As you know, we have eight units there as well. I'd be interested in

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having your opinion. I think both of the communities, the Pickering-Darlington

community -- maybe I agree with Mr O'Toole that they shouldn't be joined as one,

because I do understand there's a different atmosphere, if you will, with regard to

the site.

Let's take Pickering A and Bruce A. The presentations we're hearing this afternoon

are absolute opposites in terms of attitude and atmosphere and acceptance within

the community. I just wonder why that might be if the backyard is as educated in

each of the communities, which I believe it is. Why do you think that is?

Mr Pac ione: I think because of a lot of these reports that have been coming out

recently. I think the public, like myself, have always presumed that it was a safe

facility, but when you start hearing things and seeing reports on television, that

they had 33 fires there last year, that they don't have adequate fire facilities there,

that they don't have a sprinkler system -- even the school has a sprinkler system. If

this plant hasn't got a sprinkler system or adequate fire protection, why would I feel

safe? How could they have built this thing? I think the perception out there with the

public is that it just wasn't built properly at that time. They should have taken these

things into consideration and management should have been handling this thing

much more properly out there. The perception right now I think has totally eroded.

I'll tell you right now, this assessment question, once it comes up in a referendum,

should be overwhelming: 95%.

Mr Kw in te r: Mr Pacione, we really do have a difference of opinion in that, in our

hearings to date, if there is one single strand that has gone through them from all of

the experts -- and you may question the experts -- it is that safety is not a problem.

Whether it's the AECB, whether it's Andognini, whether it's any of the people,

foreign experts, they all say the same thing, that the Candu technology is "robust" -

- their word -- and that safety is not a problem. I just want to get your response as

to whether or not you think there's a communication problem.

I've read the incident reports from the emergency measures office in Durham and Ican tell you that one of your other neighbours is General Motors. Although when

you talk nuclear, every time there is any kind of an incident, you suddenly say, "Oh,

my God, we're fried," but if you saw the results that came out of General Motors,

with the accidents and the breakdowns, I would say to you that they are probably --

and I don't know this for sure -- at least equal to what's happening in a major

facility like Pickering.

You keep talking about perception. Do you think it really is a problem of

communication maybe, a failure to communicate what is happening, and as a

result it leads to these people imagining the worst?

Mr Pac ione: I don't think it's imagining. Things are happening there. We're not

imagining all of these incidents that have occurred in the last six months, the last

two years. We're not imagining the fact that they don't have adequate fire

protection there. Am I imagining that? I don't think so. That's a fact. I don't think you

can dismiss that.

We can communicate now and say, "Yes, we've just put in an 80-man firefighting

force in there, 24 hours a day." People are saying to me now: "Why did it take you

so long to do that? Didn't we need it for the last 25 years?" People are not that

stupid. People are saying that. No matter what we do now, I don't think you're

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going to get that confidence back, I really don't.

Mr Laughren: You're running in ward 1?

Mr Pac ione: Ward 1, yes. That's the western sector of Pickering.

Mr Laughren: I suspected as much. I wanted to know if you find quite a dramatic

difference when you knock on the door of a worker at one of the plants.

Mr Pac ione: Actually, that's a very good question you ask. I have run into those

and the perception there is that they believe the plant is safe. They all say the

same thing: "I wouldn't work there if it wasn't safe." On the other hand, you ask the

housewives and they have a different idea. They will say honestly: "Yes, I'm

worried about my husband's job, but I am distressed about these things that I'm

reading in the paper. I am worried." So there is that possibility.

Every worker that I've talked to says it's safe. I haven't met anybody who's said it's

not safe. They all say the same thing: "If I didn't believe it was safe, I wouldn't go

in." "But do you hear all these other things?"

There was a report one day -- I can't substantiate this; I heard this from someone --

that a bunch of housewives of Hydro workers quickly went to the local high schools

and elementary schools and took their kids out, out of the blue. There was thisrumour. I don't know if that was true or not, maybe because something happened, I

don't know. But these things filter around and they stay there. They linger.

Rebuilding that is going to take a long time and I don't think it's going to be done.

My feeling is that this nuclear facility will eventually be decommissioned. That's my

feeling.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Pacione. I appreciate your presence before the select

committee. If we have any further need of your evidence, we'll certainly be in touch

with you. I will have a long discussion with members later about the definition of

the word "crisp." We may have to redefine that just a bit. No, you weren't bad, Mr

Laughren.

1550

SUZANNE ELSTON

The Chair: The next presenter is Suzanne Elston. Welcome to the select

committee. You have 10 minutes for questions and answers.

Ms Suzanne Elst on: Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. My

name is Suzanne Elston. Like many of the presenters that have spoken today, I

bring a variety of perspectives to this process. I am about to enter my second term

as a public utilities commissioner for the municipality of Clarington. In this capacity,

I serve on the Municipal Electric Association's environmental matters committee. I

am a founding member of Durham Nuclear Awareness. My weekly environmental

column is now in its ninth year of syndication around the province, and my radio

commentary can be heard regularly on 110 national public radio stations in the

Great Lakes basin. But that's not why I'm here.

I'm here because I'm a parent who lives within 10 kilometres of the Darlington

nuclear generating station. I'm here because I'm concerned about the health of my

three kids and the health, both economic and environmental, of this province.

The last two weeks have been very difficult. I've been juggling a very busy

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schedule with the lives of my three children who, thanks to education cuts, are no

longer in school. It troubles me deeply that $1 billion in education cuts have

paralysed our school system, while Ontario Hydro is allowed to commit $5 billion to

$8 billion of our resources to its nuclear recovery program with little or no public

consultation. There is something seriously wrong with this picture.

You may argue that the two are not related. I beg to differ. While one deals with

ratepayers' funds and the other with taxpayers' revenues, the ultimate control is

the same: the government of the province of Ontario. So why is it that this

government is willing to paralyse the education system for $1 billion, but is

unwilling to confront Ontario Hydro for almost 10 times that amount? I believe it is

fear: fear of change, fear of Ontario Hydro, fear of the sheer force required to

dismantle the largest utility in North America and fear of the financial

consequences for this province. The time for fear is over; it's time for action.

It troubles me that it has taken 10 years of hard work to have the appropriate

officials begin to come to the same conclusions that environmental activists made

long ago: Nuclear power is unsustainable; our nuclear plants are in serious

disrepair; the cost to maintain these plants renders them unviable. It troubles me

that two years after it was released, the Macdonald committee report has all butbeen ignored. This is despite the fact that its recommendations are in essence

supported by the MEA, the Municipal Electric Association, the environmental

community, the Independent Power Producers' Society of Ontario and the

individual utilities themselves.

It troubles me that, despite sweeping changes in the electricity sector in North

America, Ontario Hydro's monopoly continues to control the energy future of this

province. It troubles me that for too long we've been told to trust Ontario Hydro. It

troubles me that over a year ago, Norm Sterling stood before the district 1 annual

meeting of the MEA and promised that the release of the white paper was

imminent. I now understand that the white paper will be released tomorrow. I find ittroubling that, given the implications this document will have for the electricity

sector, it was not made available for your deliberations or for the people that came

to speak to you.

We need the recommendations of the Macdonald committee implemented now.

We need to make Ontario Hydro accountable now. We need strong, sustainable

energy plans that will allow this province to lead this country into the millennium

now. We need a commitment from this government that both the Pickering A and

the Bruce A stations will be shut down permanently. We can no longer throw good

money after bad. What we need is action, and we need it now. Thank you for your

time.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Suzanne. We have, I dare say, time for one

crisp question from each caucus. We'll try again, shall we? We'll begin with Mr

Conway.

Mr Conway : Thank you, Ms Elston, for a very spirited and direct presentation.

One of the questions that the paper on electricity reform is clearly going to give

quite a lot of discussion to is the whole question of stranded assets, stranded debts

at Ontario Hydro. You're a municipal politician. The Macdonald commission, quite

frankly, speaks of a very substantial dismemberment of Ontario Hydro.

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There is $29 billion, $30 billion worth of publicly guaranteed debt at Ontario Hydro.

Let us say that we simply took Ontario Hydro apart. What do you think the people

of Clarington would want us to recommend about the management of Hydro debt?

Ms Els ton: First of all, let me make it clear to you that I'm not speaking on behalf

of Clarington Hydro, but I think the answer is very clear. In most of the reports,

there is a consensus regarding the dismantling of Ontario Hydro, that transmission

and generation be broken up. What I think the most equitable way of avoiding

stranded assets would be is if a transmission charge was put on a transco, that a

publicly owned monopoly in the transmission sector be maintained and that

everyone who accesses that transmission corridor be required to pay a fee, a debt

fee, whatever you want to call it. This would also make provisions for independent

power producers to help pay down the debt, international power producers coming

in from the US, whatever. It is the most equitable and reasonable way. I share your

concern about the stranded assets and we cannot allow that debt to go uncared

for.

Mr Laughren: I'm going to pick up on that, because I understand what you're

saying and that it could have some appeal, but the problem, it seems to me and I'd

appreciate your comment, is that you can have very large institutional users of

electricity, Falconbridge, Inco in my own community, General Motors, wherever,

that would generate their own power and not access the transmission lines

whatsoever, and would resist mightily any charge against the debt, the debt

charges, being applied to them. I wonder if you've got your mind -- I haven't got

mine, so believe me, I'm not critical if you haven't - - around that problem.

Ms Els ton: I must admit truthfully that cogen for large manufacturers isn't a

consideration I've looked at. Fortunately, it's not up to me to come up with that

solution.

Mr Laughren: I understand that.

Ms Els ton: I understand, but it's not something I have considered.

Mr O'Toole: Thank you very much, Suzanne. I do read your column and try to

keep abreast of your point of view. Thank you for your politically driven comments;

I accept them as that. Would you be in favour of closing the Darlington nuclear

plant?

Ms Els ton: Would I be in favour? Immediately? No, but I believe what we have

recognized -- and all of the evidence is there -- is that the days of advancing

nuclear technology are over. I think that in good time the Darlington nuclear

generating station should be phased out. I think the example we've learned from

Pickering is that heroic measures do not work, nor should they work, and that theprojected life of the plant should be simply that. You know, we talked about 25

years, whatever. I don't think we should be investing any more money. I think the

question will answer itself, John, when the Darlington plant comes into the same

age where the Pickering plant is now. Hopefully, we will have come to a more

mature attitude towards energy and we will have solutions apparent to us, we will

get through this crisis, and by the time it comes time to look at the life of the

Darlington plant we will say: "No. There is no point. This is what it was built for and

now let's more on to more sustainable and brighter energy futures."

Mr Laughren: On a point of order, Mr Chairmen: Are you going to allow those

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politically driven questions?

The Chair: That's out of order, Mr Laughren, and I'm pleased to rule that way. I

suspect that Ms Elston can care for herself in a very competent fashion.

Ms Els ton: I was going to say, you don't have to worry about me, Mr Laughren.

The Chair: Thank you. I don't need any other incitement here. There's plenty to

go around. Thank you, Ms Elston.

Ms Els ton: I thank you all for your time.

1600

KAREN PAUL

The Chair: I call upon Karen Paul. Welcome to the select committee. We

appreciate you being here. You have 10 minutes for your presentation, including

questions and answers.

Mrs Karen Paul : My name is Karen Paul. I'm a resident of Pickering, Ontario. I

first want to say I've been following quite closely the transcripts of this committee's

proceedings and I'm very proud of the work that has been done, the questions that

have been asked by all members to the people who have come before you. I amspeaking today as a very new resident of Pickering. I have been chastised for that

when I've spoken out, as being new to Pickering, but I am also a resident of

Ontario, so I think my opinion is valid.

I moved to Pickering just under two years ago with my very young family, and I

must say I was one of those people who was in a complete state of denial that

anything could possibly be wrong. When I moved from Kingston some people said,

"Pickering?" I said: "Oh, there's no problem. It's Toronto. Oh yes, the nuclear plant,

right. It should be fine. Everything's fine. The government is taking care of it."

Things haven't quite gone the way I'd hoped.

As a matter of fact, I was one of those parents who went to pick their kids up one

day and found that there had been a rumour of people taking their children out of

school. I had no idea that such a thing could happen. I was quite surprised at the

time. But I went back into my nice little state of denial and I got through the next

several months, until we started hearing about the problems that were happening

at the plant.

The other day a candidate came to my door with a Pickering Hydro hat on and we

had quite a discussion about the state of Ontario Hydro. We were talking about the

recovery plan. He said, "You know, we are kind of guinea pigs," and he stopped

and he tried to take it back. I said to him that I understood he really meant to say it,because this is an experiment, this nuclear experiment that we're into. We are at

the point in time where our plants are coming of age. The aging is inescapable and

it's something that I've since learned was not really well planned for.

The reactors in Pickering are breaking down earlier than was expected. I think we

have to come clean about this and we have to look at who said 40 and who said 20

and can we settle on 30 years? But it's kind of like an old car. The older it gets, the

less efficient it gets, the less dependable and the less safe, ultimately.

This plant is in the most densely populated part of this country so a serious

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accident is really unimaginable, and we'll all go back into that state of denial again

because we don't want to go there. I think someone at this committee said that

knowing what they know, they'd never have put up a nuclear plant or a series of

reactors this size in an area like Pickering. It was not a good idea. I think over time

we will address that as we phase out nuclear.

The way I see it, Ontario Hydro bet the farm on nuclear at the expense of

everything else, and it continues to do so. They want to salvage these aging,

accident-prone reactors and then they want to rev them up to full speed, want to

rev them up to 80% capacity to pay for it. That's a gamble I'm not really interested

in taking, personally.

Ontario Hydro has known for a long time that the Pickering plant was in trouble.

The AECB came here and said that they were within a hair's width of shutting

Pickering down last year. Ontario Hydro has presented the AECB with plan after

plan after plan to improve efficiency and safety and it's been stated very clearly

that they were great at making promises and really bad at carrying them through.

With something as technical as nuclear power, I don't understand why we have to

have such blind faith in it. I know we're in a church but --

Mr Conway : The Chairman of this committee is a noted Anglican divine.

Mrs Paul: I apologize.

The Chair: The church is aware of burning.

Mrs Paul: I think we're trying to push the technology beyond where it obviously

can go and needs to go, and at the end of the day we are still stuck with the

problem of waste. We still talk in terms of temporary waste disposal -- storage

really. Our Pickering site is a waste site for radioactive material. It's stockpiling up

on our waterfront and that's an unfortunate problem that has yet to be resolved

after many years of attempts.

We can't escape the fact that we'll have to decommission these plants eventually.

As has been stated very clearly, these plants have a finite lifespan. Trying to push

that is a very foolhardy, dangerous thing to do, primarily I guess because of the

location in my backyard, but it is also in the heart of the province and in the heart

of the country. As I said before, we simply can't risk a serious accident at this plant.

That's just a given.

We need to step back from nuclear, mature and look at it as the world is looking at

nuclear. There's no room for error in this recovery plan, in more ways than one,

and the truth is just starting to come out about the total cost of all of this. It would

be wrong of us to repeat old mistakes. I frankly don't want to be a guinea pig and Idon't want to feel like I'm part of this experiment. That's why I think a lot of us have

come out from that sleepy bedroom mentality we had and have decided to speak

out.

At 25 years the Pickering A reactors are likely at the time when they should be

permanently shut down. The phase-out of nuclear is coming from many different

angles. We're just one part of that big picture.

I again support a full environmental assessment of the safety, economic and

environmental issues and I really applaud Mayor Arthurs for taking a very sensitive

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issue and handling it extremely well.

Ms Johns, you asked me a question, would the public pay more for energy? I think

the full cost of nuclear has not been presented to the public. I think we're going to

pay more. The signs are out that this is going to cost us. We can't escape it. I think

that presented properly, we all understand our responsibility to this attempt we

made at making nuclear solve all of our energy problems.

It's time. I'm ready and I want to see my children -- as a matter of fact, I've told my

nine-year-old that he probably won't get his electricity from nuclear power. I'mhoping that I'll be right and I'm hoping that money will be spent to fully develop and

implement those safe, sustainable forms of energy and we can put an end to the

nuclear experiment.

The Chair: Thank you very much for deputing. That just about uses the time, but

I appreciate it. May I also say on behalf of the committee how pleasant it is to have

a generous comment, as you began, about the work of the committee. Thank you

very much. I appreciate that.

CANADIAN NUCLEAR WORKERS' COUNCIL

The Chair: I ask David Shier, president of the Canadian Nuclear Workers'Council, to come forward to the witness table, please. You have 20 minutes for

your presentation, including questions and answers.

Mr David Shier : Good afternoon and thank you very much for providing the

opportunity for me to address the panel. My name is David Shier. I'm president of

the Canadian Nuclear Workers' Council. I've provided copies of my presentation,

and I guess the good news is I'm not going to read it verbatim. I'm going to skim

through it and I will make some additional ad hoc comments.

The first part of the brief summarizes what our organization is. To simplify it, the

council is an umbrella organization of mainly unions that are involved in the nuclear

industry in Canada. We perform the function of giving those unions and those

workers a vehicle to join the nuclear debate and present the issues of nuclear

energy, nuclear medicine, the whole nuclear industry from a worker perspective.

We are also connected to the international scene. We were a founding member

and we're still a member of the World Council of Nuclear Workers. My comments

today will be from that perspective, from the workers in the industry and with some

of the comments of the workers' views worldwide.

First of all, the safety aspect is something that workers naturally would like to

comment on. Regardless of particular mechanical or equipment breakdowns at the

Pickering nuclear plant, the single overriding concern of all parties is, is it safe?

Members of the committee and residents of the nuclear community can be assured

that all Ontario Hydro reactors are indeed safe from the worker perspective.

I know you've been going on around that and hearing lots about it. All the different

groups have assured us that it is safe. I think it should be added to this fact that the

workers in these facilities do maintain that they are safe, and also the workers in

the industry in general. Here we're talking about the nuclear stations, but not too

far away from here we do have other nuclear facilities. We have fuel fabrication

plants in Port Hope and also in Peterborough, and lots of these people work

outside the location here but do live in this community.

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1610

Also on the safety concern, in my capacity as the nuclear workers' council

president, I was in France back in September dealing with some meetings with the

world nuclear worker council and it was made quite clear to me by other members

of the organization that their big question was: "What's going on in Canada? We

thought your reactors were safe." This is something we have to get out

internationally, to make sure they are still perceived as safe as they were before.

From the workers' comparison again, we look at that simple analogy of comparingnuclear plants to a car: When a car gets a few years old you don't throw it away,

you repair it. This fits into the whole concern of the environmentalists as well. You

don't trash things, you try to repair them and keep them going.

To reiterate a point that we have made many times before, if there were any

substantial threats to the human or natural environment from Ontario Hydro's

nuclear reactors, members of this committee or of the nuclear community would

not have to wait to read about it in the media. As a spokesperson for the thousands

of workers who spend most days of their lives working not only in the offices of

nuclear plants and uranium mining and processing but also in reactor vaults and

spent fuel bays, I can assure everyone that you'd hear it from the workers first.

I qualify that by saying that the Canadian nuclear industry is a very highly

unionized sector and many of the main unions put health and safety very high on

their agenda. They've got a record of addressing and making public any safety

concerns. The unions involved in this organization are the Steelworkers; the

Communication, Energy and Paperworkers; the Power Workers' Union, CUPE

workers; several other ones as well. They all have a good record of bringing out

any health and safety issues. That would not exclude the nuclear facilities either.

To assume that a nuclear worker would deliberately hide or ignore anything that

compromised their personal safety or that of their families in the community for the

sake of hanging on to a paycheque is to entertain a radically new view of human

nature; and that would not happen, in our view.

Looking at the replacement component of the proposal, we get a clearer picture of

the role and value of nuclear power in Ontario when we consider the cost of the

replacement fossil fuel energy for only seven reactors during the proposed

refurbishment period, which is estimated at around $3 billion. This does not include

the environmental costs of the increased production of acid gas. This is a definite

concern for workers.

I've just returned from Manitoba where the Canadian Labour Congress was holding

a health, safety and environment conference this weekend. A lot of the trueenvironmentalists in the country are asking the question, "What's going on here if

we're going to replace safe nuclear plants with more fossil generation?" We all are

aware of the present state of the greenhouse gas situation in Canada, where we're

already exceeding our limits. If this proposal goes through it will actually increase

them again. There is a meeting, which I'm sure you're aware of, coming up in a few

weeks in Japan where the countries of the world are getting together to try and

make another commitment to the greenhouse gas effect. I'd suggest that this now

does have some international implications by this proposal.

The other sections here I will scoot through, as I indicated I was not going to read

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verbatim. But I would also like to comment on the staffing. The matter of staffing

shortage has also been advanced as a reason for shutting down the seven nuclear

reactors, the reason being that there simply are not enough skilled tradespeople to

carry out the huge maintenance backlog that's required. We would question this

logic. We believe it is possible to repair the nuclear units while keeping them in

operation. With enough additional staff, the backlog can be cleared during a

reactor's scheduled maintenance outages.

It's true that there are not enough skilled people in Ontario Hydro's present staff

complement to carry out this work while the reactors are in operation, but there are

many unemployed skilled trades across the country, those recently laid off and in

planned future layoffs by Hydro and also by AECL, who with minimal additional

training could carry out the required maintenance during a reactor's scheduled

outage.

I'll give you some examples of that. In Quebec and New Brunswick there are

nuclear plants. They are smaller than the plants in Ontario and they don't have the

same staff we have. When they have outages there, they go to the community and

hire skilled tradespeople to come in and assist with their outages. There are people

in the community who can come in and do this work to get these units up on

improved performance in a short period of time.

The assertion that we must shut down seven reactors for several years, take on

billions of dollars of replacement energy costs and degrade the environment, all

because there are not enough skilled people on hand, is, at the very least, highly

questionable.

In conclusion, the Nuclear Workers' Council would ask the members of the

committee to consider the following:

Regarding the safety of the plants, the responsible authorities both in Canada and

internationally have endorsed the reactors in question as being safe, and the

people who work in them are telling you they are safe. Reduced effectiveness and

diminished performance do not mean unsafe. We trust these views will persuade

you on the condition of the reactors. I emphasize that I think we have to do a lot of

work in that area to repair the damage that's been done to our Candu system in the

minds of people across the world.

As to repairability, our view is that in bringing these reactors back into service,

there simply are no reasonable alternatives to produce this amount of base load

electricity in Ontario within any reasonable time frame for the costs envisaged.

Also, refurbished nuclear reactors will be a significant bounty for Ontario on two

major counts: first from the employment standpoint -- and we trust that thecommittee will agree that Ontario's unemployment levels are in no need of further

expansion -- and second, refurbished reactors will be extremely important to

Ontario Hydro as tremendous revenue earners and especially if we see the

competitive market that is expected within a few years.

Regarding the recommendation that the reactors must be shut down while being

repaired, we strongly argue that there are significantly less expensive alternatives

to shutting them down, both from an employment standpoint and in terms of costs

to energy consumers. We would strongly urge the committee to consider these

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alternatives.

I would also like to add that I understand there was a presentation by the British

Energy group to one of your hearings. I had the opportunity a few years back to

tour one of the generating stations they were talking about, how they improved

their efficiency and were improving safety and so on. In my view, the plant I was in

looked very clean, looked very well. One of the big things that came across was

that the workers had played a very major role in turning that station around. There

was a lot of union-management cooperation. The union was involved with input on

how to do things better.

If you look at the charts that they provided, you'll see that was through the years

1992, 1993, 1994 and 1995. I was there in 1995. Actually, we had the manager

from that station with a couple of his workers over to Canada two years ago this

month and we did tour them around the Pickering and the Darlington stations

where we had some dialogue with the management and the union people. There

are ways of doing this. I guess my point here is that workers should be involved

with their ideas as well on how these plants can be brought up and ways of doing it

quickly and safely.

Again, thank you for giving me the opportunity to make my presentation.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Shier. We appreciate your evidence. We have a

minute and a half for each caucus. We will begin the questioning with Mr Laughren.

Mr Laughren: I would like to challenge you on your comment about workers in

uranium mines, but I'll leave that for another day.

You make a statement here, "The technology has not declined -- machines do not

run by themselves...." How can you say that the technology has not declined when

the older the plants get the more breakdowns they have, the more problems they

have, the more difficult and expensive they are to resolve, it seems? What do you

mean that the technology has not declined? I'm at a loss.

Mr Shier : Our reference there is that it's a safe technology. As these machines

get older you have a choice: You can scrap them or you can repair them. These

machines are not at the age where they should be scrapped. It's a lot more

reasonable in cost to repair them, bring them up to higher standards than they are

now. I'm not saying they're not safe now, but they do require some money to bring

them up so they're going to be able to produce electricity for the residents of

Ontario for several more years. Back to the car analogy: It's a few years old, the

technology's still there, the engine technology hasn't changed, but you're going to

have to spend a little more money on it to bring it back up to top shape.

1620

Mrs Fisher: You may know I represent the riding of Bruce. As a matter of fact, I

think I attended one of your conferences a year ago.

Mr Shier : Yes, I believe you did.

Mrs Fisher: The question I have is this: The mayor of Pickering, on behalf of his

people, has very well described their concerns with regard to the operation and the

answerability to a community of Ontario Hydro, and if I might add to it, I would

expect even to the AECB realm.

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You commented that you witnessed the recovery plan in operation in the British

system, and yes, we did have the presentation before the committee in the past. Is

it your feeling that there's an opportunity for Canada, if there are not nuclear-

qualified workers today, to bring some comfort -- not comfort, but some action to

the concerns that are being raised by the residents of this area? If management

and the workers, through the PWU and the society and the community work

together to (1) better understand those problems and (2) do something constructive

to address those in terms of repair and communication enhancement, is this

recoverable or not at this site?

Mr Shier : I would say yes. Our organization has done a little bit of community

public outreach. We did have a display booth in one of the local malls in the

Pickering area last year where we were able to solicit some input from people and

discuss aspects of the plant. Once people we talked to found that we were not

from Ontario Hydro management, that we were actually from a worker organization,

in our opinion they tended to listen to us. We didn't get the same read that may be

proposed by a lot of people. A lot of the people we spoke to -- and it wasn't a

scientific survey -- were not as concerned as maybe we hear. The thing that was

lacking was communication. They got most of their information out of the local

paper, which in our opinion tends to raise a little bit of scare tactics on some ofthese issues in their reporting. That's what the people told us. That's where they

were getting their information.

Yes, there has to be a lot of work done, because it's definitely quite clear that

there's a different concern here in this community than there is at the Bruce, for

example, when you talk to people in the public. Workers could have a very major

role to play in that area. The company has to change its ways as well. I've toured

plants in Europe and they have a lot different public relations as far as getting

public comfort in having the plant as part of their community.

Mr Conway : Thank you, Mr Shier, for quite a good brief. I want to focus on one

particular area. If the people of Ontario listened carefully to Mr Farlinger and Mr

Andognini in mid-August, or if they were with this committee this morning listening

to the Atomic Energy Control Board talk about some of the difficulties that have

been experienced over the last few years at Pickering nuclear power stations, and

with a particular focus on management and worker culture, they would want me to

ask on their behalf, what the hell has been going on?

I said this morning to the Hydro leadership at Pickering, it's as though both

managers and workers in some of these cases parked their brains on some planet

outside of our terrestrial experience. There's just no easy understanding for

laypeople looking at some of the problems, some of the sloppiness, some of theinadvertence, some of the laxity. What has been going on at these plants over the

last five or six years or however long it is? We were certainly presented with a

number of findings this morning from the AECB. How would you explain that

pattern, the problems of that management and worker culture that have been

highlighted, not only by the federal regulator but by Andognini and others in recent

times?

Mr Shier : I'll make this quick. I'm not going to pass the buck. I'll make a comment

on it but I suggest you put that same question to the panel which will be coming up

later on from the workers.

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Mr Conway : I'll do that, but you're my witness now.

Mr Shier : From my perspective, I would say there are a couple of issues here.

The public relations aspect is one thing that has been very weak in this area, in my

opinion. As far as the practical problems or the practical things we hear reported, a

lot of them do get blown out of proportion so that it looks like there are major

concerns and big things happening, for example, the siren issue and stuff like that,

which are not major issues but they appear to be that way.

Mr Conway : That's not what we heard this morning, though. Again, just veryquickly, we heard from the federal regulator telling us that some of the most

routine, basic procedures that one would expect both workers and managers

would do at a nuclear power station were not being done. When it was pointed out

that this was a problem and should be fixed, it didn't get fixed. What is going on

inside the heads of workers and managers that these kinds of things happen and

continue to happen after they have been complained about?

Mr Shier : I hear you, but I'm going to pass that on to the people who work

specifically in the station, who will give you a firsthand answer to that particular

question.

The Chair: Mr Shier, just before you go, I have a question. Ontario Hydro has

been at great pains to discuss the labour mix, the shortfalls in certain skilled areas

and so forth. Is your council giving consideration to the reality and the significance

of that information contained in those various reports?

Mr Shier : There is a shortage right now, as we've acknowledged, but we don't

say that there's a shortage in the community, with the unemployment rates or as

skilled trades. Other organizations do handle that.

The Chair: Your council has done no direct study or response to that?

Mr Shier : We've done no direct studies or anything. We have no statistics on that.

The Chair: Thank you very much for your presentation. We appreciate your

evidence. You are excused. I appreciate your time.

MAURICE BRENNER

The Chair: Councillor Maurice Brenner, would you come forward, please. You

will have 10 minutes for a presentation. Welcome to the select committee.

Mr Maur ice Brenner : Thank you, Mr Chairman and members of the committee.

I appreciate the opportunity to address you this afternoon.

This presentation is, in a sense, to pick up from the presentation of the fire marshal

and the town of Pickering fire chief which was held on October 27, I believe.

Ontario Hydro nuclear presently lacks a balanced approach to fire safety at its

plants. A balanced approach consists of three components: passive fire protection

-- compartmentalization by means of fire barriers; detection and suppression,

which is active fire protection; and proximity to fire service, ie, building being close

to fire response/firehall.

This approach is used in all of Canada's buildings except Candu reactors here in

Ontario. It is also used in all buildings, in both nuclear and non-nuclear, including

marine and offshore construction, in countries such as the United States, the

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Federal Republic of Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Korea and China. The

fact is that all new AECL-Candu designs all utilize compartmentalization, sprinklers

and fire service. We should expect nothing less here in Ontario.

During recent weeks, through these hearings, the lack of accountability has

become very evident and how far-reaching it is in the area of fire services. Clearly

it has now been demonstrated that no one appears to have sole authority over this

important issue. Who is minding the shop when it comes to fire safety?

The Atomic Energy Control Board has admitted it lacks the expertise. The Ontariofire marshal's office has stated it cannot intervene unless invited in. Municipal fire

service, which operate under the authority of the fire marshal's office, cannot

intervene unless invited in. These facilities are not required to comply with the

Ontario building code, 1990, in particular section 3.1.9. Municipal building

inspectors do not have the legal authority to require these facilities to comply with

Ontario building code requirements.

While it has been argued that Ontario Hydro nuclear is regulated by the Atomic

Energy Control Board, a federal authority, exempting it from lower-tier regulations,

Ontario Hydro nuclear is in fact owned and operated by a provincial crown

corporation and, as such, should be subject to the same strict regulationspertaining to fire and structure as anyone else in this province. The fact that you as

a provincial body are having these hearings would also concur that this is a

provincial matter.

1630

With this in mind, I wish to introduce the following recommendations which I call

Fire Safety: A Blueprint for Change.

Ontario Hydro Nuclear must be governed by the Ontario building code, 1990,

during its recovery process. Each plant should be required to apply for municipal

building permits in compliance with the 1990 Ontario building code, OBC.

Assessments of each plant must be made by municipal building departments in the

municipalities where each OHN plant is located. Alternatively, the Ontario buildings

branch should act as a resource to municipalities across Ontario in this regard.

The following overriding stipulations be made in the 1990 Ontario building code,

only as it relates to fire protection upgrade by the Ontario nuclear generating

stations:

All service rooms, including but not limited to the following, be separate fire

envelopes, separated by three-hour fire barriers as per CAN/ULC-S101-M89:

control rooms, cable spreading rooms, battery rooms, MCC rooms, oil storagerooms.

All firestops, with each configuration, shall have a three-hour FTH rating as per

CAN4-S115, latest edition. All firestop installations must conform to the minimum

and maximum tolerance stipulations of these listings. Where three hours of

temperature ratings cannot be achieved, the penetrant on the side of the floor

assemblies and on both sides of wall assemblies should be treated as follows:

Cables should be coated to a minimum length of 500 mm with a minimum

thickness of 1 mm of approved intumescent cable coating to prevent ignition of

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adjacent combustibles as well as unexposed side cable jacketing retard corrosive

offgasing of cable jacketing on the unexposed side due to temperature

transmission through the firestop.

Piping shall be covered with a minimum 25 mm thick inorganic pipe covering for a

minimum distance of 500 mm in order to prevent ignition of combustibles on the

unexposed side.

Firestops and electrical circuit protective fire barrier components must either meet

the acceptable standards of CAN4-S114 or be totally concealed by a minimum of 5mm barriers which meet the acceptance criteria of CANS-S114.

Emergency power, including redundant safe shutdown systems and/or critical

control, instrumentation and/or power cabling between the reactor and the control

room, and critical protective circuits and communication or security systems must

either be qualified under full electrical load and testing to CAN/ULC-S101 or be

totally enclosed in barriers qualified to UL1724.

All fire protection systems and components must be listed with one or both of the

following: Underwriters' Laboratories of Canada or Underwriters Laboratories Inc.

Deviations from regulations, for each configuration, must be applied for in writing,complete with drawings and descriptive text and alternative proposed solutions with

a nuclear fire protection task force.

Upon issuance of an occupancy permit in compliance with the 1990 Ontario

building code and the overriding regulations as stated within, Ontario Hydro

nuclear plants must be operated in compliance with the Ontario fire code, under

the enforcement of those bodies that are legislated through the municipal fire

departments.

In closing, I am also recommending that a nuclear fire protection task force be

established as a resource to the protection upgrade program, the municipalities

and licensees involved, as well as to review any requests for exemptions. This

group should be considered to be a nuclear protection task force and should be

required and responsible to either this select committee or a body that this select

recommends.

Given that time is of the essence, I am prepared to provide to this committee a list

of five names well respected and knowledgeable in the area of nuclear fire safety.

In conclusion, these comments and recommendations are aimed to ensure that the

taxpayers' money in Ontario that is spent on the Ontario Hydro nuclear facilities is

spent on proven methods under the control of the province of Ontario and its

municipalities. Fire protection in our Candu reactors can in this way be brought upto world-wide international standards that everyone can be proud of.

The Chair: Thank you. There is time for one minute for each caucus. Mr Galt.

Mr Ga l t : I really enjoyed your presentation. You've given a tremendous amount of

information. We had before this committee a representative from the fire marshal's

office. We also had the local fire chief from the town of Pickering. Neither of them

had any suggestions. I was really almost embarrassed on their behalf for lack of

information. You've given us a lot. You're here as a regional councillor?

Mr Brenner: Yes, sir.

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Mr Ga l t : What is your background? Where do you get this information from? I

need to know to provide some accountability and credibility.

Mr Brenner: I appreciate that question, Mr Galt. Actually, I submitted through

affidavit a copy of material which I have researched. I have submitted it to the

committee for your perusal, sir. I also have a copy that I can leave here today,

which is the Digest 07840 Firestopping, Canadian Standards, which has also --

Mr Ga l t : That was my next question. My question is your background: Are you a

fire chief or have you been in the fire marshal's office?

Mr Brenner: No, sir. I am a concerned elected official who has taken the time to

do research over the last several months to ensure that I had the appropriate

information to present to this hearing.

Mr Ga l t : I was asking about walls and about wires --

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Galt. Mr Kwinter.

Mr Kw in te r: Thank you very much for your presentation. I also want to

congratulate you on the amount of work you've done. The question I have for you:

To your knowledge, these standards that you have outlined in your presentation,

have they not been met inside that facility notwithstanding that it isn't subject to

Ontario building code regulations?

Mr Brenner: In fairness to Ontario Hydro, there's been an attempt, but

unfortunately, I understand the Atomic Energy Control Board and some of its

governing agencies presently are investigating some of the materials which may

have misrepresented at the time that firestops were filled within the plant. I have

information I can make available, but it's not yet been verified.

In effect, a lot of the areas that I've covered have not to date been addressed to

the full extent that they should be addressed. It's not because there's not been a

desire on the part of Ontario Hydro, but in fact the criteria are not in place so thereis no set standard for them to have followed, whether it's in the trays that are used

under the cable runs, which are only single-sided so they don't do any good, or

where in fact materials have been applied to the fire barriers walls to a greater

capacity than normally could withstand any fires, or for example, where some of

the piping is plastic which is going through which would never withstand any

temperatures.

The information I have would suggest that unfortunately, because the regulations

have not been tight enough and the standards are not tight enough, no, they do

not yet comply with some of the recommendations that I'm making today.

Mr Laughren: I have a brief question and it has to do with your fire protection

task force. Do you see that as a permanent ongoing force that will monitor fire

protection at the nuclear stations, or do you see it as a sort of a hit squad that tries

to get things back in shape and then disbands?

Mr Brenner: I would see it initially as -- I don't know if I could call it a hit squad --

a recovery process task force. If the recommendations that I put forward are

carried by the government of Ontario, such a task force will no longer be required

because the Ontario fire marshal's office would have the appropriate authority that

would allow them to do their job in these facilities as they do throughout Ontario. I

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suggest it would be a short-term recommendation until such time that these plants

go through the recovery process that's been recommended through previous

recommendations.

The Chair: Councillor, thank you very much. We appreciate your evidence.

Mr Brenner: Thank you very much. I would like to congratulate this committee on

an excellent job that you have done in listening to the people of Ontario, sir.

The Chair: That's very polite of you to raise that. We appreciate that

commendation.

JOHN WELLS

The Chair: I ask John Wells to come forward, please, to the witness table.

Welcome to the select committee. You have 10 minutes for your deputation,

including questions and answers.

Mr J ohn Wel ls : My name is John Wells. I'm an engineer. My background is in

operations research. I've worked at British Gas and I've also worked at Ontario

Hydro, building models for production transmission.

I'm going to try and deal with the side of costing of trying to get the power back into

Ontario. I'll only deal with the generation reserve. From my work in the past, the

minimum generation reserve that you required for Ontario was 23%. I would say

that with the latest moves you're way below that. From my findings, at 20%

generation reserve, you were getting some rotating blackouts and you were getting

a lot of brownouts. At 15% generation reserve, you were getting a hell of a lot of

rotating blackouts and a lot of brownouts as well. I'm afraid that with the cutbacks

that are going to be instituted through this winter, you may be in a state where

you'll be getting a lot of rotating blackouts.

1640

In Ontario we have two ties: We have a tie to Michigan at 2,000 megawatts and atie to New York of 2,000 megawatts. Unfortunately, with the amount of generation

you've cut, you're going to be a bit short of capacity to bring that stuff in from the

outside, but if we have a bad winter then I'm afraid that our neighbours to the south

will be in the same trouble we are, and they won't have sufficient capacity to supply

us. Therefore, we will have to look further abroad to bring that capacity in. My

experience back in 1976, when Ontario Hydro went to look for spare capacity, was

that it went down to Florida and wheeled in some 200 megawatts. We were very

fortunate that the utilities between Florida and Ontario were not in any trouble.

I'm afraid that if we are in trouble and if the other utilities are in trouble, then

whatever we purchase from outside and try to wheel in, will be eaten up by those

utilities and I don't think we're going to see it here. So we may be on our own. I am

a little worried about that. All I can say is that you'd better pray that El Niño is going

to give us a very nice, warm winter, and probably even for next year.

I would say that to help to cure this, we should probably bring in the independent

power producers to try to help out during this phase but if the all the nuclear plant

is brought back on stream, I'm afraid that they are going to get their clocks cleaned

and I would hate to see a group of people making that sort of investment and

getting wiped out because I don't think they would be able to compete. Whatever

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the independent power producers can produce now will be all right to meet, say,

the normal daily load, but when it comes to the peak load, they'll probably have

other clients for that peak load, probably themselves. This will probably occur at

most of the power producers. Therefore, it's no use them competing on a normal

load basis against Ontario Hydro because they are just going to get wiped out, and

Ontario Hydro would have sufficient capacity to be able to deal with that. That's

assuming that they bring the nukes back on.

If the plan is not to bring all the nukes back, then you're going to have to replace

that with some other generation within Ontario. I think a lot of people are looking

towards gas as a means of getting that generation replacement here. I think you

had better look very carefully at the pipeline and the problems it has been having

because I think you'll find you're going to be close to the capacity of the pipeline.

The other thing you have to take care of is that you have a storage of natural gas

which occurs in the southwest of Ontario, and that's where they have salt domes

and they store the gas there. I think the capacity of those salt domes and on the

pipeline are going to be very sorely tested if we are going to start to draw off

something like 10,000 megawatts of power; to try to generate that. I think we

should be very careful about doing that. Otherwise you may have to build a very

large ditch between here and Alberta to get the gas again.

The other thing is that if you are going to hive off the generation side of Ontario

Hydro as a separate entity and with the piling on of these costs related to the

safety issues, then the generations company may want to split the two because

Wall Street does not appreciate, or downgrades, any utility that has a nuclear

component. Therefore, they may well want to split it off and have a nuclear

generation company and then the rest, because then the rest may want to get into

the gas distribution side and not be penalized by the nuclear. I'd be very worried

about that, because if the nuclear company that we may want to generate has to

go on to the market for cash, it may be very difficult for them to get it and it may

impinge down the road on safety.

The net effect of all of this is that if you go to gas as a means of generation, you

are going to increase the price of gas because of the shortage and you are also

going to increase the price of electricity. If you're going to be buying electricity from

offshore, then because everyone knows you're up against a wall, 10 cents a

kilowatt-hour is going to be very, very cheap. I think they are going to put you

against the wall and they are going to shoot at you; and that's including places like

Michigan, New York and even Quebec. They'll just take you to the cleaners

because you've got no defence. I think you'll count yourself lucky if you're going to

get 10 cents a kilowatt-hour.

I'd like to address the future, if I have enough time. If we are going to deal with this,

we have to look in terms of the long-term future. There are some more devices

coming on to the market, like block storage heaters, which will fill in the dip in the

night curve. When that occurs and we've got a flat daily low curve, then we're going

to be in more trouble because you are going to need more base load plant, and the

only option for base load plant is water or nuclear, as it stands right now.

Therefore, you are going to have to ask yourself what you are going to do for an

encore because there is no more water around, therefore your only choice is

nuclear. S the thing is: What is going to be the next nuclear device you are going to

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be putting on? This may be 10 or 20 years down the road. You may have to think

about the ITER project for that. I'll leave that be my remarks at this stage.

Mrs Helen J ohns (Huron): We might have to think about what? I'm sorry.

Mr Laughren: What did you say? I didn't hear you.

The Chair: Sorry. The members didn't pick up the last couple of comments.

Would you just repeat that again?

Mr Wel ls : About the ITER project?

Mrs Johns: ITER?

Mr Wel ls : Yes. This is a fusion project which has begun to be situated here,

possibly in Darlington, and that will give us a background of information about how

to deal with fusion generation. We may need that technology down the road.

The Chair: Mr Wells, thank you very much. You've taken your time and I

appreciate your evidence given before the select committee. We have your

exhaustive document; that'll be tabled with us for consideration.

DAWN ROPER

The Chair: Dawn Roper, would you please come forward to the witness table?

Welcome to the select committee. You have up to 10 minutes for your

presentation, including questions and answers.

Mrs Dawn Roper: I probably won't take 10 minutes. I am the parent of a child

with a developmental disability and I live in Ajax. We have lived here all my

daughter's life. I wanted to come and talk to you because I think what you are

doing is critical and I think it is particularly critical for vulnerable people who can't

speak for themselves.

Only once, to my knowledge, was there ever a study done to look at the potential

connection between disability and the presence of nuclear power in ourcommunity, and it ended up being inconclusive. As a member of the board of

directors of the Ajax, Pickering ans Whitby Association for Community Living and

the Ontario Association for Community Living over the past 15 years, I know of no

other effort to look into the issue. Indeed, from the point of view of a citizen, why

would you? All of the information that we have ever had is that there were no

accidents, there were no emissions, there were no seepages, leakages or

whatever you want, and everything was contained.

My concern, and I don't understand a lot of it, is that in the past several months,

there seem to have been indications that perhaps that's not true. Here we have this

one report, several years ago, which indicated that there was a higher instancethan to be expected in our population of serious developmental disability in our

community, particularly Down Syndrome, particularly in Pickering and then

secondarily in Ajax.

If we do have something to worry about, then we've got to worry about it and we've

got to deal with it. I was thinking about this and talking about it with my husband.

Several years ago, when the study came out, we kind of laughed when they said

they were not going to look into it any more, because it didn't really matter. You

deal with it. You get on with your life. You do what you have to do. There were a lot

more secure social programs in place. We all know that in the era of deficit fighting,

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our social programs have been eroded somewhat, we are tightening our belt, and

so if there's a problem, we really need to know about it, because there is an

accountability issue: Who pays to support people who may have been given a

specific disability?

Again, I'm not making any allegations. I tried to understand some of the material

and it's very difficult for laypeople. I think that's why we've got you. I really wish you

luck as you do your job, but I just wanted to remind you that there are people who

can't come and sit before you, but whose presence must be here. I just wanted to

remind you of that and ask you to think of them as you're looking into this.

1650

The Chair: Thank you for your comments. We have time for one question from

each caucus. I'll begin with Mr Kwinter.

Mr Kw in te r: Mrs Roper, I was interested in your comment about the higher, I

assume per capita, incidence of Down syndrome in Pickering. Has that been

substantiated by studies?

Mrs Roper: As I say, there was only one that I know of and I believe it was done -

- maybe some other people here will know -- by the Atomic Energy Control Board,and I believe it was based on births. There were some people at the time who said,

"Well, it's a high-growth area so a lot of people with those disabilities moved into

the area." But I believe that was accounted for and that is was based on births.

Certainly the region medical people would be able to tell you more about it.

But as I said in my presentation, as a member of the board of directors of the

Association for Community Living, both local and provincial, I have never been

approached and asked, "Where were you during your pregnancy and birth and

those early stages?" That's going back 15 years -- never.

Mr Laughren: Just to follow up on that, because your presentation is a disturbing

one, even in the questions it raises, I applaud you for coming before the

committee. I'm not sure whether Mr Kwinter was asking this question or not. Is the

incidence of developmental handicaps statistically higher in this area than it is for

the provincial norm, for example?

Mrs Roper: Yes.

Mr Laughren: We know that?

Mrs Roper: We know that.

Mr Ga l t : Good afternoon. It's interesting, the problem you've brought forward. I

think I've heard of this before. It isn't totally brand new.

Mrs Roper: No, it's not.

Mr Ga l t : It certainly jogged my memory as you brought it. There certainly can be

other causes, or could be many other causes. Has the study gone into looking

further afield than relating it to the nuclear facility that happens to be here?

Mrs Roper: No. I don't believe it did. Again, it kind of made me laugh, but

recently, when they had the emissions of the zinc and some other chemical, I

thought, "Gee, I wonder." Because they said there was another area in the

province that had the same disturbingly high incidence of disability but there was

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no nuclear plant there. I remember thinking when there was this recent thing, "I

wonder if there was a mine or if there was some other connection." But as far as I

know, they only looked at it once and only briefly, and then it's never been raised

again. I really think that fails a large group of people who may be impacted in a

very significant way. We just don't know.

Mr Ga l t : There is certainly a lot of radioactive material in other locations,

particularly where they make the fuel and in the past.

Mrs Roper: Yes, who knows?

Mr Ga l t : Do you know how much higher above the provincial average? Is it 2%,

50%, 500%?

Mrs Roper: I'm sorry, I only had two days. I didn't have time to go to the medical

health people and get the study. But I am sure it's still available with the region.

The Chair: Mrs Roper, thank you very much for appearing before the select

committee. We appreciate that.

Mrs Roper: Good luck.

Mr O'Toole: On a point of order, Mr Chairman: If there is a baseline study that's

been completed, I would ask that staff perhaps avail themselves of the public

health study that has been referred to. I think it would be a good document to have

reference to.

The Chair: While that is not a point of order, it is certainly worthwhile raising.

Certainly I recognize a hand going up just asking a question and I am delighted to

respond. I think it's a good question to ask.

Mr O'Toole: Thank you.

The Chair: You're more than welcome, Mr O'Toole.

SHERRY SENIS

The Chair: I ask Councillor Sherry Senis to approach the witness table please.

Welcome. You have 10 minutes to make a presentation to the select committee,

including questions and answers.

Ms Sherry Senis: My name is Sherry Senis and I am a councillor with the town

of Pickering. I want to thank the select committee for allowing me to speak as a

delegation today.

As I mentioned, I am a councillor for the ward in which the Pickering nuclear

generating station is situated. I am also running for mayor in the upcoming

municipal election and, because of this, have spoken with countless people aroundthe town on the subject of the plant. I will come back to this point in a few

moments.

The town of Pickering, as the host community for the Pickering nuclear generating

station, has been treated shoddily in the past by Ontario Hydro in that we were kept

in the dark as to the operations and the safety risk, perceived or otherwise. There

is no point arguing about the past and finger-pointing as to blame, but instead we

must at this juncture move on and start with a clean slate while ensuring past

injustices are not repeated at the expense of our residents.

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water, air and soils in your municipality?

Ms Senis: The department of public health, through the regional government,

does the testing, but what happens is, they draw the water and then it is given to

Hydro to test for the tritium levels.

1700

The Chair: They don't do their own testing?

Ms Senis: No.

The Chair: They don't send that to another, independent lab?

Ms Senis: No. From what I understand, there are only two labs in Ontario that are

capable of testing for tritium. One is with the Ministry of Labour and the other is

with Ontario Hydro.

The Chair: I ask you that because Metropolitan Toronto has done its testing for

many years and has sent all of its samples out to independent labs for testing. So I

found that a curious and very interesting piece of information.

Ms Senis: Yes.

The Chair: Let me begin with Mr Laughren, one question.

Mr Laughren: Councillor, welcome to the committee. I'm somewhat taken aback

by your call that the communication with the plant be through the mayor's office. I

would have thought that was done already. If there is a problem -- and maybe this

is what the residents were trying to tell us earlier on -- at the plant, how does the

population at large in Pickering -- or in the surrounding area; it doesn't have to just

be Pickering -- know about it? How do they find out about it besides reading it in

the paper a day later, two days later or a year later? How does that happen?

Ms Senis: At this point in time, when we had a very heavy spill of water back in

December 1994, there was a Hydro liaison committee set up. The purpose for thatwas to liaise with information between the town and Ontario Hydro. What ended up

happening was through our town council we passed a bylaw that Ontario Hydro

would be expected to advise us of any incidents, no matter the significance to the

town. Prior to that, we had received next to nothing.

Now what is ending up happening is if a toilet overflows we are advised, because

it's an incident, and the significance really doesn't matter. I think maybe that's one

of the problems that has ensued, that we hear about a spill of heavy water, a litre,

and it ends up being published in the paper. People can't equate, as I mentioned in

my speech, as to how that affects them. Is it detrimental? All they know is that

there is a problem and, "Is this problem significant enough that we should worry forour safety?"

Mr O'Toole: Thank you very much, Ms Senis, for coming before the committee.

Do you have any association with Ontario Hydro yourself -- family, friends?

Ms Senis: No, I do not.

Mr O'Toole: So you just go on what the community information is.

Ms Senis: Yes.

Mr O'Toole: Mayor Arthurs's comments early this afternoon were quite scathing.

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In fact, I'm looking at the report. He says "a complete collapse of public

confidence." Is that the generally accepted theme or tone in Pickering with respect

to its dealings with Ontario Hydro today?

Ms Senis: I believe that most people don't believe what they're told from Ontario

Hydro.

Mr O'Toole: Is it the recent incidents or is there one specific incident? Was it the

CBC program on the 30-some -- was there a specific incident or a series of

incidents?

Ms Senis: No, I think it's due to the fact that in the past we had nothing and now

we're receiving information overload. As I said, there's no way to equate whether

this is significant or not. We're given a statement by Ontario Hydro that everything

is fine, and then find out later that it is not.

Mr O'Toole: Are you for or against nuclear?

Ms Senis: That's a pretty loaded question.

Mr O'Toole: No, I mean your own persuasion, looking to the future and the

stability of supply.

Ms Senis: To be honest with you, I don't know enough about the subject to give

you an answer.

Mr Kw in te r: Ms Senis, can you tell me in your opinion what the effects are going

to be if they decommission the plants? You say that the community will be greatly

affected if they decommission the reactors. Is that greatly affected because of

safety, greatly affected because of the economics? What did you mean by this

great effect it's going to have?

Ms Senis: At this point in time we don't know what decommissioning entails, so

that's a difficult question to answer because not enough knowledge is out there

available to the public to know what decommissioning is. If we're talking at thispoint in time of the possibility of closing Pickering A, what does that mean? What is

going to happen to the spent reactors? How are you going to deal with the reactors

that are there? Are they going to be taken out of the facility? Are they going to be

left there? Who will look after the plant? Will it be still maintained or guarded?

There is so much that we don't know and I'm certainly classed as most of the other

residents of Pickering who don't have nuclear knowledge.

The Chair: Councillor, thank you so much for appearing before the select

committee. We appreciate your evidence and it'll be given considerable

consideration.

KEVIN ASHE

The Chair: I call upon Kevin Ashe as the next witness. You have up to 10

minutes for your presentation, including questions and answers.

Mr K ev in Ashe: Thank you, Mr Chair. My name is Kevin Ashe. I live at 417

Victor Court in Pickering. I'm as well a separate school trustee for the entire town of

Pickering.

I'd like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to dialogue with the select

committee today. I believe my comments today will be quite different from many

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you've heard earlier, but I think they're very reflective of the community I belong to.

First, let me tell you a bit about myself. I come today not representing any group or

organization but only my impressions of the community where I live. I'm currently a

school trustee; I have been since 1985, as well as past chair of the board, and

currently chair of the local education improvement committee.

I am also currently in the midst of an election campaign; I'm a candidate for

regional council, ward 1. In addition, my father was the mayor of the community,

MPP for 10 years, and a former Minister of Energy. He served with Mr Laughren,Mr Conway and, I believe, Mr Kwinter. I'm a lifelong resident of Durham and during

my childhood from age four to 18 lived within a kilometre of the Pickering station.

My message today is quite simple. I believe Ontario Hydro has been and hopefully

will continue to be an important part of our community. I am the first to admit that

there are problems at the plant. I would suggest, however, that the main issue with

the people of Pickering and the citizens of Pickering is their exclusion from

meaningful discussion of the plant and its operation. There's a perception, and I

believe it's quite right, that the citizens of Pickering have not been fully informed of

the difficulties occurring at the plant for many years. I suggest that must change.

I began my comments by indicating that they, meaning Ontario Hydro, are a

valuable resource that's worth saving. I want to spend my last few minutes talking

about that.

First of all, from an employment point of view, they employ over 2,800 individuals

at the Pickering station, of whom 66% live in the geographic area called the region

of Durham, and over 500 of them live in Pickering. Certainly a sizeable portion of

the payroll is reinvested in our community through property taxes, through sales

taxes, through consumer spending and the like.

Currently Ontario Hydro pays in excess of $5 million annually to the town in grants

in lieu of taxes, which is a significant part of the operating budget of the town.Without that income, property taxes would certainly increase on that portion from

the town aspect.

Ontario Hydro also spends. It is my understanding over $2.5 million worth of

supplies were purchased from Pickering businesses. As well, being a Rotarian

involved in the United Way and as a hospital fund-raiser, I know that they're a

significant corporate citizen and that in the 1996 campaign they gave over

$200,000 to the United Way in Pickering, been involved in the hospital. I expect

that Ontario Hydro will offer significant resources to the waterfront regeneration

which will be ongoing in our community.

To summarize, Ontario Hydro and the Pickering plant are a resource worth saving.

I urge you to take this into account when you make your recommendations.

However, the underlying theme is that safety must come first.

I'd be pleased to answer any questions the committee might have and again I

thank you for the opportunity to come before you today.

1710

The Chair: Mr Ashe, I appreciate that presentation very much and we will begin

the questioning with the government caucus.

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Mrs Johns: Welcome to the committee, Mr Ashe. It's nice to meet someone who

has a long and varied time in community service. You are the first person who has

really talked about the financial impact of Ontario Hydro, so I appreciate you

bringing that in. We certainly heard a lot about that at Bruce.

I guess in every situation that kind of money has a different impact. In my

community, that would be very substantial. Can you tell us how much of the, for

example, payment in lieu would be in comparison to the total revenue generated

through taxes in your town?

Mr Ashe : I don't have the numbers offhand, but I think the operating budget of the

town is in the $30-million to $35-million range. The town manager is sitting behind

me.

Mrs Johns: Yes, and he's smiling. We've already had a crack at him.

Mr Ashe : He can nod if I'm accurate or not, but $5 million is a significant

contribution to the operation of the town, and that's for the Hydro transmission lines

as well as the actual plant itself. It is significant. I don't think there are any studies

that would talk about the spinoff effect, but $225 million is spent a couple of times

and 66% of the people live in Durham, over 500 of them in Ajax and Pickering. I

suggest it is a significant employer in town and one of the biggest employers in

town and one that would be sorely missed if it was taken away from us.

Mr Kw in te r: Mr Ashe, I'm anxious to get your impression of some of the things

that were said to us earlier today, that there is a perception out there that suddenly

Pickering is falling apart, that there are all kinds of problems. It has been here

since 1971. I know that there are people who are against nuclear and have been

from day one, but by and large, has your information been that generally, until

these latest events were publicized, people were accepting of the nuclear facility in

Pickering?

Mr Ashe : I suggest that the people of Pickering are still accepting of it being acontinued part of our community. They are troubled by most recent events, some

of them that go back many years, that we weren't aware of. I think it's a credibility

issue right now and I think that Ontario Hydro has a significant challenge ahead of

them to restore that credibility. I've been knocking on a lot of doors over the last

couple of weeks and the issue of trust is mentioned, that word is used. I think it can

be restored. They are a valuable part of the community and a good corporate

citizen and there is some work to be done, but it can be restored. The

communication must be open and they have to work hard at that.

Mr Laughren: Good afternoon. I have a very simple and direct question, and that

is, do you support the call for the environmental assessment of the Pickeringoperation?

Mr Ashe : I don't think that question itself is appropriate because I don't think

environmental assessment for an existing facility is the proper way to go. I do,

however, believe that there should be an enquiry of some sort to deal with the

issue. I really don't think the Environmental Assessment Act and the provisions of it

were meant to deal with a development that has a history of 25 years or so. I do,

however, think there is a need for a public enquiry or a public review of some type.

The Chair: Mr Ashe, thank you very much for your evidence and for appearing

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like in both the short term and the long term. One really has to wonder whether

Ontario Hydro would establish a different strategy in their nuclear recovery plan if

industry reform was better defined.

The second issue: Rehabilitation and maintenance of non-nuclear assets of

Ontario Hydro. Clarington Hydro has significant concerns on how these enormous

nuclear expenditures will impair Ontario Hydro's financial ability to rehabilitate and

adequately maintain the rest of the system. We're seeing evidence of inadequate

Ontario Hydro maintenance within Clarington.

Clarington Hydro's customers are supplied from two 44 kV distribution lines. One of

these lines has a long section that is 50 years old. During the summer of this year

there were 17 interruptions on eight different days on this line. We've been unable

to get an answer from Ontario Hydro as to what corrective action they'll take. We've

got customers that are hopping mad over this problem and we don't blame them.

There's one of our customers on this line that is extremely sensitive to these

interruptions. It's a rapidly growing customer that runs a number of manufacturing

lines 24 hour a day, 7 days a week. Even one momentary power interruption can

cost them as much as $30,000 in equipment damage and lost production.

1720

We have a growing concern that this nuclear problem is being looked at in

isolation. Ontario Hydro is unable to raise rates for the remainder of the century;

has some $30 billion in debt, and that is estimated to be twice as much as they

should have to enter a competitive market; and is now faced with an estimated $5

billion to $8 billion to recover its nuclear assets, an estimate that many have little

comfort relying on. Given this dire financial situation, what hope is there that the

rest of Hydro's assets will receive necessary attention?

We understand that there are transmission constraints that will l imit the capability

of bringing supply in from neighbouring utilities, a key consideration when you're

looking at possibly opening up for competition. Based upon our local experience, it

appears that Hydro's existing transmission and distribution system is inadequately

maintained. There are other problems at Hydro besides nuclear and we haven't

heard what the pricetag may be in those areas. If there isn't an adequate

transmission system to deliver electricity to the customer, it won't matter how much

generating capacity there is in the province. We think there will be a short-term

requirement for significant transmission and distribution expenditures. The

committee should ask: Has Hydro factored transmission system expenditures

necessary to accommodate a competitive electricity environment into their financial

projections? Are there other options that would be less costly than the proposed

nuclear recovery plan?

The third issue: real and effective regulation of Ontario Hydro. The committee has

heard from the Ontario Energy Board and seen evidence of the frequent dismissals

of OEB recommendations. We believe OEB's powers should have teeth and Hydro

should be obliged to comply with the board's rulings. It doesn't make much sense

to have these expensive hearings if they aren't adhered to.

That's not to say we've always agreed with the board on its recommendations; we

haven't. In fact, we were one of about 270 utilities here in Ontario that benefited in

1997 from Hydro ignoring a board wholesale rate recommendation. In spite of our

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areas as well; in other words, shoulder-to-shoulder utilities right across the

province.

Mr Conway : If you moved north into Victoria and Haliburton, would you be

interested in taking over the delivery system for Haliburton county?

Mr C la rk : There are some areas within Durham region that are as remote and

sparsely populated as areas to the north.

Mr Conway : But for every one of those customers in Durham, you've got

presumably 50 customers in areas like Bowmanville and other urban centres, n'est-

ce pas?

Mr C la rk : One of the things we found in both studies that we did was that it

wasn't necessarily a factor of the density of the population but the density of the

load that was significant.

Mr Conway : Just a last question: You make a point, and we haven't really heard

too much evidence on this, but you really pointed out that there is a decrepitude

about the current transmission system in that part of Ontario Hydro that you have in

Durham region, and that's been serious and getting worse, I take it.

Mr C la rk : It has been getting much worse. We have a group of customers inNewcastle that have been experiencing far from reliable power over this last

summer particularly.

Mr Conway : Are Ontario Hydro people privately confessing that they just don't

have the resources to keep those facilities up to a good standard?

Mr C la rk : The answer we're getting so far is that there are other projects that are

taking precedence over this particular project, and there is also concern being

raised as to reorganization that is taking place at Ontario Hydro retail. There is a lot

of uncertainty as to who is going to be responsible for those particular

expenditures.

Mr Laughren: I assume by your brief that you are in favour of competition

entering the electricity market. Is that a safe assumption?

Mr C la rk : Yes, we are.

Mr Laughren: On page 5 you talk about when Hydro headed you off from

expanding your jurisdiction by engaging in a very competitive practice. Do you think

the private sector wouldn't do that in spades. Why wouldn't they be at least as

competitive, if not more so, than Ontario Hydro? They would have a very tough

bottom line to think about.

Mr C la rk : In response to that, we're not afraid of competition whatsoever. We feelthat what took place in 1995 was there was cross-subsidization of this higher-

density area from the rural rates. It gets to our third point, really, that we're not

afraid of that as long as there is adequate regulation to prevent that type of activity

from happening.

Mr Laughren: Why couldn't a private operator cross-subsidize as well? What's

wrong with that? I don't understand.

Mr C la rk : That is a concern, but if we're dealing with the monopoly end of the

business, there will have to be --

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Mr Laughren: No, I'm not talking about monopoly; we're talking about in a

competitive market. It could be a private operator who had a high-density area and

a less dense area and would do whatever they could to maintain and expand their

market, surely. I just don't understand the point.

Mr C la rk : We're not afraid of competition whatsoever, as long as there's an even

playing field. Ontario Hydro is our regulator and makes the rules that we have to

follow as far as setting our rates. We can't do the same things that Ontario Hydro

can do right now.

1730

Mr Laughren: But then you'd be calling for a regulated private sector.

Mr C la rk : No. I think the monopoly portion of the business has to be regulated

but the portion that is not deemed to be a monopoly would not have to be regulated

to the same extent.

Mr Laughren: So you would throw it wide open and you wouldn't object to

practices by the private sector to cross-subsidize if they weren't a monopoly.

Mr C la rk : As long as we're working on an even playing field, we have no

objection.

Mr Laughren: Well, that's what I'm talking about.

Mr O'Toole: I'm inspired by Mr Laughren's pleading for the competitive

marketplace; it's a real revelation. I think he has grown with the experience on this

committee and his experience over the last five years.

The humour aside, I commend the commission openly for their concerted, genuine

effort to reorganize and realize the economies in the one utility for Durham. I

commend you for that. It shows vision, leadership and confidence, something in

scarce supply today. I want that for the record.

There are members of Ontario Hydro here, surreptitiously hanging around, listening

to what's being said.

Mr Conway : Bill Farlinger is watching.

Mr O'Toole: Yes, Bill is watching. I'm sure they've heard your cause with the

high-voltage lines that service the municipality of Clarington. I would urge you to

write to me as your member and I will make sure that he gets it personally.

On a more sincere note, we've not heard --

Mr Conway : That sounds like a politically motivated question.

Mr O'Toole: I know. There are times and places for everything.

I have to comment that the elected leadership of the municipality of Clarington,

outside of you as elected commissioners, has not taken the opportunity to prevail

on Ontario Hydro to date. In my view, silence is acceptance. I'm getting quite a

mixed story on the three station sites. Bruce is a community widely embracing

nuclear operations. That's what it said clearly. What I hear at Pickering, where we

should be today -- but we're in Oshawa, neutral territory, I guess -- is a lot of

community angst. Without putting you on the spot, are the nuclear operations and

the interrelationship between the community, of which you're a significant part as

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elected people, and myself, accepted in that particular operation, the Darlington

site? Is it a good, willing partnership?

Ms Paul ine Stork s : I would say yes.

Mr Van Dyk: I think there's a good working relationship with us, other than the

equipment failure on their part. They are good listeners; they're very slow doers.

Mr O'Toole: The charge of this committee is community safety across Ontario,

and there's a further requirement for the assurance of supply. That's an important

concern of this committee as well. I'm reassured that nuclear safety in Clarington

seems to be working favourably in that community. Thank you for appearing here

today.

The Chair: I'd like to thank the witnesses for their evidence and the presentation.

Thank you for being here.

I think I should be writing an Ontario book of quotations. I've noted this again,

"good listeners and very slow doers." I suppose that would apply to a lot of people,

as an Ontario witticism. Good comments. Thank you so much.

ONTARIO HYDRO EMPLOYEES

The Chair: Our next witness is the panel of employees. I have three listed on my

calendar. There will be up to 30 minutes for the presentation and questions and

answers.

Mr Peter Fa lconer: Thank you for this opportunity to talk to you. My name is

Peter Falconer. I've worked at Ontario Hydro, Pickering, for about 16 years. I live

on the doorstep of the Pickering plant. My house backs on to the land that is

owned by Ontario Hydro. The park that was referred to earlier backs on to my

house. I can look out my bedroom window and see all eight units of that plant

when the trees don't have leaves on them.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Falconer. A little more than I needed just to identifyyourself to start with, but I appreciated the scope of your identification. I would just

ask the other two to identify themselves and then we can proceed any way you

would like to present your evidence.

Mr Bob Peters : My name is Bob Peters. I work at Darlington nuclear generating

station. I've been an employee at Darlington since 1989. I am a mechanical

maintainer and I just happen to be a joint health and safety committee member for

the last seven years at the station.

I thank the committee for the opportunity to speak. I have a presentation that I will

be giving. I regret to inform you but I forgot to include one part of the presentation,

which is a copy of the work standards handbook for maintenance staff at

Darlington. I'd like to have this entered as part of the exhibit.

Mr Dave Mi l ton: My name is Dave Milton. I work at the Pickering nuclear plant

as a nuclear operator, actually charged with the responsibility of operating the

reactors. I've been there for 16 years. I'm also an executive board member of the

Power Workers' Union.

What Peter and myself and Bob would like to do is a little different from the earlier

groups. You have a copy of our submissions. We raise some issues in those

submissions, but what we'd like to do is turn it over to the select committee

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members for any questions with regard to our reports, or any questions they may

have in their minds that were raised by previous submissions. We'd like to turn it

about and give you more time to address us and ask us things and see if we can

reply and fill in some of the voids of information that still may be there.

The Chair: I assume you have a written copy of the presentation you wanted to

leave with us.

Mr Mi l ton : There should be two.

The Chair: You will file a copy of that handbook that you've indicated; we'll take

that as well.

With that in mind, we'll turn the questioning open and begin with Mr Laughren.

Mr Laughren: Welcome, gentlemen, to the committee. As employees, it must be

difficult sometimes in your own community when you hear a lot of the negative

publicity surrounding the plant, especially at Pickering. One of you works at

Darlington and the other two at Pickering. I'm wondering how it affects you on the

job when you read about the bad publicity, when you hear it in your own

community. As well, when do you hear about the problems? Do you hear about the

problems before anyone else does?

Mr Mi l ton : I'll comment on that first, and then Peter and Bob may want to

comment on it. Particularly at Pickering, I think there's a sense of frustration with

the workers there that we and Ontario Hydro, we as individuals in our communities

and Ontario Hydro as the corporate citizen in the community, have been unable to

explain ourselves appropriately, explain the problems we've experienced. We've

found it difficult translating our technical jargon, our Hydro jargon, as people may

call it, in laypersons' terms.

There are incidents of varying severity that have happened in Pickering over the

years. Almost exclusively, the media portray them all as very serious. We've had

difficulties and we're frustrated that we can't seem to make a significant portion of

the community understand, "Yes, there are some that are significant, and here's

our explanation and here's our understanding, but there are many that are of less

significance, have little or no impact on you and the community, and here's why."

So that's a bit of our failure as employees and I think a bit of Ontario Hydro's

failure.

On your second point in that question, when do we become aware of issues, there

are varying degrees within the station. Those individuals such as Peter, myself and

Bob, who I would say are directly on the workface of the reactors -- we work with

them, we follow the procedures, we deal with those -- we become aware almost

instantaneously. In fact, in many cases we are the individuals who identify the

problems and report them to our supervision.

There has been an improvement within Pickering, I'll speak specifically, on

communicating what we find out about almost instantaneously to all the other

employees, I would say, who are more remote from the reactor face: the support

staff, the clerical staff, the technical staff, who predominantly work days and are not

there around the clock. So Ontario Hydro, at least at Pickering in the last couple of

years, has improved that dramatically through our e-mail systems, through our

bulletins, through our pre-job briefings with our supervisors in the morning, so if I

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report something to my supervisor, the next day all the other supervisors will

discuss that with their other workers so they are more educated and aware of what

the issues are.

1740

Mr Laughren: Thank you. As you might know, we were at Pickering this morning

and had a presentation by AECB, and part of the presentation were some quite

graphic pictures of what was really bad housekeeping at the plant. I think a lot of us

on the committee, and I won't speak for other members, were scratching our headsand saying, "How is this possible?" It was so obvious, and even though I'm not an

expert I could have said, "That's wrong," and believe me, I'm not an expert. I asked

the question of the people at Pickering and they said, "Well, over a period of time it

deteriorated and it didn't happen overnight," and so forth, but the AECB keeps

coming forward with these reports and there's lots of evidence too. It's not just

scaremongering or anti-nuclear people saying it. Have you got and explanation for

that?

Mr Mi l ton : I'll talk in general and then maybe specifically to the housekeeping. In

general, I think the way the way to approach this, and this is a generalization, is

that throughout the 1980s -- I think you heard this from the AECB and from otherindividuals -- Pickering performed at the highest levels in the world, their capacity

factors, their costs, and other utilities came to us to learn how to do things better.

What we I think did collectively as a station is that we started to rest on those past

successes. We got overconfident. We did not apply what most businesses would

call continuous improvement principles, where you can't just stay there. You have

to keep on raising the bar and striving to improve. In fact, the rest of the nuclear

industry did that. They caught up to Pickering and passed Pickering. We rested on

those laurels.

Why did we do that? There is a whole host of theories. Mine, being at the plant and

seeing what developed since 1981, since I've been there, is that around 1988-89and into the 1990s we went through budget cuts, staffing cuts that demotivated

people, that affected morale, that made it difficult to accomplish the necessary

tasks with the resources that were allocated. We shifted, as an organization, as

management set directions and goals, from safety first at all points to safety if it's

not really too serious and "Let's not compromise productivity." That mixed

message got out.

I'll give you an example. Before, if a procedure was being followed and could not

be followed according to the procedure, in the 1980s it would have been: "Stop the

work immediately. Let's get the necessary people together and review this before

we do anything." What became apparent in the early 1990s was: "We don't havethose people. They're not available. Go ahead and do it the best way you can." As

a worker, if you beat your head against the wall, you only beat it so often and then

you say: "Well, they're not caring. They are not wanting to strive to higher

standards. I'm tired of doing it myself. I'll do the best job I can. I'll do it as safely as I

can." That will lead to an increase in human error, when you set up an environment

like that. That has slowly started shifting. With regard to housekeeping, I'll ask you

the question: You were at Pickering. Did you see an improvement from the

pictures?

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Mr Laughren: Yes. May I ask one final question? Do we have time?

The Chair: You may indeed.

Mr Laughren: What are your views on the call for an environmental

assessment?

Mr Mi l ton : I think it's an inappropriate forum. I understand the community wants.

I was at the town council meetings when the bylaw was passed. I was at Sally

McLeod's first town meeting. What I clearly heard from -- if you take away all the

Hydro people, the Power Workers' Union people, the anti-nuclear people -- the

citizens of Pickering who didn't belong to these affiliations was, "Is that plant safe?"

I think what an environmental assessment hearing does is open up the Pandora's

box of the future of the nuclear electricity industry and do nothing to answer the

question of whether Pickering is safe. What is needed is an independent task force

or committee that will look at those questions that Councillor Senis raises about

drinking water, about air quality, about the land, about what is going on in the

plants. Give us detailed information about the alarm that went off. Put it so we can

understand it. Get a dialogue going.

What I think should be happening and what we asked for is for this select

committee to consider the creation of some kind of ongoing, community-based,

regular monthly or quarterly committee meetings where we can have this dialogue.

We have offered to the Power Workers' Union that we would attempt to set that up

and give information as we get it and share that with the community, because

through dialogue, through education I think we'll be able to solve many of the

concerns in the community.

Mr Ga l t : Good afternoon. Thanks for the presentation and for being with us. We

have heard all kinds of stories and they are starting to sound awfully similar,

everything from the nuclear culture, the management gets the kind of union it

deserves, and I thought maybe we were in trouble. It's not just nuclear as you look

at Ontario Hydro. Back in the 1980s I was hearing all these stories about one

person working up the pole with 10 watching. Those kinds of stories are telling us

there's a problem in that organization. Obviously, from some of the pictures we saw

today, that didn't just start yesterday. It was pictures of the fact that people didn't

care about their workplace regardless of what management or worker level they

were at. Is it as simple as you're describing it: "We got here just because we

thought we were the greatest; we just kept looking inward and didn't look out to see

what else was going on"?

Mr Mi l ton : I don't think it's as simple as that. I think that's a strong element. If you

look through particularly the last three years, what Ontario Hydro employees have

gone through, in particular Power Workers' Union members, we've lost over 5,000

members to cuts, budgets have been cut at Ontario Hydro, there's the constant

debate in the communities and in the province about privatization, about

competition. While those things are necessary and have to continue, there's an

effect on the human being. You're concerned about job security, you are

concerned about your future, you are concerned about your health, your wellbeing,

and I think anything that can distract your 100%, undivided attention from your task

at hand can end up producing performance that is not excellent. While it may be

safe, it's not where it should be.

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Mrs Fisher: I'm hopeful that actually we can move forward that way, and that

includes the Pickering site as well, by the way. Some people think because I only

represent Bruce that's all I'm worried about, but I started at Pickering in 1970 and I

knew what nuclear excellence was.

I was very discouraged this morning from some of the presentations, but I

personally believe that the workers are committed. I know management is

committed. The corporate head office has to be committed. Government has to find

an answer. I think it's going to be a joint effort all the way around to make it work if

it's going to be recovered.

Mr Kw in te r: Mr Milton, this morning we had a presentation by AECB with

photographs showing some of the maintenance problems, and also the AECB

representative suggested that notwithstanding that improvements were being

made, he was still very sceptical about whether it's going to be maintained,

whether the ability is there, whether there is a culture to allow that to happen.

Notwithstanding that, when we visited the plant, and I'm just a layman, and I

walked down that long passage past the four A reactors and saw the airlock rooms,

to me it was absolutely sparkling. What I really want to know is, is that just a

showcase for visitors as they come in or is that what happens throughout the whole

plant?

Mr Mi l ton : We've been asked that more times than I care to remember,

particularly since our two open houses we've had this year where we had some

5,000 various residents come through the plant.

No, it's not a showcase. Is it recent? Yes, it is. These initiatives are things that have

happened over the last two and a half to three years, albeit not fast enough and

maybe not at the pace the AECB would want, maybe not at the pace we would

want, but they were things -- we were prodded by the AECB on the various pieces

of documentation and we took action in those areas. They have been sustained for

the last couple of years now.

I think what corporate management has done to clearly give an indication that

they're serious about their commitment to improve and sustain that improvement --

Pickering has been less staffed or more understaffed compared to any other

nuclear sites in Ontario Hydro on a unit basis, per a megawatt basis. We are

understaffed compared to the nuclear reactors in the United States. We presently

have about 2,700 and change regular permanent staff. What corporate

management has said is that for a four-unit station at Pickering you need 1,800

staff, and to have eight units running at Pickering, because there are some

economies of scale, it wouldn't be 3,600, it would be in the range of about 3,400.

They've started some of that already. We've gone from a low of 2,400 a couple of

years ago to 2,700 now and going up another 700. That's an indication that you will

have the skills, the resources, the people, the moneys necessary to sustain your

improvements, because it requires enormous energy to improve and then you have

to sustain that improvement. I think it can be done and it has been done so far in

some of the areas.

Mr Conway : Mr Milton, I want to explore the question of the deployment of

human resources. Ernst and Young in their financial analysis of the so-called

NAOP, the nuclear recovery plan that the corporation has embarked upon, raised

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as one of their concerns the ability of the corporation, the ability of Hydro, to

manage the human resources in a way that will make this thing work.

A number of people have commented over the years that the collective agreement

at Ontario Hydro Nuclear is quite a remarkable document and not always the most

flexible and most creative of agreements. It certainly is the view of some that one

of the very real impediments in making this nuclear recovery plan work is the ability

of management and labour to move people around when they're required for

movement to get the right mix. Is that a legitimate concern in your view? What

should this committee know about that issue, from your point of view and your

colleagues' point of view?

Mr Mi l ton : Some of the committee members have been given their politically

motivated speeches or questions. Maybe I'll give mine. I don't think there's an

employer anywhere in the world who if asked -- where they have a union and have

a collective agreement -- is the collective agreement a barrier to their being more

efficient and improving and getting better, would say that no, it's not a barrier. I

would respectfully submit that any employer would say that.

That being said, it was signed by both parties. There are rules to follow within that

collective agreement. We have indicated in writing to Bill Farlinger that with respectto the movement of staff, particularly within nuclear, we are sensitive to why that

has to be done and why it has to be done properly and we're prepared to sit down

and negotiate some creative methods to do that. To date, my understanding is that

the documents have been exchanged between John Murphy, Peter Kelly, Bill

Farlinger, that type of level. Some preliminary dialogue has gone on to how that

can be accomplished.

Mr Conway : One of my concerns is that over the last number of years a lot of

people with good intentions have agreed to sit down and discuss a lot of things,

and a lot of things haven't changed. We had some very good testimony from the

people at British Energy, who said: "No, the union's not our problem. We are aunionized shop and the union wasn't the problem." In fact the union was very

creative and helpful in working that company out of a very difficult situation.

I certainly don't view myself as anti-union, but I can say this: When we've got a

situation, when we've got a company that's a monopoly that is providing electricity

and is substantially a nuclear company, you don't have to be Albert Einstein to see

where problems might arise, and they have arisen. I saw Murphy's comments in

the Globe and Mail yesterday, and he and Chairman Bill, apparently, are at the

summit negotiating these matters. I just hope that we are not going to be faced

with a situation that is going to be problematic here.

Mr Mi l ton : I'll just make one more comment and Peter Falconer would like to

address that a bit. Without getting into the specifics of some of the dialogue and

paperwork that are exchanged at that level already, I think it would be achieved

rather quickly if Mr Andognini had the authority as the chief nuclear officer to sit

down with John Murphy and people such as myself to work that out. What happens

in a company the size of Ontario Hydro or any large corporation is that there are

the Karen Robinsons of the world, there are the vice-presidents of other areas of

the company, and they're saying: "Whoa, we don't want that done in nuclear. That

will affect us over here."

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If Mr Andognini was left with the directions from Mr Farlinger, "You sit down with Mr

Murphy and work out what you need in nuclear; I'll take care of the problems with

the rest of the company," I think that could be done.

Mr Conway : Would it be easier if we just aggregated Ontario Hydro and

separated out some of these players and divisions?

Mr Mi l ton : Do you mean through the white paper or some initiative like that?

Mr Conway : Nuclear is a very special commitment. I think that has been

acknowledged for a long time. I've endorsed the commitment for my entire public

life and I'm not prepared to back away from it now. But I'm going to tell you that

when I saw Chairman Bill do his little song and dance on August 13, it became a

little bit harder to be supportive. Having said that, my question remains: Would it be

easier to break the company up and separate, say, nuclear out from the rest of

generation?

Mr Mi l ton : Would it be easier? I don't know. What I think has to happen to make

the types of discussions fruitful that you're talking about is that the corporation has

to continue at the corporate level on this learning curve that it is in the nuclear

industry business. You heard Chairman Bill say, "Jeez, we kind of got

overwhelmed by this nuclear cult." They had a responsibility to listen. We were

presenting information. We were telling them the effects of the cuts they wanted,

but they weren't listening. Now they are.

1800

Mr Conway : My final observation on this, and let me be really provocative: What

do we know about this situation from a labour-management point of view? Any of

us who have been in government have faced this. We've got a corporation that

provides an absolutely vital commodity, a state-owned company that's

overwhelmingly nuclear. Everybody knows we can't take a strike. It's one of the

great fictions of Ontario's public life. We cannot take a strike in our public utilitywhen that utility is 65% nuclear. If it were 35% nuclear, maybe, but it's not; it's

65%. So if you start with a situation that you're in the electricity business in a

province as big and as empty and as cold as Ontario and you can't take a strike,

and it's a state-owned enterprise, you could imagine what flows from that. I think

even I could appreciate some of the difficulties and opportunities that both labour

and management might have in this situation.

Mr Mi l ton : That doesn't require an answer.

Mr Conway : I guess it's self-evident.

The Chair: All right. The plane has landed.

Mr Falconer: Could I just respond for a second?

The Chair: Yes, please do make a very brief response.

Mr Falconer: I had the pleasure about two years ago to meet a man from British

Nuclear by the name of Paul Maycock, who came and took a tour of Pickering with

two of the union representatives who worked in the Heysham plant. He was the

manager of that plant at the time. We had a rather long and very informative

discussion with him on management and union relationships.

Basically the way Paul put it to us was that when he was faced with a problem, and

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that could be something as serious as his corporate office saying, "We're going to

downsize you, we're going to cut your budget," he did not go away to a room with

his managers and decide, "This is what we're going to do and we're going to

enforce that on the people who work in the plant." He immediately brought in his

union representatives, he sat down with those people and he discussed thoroughly

what the problem was, how they were going to address that. They may turn around

and say, "We're going to fight corporate office because we don't think this is right";

conversely, they may say, "Where can we make these cuts in an effort to ensure

that we can still produce a safe product?" He was very open about that and, as he

was discussing this, I checked with the union people who were there and they

backed him up 100% that that is how it's done, that is the British model. Currently, I

don't believe that is the model within Ontario Hydro.

The Chair: All right, gentlemen. Thank you very much for your evidence and for

being here to present to this select committee. We appreciate that very much. You

are excused.

Mr Falconer: Thank you very much for the opportunity.

The Chair: We will pick up a copy of that handbook for the evidence.

FRANK ADAMEK

The Chair: The next witness is Frank Adamek. Welcome to the select committee.

You have 10 minutes to make your presentation, including questions and answers.

Mr Frank Adamek : My name is Frank Adamek. I don't work for Hydro -- I'm a

freelance consultant -- but I've had a close association with Hydro over the years

and I am quite dismayed about what I've seen. I'll start reading this. I'm not

accustomed to public speaking. I am more at home in a control panel or at a

keyboard.

The Chair: Frank, there has not been one witness as yet dying of bite wounds, so

just relax.

Mr Adamek : I expect that Ontario Hydro management, along with the trade

unions and the engineers' union, are vigorously petitioning this committee to give

them carte blanche authorization to restore Ontario Hydro back to its former status

as one of the top power utilities in the world. They no doubt are assuring you that

they can do this on their own, without outside help or intervention. After all, they

are the experts and best qualified for the task.

My counter is simply this: True experts and real professionals would not have

permitted the utility to decay to its sad state today. I recognize that there may have

been some assistance from previous government appointees, but there is logicallyno reason to expect that those who were primarily responsible for the problem are

the best qualified to fix it.

Enormous manpower will be needed to assess the current status and to restore

some, or optimistically most, of our nuclear plants to a safe and economical status.

Therefore there is no option but to utilize most of the resources available within

Hydro. However, I urge that outside expertise be utilized to address abusive union

powers and to advise, audit, review and, in key areas, to approve internal

administrative procedures. Budget estimates and economic analysis and

justifications for plant repairs, modifications and upgrades, along with projected

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revenues, also will require close scrutiny. You can't just take their word for it. In

case of disagreement, the outside authority must prevail.

I would like to stress that it is not the technology that has failed. What we have is a

classic case of bureaucratic bungling reminiscent of the worst of the old

Communist empire and many Third World governments.

I concede that I have a personal bias on the subject since I was a part of the

pioneer team that designed Canada's first full-scale commercial nuclear power

plant, Pickering A. After unit 1 construction was finished I was at the site as theengineer responsible for commissioning the liquid zone control system which

controls reactor power and neutron flux tilt.

Because Canadian expertise and experience were valuable assets in the US in

those days -- quite a turnaround -- I had the opportunity to work at several US

locations. Before returning to Canada for family reasons I was Bechtel's senior

startup commissioning engineer for a pressurized water reactor being built in Iowa.

Based on my first-hand experience in both countries, I can say that the Candu

system was second to none and that I could be proud of Canada's

accomplishments.

After my return to Canada, I did not have any direct contact with our power plants

for some time. I was occupied with many interesting projects, including conceptual

design studies with the European fusion research community. However, last winter

I found myself back at Pickering after an absence of 25 years. I was part of the

jumper reduction team. That proved to be quite a shock. Pickering was not the

same place that I remembered. What had happened?

The Andognini report acknowledged that the Candu system was robust. What was

tactfully left unsaid was that the Candu reactor system must have been very robust

in order to have survived operational and maintenance abuse for so long. The

Pickering I saw in the winter of 1997 had degenerated into a tight, inbred club

which had little more going for it than the similarly inbred anti-nuclear club. In some

respects it might be considered worse. At least most anti-nukes are driven by a

blind but honest faith. They appear to have no financial rewards.

This appears not to be the case at Hydro Nuclear. Pickering had an

overabundance of heavily entrenched and highly overpaid bureaucrats whose sole

interest was self-interest. Their primary skills were related to the avoidance of

responsibility, passing the buck and perpetuating their empire. Nowhere in my long

life and many travels have I seen this perfected to such an art form. In its own

warped way it was awesome.

How and why this once-proud organization strayed to this low level can be debated

endlessly. The fact remains that the damage is done. The important issue now is

what is to be done about it and how. It is necessary to get into full damage control

mode and to do so quickly. Furthermore, we cannot afford the luxury of pandering

to the sniping and gloating of the anti-nuclear establishment.

There is nothing wrong with our nuclear technology. If you turn over a well-

engineered and reliable car to a careless driver and an incompetent mechanic, it is

not difficult to visualize what the fate of that car will be. Why would a complex and

sophisticated piece of machinery be any different? Of course, the car analogy is

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simplistic. One can easily replace a few drivers and mechanics, assess the

damage, fix the car and be on your way. It is not so easy to replace a few thousand

operators, maintenance crews and engineering support staff.

Fortunately there is no need to do so en masse. My observation at the site was that

many of the professional and technical staff are willing, ready and able to do

serious work. The system imposed on them by inept and/or self-serving managers

prevents them from being effective. Please note that when I use the term

"management," I include union bosses with their own self-serving union credo.

1810

Before any meaningful reconstruction can begin, this cancer must be removed, and

must be removed skilfully, or it will grow back. The next step is to realistically

assess the physical plant damage and determine what, if anything, is salvageable.

If salvage is economically feasible, get on with it. The final and most important step

is to set up a mechanism to continually monitor for re-emergence of the old cancer

and for timely and positive corrective action. Third-party assistance and/or

intervention is a must at all steps. The only way to minimize the negative aspects

of inbreeding is to introduce new blood. It works for dogs, horses and managers.

Unfortunately this third-party involvement will not be easy to implement. At the

Pickering site I sensed considerable hostility by many towards outsiders such as

myself. It appears that our experience in the real world outside is seen to be a

threat to the security of their club, and they are correct: It is a threat.

To further muddy the waters, there is a widespread belief in Ontario Hydro that the

status quo will continue indefinitely because the AECB cannot or will not shut them

down. They believe that one government agency would never choose to do

anything that might create hardship to their brethren in another government

agency, which includes crown corporations. My experiences in the nuclear fuel

industry suggest that this belief does have some basis, and I am prepared to

expand on that privately.

We are in a serious economic and social crisis now. Band-Aid patches and/or

political posturing are not the solution. We need calm, rational and timely damage

control measures. The anti-nuke groups want a complete shut-down. This is

unrealistic. The union and old-guard management are trying to hang on to the

status quo or some variation of it. This is also not realistic. There are contradictory

economic analyses and projections. Frankly, I wouldn't trust either camp.

Furthermore, it makes no sense to be guided by or to accept advice from the very

people who are acknowledged to have created the problem and who are an

integral part of the problem. Impartial third-party input and involvement is

imperative. I suggest that the engineering profession and the manufacturing sector

become seriously involved via some coordinating and mediating organization. I

suggest that the PEO take on this role.

Because Ontario Hydro is a crown corporation, the final responsibility for corrective

action is of course with the current elected government. Like it or not, that's the

reality.

Because of time constraints, I can't delve into details. Briefly, in addition to the

general issue of mismanagement, the following are specific issues which I consider

to be the most urgent areas of concern:

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Damage control, which includes an unbiased and realistic assessment of current

status and inventory and an evaluation of options: shutdown, temporary repair,

long-term upgrade, privatization.

Union power. Please note that I include the engineering union or society along with

the Power Workers' Union. The flagrant abuse of this power is a major factor in the

general lack of accountability and responsibility.

The delicate but crucial issue of quality assurance. There's no denying that an

appropriately considered and well- implemented QA program is an asset to any

organization. Unfortunately, QA is a double-edged sword. It can also be misused

by management to abrogate personal responsibilities, and when allowed to go out

of control it supersedes and replaces responsible engineering judgement and

practice. The end result is uncontrolled cost, inferior product, low morale and

compromised safety.

The Chair: Mr Adamek, I've let you go over the time because I know the

committee is quite attentive to what you're saying. How many more pages might

you have in your presentation?

Mr Adamek : I've just got one more point.

The state of administrative, operational and plant maintenance procedures is

another issue. Documentation is cumbersome and in many instances it's

incomprehensible. When comprehensible in the literal sense, procedures are often

contradictory. There will be a massive effort required to clean this up. In fact, I think

one of the former speakers brought this point up too.

If one can economically justify putting the plants back into service and if the above

issues can be resolved, the subsequent technical challenge to get a plant up and

running will be trivial by comparison. For the sake of our economy, I wish you

success.

The Chair: Mr Adamek, I thank you very much for your presentation. That

concludes your time and there is no time for questioning, but I hope you will table a

copy of your presentation with the clerk so we can make sure a copy is given to all

members.

Mr Adamek : I brought 25 copies.

The Chair: Good for you. We appreciate that very much. We'll distribute those to

all members right now and we thank you for attending upon the committee, for your

submission and for your interest.

RICK MARSHALL

The Chair: Is Rick Marshall here, please? Good, we're able to deal with you now,

Mr Marshall, if you'd be good enough to come up to the witness stand in a moment.

Welcome to the select committee.

Mr R ick Marsha l l : My name is Rick Marshall. I live in Cobourg, Ontario. As I

say in my presentation here, I wear three hats. I'm a Hydro employee, I'm a PWU

member, but I'm also a ratepayer, a taxpayer and a parent. I want to start off by

thanking you all for giving me a chance to make somewhat of a presentation

tonight, and I do so without prejudice.

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My first concern is that normally when I've seen an expenditure of this type,

especially by a public corporation, it seems to me that there have always been a

number of impact studies, environmental studies, a lot of studies I've seen before.

To date, I don't think I've seen any of those types of studies I'm speaking of.

The first question that comes to my mind that I've jotted down here is how the

decision came about for an American firm to do this. I'm of the understanding that,

say, a German or a French -- it seems if you look in the top capacity factors of our

business, which is nuclear, I don't see an American firm in the top probably 20 or

30 reactors in the world. So that concerns me.

To that end, in a search for an appropriate adviser, to justify the statement that I

don't think the person who was asked to do this and did the search for it -- we all

know his name. He resigned. That concerns me too. Nobody has been given an

explanation, at least I haven't, of to why he resigned. So that concerns me.

I have been quite active in trying to witness all the parliamentary channels and all

your hearings and I must say you have a pretty impressive list of people who have

witnessed before you. I've seen British Energy, I've seen Natural Gas, I've seen a

lot of people. It must be hard for you to stay on track, because it seemed that their

subject was more towards, say, privatization or something rather than the IIPAreport. I imagine it's pretty tough to stay on track. That concerns me. I hope and,

from all I've seen from you, trust that you're looking at this carefully and that it

doesn't cause any conflicts of interest or that the subject doesn't get changed from

one to the other.

My next concern is the safety of our operation of the affected reactors, those being

the seven that are being laid up. You probably beat this one to death, and I've got

testimony here from many different aspects. My concern is the excuse given for

Pickering A having to be shut down at the end of the year. I believe that statement

is totally untrue. At least two of these units, being units 4 and 1, I believe could

have been run indefinitely. The repairs that needed to be made -- the plug waspulled almost immediately -- could have been completed by the end of the year --

granted, with some effort, but that would leave them available for an undetermined

amount of time. Regarding the Bruce A units, I was speaking with somebody

yesterday and it has been discovered that units 3 and 4 have nowhere near the

boiler problems that 1 and 2 do, therefore I believe those to be two viable units to

run. That concerns me very much.

1820

The question I've got written here rings loud in my mind. With an expenditure of

that type, as has been stated time and time again, it seems to be more of a

management problem than a machinery problem. I guess I'm wearing a taxpayer's

hat here, saying, "Wait a minute now, $8 billion; could we not spend a lot less than

that dealing with the management problem and maybe take a little bit more of that

and fix the machinery problem?"

This leads me into the next thing, with all that's going on, and that is your

recommendations and the weight they've carried. I have spoken with one of your

members about this. I heard testimony from the OEB and certain other people and

I'm hoping that your recommendations carry some weight. As I said before, I trust

that your recommendations will be based on these expert witnesses you've

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received.

The expenditure of $8 billion bothers me, but it also bothers me in the sense that,

and I'm not absolutely positive, this must be costing the taxpayers money as well

for the committee travelling all over Ontario and having people speak. I can

imagine. I'm interested in knowing what it costs the taxpayer just for this aspect of

the IIPA report.

In te r jec t ion : We're all free.

Mr Marshal l : You're all free. Okay.

Mr Conway : Mrs Johns is a deal.

Mrs Johns: Thank you.

Mr Marshal l : It seems in all the goings-on there's the accountability. That's what

I'd be asking a lot of people; Hydro, for example: Where are the supporting

documents, the business cases, the impact studies which I mentioned before that

don't seem to be there, viable or at least considered alternatives? As I mentioned

before with the Pickering A units, two of them could be run. I believe two at Bruce A

could be run. Were those considered? Probably not in the case of Bruce A,

because the findings of the boilers were just recently found out.

I'm wondering, on the part of government, if they considered any actions as far as a

legislative hold, if that's entirely possible with Ontario Hydro. I wonder if they've

given consideration that hopefully my children, growing up, will have the availability

of reliable and relatively cheap power compared to an awful lot of areas, although

I've heard certain conflicting testimony on that.

It has been stated that there are no experienced persons in this province. I don't

know whether that was stated by you or by somebody to you, but I find that at work

on a regular basis and that really concerns me. I've got written here, "Canadian

personnel have been let go by foreign personnel who are now occupying those

jobs." Another one of my concerns is, is it legal? Are they obeying immigration

laws? Are we allowing them to set forth with our public utility and are they violating

some kind of immigration law? To me, it seems they are.

I'll end this in being a triple-headed person sort of thing: Will the generation -- or

the little people, so as not to confuse it with electricity generation -- enjoy the

reliable, environmentally friendly energy sources while looking back in time and

saying, "Yes, we made the right choice; yes, we did go with the right decisions"?

This should be our motivating factor when taking into consideration all the

evidence we gather and act in a responsible manner without influence from political

pressures or business aspirations.

That's pretty well my presentation. I thank you very much for your time.

The Chair: Thank you. You have exhausted your time. We appreciate your effort

and your presentation. We thank you very much for appearing before the select

committee. You're excused.

Mr Laughren: Mr Chair, I raise a point of privilege. I wanted to wait until all the

deputants were finished. I speak perhaps for the committee, not just for myself as a

member. It has to do with the white paper.

The white paper is being released tomorrow morning, I think around 11, and there's

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The Chair: I'm dealing with a point of privilege right now, Mr O'Toole. If you want

to speak to the point of privilege that has been raised, I'm happy to entertain your

comment.

1830

Mr O'Toole: On the point of privilege, Mr Chair: I respect the comments made by

all parties. What's remarkable to me is that there has been a unanimous effort by

this committee representing various perspectives, and in that respect I feel pretty

much the same thing. It's unfortunate scheduling and those things, so I think MrGalt has made the appropriate recommendation, which I would support fully. It's

the tone I hear from all the members, because we are a part of a very important

deliberation, and this part has been a requested part and it's only appropriate that

we get a full briefing.

The Chair: Mr Laughren, it is not a point of privilege, but I do understand, and I

don't say that even with a smile on my face. I say that most sincerely, because I do

understand the issue you raise and I believe you to know that I would share the

concern you express. In the parliamentary sense it is not a point of privilege.

I think the suggestion that has been posed, if it's agreeable to members of the

committee, having just heard that the white paper will be made available, and

we've only just heard about it in the matter of the last hour or two, is that it would

be appropriate, if it is with the unanimous consent of the committee, that we stand

down the visit to Darlington tomorrow. I would require unanimous consent by the

caucuses to agree to that and reschedule that visit. We would then have a chance

to be part of the briefings.

I would like to register, on behalf of the committee, the concern that has continued

to be expressed -- I want to point out it's been expressed not just by the opposition

caucuses, it's been raised by everyone -- about the timing of the white paper. I

think all members of the caucuses have been pressing for this and, in some cases,

in fairness, I have heard it mentioned that the white paper might well have been

introduced even two or three weeks later, so at least in this sense there's still an

opportunity for this committee to deal with it. We have an opportunity to reflect

upon that as a committee, to take it unto ourselves and determine what we do with

it in terms of that December 1 deadline. That's up to us to decide.

I, on the one hand, regret the fact that it's caught us in midstream; on the other

hand, I at least am pleased it's here and we can now deal with it. There is time still

to deal with it and we should deal with it effectively. It does mean making some

quick adjustments to our schedule. There will be some costs incurred with that. We

have things such as the transportation facilities for tomorrow and the arrangements

with the plant management and AECB that are not modest, but they are certainly

not the kinds of costs that can't be incurred. If I have unanimous agreement from

the caucuses, then I will proceed in that direction.

Mr Laughren, it's not only a ruling on your point of privilege but also it is to give my

personal sympathy to the thrust of your point and to see if there is a way for us, as

we have been doing for some weeks now, finding a common consensus among

ourselves of how to proceed. That's a far better way I think to run a committee than

it is by running always by the rule books.

Let me pause with that and ask, is there a sense among the caucuses that that

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would be an appropriate way to proceed tomorrow?

Mr Conway : It's agreeable to us.

The Chair: Mr Laughren?

Mr Laughren: Yes.

The Chair: Thank you. I need to hear that for Hansard, that's all, sir. For the

government caucus?

Mr Ga l t : Agreed.

The Chair: Then I will take it that the visit to Darlington tomorrow will be

rescheduled. If you will leave that with me and with the clerk to try to find a way to

deal with that as quickly as possibly, we'll deal with that without going through

subcommittee. We'll try to make that happen at an appropriate time.

I would think that in the light of the white paper it would be appropriate for the

subcommittee to at least be on the alert that I would intend to call us together to

discuss the process of dealing with it and how we might want to process that. I

don't have a time or a place in mind at this moment, rather just to alert you that this

is what I propose to do if that's agreeable.I have a couple of other items to go over before you leave.

Mr Kw in te r: Mr Chair, further on your point: Could you tell us where and when

this lockup is taking place?

The Chair: Mr Kwinter, I suspect you know considerably more than I. I have no

idea, but I would think that Mr Galt will be able to let us know.

Mr Ga l t : Tomorrow morning.

Mr Laughren: Do you know where it is?

Mr Mar t in : I gave my copy to the reporter.

The Chair: You have a copy of what?

Mr Mar t in : It's an invitation from the minister.

The Chair: Oh, all right, that's fine. If it had been the white paper, I would have

gone extremely ballistic, let me tell you. You've never seen an Irish ICBM before.

That would have been the first one. Have you got the information there? Perhaps

Mr Laughren would be good enough to read it out.

Mr Laughren: This is for Mr Martin. We may not be welcome. "The briefing will

take place on Thursday, November 6 at 9:30 am in the Thames Room, Macdonald

Block, second floor."

The Chair: I think that's probably a place to start. If there is any additional

information prior to that, Mr Laughren, I'll ask the clerk to try to determine it and

make sure all members are notified no later than 3 am.

Mr Conway : By the way, if there ever was a case of privilege, this is it, but that's

another subject. I'm deadly serious.

The Chair: But it is not, Mr Conway, for another reason. But having said that, I

think I have dealt with it in a way that's to the satisfaction of all members of the

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committee.

Now can I finish off a couple of other points here before we leave? Let me make

sure we're very clear about this. First of all I wanted to thank, obviously, St

George's Memorial (Anglican) Church for hosting us. Clearly now we can scrap the

announcement about tomorrow's activities, because we are now meeting

somewhere else.

I want to say that we are wishing our best to Mrs Johns. It is Mrs Johns's

anniversary today, so we'll wish her well. She has continued along through thesedifficult waters today, barely waiting for the evening to blossom forth and for her to

go out and celebrate with her husband.

Is there any other business before the committee? There is one final point about

the week of the 17th. We talked about this the other day. In terms of scheduling,

clearly we need to have a block of time for that week. We worked it through similar

to what we discussed in committee at the last meeting: Monday, 3:30 to 6 and 7 to

9; Tuesday, 3:30 to 6; Wednesday, 10 to 12 and 3:30 to 6; Thursday, 10 to 12 and

3:30 to 6. The House leaders will all be advised of their agreement that the

members of this committee will be available.

Mr Laughren: Sorry, what was the Wednesday schedule?

The Chair: Wednesday is 10 to 12 and 3:30 to 6.

Mr Laughren: Well, there is conflict with at least one committee that I'm aware

of.

The Chair: I'm sure there's a conflict with more than one committee. Unless

there's a problem, all the House leaders had given an undertaking that for this

select committee members would be subbed so they could continue with their

responsibilities.

If anybody wants to make a suggestion -- for example, altering this time -- I'm open

to your suggestion now, but I'd like to get it locked in, before we go, for the week of

--

Mr Ga l t : Go through it again just so I can click in.

The Chair: All right. Monday, 3:30 to 6 and 7 to 9; Tuesday, 3:30 to 6;

Wednesday, 10 to 12 and 3:30 to 6; Thursday, 10 to 12 and 3:30 to 6.

Mr Laughren: Could that be contingent, that this schedule will be in effect only if

we're not debating back-to-work legislation for the teachers?

Mr Conway : That's provocation, Mr Chair.

The Chair: I didn't rise to yours, Mr Conway, and I won't rise to Mr Laughren's.

If that's agreeable, we will use this, assuming each one is at the call of the Chair

and any other calls necessary. I appreciate your generosity of spirit for the day. It

has been a long day and we're now prepared to adjourn. Any other business? No.

Then the committee will stand adjourned until the call of the Chair or if the

subcommittee meets or on Monday the 17th.

The committee adjourned at 1840.

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