It’s election time. Let’s do our best to ensure nukes are an issue that candidates must address!
These resources were prepared by the national group advocating for a future free from nuclear energy. On this page are: questions for candidates, links to infographics for social media, and an action tool.
Links to infographics for social media
The Ontario Clean Air Alliance is making its amazing infographics for us ALL to use freely – share them on social media, in your newsletters, etc. They’re all original, specific to the Canadian context, and brilliant! Please use them on all your social media channels!
This file folder contains the newest anti-nuke infographics: https://lynetteb.crevado.com/aug-18-nuclear
This file folder also has a few dozen as well (older): https://lynetteb.crevado.com/ottawa-freeland-feds
And there are more here: https://lynetteb.crevado.com/ Each graphic that you see on this page is a file folder – click on it to see dozens more infographics.
If you want to use one, click on the image, and at the bottom right-hand side of the image are 4 icons: enlarge, download, facebook and twitter. Don’t share them via FB and twitter from here – the link and sizing will be wrong. You must download the image onto your computer and share it on social media from there. The download icon is the one with the downward arrow.
Be sure to add some text along with your image – most importantly, add a link to the action tool!
Action tool
The Ontario Clean Air Alliance has prepared an action tool that everyone can link to when posting infographics. Nuclear is not a climate solution: renewables are!
The letter is sent automatically to the sender’s current MP as well as the relevant federal ministers. It’s working now for current MPs and ministers and will be updated after the election with the contacts for the new MPs and ministers.
Here’s the link to the action tool to put on your posts:
http://cleanairalliance.org/smr/smraction.html
Questions for candidates
Who are the candidates in your area? Elections Canada has an official site with the complete list of candidates:
https://www.elections.ca/Scripts/vis/FindED?L=e&QID=-1&PAGEID=20
These questions are good for discussions at all-candidates meetings or at the door. If you’re with a group, you can send them by email to candidates in your region in different ridings. If you do that, your email should include a short deadline for candidates so you’ll have time to issue a report card before Election Day. We suggest you ask ask four questions on different related topics. Some of the topics below have several suggested questions; choose and modify them as required for your particular local area:
1) Questions about nuclear energy and the climate crisis
2) Questions about nuclear waste
3) Question about Indigenous consent
4) Questions about nuclear weapons
Question about nuclear energy and the climate crisis
The August 2021 report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change signaled a ““a code red for humanity” and highlighted the urgent need to take action to reduce carbon emissions and to slow and limit global warming.
The cheapest way to reduce our dependence on carbon-based energy production is through energy conservation, while the fastest and cheapest way to produce new low-carbon energy is wind and solar, with some room for geothermal. In recent years the nuclear industry has been attempting to recalibrate by promoting “small modular reactors” as a means of reducing Canada’s carbon footprint.
Unfortunately, the conceptual line of reactors under review in Canada will be even more expensive per unit of energy and will still produce highly radioactive wastes. From a climate perspective, they would be too little too late, with even the first prototypes in the early design stage and not expected to be under construction until the 2030s at the earliest. With an urgent need to reduce our carbon releases by 2030, we simply don’t have the time to test out another set of nuclear experiments. And we will NOT achieve the necessary progress in fighting climate change if we invest in these very slow, very costly, very speculative technologies.
Q1: Given the urgency of the climate crisis and the need for proven technologies ready to deploy now, do you support a moratorium on federal public funding for speculative nuclear reactors, including those described as “small modular reactors”?
___ Yes
___ No
___ Undecided
Additional comments:
Q2: If elected, would you ensure nuclear energy is phased out of Canada’s energy production network?
___ Yes
___ No
___ Undecided
Additional comments:
Q3: If elected, would you reject nuclear as a climate change solution and instead support a mix of renewable energy production enterprises that includes local and regional operations that are community-owned and managed?
___ Yes
___ No
___ Undecided
Additional comments:
Q4: If elected, would you protect small, remote and rural communities from the proliferation of nuclear reactors through the implementation and continuation of standards of practices as well as safety and health requirements established for Canada’s CANDU reactors, as a minimum requirement level?
___ Yes
___ No
___ Undecided
Additional comments:
Questions about Nuclear waste
Background:
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization is comprised of Ontario Power Generation, Hydro Quebec and New Brunswick Power, who were directed by the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act (2002) to organize themselves into a “not-for-profit” corporation for the purpose of investigating and potentially implementing a long term management option for all of Canada’s high level nuclear fuel waste.
In 2005 the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) submitted a report to the federal government recommending an approach they called “Adaptive Phased Management”, which included a method of selecting a location for a deep geological repository, and establishing the deep geological repository itself, both of which were presented as general concepts. After receiving approval in 2007, the NWMO spent three years developing a nine-step siting process, which it launched in 2010. A total of 22 municipalities have been the subject of NWMO siting studies, and two municipalities – one in northwestern Ontario and one in southwestern Ontario – remain under investigation. The NWMO has said they will select a single site by 2023.
There is no deep geological repository for high level nuclear waste operating – or even approved – anywhere in the world, despite decades of effort in this area. Several repositories which had been thought to be close to approval – such as Yucca Mountain in Nevada – were cancelled after years of spending due to either technical issues or local opposition. In Canada, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited’s “geological disposal concept” failed to get an approval after a ten year review which concluded in 1998 with the eight person panel having determined that Atomic Energy of Canada Limited had failed to demonstrate that their proposal was “safe and acceptable”.
Transparency
With the transfer of responsibilities for the high level nuclear waste management program – including research and development – to a corporation comprised of the nuclear waste owners, there are serious limits on the public or public institution’s ability to monitor the research and activities of the organization, beyond the NWMO’s legislatively required annual and triennial report and occasional research papers, all of which are summary and selective in the information they present.
Q1: If elected, would your government take the necessary measures to make the Nuclear Waste Management Organization subject to the federal Access to Information Act or provide equivalent transparency through some other means, such as an amendment to the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act?
___ Yes
___ No
___ Undecided
Additional comments:
Q2: If your political party does not have a position on this question, would you personally support such a measure being taken to make the NWMO subject to Access to Information provisions?
___ Yes
___ No
___ Undecided
Additional comments:
Q3: To date, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) has been spending more than $100 million annually to determine the disposal of the spent fuel waste of the nuclear reactor. Do you support the need for an independent review by a group of experts, similar to the Seaborn Commission, to evaluate the effectiveness of the NWMO process and management approach for a Deep Geological Repository and whether the social implications of such a project have been adequately addressed?
___ Yes
___ No
___ Undecided
Additional comments:
Consent
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization spent three years designing its nine-step siting process and launched its site search in 2010, describing the process as intended to identify an “informed and willing community”. More than a decade later, and after spending hundreds of millions of dollars and investigating more than 20 communities, the NWMO has still not disclosed how it will define the “community” who is considered to be host to their repository and included in the determination of “consent” or how “consent” will be measured. The candidate site in northwestern Ontario is more than 40 kilometres outside the municipal boundaries of the NWMO’s engaged municipality, and in the case of both candidate sites there are downstream communities and communities and residents along the transportation routes who will also be put at risk should the transportation and burial of the highly radioactive wastes proceed.
Q4: If elected, would your government ensure that downstream communities and communities along the transportation route are part of determining “consent” prior to site selection being finalized? Would your government ensure that the determination of “consent” was measured by means that are fair, transparent, and democratic?
___ Yes
___ No
___ Undecided
Additional comments:
Q5: If your political party does not have a position on this question, would you personally support the right of downstream communities and communities along the transportation route to affect the selection of a burial location for all of Canada’s highly radioactive nuclear fuel waste?
___ Yes
___ No
___ Undecided
Additional comments:
Accountability
In November 2020 the federal Minister of Natural Resources launched a review of Canada’s radioactive waste policy, in response to recommendations of the International Atomic Energy Agency review that determined Canada’s radioactive waste policy and strategies were inadequate. At the same time, he invited the nuclear industry to develop the a set of strategies for the management of radioactive wastes, while the radioactive waste policy was still under development. Both of these processes are still underway.
Q6: If elected, would your government undertake a public process to develop radioactive waste strategies that implement the revised policy, and ensure that the process is fair and equitable and is undertaken by the Government of Canada rather than by the nuclear industry?
___ Yes
___ No
___ Undecided
Additional comments:
Q7: If your political party does not have a position on this question, would you personally support strategies for radioactive waste management be developed by Government rather than industry, with the participation of the Canadian public and Indigenous peoples?
___ Yes
___ No
___ Undecided
Additional comments:
Q8: Do you support the federal government setting up a national radioactive waste management organization, independent of the nuclear industry, with no “public – private partnership” or GoCo model, and no incentive for companies to profit from quick and cheap nuclear waste disposal projects?___ Yes
___ No
___ Undecided
Additional comments:
Questions about Indigenous consent
- Article 29(1) of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) states that “Indigenous peoples have the right to the conservation and protection of the environment and the productive capacity of their lands or territories and resources.”
- Article 29(2) of the UNDRIP states that “States shall take effective measures to ensure that no storage or disposal of hazardous materials shall take place in the lands or territories of Indigenous peoples without their free, prior and informed consent.”
- Article 32(1) of the UNDRIP states that “Indigenous peoples have the right to determine and develop priorities and strategies for the development or use of their lands or territories and other resources.”
- Nuclear reactors, regardless of size, produce by-products and radioactive waste material that must be contained and will be toxic and dangerous to human health for thousands of years.
- Several Indigenous political organizations have passed resolutions rejecting NWMO’s proposed processes for the handling and management of the radioactive materials produced by nuclear reactors. Both Natural Resources Canada and NWMO, continue to ignore these resolutions and attempt to identify and fund other Indigenous organizations and communities to counter the positions being taken by these Indigenous organizations and communities opposed to the proposals being created by NWMO.
Q1: Do you support free, prior, and informed consent with Indigenous peoples on new nuclear development, including modular nuclear reactors. uranium mines and radioactive waste facilities?
___ Yes
___ No
___ Undecided
Additional comments:
Q2: If you are elected will you ensure all Indigenous voices and resolutions are recognized, respected, discussed and implemented?
___ Yes
___ No
___ Undecided
Additional comments:
Q3: If elected, what methods will you use to address systemic and environmental racism within the nuclear industry, government agencies and regulatory bodies in place to protect Canadians from deadly, dangerous radioactivity within our environment?
x
Earlier this year, the Wolastoq Grand Council issued a resolution on nuclear energy and nuclear waste. You can read it here:https://nbmediacoop.org/2021/03/12/wolastoq-grand-council-resolution-on-nuclear-energy-and-waste-on-traditional-wolastoq-territory/
Q4: Do you support the Wolastoq Grand Council resolution opposing nuclear energy and nuclear waste on traditional Wolastoq territory?___ Yes
___ No
___ Undecided
Additional comments:
Questions about nuclear weapons
Federal support for plutonium extraction
The federal government has spent more than $50 million of public funds on a technology to extract plutonium from used nuclear fuel at the Point Lepreau nuclear plant on the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick. As reported in the Financial Post and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, non-proliferation scientists and experts in the United States have written to Prime Minister Trudeau, raising concerns about the nuclear weapons proliferation implications of federal support for this project and calling for a high-level review.
Q1: Do you support the call for a high-level review, including by international experts, of both the nuclear weapons proliferation and environmental implications of Canada’s plutonium-extraction project?
___ Yes
___ No
___ Undecided
Additional comments:
Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
In response to the unacceptable humanitarian harm caused by nuclear weapons and the risks that nuclear weapons continue to pose to humanity, 122 states negotiated the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2017. The Treaty entered into force in January 2021 but Canada remains outside the Treaty despite polling data that indicates over 70% of Canadians support joining it.
Q2: If your party forms the government after the 2021 election, will Canada undertake a study of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons?
___ Yes
___ No
___ Undecided
Additional comments: