Canadian and International Nuclear Lobbies

Excerpt from The Independent Voice,  “More Power?! CANDU! In which we learn that the fix is in for future power generation” , March 2006.


Nuclear Lobby Calling The Shots

More Rotten Back Room Deals?


In spite of the grove of high-profile wind turbines soon to take root on Wolfe Island, the nuclear fix is evidently in. The McGuinty Liberals, pledged to phase out

coal and spooked by the spectre of “rolling” summertime blackouts, are leaning toward spending tens of billions of public dollars on another generation of nuclear reactors.


Conservation gets short shrift, with the new plan calling only for a 5 per cent cut in consumption by 2025, relative to a projected growth rate that is almost double

the real growth rate over the last 15 years. This is quite the impressive backslide, given that the Liberals were elected on a promise to cut electricity consumption by 5 per cent by 2007. What’s more, the scenarios in the plan assume that if we do manage to reduce consumption by more than this measly 5 per cent – which would be really hard not to do – we should still build all of the planned nuclear plants

and cut back on windmills.


This is not just a case of a government in panic mode. The nuclear-power boys, wary that their image conjures up Mr. Burns of The Simpsons, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl, have hired the best Liberals money can buy to push the atomic case at Queen’s Park.


Murray Elston heads up the main nuclear lobby group, the Canadian Nuclear Association. A former Liberal MPP, Health Minister under David Peterson, and Liberal House Leader, Elston was a key supporter of Dalton McGuinty’s

successful 1996 leadership bid. After a stint as front man for global drug-dealers (who prefer the label “Research- Based Pharmaceutical Companies”), he signed on with the CNA just after McGuinty was elected premier.


One of the backroom advisers was David MacNaughton, a key architect of the Liberals’ 2003 election victory who became McGuinty’s principal secretary before moving on to chair a Toronto lobbying outfit called Strategy Corporation. One of MacNaughton’s big clients is the federal Crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. Having recently failed to sell its moribund CANDU reactors in the

USA, AECL is desperate to flog them here in Ontario, despite their dismal cost and reliability track record.


Predictably, Premier McGuinty denies being contacted by his pal on the multi-

billion dollar nuclear file. But the Strategy Corporation website says MacNaughton is

lobbying the provincial energy and finance ministries on behalf of AECL. Strategy Corp. employs longtime Liberal Hillary Dawson to lobby the premier’s office for AECL. She spent six years in senior roles with the Ontario Liberal Party, advising current cabinet ministers Gerard Kennedy and David Caplan.


So the nuclear boys have their ducks in a row while the green lobby tries to rouse an apathetic public whose attention only gets focused on the electricity issue when

the price goes up or the lights go out.


When the consultants hired by the government to consult with the public toured the province, the pro-conservation response was overwhelming. Speaker after speaker

insisted that Ontario’s electricity future lay in a judicious mixture of energy efficiency, renewables, and some natural gas as a bridge fuel.


But veteran green advocates came away with the feeling that the government was more interested in going through the motions of taking the public pulse – classic,

paternalistic case of DAD: Decide, Announce, Defend. How else to explain the brief video assertion that nuclear power is “greenhouse-gas free” and quoting Energy Minister Donna Cansfield insisting on an urgent need for more electrical generation supply?


“It was the worst public consultation I’ve ever been in,” said the Sierra Club’s Elizabeth May in an email message to fellow environmentalists. “A dog-and-pony show with no dog and no pony!”


Public consultation (both superficial and in-depth) is nothing new. The 1970s and 1980s saw Royal Commissions, Legislative Commit tees, and Ontario Hydro’s own Demand Supply Plan. The issue was nuclear power and Hydro’s new reactor fleet, whose cost overruns would have made a Pentagon contractor blush.


Ontario’s public power-system had been hamstrung by a nuclear effort that had plunged the old Hydro into debt, eroding its popular support and leaving it vulnerable to a privatization scheme that turned into one of the greatest political train wrecks in the province’s history. The attempt by Mike Harris’s Conservatives to hand the electricity system back to the Big Interests that Beck so often decried (Harris even brought in Enron advisors) failed, and Ontario now stands at a watershed moment.


Environmentalists of the 1970s and 1980s knew that opposition had to be

leavened with proposition. Their critique went beyond the dangers of radioactive waste that remains lethal for time-frames beyond human imagination. The green

critics proposed that a culture of conservation replace the bigger-is- better imperatives of Hydro’s past.


The concerned citizens who gathered at Kingston’s Days Inn to express concern about the McGuinty government’s nuclear leanings said essentially the same thing. They are pressing for energy efficiency and an emphasis on conservation spending that would create jobs locally, not megabucks for centralized

nuclear plants.


But Ontario’s conservation spending is still much less than it was fifteen years ago. The Liberals have yet to act on promises to improve building codes or seriously upgrade energy-efficiency standards. Their new Conservation Act only applies to government operations and some cities, hospitals, and education buildings.


This is a pity. For unlike coal or uranium or even wind power, the resource that is the demand-side management – essentially, using energy more wisely – has no physical limit. But neither does it have well-paid lobbyists with friends in high places.


Jamie Swift



 



.......when you consider that this nuclear path is littered with 300 per cent multi-

billion dollar cost-overruns, delays, and breakdowns, the choice (nuclear) might seem odd. That is, until you look at whom the government is depending on for advice. Environmental groups have pointed out that a number of former top people in the Premier’s office are now paid lobbyists for nuclear industry players, who have much to gain from the government’s nuclear strategy: Murray Elston, a former Ontario Liberal Minister and supporter of Dalton McGuinty’s leadership bid lobbied the province for the Canadian Nuclear Association; David MacNaughton, Premier McGuinty’s former principal secretary, is a lobbyist for Atomic Energy of Canada Limited; and Bob Lopinski, the Premier’s former director of legislative affairs, lobbied for Bruce Power, the operator of the Bruce nuclear station.


Toby A. A.Heaps, Corporate Knights