Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for attending here today.

In my riding is the municipality of Port Hope, and of course this government has committed significant funds over the years to the cleanup of low-level radioactive waste, which was not necessary for health reasons because Health Canada did multiple studies and found that there were no diseases caused by this. What did occur in this community was a lightning rod for the anti-nuclears from all around the world to come here and tell us how to do our job. The good thing is that Natural Resources Canada, under the ministerial leadership since we've taken office....

I wonder if you could give, for the benefit of Canadians and my constituents.... I believe in 2001 a previous government allocated funding for the low-level radioactive cleanup. I forget the exact amount, but it was between $250 million and $300 million. My complaint upon election, and several years later, was that all of that money was used for meetings and licensing requirements, and not one teaspoon of soil was moved.

I went and lobbied a previous natural resources minister that we needed additional funding because of the problems that were caused to this community unnecessarily, which caused a very negative economic hardship to the community, so much so that some local businesses were closing down and people were...from the cities because of the negative press, primarily through the Toronto Star—which I refer to as the red star—which said some very uncomplimentary things about the community that were not substantiated by scientific fact.

I wonder if you could let the community know about the $1.2 billion investment that this government is making to finally, in a world-class way, clean up the low-level radioactive waste.

Rick Norlock

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