So I've been watching this unfold as it was relevant to a course I was taking this past year on radiation and nuclear power.

This raises questions about whether the CPC, specifically minister Lunn, overextended and abused gov't powers. Are there behind-the-scenes politics that we don't know about? maybe. Even if so, and zero evidence has been provided to that effect, legislation and firing the head of the watchdog is NOT the way to solve it.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) is an independent nuclear safety watchdog charged with essentially regulating the industry in Canada.

Late last year, the Chalk River plant, which produces much of the world's medical isotopes, was deemed to be in violation of safety standards. So the CNSC, headed by Linda Keen, decided to shut down the plant.

Our gov't decided, after consulting with "its own people" (people not accountable to anyone), that it was safe to re-open the plant. So the CPC has better knowledge and grasp of the situation than the CNSC, who's *job* it is to oversee these matters.

Further, this fuckwad minister, Lunn, sent Keen correspondence casting into doubt his faith in her ability to head the watchdog and threatening take go to parliament to have her removed (and she has been fired). THIS IS NOT HIS JOB and he should not be making this kind of threat. He is essentially interfering in the role of an agency that is NOT supposed to be directly controlled by whomever is in power.

If there is an issue, it should have been taken up with Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. who runs the plant itself (and who failed to meet safety regulations) and the gov't admits that it knew there were long-standing problems with AECL. In fact, AECL falls under the minister's portfolio, so his meddling and threatening Keen with dismissal should be considered a gross conflict of interest and abuse of power.

Stephen Harper was quoted saying that "his people" advised him it was ok for the plant to be restarted. Harper said it was safe and that the priority was to restart and continue to produce the medical radioisotopes used around the world. So Harper and "his people" are now more qualified to determine if a nuclear plant is safe to operate than the CNSC?

I'm very disappointed that the opposition parties supported re-opening the plant when the legislation was brought to parliament, but I suspect it was simply to avoid public backlash. It's pretty hard to justify to an uneducated (on the issue) public whey they can't get medical treatment because of a "relatively" low safety risk in a nuclear plant. They have validated the idea that if a watchdog *does it's job*, but that doesn't jive with the opinions of politicians and an uneducated public, it's ok to circumvent that watchdog and do whatever the fuck you want.

Stephen Harper is governing more and more like Bush. So if the status quo doesn't work for you, just introduce legislation to circumvent it to fit your agenda?

I find that appalling.

quote:

PM blasted for firing of nuclear watchdog FRED CHARTRAND/THE CANADIAN PRESS Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn prepares to appear before a Commons committee yesterday after the firing of Linda Keen, head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. Extraordinary late-night tactics show Tories `will stop at nothing' in vendetta, critic charges Jan 17, 2008 04:30 AM Richard Brennan Bruce Campion-Smith OTTAWA BUREAU OTTAWA–The Conservative government had a personal vendetta against Canada's nuclear watchdog whose safety concerns about an aging nuclear reactor sparked a shortage of medical isotopes, opposition MPs say. Appearing before a parliamentary committee yesterday, Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn refused to cite one example of what Linda Keen had done wrong in her job, only that she had lost the confidence of the government. In an extraordinary late-night move Tuesday, Keen, 50, was dumped as president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission on the eve of a scheduled appearance at the committee. As a result, Keen, who will remain on the commission board and who has been critical of the government's handling of the file, was a no-show yesterday. "These are the kinds of Republican tactics this town has never seen before," Liberal MP David McGuinty (Ottawa South) told the natural resources committee. "The Prime Minister and the people around the Prime Minister will stop at nothing. ... They will fabricate, in my mind, a case to dismiss a senior official, an independent regulator," he told reporters later. Lunn told the committee: "We do not believe she fulfilled her duties. There was an urgency to this situation, make no mistake ... it would have meant life and death for some patients." The Chalk River reactor, run by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., was shut down on Nov. 18 for routine maintenance, but an inspection by the regulatory staff found that mandatory safety upgrades – connecting vital cooling pumps to an emergency power supply that would work even if the area was hit with an earthquake – had not been done. That put the reactor in violation of its operating licence and AECL opted to keep it shut. The result was a worldwide shortage of radioisotopes used for medical diagnosis and treatment, prompting the government to pass legislation ordering the start-up of the reactor. According to an AECL report this month, the Chalk River region was hit by two low-grade seismic tremors in late December, something not uncommon for the area. McGuinty charged yesterday that the Prime Minister's Office orchestrated the "dead-of-night" dismissal to remove an independent officer who had been a thorn in the government's side. Lunn was repeatedly pressed yesterday to cite one reason for the decision to dump Keen, who was to serve as president until 2010. "I'm going to ask again for the record. What specifically, what evidence are you prepared to table in this committee for Canadians to justify your decision to fire Linda Keen?" McGuinty said. "The evidence is there that she did not execute her responsibilities in her role ... with the events surrounding the medical isotope issue and that our government has acted accordingly," said Lunn, who has been avoiding the public spotlight for weeks. He was reluctant to criticize AECL, which falls under his department, despite serious concerns about cost overruns and delays on the construction of two reactors meant to replace the aging isotope reactor. McGuinty told reporters later the Tories had no legal reason to dump her from the post. "This is a concocted story. ... the Prime Minister's Office is involved," said McGuinty, who told the committee the firing was reminiscent of former U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy's relentless hunt during the 1950s for communist sympathizers, during which hundreds of people's lives were destroyed. Several critics said Keen's firing "for doing her job" will send a chill through the ranks of senior officers serving on regulatory commissions who fear they might run afoul of the Conservative government. "I don't know when the last precedent for anything like this is ... to have a Prime Minister and a minister go after a senior civil servant and regulator personally and question their integrity and competence is not something that happens in our system," said Elly Alboim, a journalism professor at Carleton University. "Can you run a serious country like this?" he said. In a letter to Lunn released earlier this month, Keen argued she should be immune from government pressure and accused the minister of "improper interference." Keen, a long-time bureaucrat, had angered Prime Minister Stephen Harper with her handling of the Chalk River reactor shutdown that left the Conservative government scrambling and embarrassed as it coped with the shortage of medical isotopes. The Harper government brought in emergency legislation to override Keen's safety warnings and restart the reactor in mid-December. Lunn said the Conservative government had no choice but to fire Keen when she would not budge from her position that the research reactor at Chalk River didn't meet safety standards. "At issue was the president's failure ... to bring the matter for hearing before the commission in an appropriately urgent fashion. A failure to consider fully in a timely fashion the serious consequences of the growing shortage of medical isotopes was of great concern to the government," he told MPs. Lunn said both he and Health Minister Tony Clement appealed to Keen to put the health crisis ahead of her safety concerns with the reactor. Lunn dismissed the commission's concerns as little more than a licensing dispute with AECL, and told the committee the government was assured by independent experts, one of them a Conservative riding association official, that it was safe to restart the reactor. "The growing health crisis and the impasse between AECL and the nuclear regulator ... required that the government take all reasonable steps to find a resolution to this matter," he said.