Sask. green group derides public consultation on nuclear power
By Anne Kyle and Angela Hall , Canwest News ServiceApril 20, 2009
REGINA — Saskatchewan’s public-consultation process on uranium development and nuclear power is nothing but a whitewash, an environmental group charged Monday.
“Consulting with the public after the fact is actually insulting to the public,” Jim Harding, a member of the Coalition for a Clean Green Saskatchewan, told reporters at a news conference in Regina.
While the Saskatchewan government on Monday defended the current public-consultation process as “the largest and most extensive” on nuclear issues in the province’s history, the coalition took aim at what it calls an unprecedented corporate domination of a public policy process.
The 12-person panel has been struck to advise the provincial government on the future of its uranium industry.
The government-appointed Uranium Development Panel recently made 20 recommendations, including that the province should pursue nuclear power but not uranium refining, at least for now, because it wouldn’t be economically viable.
Saskatchewan is currently the largest uranium-producing region in the world and accounts for about 30 per cent of annual world uranium production.
The panel is biased in favour of recommendations that will benefit Bruce Power, a company looking at nuclear development in the province, at public expense, according to Harding.
“It has a group on (the panel) that couldn’t possibly be objective or independent to look at the mandate. It is clear it is a ploy for expanding the nuclear industry in Saskatchewan with apparently the Saskatchewan Party government’s support,” said Harding, who also disputed the partnership’s assertions that nuclear power could be cost-competitive.
But Crown Corporations Minister Ken Cheveldayoff said the government has not pre-determined whether a nuclear power plant would be a good idea for Saskatchewan, and defended the work of the Uranium Development Panel.
“It’s a plan that has been rolled out based on the input from 12 individuals from different cross-sections of people in Saskatchewan,” said Cheveldayoff.
“It doesn’t make any determinations. What it is a basis for consultations,” he said.
“We want to hear what Saskatchewan residents have to say.”
The NDP, however, noted that a website set up to receive public feedback, saskuranium.ca, contains no information on when or where public meetings will be held starting in May. The people of the province want a “much more substantive process” than what the government is proposing, said NDP Leader Lorne Calvert.
Cheveldayoff said details will soon be released about the public meetings.
Regina Leader-Post
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