'Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked?' Edward Thurlow, 2nd Baron Thurlow 1781-1829
Where in the world but Port Hope, could this picture have been taken? Where else would you find a town with a toxic nuclear facility in the middle of it and no provision
made for the protection of the environment or the health of its residents'? No buffer zone!
from The Canadian Album: Men of Canada 1896 'Having enjoyed for years the reputation of being the prettiest
and most healthy town in Canada, it is natural that Port Hope should become popular as a summer resort. During the summer months many visitors are entertained in the town, for whom ample sports and
amusements are provided. The beautiful sandy beach affords a charming and safe place for bathing...'
Mayor Linda Thompson, in a newspaper interview on March 27, 2012 was quoted
as saying: "Councils of the past have been beat up because nobody wants to live here; everybody went to Cobourg." If what she said is true, the likely cause would be the nuclear
industry's decision to make Port Hope and area its toxic waste dump, in spite of which, successive mayors have declared it a 'good corporate citizen.'
from The Evening Guide June 25, 1925 LETS GO! OLD TIME DANCE AT the Beach Pavilion on Friday evening, June 26th., at 8:30. Enjoy a good dance at the beach. Good floor.
Good music. Admission 50¢ tax included.
from The Evening Guide Saturday, May 18, 1929 The Board of Management of the Port Hope Parks Commission
have a real pleasure resort for the people of Port Hope. The town is fortunate in having an excellent beach for bathing, and the building, formerly used as a dance pavilion, will
be devoted to the use of the public. A capable official will be placed in charge and in case of rain, picnic parties will be able to use the pavilion. Tables and hot water will
be provided and an up-to-date canteen will be opened. The local beach is a very popular spot, especially in mid-summer and it is believed that a great many will take
advantage of the facilities this year.
The West Beach is not what it was. Cameco's local PR flack, Doug Prendergast, wonders why anyone would want a beach here click an image to enlarge. click to shrink
There are differing views of the radioactive (official euphemism, historic) waste problem. Only one view is tolerated.
from Northumberland Today Tuesday, March 27, 2012 by Ted Amsden "We said a couple of years ago when we had those communication hits (a visit by
anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott and articles in national media) that we weren't going to allow information to go unchallenged," she [Mayor Linda Thompson] said.
But
the official feel-good story must not be questioned: Dr Helen Caldicott
was kept from speaking in Port Hope in 2010, instead she had to give her talk in Oshawa. "The mayor said I was not to speak in Port Hope. The inn [The Carlyle] where I was
staying prevented me from staying there, and we couldn't have a fancy dinner that the people had set up. The church [St Mark's] that was going to sponsor me would not host me."
Dr Helen Caldicott's forbidden talk of Nov 16, 2010 (57 minutes)
from Northumberland News Nov 18, 2010 PORT HOPE PONDERS LEGAL ACTION AGAINST LOCAL ANTI-NUKE GROUPS by Bill Tremblay Dr Helen Caldicott
talks about Port Hope's nuclear industry during a press conference held Tuesday, Nov 16.
PORT HOPE - After a week of provocative commentary from anti-nuclear activist Dr
Helen Caldicott, the Municipality of Port Hope may take legal action. "We all know a fight's a fight, and you can defend and you can defend, but after a while you have to fight
back," Deputy Mayor Lees said told council members Tuesday night.
Despite her strong convictions against the nuclear industry, the federal government, and most recently,
calling Port Hope a toxic time bomb because of low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) buried in the community, Dr Caldicott said at a press conference on Tuesday that she has never faced
any legal action.
"I say things that people are often afraid to say," she said. "In fact, you know, if someone wants to charge me with something, I'd welcome it."
But Deputy Mayor Lees is not interested in Dr Caldicott. Instead he wants to go after those who made her recent visit possible, and gave her the publicity that has resulted in a new
nation-wide belief that Port Hope is unfit for habitation.
Dr Caldicott's visit was arranged by Families Against Radiation Exposure (FARE) and Friends of the Port Hope Cleanup,
after she was quoted over a year ago saying the community is unsafe because of its exposure to LLRW. Her comments, repeated in the Toronto Star last week, received national media attention,
much to the shock of the community, including FARE member Sanford Haskill. "We did not ask for her to make those comments," said Mr Haskill.
Deputy
Mayor Lees estimates that Port Hope has lost millions of dollars in retail sales, real estate transactions, as a result of the actions of both groups, and certain other individuals whom
he would not name. "And you know, it's strategically being done," he said. Every November for the past three years, right before the busiest time of year for downtown merchants,
he said the same organizations start a nation-wide blitz against Port Hope's nuclear industry.
"I agree with freedom of speech, but this is interfering with people's livelihoods,
their incomes, and their retail businesses," he said. "It's affecting the whole municipality, and I think as a council we owe it to the majority of people in this municipality to look at
seeking a legal opinion."
Although Mayor Linda Thompson was concerned about the optics of using taxpayers' dollars to fight their own citizens, she agreed the negative publicity
is damaging. "It is frustrating and I know I've had many residents suggesting the same thing who are looking at it themselves as doing something," said Mayor Thompson.
Following her visit, Dr Caldicott maintained that Port Hope is dangerous. In fact, she said with Cameco's uranium conversion facility operating on Lake Ontario, there is no other place
on earth more dangerous to human health. "I can't think of one," she said, insisting residents leave the municipality en masse, and on the government's dime.
"The town
should be moved to a safe site," she said. "Beautiful new houses would be built. You can't tell me (the federal government) can't afford it, because they can. They're the ones I'm really
annoyed with. They have had no right to pollute your beautiful little town like this. It's a tragedy."
Pointing in the direction of Cameco from the living room of Port
Hope resident Stephen Smith's house where the press conference was held, she said, "You don't know how much water they're taking out of your lake per day, you don't know how much
is being re-entered into the lake, you don't know if it's polluted or not, and with what," she said. "I was very disturbed to see fishermen fishing in the harbour. That spot should
be absolutely prohibited for fishing."
The uranium Cameco releases into the air is also a concern for Dr Caldicott. Not only did she call the company "very secretive,"
she described Cameco as a "bomb factory," and suggested residents demand the information they have a right to know. "It's in your community, and this is a democracy. And you
must not be lied to," she said. "What they are doing is making rods for nuclear power plants from uranium, and that goes all around the world," she said. "Every country that has
a nuclear power plant can make a bomb. So, in fact, that's part of the process in the proliferation of nuclear weapons."
Cameco spokesperson Doug Prendergast said he
has many issues with Dr Caldicott's statements. "She clearly did little research into Port Hope or Cameco before she made comments about the town or the company," he said.
Mr Prendergast is primarily opposed to her assertion that the company is secretive. "Our information is readily available. We pride ourselves on being good corporate
citizens, as well as being open and transparent," he said. "I'm not quite certain on what basis she's calling us secretive." Mr Prendergast pointed out that Cameco only sells
uranium for peaceful purposes for the generation of clean electricity.
THE CAMECO HEARINGS: TWO VIEWS OF WHAT REALLY HAPPENED from The Crier October 21, 1999 The two worlds of Port Hope still aren't on the same page by Penny Sanger The two worlds of Port Hope politely stepped around each other in front of the Atomic Energy Control Board at its meeting in the Legion hall on
Oct. 7. After citizens described for board members the acute health problems that plague families exposed to toxic emissions from Cameco (formerly Eldorado Nuclear Ltd.), a
representative of the Canadian Nuclear Workers Council took the mike to say their workers couldn't understand what all the fuss was about.
"We only see these people
every couple of years at these hearings," he said. Questioned by board member Yves Giroux about whether his union, the United Steelworkers of America, had done its own research
into the health of past members, given the deaths, cancers and related diseases reported over the years, he said he was not aware of any such research or indeed if any health
records were held by the union. United Steelworkers is especially proud of its health and safety standards, he maintained.
But Chris Conti of Port Hope's Environmental
Advisory Committee spoke of soil contaminated with arsenic, lead and mercury in the area around Cameco, and poor air quality with no enforceable standards for uranium emissions.
He said that 20 to 30 kilos of uranium particulate per month were being emitted from the Cameco stacks.
Faye More of the Community Health Concerns Committee echoed his
concerns, noting the lack of any buffer zone around the plant. "Surely," she suggested, "we're seeing a pattern here?"
Other intervenors told their stories of growing
up in the shadow of the plant.
Pat [Croft] McMillan's family moved to a house on south John Street, right across from the Eldorado plant, when she was a child. She
remembers the thick yellow smoke that billowed out from the stacks: "We played in the park, on the beach and along the shore... and our eyes would sting. We
thought it was normal to have to rub them." She and her siblings also ate her father's home-grown vegetables, "his pride and joy... We just wiped the dust off and ate them unwashed."
She's had a brain aneurysm and her sons have a range of health problems, including severe asthma, allergies and Tourette's syndrome.
Pat Lawson said she thought these
people represent the tip of an iceberg. Not everyone is willing to go public with their personal tragedies. She urged the board to act on a proposal submitted three-and-a-half
years ago from the Port Hope Community Health Concerns group for a wide-ranging epidemiological health survey. It would start by studying the health of people most exposed to
the effects of contaminants when emissions were much higher than they are now.
If cause and effect is established between the contaminants and their health, a much
larger survey would take place. Every household would be screened.
In a day of carefully shrouded discussion, conducted in the generalities favoured by AECB staff,
concrete commitments were as scarce as hen's teeth. Only a report on soil monitoring from David McLaughlin of the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, whose work has continued
since 1973, delivered clearly practical advances. By sinking pots of clean earth in areas near the plant, he is tracking the amount and movement of certain contaminants.
The verdict on whether Cameco will have its license renewed, and for how long (one of the stated reasons for the meeting), will have to wait. Probably not for five years
as Cameco wants, more likely two.
No, its license will not be suspended until its toxic emissions are cleaned up, as some of those intervenors with deadly sickness in
their families want. But there will be a health study, of sorts. How soon, how wide-ranging and therefore how effective the study will be, seems, in the wake of the board meeting,
to depend on the energy and skill of the Port Hope people who have been lobbying for one so reasonably and for so long. Penny Sanger grew up in Port Hope, and is the
author of 'Blind Faith': The nuclear industry in a small
town (McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1981), a study of Eldorado's radioactive waste disposal in Port Hope.
A view of John Street before the nuclear industry contaminated and overran the community across the street
from
The Crier October 21, 1999 TOO MANY DEATHS IN THE FAMILY Why one woman chose to speak up
by Sophie Kneisel Silence has its price, and long-time residents of Port Hope may find that it's considerably higher than the cost of raising their voices.
When Dorothy Hosking was on the verge of suing Eldorado Nuclear for what doctors believed was its part in causing her father's death, her mother and one of her brothers
convinced her to back down. Her mother said "People in Port Hope are narrow-minded and they will say that we are trying to get money off Dad's death."
Hosking's
brother, John [Harwood], was driving a CP express truck in town at the time. "He had to go in there [Eldorado Nuclear] with packages every day. He said 'If you do this, they will
give all this business to CN, and I'll be out of a job.'"
Clearly it takes courage and conviction to describe your family's history to a panel of experts in the nuclear
field with, ultimately, your entire hometown as an audience. During a 20-year period, four of seven members of the Harwood family have died; two of the remaining three are living
with cancer.
But it wasn't her own family's tragedies that prompted Hosking to speak at the Oct. 7 Atomic Energy Control Board licensing hearing. It was the idea that a
second generation of townspeople now appeared to be suffering the effects of living under the plume from the nuclear fuel refinery's smoke stack and in close proximity to radioactive
waste (literally in their back yards in some cases).
After 19 years of silence, she was convinced to speak by Pat Lawson, who is well-known for her long struggle to get
some answers about what living with low-level radiation is doing to people of the town. "Do you know about my Molly? She's dying," Lawson said. She pleaded with Hosking to "come out
of the woodwork and for God's sake say something" at the upcoming AECB hearing.
"When she told me about Molly, I thought, okay, this is hitting too close to home," Hosking
says. "We've lost too many young people. We're going to be without a generation if we don't watch it," she adds, explaining that Molly has no children because she was unable to carry
a fetus to full term. And after many miscarriages, Hosking's only child, Anne-Marie, now has three healthy boys. Each of them was born about three months premature.
When
Hosking's youngest brother, George, died at 39 of a heart attack brought on by other medical problems, her mother would not allow an autopsy. The family was deeply saddened, but had
no idea this was to be the first in a series of tragedies. Three years later, in 1980, Hosking's father died a sudden but "horrific" death from lung cancer.
"When the
pathology report came out, the two doctors involved said that they would stand behind us (if we decided to sue) because they thought it was definitely caused by radon gas," Hosking
says.
The century home where Albert and Margaret Harwood brought up their five children had a long history with radon gas. Just across the street was a bank that required
stabilizing. Eldorado had provided fill in the form of waste from the process of extracting radium from ore. This same material was dumped at many sites around town, particularly
ravines, and was often used as fill for construction projects big and small, the best-known of which is St. Mary's School.
The Harwood's house at 14 Caldwell St. was also
located in the path of the plume from the refinery's smoke stack. High radon levels on the outside of the house and in the basement prompted Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (the
government body then in charge of Eldorado Nuclear, the Crown corporation that has since been purchased by Cameco, a private company) to dig all around the foundations four separate
times between 1976 and 1980, Hosking says. The damage to the house and yards was such that the town's chief building inspector pronounced it unsafe due to its structural problems.
"However, it is not the property damage that is our main concern," Hosking wrote to Atomic Energy of Canada Limited in 1980. "It is the personal damage that has taken place during
these four years... nobody needs the aggravation that has been caused to our parents. "Dad has lung cancer, Mother has been treated throughout the whole ordeal for her nerves. One
daughter has cancer, one son has a brain tumor... what have the rest of us got? Should we have been tested and why has this not been suggested?"
Hosking's father died a
week after this letter was written. In response to the letter, an AECL representative phoned to point out that her father had signed a contract to have the work done, and that it
was only done as a courtesy. "They 'didn't have to do it.' And he said radon levels in the house were never high enough to cause lung cancer." The work was finally completed
in 1980, but AECL put the radon gas monitors back on the house in 1981.
"We sold that house for $50,000," Hosking says. "It had been appraised, when Mum was alive, for
$100,000. But who cared? I was bloody glad to be rid of it." Hosking made sure the new owners were aware of the building's history, but she isn't sure if subsequent purchasers
were as well informed.
This is the kind of thing that really worries her, and this is the issue over which she feels the people of Port Hope are owed some compensation.
She's certainly not speaking up to gain financially. If nothing else, dealing with the Crown corporation and government agencies during the four years of digging around her parents'
house has taught her that this would not be, in any sense, easy money.
Like many other long-time residents, both silent and outspoken, she would like a health study to be
carried out. In August 1981, such a study was announced for Port Hope. "This is what everybody wanted," she says. (Eighteen years later, it still is.) [As of 2017 it still
hasn't happened, and is not likely to.]
It's a "catch-22" situation. There is no scientific proof that exposure to low-level radiation — whether in the form of
emissions from the smoke stack of a uranium refinery, radon gas seeping out of contaminated fill into basements or radioactive material absorbed by plants in vegetable gardens causes
cancer, miscarriages and other health problems. Without such proof, the federal government, which regulates the atomic energy industry, cannot compensate those who may have been
affected. But for years that same government has put off conducting the study of the effects of 60 years of low-level radiation in Port Hope's environment on its residents.
At the AECB open house, held the night before the hearings, a board representative asked Hosking if she was bitter. "No," she said. "You can't live like that." Still,
she remembers that when her father was dying, he wrote her a note that said, essentially, "fight." "I always had the feeling at the back of my mind, he wants me to fight the Eldorado.
I should have done it. And now I feel like I'm doing the right thing.
"I hope nobody gets the wrong impression. I don't want to see Eldorado (Cameco) leave Port Hope.
Because there's nobody else would take them anyway. But that stuff has to be monitored, for the rest of... forever. "But it's here, and we've learned to live with it."
Perhaps, but no longer in silence.
Ensuring acceptance
from The Crier October 21, 1999 AECB certainly wasn't any "Truth Squad" but it had its moments by Denis Smith Canadians trust their governments. Sometimes that trust is not deserved. But apart from testimony to the aboriginal commission
in the early 1990s, the country has yet to experience anything like the revelations of official crime and irresponsibility offered at hearings of the South African Truth and
Reconciliation Commission.
Yet there were long moments on Oct. 7, during the Atomic Energy Control Board's re-licensing hearing for Port Hope's uranium conversion plant,
when echoes of the South African truth commission filled the air. The issue was the cumulative effects on the health of Port Hope residents from decades of activity at the uranium
refinery that scars the town's waterfront — and all those years of federal indifference. If the agenda had followed the traditional pattern of AECB licensing hearings, there would
have been technical evidence from Cameco Corporation about the safety of its operations, confirmation of Cameco's case by a meek AECB staff, grateful noises from members of the
licensing board, and automatic renewal of the plant's license. The concern of the Control Board has always been to look confidently to the future in a world of nuclear bombs and
nuclear power.
That is the way it has been since the Atomic Energy Control Board was created to supervise the nuclear industry in 1946.
Cameco felt so
confident about its prospects in 1999 that it asked the board for a five-year operating license rather than the normal two-year term. Why bother with unnecessary public hearings
if everything is going so well?
But everything did not go so well on Oct. 7. Cameco, which has owned the uranium plant only since 1988, was
unexpectedly buffeted by waves of indignation and personal anguish directed as much at the Atomic Energy Control Board as at the uranium company itself.
The board
heard testimony from six brave individuals, two local advisory committees and one international institute of public health asserting that the federal government and the licensing
agency have, for decades, been grossly negligent in informing themselves about and protecting local health within range of the conversion plant.
Board members listened
intently to moving accounts of illness and death among families living close to the harbour. They seemed surprised to discover (from their own staff) that previous incarnations of
the Control Board had shown no concern for public health around the Eldorado refinery until 1969 — and that present AECB staff have been unable to locate any health records gathered
by the agency from Eldorado and Cameco since that time.
The personal evidence offered at the hearing was historical and anecdotal rather than "scientific." But the
testimony of shattered and destroyed lives points to the need for thorough exposure of what has happened to Port Hope in 60 years of dangerous industrial activity along the
waterfront.
That is what the witnesses asked from the AECB. That is what the community deserves from a national government which owned and supervised the entire radium
and uranium industry from 1943 onwards.
The intervenors requested that Cameco's operating license be withheld until after full environmental and health studies of the
plant have been completed. Given the sorry record of federal supervision over 50 years, and continuing public ignorance about its effects, the request seems reasonable. We may
learn in December whether the AECB has at last managed to liberate itself from unthinking subordination to the nuclear industry.
fromjohnwwarnock.blogspot J
une 1, 2013 In 1999 Cameco created a subsidiary, Cameco Europe Ltd., and located it in Zug, Switzerland. Switzerland is well known as one of the favourite low tax hosts for
corporations seeking to avoid paying normal corporate tax rates.
Cameco 'sells' the uranium it
extracts in Saskatchewan to Cameco Europe at the very low prices that were set in 1999. Cameco Europe then sells the uranium at the market price. CRA reports that Cameco is
allocating its profits to Cameco Europe and recording very low profits for its operations in Saskatchewan.
The Ontario media reports that over the past ten years
Cameco has avoided reporting income of $4.9 billion which allowed it to save $1.4 billion in federal corporate taxes. The corporate tax rate in Switzerland is 5% compared
to 27% in Canada.
The Globe and Mail (May 1, 2013) reports that a study of Cameco by Veritas Research Corporation concluded that Cameco in Saskatchewan 'performed
virtually all operating functions' for Cameco Europe. They concluded that all of Cameco Europe's profits should have been declared in Canada and taxed at Canadian levels.
CAMECO IS A ROGUE CORPORATION, CONTEMPTUOUS OF THE COUNTRY IT OPERATES IN, AND SO
ARROGANT IN ITS TAX AVOIDANCE SCHEME THAT IT CAN'T EVEN BOTHER TO TRY TO JUSTIFY IT from
rabble.ca Dear CRA: Don't let Cameco get away with its $2.2-billion tax evasion by Murray Dobbin October 28, 2016 Cameco, the Saskatchewan-based uranium
mining colossus, is currently in Federal Court facing charges by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) that it illegally avoided a stunning $2.2 billion
in Canadian income taxes. It is not only the largest such case in Canadian history but one of the most shameless tax dodges ever hatched by a Canadian
corporation. The court case has been delayed for years and just the fact that it has finally made it before a judge is good news. But the news could
quickly turn bad if, facing defeat, Cameco makes a pitch to settle for less than the full amount. That would be a miscarriage of justice.
It
is absolutely critical that the government not make a deal with Cameco for a smaller sum - as often happens in these cases. Because this is no
ordinary case. Cameco is a rogue corporation, contemptuous of the country it operates in, and so arrogant in its tax avoidance scheme that it
can't even bother to try to justify it. Confronted by the facts, Cameco just repeats its executive mantra: "We believe that it was established
in accordance with sound business principles and in accordance with relevant laws and regulations."
At a time when more and more attention
is being paid to off-shore tax havens and the billions we lose to them, Canada needs to make an example of this irresponsible corporate "citizen."
How Cameco avoids taxes Here's the bare bones of the scheme. In 1999 Cameco decided to dramatically reduce its income tax bill by
setting up a subsidiary in Zug, Switzerland, where the tax rate is 10 per cent - compared to the (then) Canadian rate of about 27 per cent. At the time
the price was at rock bottom - $10 a pound. That's the price the Saskatchewan head office charged its Swiss "subsidiary." Then came the windfall manoeuvre:
Cameco drafted a 17-year uranium supply agreement at a fixed price of $10 a pound. It was simplicity itself: Cameco would sell literally all of its uranium
through the Swiss subsidiary and it would sell it for whatever the world price was. That world price went to almost $140 a pound in 2007 and is now around
$35. All the revenue earned above $10 a pound was taxed in Switzerland at the low rate. (An insignificant amount is actually sold in Europe and, of course,
not an ounce of the stuff ever finds its way to Zug.)
This scheme is known as "transfer pricing" and sometimes it is perfectly legitimate - companies
that sell their products in multiple countries "sell" them to subsidiaries which then sell them in their jurisdiction and get taxed on the profits. But more
and more multinationals have been abusing the law that allows this -- including Apple, "based" in Ireland, which is now facing a US$15 billion tax bill from
the European Commission for its abuse of transfer pricing.
But Apple actually sold its products in European countries and has 5,500 employees in
Ireland. Cameco? Not so much. According to a 2014 Globe and Mail story: "While Cameco says Cameco Europe has its own board of directors and a full-time
CEO, documents in the case reveal the European company had no other full-time employees, and no stand-alone office, instead renting space from the law firm
performing its legal work."
Virtually all the substantive work was performed in Canada. All of the uranium is mined in Canada, all of Cameco's
sales are negotiated and completed in Canada, and literally all of its profits are generated in Canada. The company's scheme is pure scam which is why
fair-tax activists in Saskatchewan call the company Scameco. A citizens' group, Saskatchewan Citizens for Tax Fairness, has been on Cameco's case for several
years - paying for a billboard demanding Cameco pay up and collecting 36,000 names on a petition which it presented to the federal government.
Growing
suspicion But it isn't just citizens' groups looking askance at Cameco. Investment research firms, like Veritas, have questioned the company's scheme. In
2013 company analyst Pawel Rajszel stated: "[A]ll the upside has been transferred to the subsidiary. Meanwhile all the risk has stayed with Cameco Canada. ...
It's strange that the company would have created this Swiss subsidiary without having any real operations in Switzerland."
A Veritas report concludes:
"It is therefore difficult to see a reasonable business purpose to [Cameco Europe's] existence, beyond tax minimization." In a further comment, Mr Rajszel
told The Globe and Mail in 2014: "Based on our review of Cameco's [first quarter] results, the dispute with the CRA may force the company to borrow funds and/or
cut its dividend in order to finance the back tax payments." Does that suggest Cameco's clever tax dodge could actually expose it to a charge of failing to carry
out its fiduciary duty to its shareholders?
Another business-focussed group has been sniffing around Cameco's problems. The Bottom Line, a Canadian
publication which bills itself as a "Forensic Accounting and Fraud" magazine, has been in contact with Saskatchewan Citizens for Tax Fairness about the case.
Companies like Cameco have for too long framed the tax haven issue as business as usual. But that is now clearly changing and people are starting to
see this behaviour for what it is: the legalized theft of Canadian government services. Cameco started off as a public mining company and its technology was
developed in Canada with the help of Saskatchewan government money. The Canadian transportation infrastructure allows them to get their uranium to market,
they have enjoyed decades in a stable economy, with low inflation, cheap money, low crime and the legal protection accorded a "corporate citizen" under the
Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Their workers received free and/or subsidized education and Cameco doesn't have to pay health insurance for its employees -
as companies in the U.S. do. Adding insult to injury, the (federal) taxes Cameco is avoiding are amongst the lowest in the developed world: 15 per cent
compared, for example, to 35 percent in the U.S.
Ironically - or maybe not - while the CRA is going after Cameco, Saskatchewan's unabashedly
pro-business premier Brad Wall has said almost nothing about the case (the timid NDP opposition has said even less). That seems a bit strange given that
Saskatchewan's share of the proceeds, if the CRA wins, would be over $700 million. Governments may govern in the era of globalization, but giant companies rule.
It is long past time that we put a stop to it. A great first step would be for the CRA to refuse to negotiate and get all of our money back. Then we need to
change the law. Murray Dobbin has been a journalist, broadcaster, author and social activist for 40 years. He writes rabble's State of the Nation
column.
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Atomic
Energy Control Board and the nuclear industry work together to promote the nuclear industry has.
from The
Northumberland News March 9, 2017 Cameco's Port Hope facility's operating license approved until 2027 Decision made following public hearing last
November by Todd McEwen PORT HOPE—Cameco Corporation's Port Hope conversion facility was given the green light to continue operating for the
next decade. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission granted Cameco a 10-year operating license that is set to expire on Feb. 28, 2027.
"We are very
pleased that the CNSC has accepted our application for a 10-year operating license," vice president of Cameco's fuel services division Dale Clark said in a news
release. "The decision demonstrates the commission's confidence in our ability to safely produce and protect the environment at this facility, both now and far
into the future."
The decision was made following a public hearing held on Nov. 9 and 10 at the Town Park Recreation Centre in Port Hope, where members
of the public were invited to voice their support or opposition to the licence renewal.
Some of those who spoke at the hearings included the Town of Cobourg;
Northumberland Quint West MPP Lou Rinaldi; Habitat for Humanity Northumberland; Canadian Nuclear Workers Council; Mohawks of Bay of Quinte; Lake Ontario Waterkeeper;
and Restore the Port Hope West Beach Committee, to name a few.
Among supporters were MPP Rinaldi, who called Cameco one of "the true community leaders" and
stressed Cameco has been open in its ongoing efforts with public engagement. "I think it is important to note that Cameco continues to be a leader in our business
community and I wish them every success with this application," Rinaldi wrote in his intervention.
Among the opposition for renewal was Anna Tilman, an
independent environmental services professional previously of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health. She concluded the Cameco plant is "well past
its best-before date," and continues to operate outside of public scrutiny while producing "multitudinous amounts of radioactive and otherwise contaminated waste."
"In 1976, the government 'discovered' the extent of radioactive waste contamination in the region and promised to move the plant and clean up the waste," she wrote.
"Forty years later, that promise is still there, but yet to be fulfilled."
With the approval of the licence renewal, Cameco will continue to process and
store uranium hexafluoride and uranium dioxide production. "We are very grateful to all those who participated in the relicensing hearing," Clark said. "Public
participation in the process ensures that all viewpoints can be considered by members of the Commission when they are making their decisions. "We are very pleased
with the outcome."
The nuclear industry produces a propaganda pamphlet
called 'energize' that regularly shows up unbidden in Port Hope mailboxes.
fromenergize News & Information from Cameco
summer 2017 'Cameco president and CEO Tim Gitzel visited employees at both Cameco Fuel Manufacturing sites and the conversion facility on May 25 to announce and
celebrate a 10-year extension of Cameco's contract with Bruce Power.'
'As Canada celebrates its 150th birthday people in Port Hope may feel an extra measure
of pride for the role the community has played, and continues to play in the development of Canada's nuclear industry.'
Kim Rudd (Liberal MP for Northumberland-Peterborough South), Bob Sanderson (Mayor of Port Hope), Tim Gitzel (Cameco President and CEO), Lou Rinaldi (MPP Northumberland-Quinte
West) and Mike Rencheck (Bruce Power President and CEO)
Four of the exuberant people pictured above don't live in Port Hope. The other's principal home is elsewhere.