Keen's firing highlights public concern about safety and Conservative bully tactics

This is from the Harper Index. Lunn has now drawn up a new job description for the regulator that includes ensuring isotope production. For Conservatives safety and environmental concerns always mesh nicely with profit making but only if you appoint the proper regulators.
This article shows some of the other factors that may have been involved in Lunn's action but as the article points out the goverment's actions may impact on their credibility. Who wants to buy a nuclear reactor that may not be safe?

Keen's firing highlights public concern about safety and Conservative bully tactics

Muzzling watchdog in isotope controversy could backfire on government and nuclear industry.

A HarperIndex.ca editorial

OTTAWA, January 17, 2008: Canada's natural resources minister Gary Lunn and prime minister Stephen Harper may have thought they were doing the nuclear industry a favour by firing Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) President Linda Keen, but the move looks likely to backfire in many ways.

The firing amounts to blaming the regulator, the CNSC, for a mistake made by the crown-owned Atomic Energy of Canada Ltc. (AECL), the corporation that is being regulated. When it became known that AECL had failed to carry out a required safety upgrade to a 50-year-old reactor, the Commission acted properly by insisting that AECL come into compliance with its licence before the reactor was restarted.

The issue raises serious concerns. The apparent crisis may have been politically manipulated to satisfy the needs of private corporate health care giant MDS Nordion and to boost the asset value of AECL. It is also possible the government was trying to cover up for having very quietly joined the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership in November. They may have wanted to divert attention from a commitment that could result in Canada becoming a global nuclear waste disposal site.

John Ivison in the conservative National Post reports today that Keen was targetted for hurting the nuclear industry at a time it sees hope of expanding. He says she helped impose "tough new international standards on any new reactor built in Canada, in doing so hurting AECL's ability to sell new reactors to the government of Ontario. She has also ended 'pre-reviews' of new reactors, a process that warns operators if there are fundamental barriers to them being granted operating licences. Both measures have made AECL less attractive to potential investors at a time when the government is mulling whether to sell off all or part of the nuclear operator."

The CNSC is responsible for ensuring the safety of nuclear reactors. The reactor shutdown affected the scheduling of medical diagnostic procedures - not cancer treatments. So, while there was real inconvenience, it is hard to make a case, as both Lunn and Stephen Harper claimed, that 'lives were at risk' by waiting a few additional weeks for safety concerns to be resolved. The issue has many classic hallmarks of another manufactured crisis. What the government created, however, appears to have become a monster.

Firing Keen - undoubtedly at the direction of Harper - makes it harder for the Commission to fulfill its mandate of protecting public health and the environment. It focuses attention on the fatal conflict of interest that was created by having a minister of the crown is responsible both for an licensee (AECL) and its regulator (CNSC).

In the past, that conflict also produced problematic results, but differently. The CNSC and its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB), were frequently accused by environmental groups of being pro-industry. Staffed as they were by nuclear energy professionals, these charges had a lot of credibility. And staffing was determined by the politicians, who favoured the industry, as they do now.

What's new here is that the Commission has stood up to the industry - something that rarely happened in the past - and been slapped down politically for doing so.

Ironically, however, the government's action may have damaged the international reputation of Canada's nuclear industry - which is tied to having a strong, independent regulator - and threatened the industry's growth. Ontario's Liberal government plans more reactors, and many politicians, including Lunn, are promoting the use of nuclear power to extract oil from Alberta's tar sands. A public controversy does not help their cause.

Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty expressed concern about Keen's firing. He told reporters at Queen's Park "We need some stability and predictability when it comes to our regulator." He said the Ontario government has cause for concern because the discord between the CNSC and the government could delay his government's plans to build reactors.

This treatment of Keen also sends bad signals to a public becoming increasingly concerned about the safety of food, products, water, air quality and the general environment, and adds to the growing list of (supposedly arms-length) quasi-judicial officials dismissed for 'affronting' the Conservative government. It is natural for people to wonder how safe they are when regulators can so summarily be sacked for blowing the whistle on safety violations.

The greatest irony is what the move did to Conservative election hopes. By running roughshod over rules of ethics and drawing attention to tactics widely described as dictatorial and bullying, Stephen Harper has done nothing to convince voters he ought to be trusted with a majority government, or perhaps any government at all.