Justin Trudeau Liberal Papineau, QC

Thank you. That's one of the overall concerns.

You talk about the sale as being a way of limiting liabilities to the taxpayer because, yes, the taxpayer has been on the hook for many hundreds of millions associated with the nuclear industry in Canada. However, then we look at the fact that in Ontario, the Darlington reactor purchase, without government's back-stopping of CANDU reactors, is probably not going to go for a CANDU reactor. The refurbishment of the Point Lepreau reactors also has us significantly on the hook from being over-budget.

My concern is that we've managed to sell off the commercial division in such a way that we will remain on the hook for a while, and I'm not certain we've had any guarantees from SNC-Lavalin that it is intending to continue to develop and research new iterations of Canadian reactors. I think there's a real concern that it's just going to putter along as long as the government continues to send it money to do what it has to do, but will get out of the new reactor business, which is something that requires billions of dollars of investment perhaps more suited to government than private companies.

So I guess my question is this. Is the intention of this government that we simply get out of the nuclear industry altogether? Is that where we're doing? What sort of guarantees did we get from SNC that it would still be investing in research and upgrades and new technology around a significant source of energy?