Well, this could get awkward: Liveblogging MDS Nordion at Natural Resources
By kadyomalley - Thursday, June 11, 2009 - 14 Comments
I mean, they’re still suing the government — well, AECL, but ultimately, it’s the taxpayer on the hook — for bailing on the Maple reactors, right? Won’t that make it difficult to engage in a free exchange of views — especially considering that one of their lawyers is on the witness list? Nevertheless, ITQ will be there, although she should warn readers that it’s likely to be a shorter-than-usual liveblog, since the committee is scheduled to go in camera after the first hour. Hopefully that will be long enough for a few rounds of questions, at least.
3:27:11 PM
Well, it may not be high profile enough to lure Mike Duffy back to the microphone, but today’s installment of the Natural Resources committee has the potential to be far more unpredictable than the PM’s stimulus roadshow: On the witness list today — and actually delivering his opening statement as I type this — is MDS Nordion president Steve West, who will give MPs his version of the unfortunate series of events that led to the cancellation of the Maple reactor projct, a decision with which it’s fair to say the company is *not entirely on board*, what with the billion dollar lawsuit currently pending against the Crown.
West is flanked by legal counsel – John Campion – as well as the company’s vice president for strategic technologies; also at the table: Universite of Laval professor Michel Duguay and John Waddington, who is billed as a “nuclear safety consultant”.
3:32:26 PM
As far as West is concerned, the decision to chop funding for Maple was wrong on many, many levels – wrong for Canada, wrong for the global isotope supply, wrong for patients and wrong for the future. So — put him down as undecided?
Anyway, he wants the government to “reactivate” the Maple project, and this is right about where we get into a terrifyingly complex game of he said/he said – the all-nuclear physicist edition, since there really doesn’t seem to be anything close to a consensus on the central question of whether the Maple reactors really were billion-dollar lemons, or have the potential to save the Canadian isotope sector, and possibly the world.
3:38:19 PM
