Authors: Michael Harris
These were nervous days for the federal public service. Stephen Harper was on the record with his view that he faced daunting obstacles in his pledge to clean up Ottawa—a Liberal-appointed public service, Supreme Court, and Senate. But Linda Keen was encouraged by promises made under the Accountability Act to respect the independence of administrative tribunals across the government. It took just one meeting with the minister to realize that Gary Lunn, like the prime minister, was not interested in independence.
In her first briefing of the new minister, Keen acquainted Lunn with what she described as the “built-in” conflict of interest in Natural Resources Canada. The problem was simple. Both AECL and the regulator reported to Parliament through the minister’s office. Keen told the minister “it wasn’t IF but WHEN there would be a conflict between AECL and CNSC and that he would need to be prepared for that eventuality.” Nor did the minister seem to understand that the nuclear regulator reported
through
him, not
to
him.
Keen got no reaction at the meeting, but it soon became clear that “Lunn’s preoccupation was how to make AECL a business success with its new reactors.” Although the Harper government talked about “streamlining” the system of approvals, what they wanted was a return to the regulatory values of the 1970s, when the industry and the regulator were kissing cousins and the environment was an afterthought. As Lunn told Keen in a meeting in the presence of his deputy minister, “I don’t much like regulators.” From the beginning, Linda Keen was rolling down the highway into the future, while the Harper government pressured for a return to the past.
Keen and the CNSC had become more active on the international scene, working with other regulators to come up with
common standards for a potential new generation of nuclear reactors. In fact, Keen was elected president of the International Nuclear Regulators Association (INRA) and also president of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) review of nuclear safety. Through this work, it became clear that Canadian regulators had not kept pace with international standards—which was surely not the way to sell Canadian-made reactors worldwide. With thirty-three reported nuclear accidents since the first one in history at Chalk River in 1952—which sent future US president Jimmy Carter into the reactor to make repairs—regulations out of the 1970s didn’t seem to be the best way to market Canadian nuclear reactors. Keen believed that when it came to safety standards, “We should be in the international sphere, focusing on best practices of what is seen as safe internationally.”
A collision was coming between Canada’s nuclear regulator and AECL, which had powerful allies such as SNC-Lavalin Corporation, and, as it turned out, in the Harper government as well. Keen saw another unsettling development. A big part of her mission was to convince the nuclear industry that it should take responsibility for nuclear safety, and that included paying for it. In her opinion, that was how the industry obtained the “social contract” to do its work. Instead, with a huge staff compared to Keen’s tiny band of regulators, AECL was constantly trying to get the CNSC to help with its design projects.
A case in point was the ACR 700 project, a new reactor AECL was hoping to sell both domestically and abroad. The CNSC had been assisting with the work since 2005, but there was little progress because of problems with the physics of the new design. For Keen’s operation, their assistance on the ACR 700 project was beginning to eat into the staff time available for regulatory work—an untenable proposition at a time when all Canadian nuclear power reactors were undergoing refurbishment. In itself,
that raised another serious issue. Since there were also problems with the new Maple reactors (another AECL project), there was intense competition for nuclear physicists and engineers from the very industry that needed regulatory oversight. Keen noted, “One industry CEO told me that no matter what I paid staff (controlled by Public Service pay levels), he would be able to pay more!”
In September 2006, three critical meetings were held. The president of AECL, Robert Van Adel, asked for a meeting with the nuclear regulator and CNSC executives. Keen and her staff were told that AECL wanted not only to finish the ACR reactor overview but also to add a new design, the ACR 1000, plus work on a revamped old design, dubbed CANDU 6E. “Remembering that the Maple reactors were already five years behind schedule and also requiring regulatory oversight, it was impossible for the CNSC to agree,” Keen explained to me.
Keen told Van Adel that their entire agreement was to be cancelled after completion of the ACR 700 review until AECL could sort out its priorities, pointing out that it was not the regulator’s role to effectively turn CNSC staff into “quality control experts” for the company. What the legislation required Linda Keen and her staff to do was regulate not collaborate. In fact, the work on the new reactors was not required or covered under the NSCA but was done under a separate agreement with AECL and paid for by the government of Canada. Keen reported to the deputy minister of natural resources, Cassie Doyle, that “there was an issue brewing.”
The same day as her meeting with the president of AECL, Linda Keen announced at an industry meeting that international standards were being developed. The work was being conducted by a large group of regulators under the auspices of the Nuclear Energy Agency of UNESCO. Keen pointed out that these standards would help all nuclear reactor companies, including AECL,
but also their principal competitors, Areva from France and Westinghouse in the United States. With her announcement, it was now clear to the industry that Linda Keen meant business. From that moment, she was in their sights.
At the end of the meeting with industry stakeholders, Keen and her executive vice-president met with executives of Ontario Power Generation (OPG). The head of OPG said that two new reactors were in the future for the Darlington plant. Jim Hankinson also said that he had been told by Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. that the CNSC had agreed to “grandfather” the old CANDU 6 design and not to require new international standards. Based on that information, Hankinson reportedly said Ontario Power Generation planned to buy the old CANDU 6 design from AECL and that “they were going to pop them in the ground.” Keen also recalled that Hankinson told her, “I promised the premier that this was going to happen soon.”
The Ontario Power Generation executives were in for a shock. Linda Keen informed them that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission she headed had never told AECL that it was possible to “grandfather” the CANDU 6, and that international standards would indeed apply to any “new-build” reactors for a very good reason—they would likely be in the ground for a hundred years. As angry as Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. was at Keen’s decision, SNC-Lavalin, the giant engineering firm, was apoplectic. “What they had felt in October 2006 was this CANDU contract is a sure deal; that we’re going to get this contract as part of the CANDU Group. . . . They were really upset, because this was money in the bank,” Keen told Clean Break Blog.
The relationship between the nuclear regulator and the Harper government deteriorated further when the French nuclear company Areva requested that the CNSC review its designs since it was performing that function for AECL. The purpose of the
request was to explore whether or not the French might make reactor sales in Canada. In December 2006, the Harper government answered on behalf of the regulator: a firm no. It also used the occasion to take its first public swipe at Linda Keen. In talking to reporters, Minister Lunn said, “The CNSC may say that they are neutral on reactor designs, but Natural Resources is not. We intend to sell AECL reactors.”
In January 2007, Linda Keen wrote to the minister and deputy minister of natural resources, outlining options for resolving the issue of reviews of the AECL reactor designs by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. She agreed that the CNSC would complete the work on the ACR 700 (which AECL wanted in order to test the design), but suggested a new approach on reviewing the ACR 1000 and the enhanced CANDU 6. Following the practice in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, she proposed that future power operators be involved in assessing designs. This partnership would mean that potential buyers would be involved early on in the assessment of the plan. Keen reported that at least one power operator had indicated interest in the idea.
Linda Keen didn’t know it, but with that letter she had entered the Harper government’s “deep freeze.” She received no response, either formally or informally. From that point on, for a period lasting eleven months, the minister and the deputy minister of natural resources refused to meet with the president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission on any matter—including critical changes to environmental assessments that could impact nuclear facilities.
The pressure began to build on Canada’s nuclear regulator. In March 2007, SNC-Lavalin dispatched one of its vice-presidents to a Canadian Nuclear Association meeting, where he claimed Keen’s “regulatory uncertainty” was the obstacle preventing the building of new reactors in Canada. It was the engineering firm’s reaction
to another decision by the regulator that they really opposed. Keen would not promise that no regulatory changes would be effected during the life of the build and operations of reactors—potentially twenty and one hundred years, respectively.
But Keen was sufficiently concerned about SNC-Lavalin’s comment that she offered to meet with the board of the company. She explained the Nuclear Safety Commission’s viewpoint on international safety standards, and the need for the regulator to spend her scant resources on regulatory oversight, not on helping with reactor design. Nor would she specify that only AECL designs would be regulated, since that was not the role of the regulator. After a few peremptory questions, the session was over.
The board meeting, though void of enthusiasm for Keen’s message, went off without incident. The lunch that followed was a different matter. In fact, Keen was reluctant to accept the invitation once her presentation had been given. The Nuclear Safety Commission had a policy of agreeing to lunches only if the commission itself paid. And there was another condition. She insisted that a note be written to file on all discussions that might take place. The lunch conversation went badly, and Keen found that the executives were “super-furious” with her. A top SNC-Lavalin executive made it personal: “You’re not being patriotic,” he told her. “How could you do this? It’s being built in other places.”
Keen later learned that the company formally complained about her to the clerk of the Privy Council, repeating their charge that the CNSC was an “obstacle” to new reactor sales at home and abroad. As she told Clean Break, the regulator now found herself in the sights of SNC-Lavalin, with the help of lobbyist Hill & Knowlton. The giant engineering firm wanted her ousted.
Meanwhile, Linda Keen wasn’t the only public servant having difficulty with the Harper government’s bare-knuckle tactics. Many heads of administrative tribunals across the public service
were having similar issues with independence. They asked Keen to present a case to the Privy Council Office on their behalf.
In the summer of 2007, Linda Keen asked for a meeting with the clerk of the Privy Council. She had no reason to expect anything but a timely and professional meeting. She had, after all, known Kevin Lynch since her days at Industry Canada. But Keen didn’t get the meeting with her former colleague. After months of delay, she was given a meeting with the chief legal counsel of the PCO and the assistant secretary of machinery of government. To any reader of George Orwell, it would not have been a promising sign. At the meeting, Keen explained the general problem of the administrative tribunals and her own specific problems with her own minister. There were silent nods but no commitment to any course of action. It was the PCO’s job to resolve issues between the public service and ministers. In washing its hands of Linda Keen, the Harper PCO was showing signs of a politicization that would deepen over time.
In fact, the end was near for Keen’s career in the Public Service of Canada. In early November 2007, her scientific staff at Chalk River reported that AECL was in violation of its licence conditions: specifically, the unfulfilled commitment to install backup power in the event of an incident—either an earthquake or power outage—which might prevent conventional power being available to the aging reactor. Instead of installing the required second backup power pump, AECL staff at Chalk River challenged the validity of the licence condition the company had agreed to and then breached.
Brian McGee, then AECL’s vice-president and chief nuclear officer, happened to be on vacation. Ironically, Linda Keen was in Australia as keynote speaker at the inaugural IAEA conference on the safety of researcher reactors, like the ones at Chalk River. After connecting by BlackBerry with Chalk River, Keen was advised
that the situation was not critical because AECL was entering a regular maintenance shutdown on November 18. When McGee returned from holidays, Keen said that he promised the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in a public meeting that he would not seek to restart the reactors after their maintenance shutdown until the backup power pump was installed. But behind the scenes all hell was breaking loose.
The first tremors of what was to come rumbled through Linda Keen’s world. After eleven months of silence, she received a call from Minister Lunn, who started the conversation as if they were old friends: “Well, Linda, I know that those guys at AECL have screwed up,” she remembered him saying. “But what can we do?” She replied that staff from AECL and the CNSC were working “non-stop” on the problem, and wouldn’t cease until a solution was found. But that was not the answer the minister needed, and now things began to slip out of his control. Although this was a dispute over the National Research Universal (NRU) reactor at Chalk River, and Linda Keen was head of an arm’s-length, quasi-judicial tribunal, she discovered that the PCO had become involved. The matter was now clearly political.