The Costs of Uncertainty: Regulating Health and Safety in the Canadian Uranium Industry

Dirk Leemans, P.Eng., lived in Toronto.

This working paper by Ian Robinson of Queen’s University details the consequences of the jurisdictional and administrative battles between federal and provincial governments in the Canadian uranium mining industry. The focus of this study is not on ownership but on the responsibilities of the respective governments in the fields of occupational health and safety and environmental protection.

First, the author looks at the nature of the issue as well as at the federal-provincial arrangements that existed before 1974. He identifies the Ham Commission in Ontario as a watershed and indicates its political fall-out. He then discusses in detail the fight over the federal bill C-14 (the Nuclear Control and Administration Act of 1977) which resulted in a constitutional stalemate, forcing the federal government to let the bill die on the order paper.

The central thesis of this investigation, presented in the third chapter, is that as long as the present jurisdictional uncertainty about environmental protection and occupational health and safety in the Canadian uranium mining industry persists, no significant regulatory activity can take place. The author reports the reactions of two provinces, Ontario and Saskatchewan, to this jurisdictional no-man’s-land and shows convincingly that the responses reflect the different policy priorities of these two governments. He then develops some thoughtful recommendations which, if implemented, would undoubtedly improve the present situation. He ends with a short chapter on a prescriptive theory of regulation.

This is a competent and interesting study which explains the different levels of occupational and environmental protection in uranium mining in the two provinces. It also demonstrates how the continued fight over jurisdiction has led to inaction (in Ontario) and inefficiency (in Saskatchewan), resulting in valuable time lost on the problems of mine tailings and radiation protection. That the final prescriptive chapter is too short and does not deal with all the issues (future generations) is only a minor reservation. It should not obscure the value of this study for students of federal-provincial conflicts as well as for people interested in the sorry state of regulation in the Canadian uranium mining industry.