AECL Sale a Possibility for Ottawa
November 18th, 2006 | by MadHacktress |Our government recently floated the idea of selling off the AECL to a private company. Heads from the Ministries of Finance, Natural Resources and Treasury have been speaking with industry players about the possible future for the crown corporation, including its possible sale.
You have probably heard of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. before when I have written about the CANDU reactors. They are responsible for supplying, building and maintaining the 29 CANDU reactors world-wide. AECL is also the world’s largest supplier of Molybedenum-99, a material used for diagnostic medicine, and Colbalt-60, for cancer therapy.
The corporation, whose monies come from government funding and commercial revenue, posted a 5$ million profit on 407$ million in revenues this year. It’s posted assets are approximately 1.1$ billion.
So, basically, the question is begged: what is the government thinking?
I never really understand why governments feel the need to divest profitable corporations from their ownership. The Ontario government considered doing the same thing the LCBO, a Crown corporation that makes about a billion dollars per year.
Chalk River, in 1944, became the first sustained nuclear reaction outside of the United States propelling Canada to the forefront of nuclear research and technology; a position which we have retained. The loss of the AECL as a Canadian Crown corporation, to me, would be a significant loss to Canada.
The article states that the big deciding factor with regard to the value of AECL is whether or not the corporation wins the bid to build the newest reactors in Ontario.
I’m not even going to get in to all the things that are wrong with the concept that AECL even has to consider competition with regard to the bid to build the reactors in Ontario. If that happens, I might just go thermonuclear myself.
Entry Filed under: In The News, Pure Opinion
I agree what are they thinking? I know that they want to be out of the private sector but this is definitely something they should be in. Another advantage of the CANDU is that it is not weapons grade material. So Iran says it needs nuclear power? Sure we can set you up with safe reliable non-threating nuclear power. Funny how simple things work or force peoples hands.