First Nations leaders continue to oppose Ontario nuclear waste burial projects

Across the street from the Westin hotel in Ottawa Thursday, Sean McLaren pointed to the suites perched atop the building.

"It's a shame," said the vice-chief of Timiskaming First Nation in Quebec, about 500 kilometres north of the capital.

"At the top of that building there, you could have a nice glass of water, clean, right out of the tap. Us, up north in the bush, we gotta boil our water. If everybody had to boil their water in Ottawa to have a drink, we'd all be standing here right now."

This concern about water, he said, is what brought him to demonstrate outside the Canadian Nuclear Association's annual conference this week.

McLaren joined about two dozen others from Algonquin communities and local citizens' groups to protest a proposed radioactive waste dump near Deep River, Ont.

The project, which Canada's nuclear regulator approved in January, would entail construction of a "near-surface disposal facility," similar to a municipal landfill, at the Chalk River nuclear laboratory.

The lab is about 190 kilometres northwest of Ottawa, but the facility would sit about a kilometre away from the Ottawa River, or Kichi Sipi. The Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nation has consented to it, but others remain vehemently opposed.

"We're here to defend the Kichi Sipi," said Grand Chief Savanna McGregor of the Algonquin Anishinabeg Nation Tribal Council, which represents six communities in Quebec.

"It needs to be protected."

Kebaowek Chief Lance Haymond is leading the charge to stop the project. His First Nation, also in Quebec north of Ottawa, filed a court challenge against the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) in February.

"It's the wrong solution in the wrong location so let's go back to the drawing board," he said outside the hotel.

Inside the hotel, the country's top nuclear players touted their vision for the future. The industry is in the midst of a public relations push, bolstered by a burst of government support.

The 2023 federal Liberal budget made nuclear power projects eligible for a clean-energy tax credit. Ontario's Progressive Conservative government is also planning on nuclear expansion.

Last fall, federal Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson endorsed the near-surface disposal method in general, as well as the deep geological repository method proposed by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO).