Category: Catherine McKenna

Guest Post by Louisette Lanteigne

OK. So there is this project to bury nuclear waste beside Lake Huron called the Lake Huron Deep Gelological Repository project, or DGR for short.

Over 92,000 people signed petitions against it. Read the Globe and Mail article Petition opposing Ontario nuclear waste plan garners 92,000 signatures.

Here is a list of Ontario Members of Parliament who have passed resolutions against it.

Over 180 municipal resolutions passed, representing 22 million people in Canada & US demanding stop of Lake Huron nuclear repository

And now Ontario Power Generation just released a new study saying there is NO PUBLIC INTEREST in this plan:
Public not concerned about moving nuclear waste bunker from Lake Huron according to Ontario report

What did they use to say that? They based their info on Twitter and Google searches while completely negating the resolutions, the petitions and MPs.

OPG’s Deep Geologic Repository Project

For Low & Intermediate Level Waste
Study of Alternate Locations Main Submission [PDF]
00216-REP-07701-00013

excerpt: pages 72 and 73

7.2.2 DGR Not a Concern
Research shows that there is little interest among the general public regarding the DGR Project at the Bruce Nuclear site. OPG had a social media analysis prepared in the fall of 2016. The analysis began with a detailed query in Sysomos MAP – a media analysis platform that provides news, blogs, forums, tweets and many other media results. A year’s worth of data was passed through IBM Watson’s Alchemy – a language analysis platform to identify key themes identified from OPG DGR related media activity and conversations in the past year. In addition to media analysis, the Google Keyword Planning Tool as well as Google Trends was used to understand how Ontarians are seeking information about nuclear waste disposal. In particular, the analysis focused on the keywords being used, and the frequency with which Ontarians are looking for this information.

The analysis showed that Ontarians are not looking for information on nuclear waste disposal in large volumes. This topic is not a popular one, nor is it generating large volumes of curiosity.

• Compared to other energy related keywords (wind turbines, solar power) there is very
  little curiosity about nuclear waste disposal, or deep geologic repositories.
• DGR related searches are at a frequency of virtually zero, and nuclear waste as a topic
  shows less interest amongst Canadians than other energy topics.
• Looking at how Ontarians search, there is an even greater discrepancy. Energy and
  power are more important (or generate more curiosity) than disposal and waste related
  searches.
• Currently, interest in DGR in Ontario has flat-lined; outside of a spike in May 2015
  attributed to the release of the Joint Review Panel report, there has been very little
  search frequency for ‘deep geologic repository’.

Download the PDF of the full study here.

You can email Justin.Trudeau@parl.gc.ca and Catherine.McKenna@parl.gc.ca and let them know what you think.

Find out more — and what you can do to help at Stop The Great Lakes Nuclear Dump

Masse: Storing Nuclear Waste Close to the Great Lakes is an Unnecessary Risk

The Federal Government has extended the deadline to make a decision on this twice has been extended twice; I believe the current deadline is August 12, 2017 ~ Laurel