SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Ontario Assembly

43rd Parl. 1st Sess.
November 16, 2022 09:00AM
  • Nov/16/22 11:00:00 a.m.

Thanks to the member opposite for the question. He does come from Durham region, which is Ontario’s clean energy capital—Canada’s clean energy capital, as a matter of fact—home to Darlington and Pickering nuclear generating stations, with 76,000 people working in this sector in Ontario and across the country.

The Premier had the vision three years ago to sign an MOU and to lead the MOU with three other provinces—Alberta, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick—on the deployment of small modular reactors, and boy, have we seen progress on this file since he had the vision to do that.

This time last year, OPG decided on the technology that they were going to be building on the site at Darlington, the GEH BWRX-300, a 300-megawatt small modular reactor that is going to be producing clean, reliable electricity on our grid by 2028. Saskatchewan has signed on to purchase potentially four and site them in their province to help them eliminate coal generation in Saskatchewan. We have seen TVA, one of the largest utilities in the United States, sign on and collaborate. And just a couple of weeks ago, the federal government signed on with almost a billion dollars from the Canada Infrastructure Bank—

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  • Nov/16/22 11:10:00 a.m.

Thanks again to the member for the question.

There’s a lot happening. I talked about what’s happening in North America. There’s a lot happening in Europe. The world really is watching what’s happening as this first grid-scale modular reactor is being built at Darlington. A company out of Poland has already signed an MOU with an Ontario company, BWXT out of Cambridge, to purchase a billion dollars’ worth of key components—that’s good jobs that will be in our supply chain here in Ontario, but there’s the opportunity for so much more.

Just last month, I was in Europe, visiting with officials in Poland and the Czech Republic, along with members from OPG and Laurentis energy, their international arm, where they signed two SMR collaboration agreements with Czech and Polish companies. Estonia is also very interested, and many others in Baltic countries and in eastern and central Europe are interested.

Our technology that we’re building right here in Ontario—technology that’s going to result in more economic activity, cleaner air for the people of Ontario, great-paying jobs—

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