Randall Denley: Carney’s genius is taking credit for projects already underway

Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Prime Minister Mark Carney. The Ford government's 2025 nuclear power strategy has become, more or less, the Carney government's 2026 nuclear power strategy. Photo by Adam Huras/Brunswick News/Postmedia; Blair Gable/Postmedia

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Some of the federal Liberal government’s future economic plans are a bit fanciful, but at last they have found one that will produce the predicted result.

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The new thinking is pure genius. Instead of imagining an unprecedented outburst of housing construction or a rapidly expanding Canadian defence industry, why not take credit for something that’s already happening?

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Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has just released a new national nuclear power strategy. What luck! The “new” strategy is remarkably similar to the plan Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government released last year. The main difference is that the federal strategy is a high-level document light on facts and figures, while Ontario’s is an action plan that’s already being implemented.

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Ontario is relying on nuclear to power its future. Construction on the first of four small modular nuclear reactors is already under way. The province is doing work on two new nuclear plants that could provide eight full-sized reactors.

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Ontario expects demand for electricity to grow by up to 90 per cent by 2050. Nuclear already provides about half of Ontario’s power with a generating capacity of about 12,000 megawatts. The Ontario plan anticipates adding up to 17,800 additional megawatts of nuclear power.

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Ontario’s plan is the result of years of detailed study about future power demand and the best way to meet it. By contrast, the federal plan looks like something created by AI. It even uses the same “energy superpower” catchphrase that Ontario employs.

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The Liberal government plan calls for up to 10 new reactors with seven “under development” by 2040. Given the vagueness of the term “under development,” that goal is a slam dunk since Ontario already has eight reactors in the preliminary development stages.

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While the new federal plan is cast as a national strategy it will include, at most, four provinces and rely almost entirely on Ontario. There is no consequential nuclear generation outside of Ontario. New Brunswick has the only other nuclear plant, at Point Lepreau.

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The federal government is touting the Candu reactor and hoping it will be chosen for new nuclear plants. This is where the federal and Ontario plans could diverge. The trouble with the venerable Candu is that there is currently no up-to-date full-sized version of the reactor ready for market.

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The federal government sold the reactor division of the Crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. in 2011, although the government still owns the Candu intellectual property.