Monday, April 2, 2012 y WATERLOO REGION RECORD y A3Canada

Swans and Chinese geese make their way from their winter home to the Avon River during the annual Swan Parade in Stratford Sunday.Thousands of spectators lined the route in the rain to see the spring ritual.

Avon callingDAVE CHIDLEY, THE CANADIAN PRESS

TORONTO — Middle-class familiesmust either save more for their retire-ment, or risk suffering a big shock intheir golden years.

The Ontario government plans torepeat that warning over and overagain during the coming months asOttawa raises the eligible age for oldage security to 67, postponing existingbenefits for two years.

Few Canadians are saving enoughmoney for their retirement years,which will put more pressure on theirfamilies and provincial health andwelfare budgets once they reach oldage, Ontario Finance MinisterDwight Duncan said.

“I don’t think we are taking thisseriously enough as a society,” hesaid. “I don’t just mean the federalgovernment.”

The federal Conservatives an-nounced in Thursday’s budget thatthey will start making the adjust-ments in 2023 and phase them in grad-ually over six years. That means any-one younger than age 54 — includingOntario’s 53-year-old finance minister— will need to seriously reconsiderhow they’re planning for their retire-ment.

It will affect the guaranteed in-come supplement, veterans’ benefits,aboriginal benefits, survivors’ allow-ances and especially the way manycompanies have set up their employ-ees’ pension plans.

Many people don’t realize howexpensive their post-retirement yearsmay be, or how much of a toll it willtake on their own finances to providecare for a loved one. Duncan’s parentspaid $4,000 a month to be in a publiccontinuing care facility in the lastyears of their lives, he said.

“Most Canadians who haven’t gonethrough this themselves or with fami-ly have no idea of the cost of this.”

“This society is getting older. Thissociety is going to live longer. De-mands on health care, social welfareare going to become much greater.And this signals a very significantchange in post-retirement income.”

The federal Tories have pushed theidea of pooled retirement pensionplans as voluntary savings vehiclesfor workers who don’t have access toconventional pension plans throughtheir jobs, such as the self-employed.PRPPs would essentially be defined-contribution plans managed by largefinancial institutions, but left-leaningcritics complain they’re little morethan “glorified RRSPs.”

Ontario reignites pension debate After Ottawa outlineschanges to old-agesecurity, CPP theconversation of day

Maria Babbage

The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — Enough nuclear waste to fillmore than 100 Olympic-sized swimming poolscould be buried in an underground chambernear the Ottawa River, upstream from Parlia-ment Hill and about a million residents of thenation’s capital.

The federal government is eyeing the siteof the Chalk River nuclear reactor, 160 kilo-metres northwest of Ottawa, as a radioactivewaste site.

Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. says 267,000cubic metres of low- and medium-grade nu-clear waste is now stored above-ground insteel containers at the Chalk River site. Theamount of radioactive material is expected togrow to 360,000 cubic metres by 2100. That’senough debris to fill 106 Olympic swimmingpools now, and 144 by the end of the century.

Government-owned AECL is looking atbuilding an enormous underground reposito-ry to bury the detritus of six decades of nucle-ar testing at the Chalk River site. The cavern-ous compound would consist of shafts, accesstunnels and as many as 223 storage rooms forthe radioactive waste.

A document posted recently on a websitethat advertises government contracts out-lines the proposal.

“Atomic Energy of Canada Limited isinvestigating the suitability of the ChalkRiver laboratories site for hosting a geologicwaste management facility as part of theNuclear Legacy Liabilities Program fundedthrough Natural Resources Canada,” thedocument says.

“The (geologic waste management facil-ity) is envisioned to be an underground engi-

neered-geological repository consisting ofshafts, access tunnels and emplacement cav-erns located at a nominal depth of 500 to 1,000metres in the bedrock at the (Chalk Riverlaboratories) site.”

AECL began looking at the Chalk Riversite as a nuclear burial ground six years ago.While the government has not yet decidedwhere to bury the radioactive waste, ChalkRiver holds promise.

“No features have been found to disqualifythe bedrock of the Chalk River laboratoriessite from hosting a GWMF,” the documentsays. “The bedrock of the Chalk River lab-oratories site below a depth of 400 to 500 me-tres appears to have a good potential to safelyhost a GWMF for Chalk River laboratories’(low- and intermediate-level radioactivewaste) although the work to date is prematurein nature.”

Ottawa Riverkeeper, a local conservationgroup, meets regularly with AECL to talkabout the health and safety of the waterway.The group’s executive director, MeredithBrown, said there is always some chanceradioactive material could leak into the Otta-wa River.

“There’s always a chance (of a leak). Iguess it depends largely on how they build it,right? I mean, obviously they’re going to haveto built it to handle any seismic activity in thearea. I take it that they know what they’redoing in that respect.”

The proposed site is in the Western Quebecseismic zone, an earthquake belt that sur-rounds the Ottawa Valley from Montreal tothe town of Temiscaming, Que.

The Canadian Press

Chalk River eyed as sitefor radioactive waste Steve Rennie

REGINA — Scientists will meet inCalgary this week to completework on what is being touted asthe world’s first standard for theunderground storage of carbondioxide.

The Regina-based Internation-al Performance Assessment Cen-tre for Geologic Storage of CarbonDioxide has been working with theCanadian Standards Associationon carbon capture rules since2009.

IPAC-CO2 chief executive Car-men Dybwad says the standardcovers what needs to be in placewhen selecting a site to store car-bon dioxide emissions under-ground.

“It takes a look at all of the risksthat might occur at every one ofthose stages,” said Dybwad.

“And when we talk about a risk,it would be a risk that youwouldn’t have containment, thatsomehow the carbon dioxidewould get out, that it wouldn’t besafe or it wouldn’t be permanent.”

Carbon capture and storagehas been touted as a high-tech wayto help with the world’s carbonproblems, but has been panned asexpensive and unproven. Criticssay not enough is known about theconsequences of burying carbondioxide.

For places like Saskatchewan,the hope is that carbon captureand storage could be a solution foremissions from the coal-firedpower plants that are the primarysource of energy in the province.SaskPower is testing carbon cap-ture technology.

Dybwad believes it could be agood tool to help the environmentin the future.

“But you can’t do it just every-where. It has to be the right site,”she said.

Following the standards wouldnot be mandatory because, asDybwad points out, they won’t belaws.

“You can either abide by it ornot abide by it and nobody’s goingto throw you in jail if don’t,” shesaid.

Firststandardfor carboncapture to be set Jennifer Graham

The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — It’s being billedas a chance for North Amer-ican leaders to discuss jobs,security and disaster assis-tance, but the elephant in theRose Garden on Monday justmight be drug policy.

Prime Minister StephenHarper will spend threehours with U.S. PresidentBarack Obama and MexicanPresident Felipe Calderon atthe White House for the sixthgathering of what was oncecalled the Three Amigossummit.

There’s been rather lessbrotherly love of late and thethree leaders haven’t met enmasse since August 2009,

while bilateral U.S.-Canadaand Mexico-U.S. issues havetaken precedence.

A trilateral meeting onthe sidelines of an APECsummit last November inHonolulu was cancelledwhen Calderon scrubbed hisattendance due to the deathof a cabinet minister in ahelicopter crash.

Which brings us to Mon-day’s meeting in Washington— just two weeks beforeanother summit where thethree amigos might havepiggybacked this chat.

The Summit of the Amer-icas, which takes place inCartagena, Colombia, April14-15, merited only a passingmention in a release from the

Prime Minister’s Office.“Canada remains commit-

ted to working with ourNorth American partners toaddress security challengesand to deepening our co-operation in support ofneighbours in Central Amer-ica,” Harper spokespersonAndrew MacDougall said ina release.

Left unsaid was that thosesecurity challenges relatelargely to a violent and esca-lating drug war, and thatsome leaders in CentralAmerica are now openlyquestioning three decades ofpublic policy.

Harper, Obama, Calderonto meet today at White House Bruce Cheadle

The Canadian Press