First Nation Leads Fight Against Nuclear Dump

How a tiny band of millworkers, hunters and fishers are beating Canada’s nuclear industry in court.

Chief Lance Haymond. PHOTO: Isaac Peltz

By Isaac Peltz & Christopher Curtis

KEBAOWEK, QC — “You don’t build a nuclear waste dump 1.1 kilometres away from your drinking source.”

Chief Lance Haymond could make any number of arguments against the $26 billion project to store nuclear waste at Chalk River. 

He could tell you about the three bear dens and eastern wolf habitat that would be destroyed to make way for a mountain of radioactive materials. 

Or about how the federal body that’s supposed to regulate the nuclear industry in Canada is stacked with political appointees and industry insiders. After all, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) had to be reminded, twice, by federal court judges, that it failed in its duty to consult with First Nations whose treaty rights could be harmed by the project.

But in the end, Chief Haymond’s most compelling argument is a straightforward one: after having studied the proposal for a decade, his community believes there’s too great a risk of radiation contaminating the Ottawa River watershed and everyone who depends on it to live.

And that’s why the Kebaowek First Nation is making a stand.

“We’re a little community in middle-of-nowhere Quebec, taking on the Canadian government in a colonial court system,” said Haymond, who is finishing his fifth mandate as Chief of Kebaowek. “But this was too important not to fight.”

Tucked in the marshes of Abitibi, Kebaowek is an Anishinaabe community of hunters, fishers and millworkers that were living along the Ottawa River thousands of years before Europeans came to the continent. They’re in the midst of a years-long court battle with the federal government and Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) over their proposal to build a near-surface disposal facility for radioactive waste at CNL headquarters in Chalk River, Ont.

The project would see 1 million cubic meters of contaminated debris stored in a forest 1.1 kilometres away from Chalk River, a major entry point to the Ottawa River watershed. So far, two federal judges have ruled in favour of Kebaowek, ordering the CNSC to provide additional consultation to be compliant with Canadian law.

Through their civil action against CNL, this community has produced the only independent study of the dump’s impact on wildlife along the river. They also revealed gaps in the regulatory process that have called into question the CNSC’s impartiality. Haymond, and his colleague Councillor Justin Roy, have vowed to continue the fight to stop the dump site until it reaches the highest court of the land.

“At the end of the day, we’ll never be able to provide consent,” said Haymond, a former pulp and paper mill worker turned community leader. “Because you can have all the consultation in the world, but it’s still a crappy project, with the wrong technology, in the wrong location. 

The CNSC has ruled that the project doesn’t pose a significant threat to the watershed, but not everyone agrees.

Even the most optimistic scenario for the facility would see a filtration system release irradiated water into Perch Lake for the next 50 years. That water — which has a half-life of 12 years — would then flow into the Ottawa River, introducing low-level contamination into the diet of millions of Canadians. 

Experts at CNL, a government-owned, contractor-operated (GOCO) site, claim their plan will safely store the waste while allowing the Chalk River labs to pursue their work. For over 75 years, CNL has been the driving force behind Canada’s nuclear energy sector. They develop reactors that have been sold to China, India and South Korea, among other industrial giants. 

While CNL drives innovation and employs thousands in the region, it’s also home to 70 per cent of Canada’s nuclear waste. The question of what to do with that waste has pitted CNL and the CNSC against environmental activists for a decade now. Despite resistance from groups like Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County, the approval of the project seemed to be a given, requiring the developer to merely check off a few boxes — until Kebaowek got involved.

Chalk River is in the heart of Anishinaabe territory, at the intersection of traditional hunting and fishing grounds for communities in Quebec and Northeastern Ontario. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms imposes a “duty to consult” with Indigenous peoples on any project that might adversely affect treaty rights. 

Since the adoption of the Charter in 1982, this has only slowed projects down by imposing some additional consultation with Indigenous communities. But after Canada signed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) into law in 2021, everything changed. UNDRIP states that no storage or disposal of hazardous materials can occur on unceded Indigenous land without Indigenous consent. How that was to be interpreted had not been tested by our legal system.

Until now.

PHOTO: Isaac Peltz

After the CNSC greenlit the project last fall, Kebaowek took CNL to federal court, suing the company over its failure to live up to the principles outlined in UNDRIP. In February, citing UNDRIP, Justice Julie Blackhawk ordered Canada’s nuclear regulator to resume consultations with Kebaowek. 

“UNDRIP can no longer be treated as merely aspirational; it is a guiding framework that informs how the Crown must engage with Indigenous nations,” Blackhawk’s decision reads. The judge cautioned that while “more robust” consultation is needed, her decision doesn’t mean the Kebaowek First Nation holds a veto over the project. 

CNL announced it was appealing the decision last week, with its lawyers arguing that it followed the rules around consultation and rejecting the idea that it sped through the process.

With the case now inching towards the Supreme Court, Councillor Roy says that the Charter and UNDRIP have placed Kebaowek at the forefront of a new political reality. He says the success of their court battles shows how the rights of Indigenous people are being used to protect all life along the Ottawa River. 

Since Kebaowek began its campaign against the dump site, more than 140 Quebec and Ontario municipalities along the watershed have signed resolutions supporting the First Nation.

“With the way the Constitution works, we’re the tip of the spear,” Roy said. “Other communities, environmental groups, mayors, they’re lining up behind us, maybe even holding the spear, but we’re out in front.”

***

As she prepared to descend 60 feet underground into a contaminated reactor site, Mary-Lou Chevrier got a funny feeling in her stomach.

Chevrier was hired by Kebaowek First Nation to do surveys along the Ottawa River, interviewing Indigenous folks about whether the presence of a nuclear facility near the water had affected their hunting and fishing rights. As part of her work for the band council, she joined three other researchers in 2023 to get a tour of the Canadian Nuclear Laboratory (CNL) campus.

But no one had told her, or any of the other researchers, they’d be visiting a nuclear reactor that was decommissioned in 1987.

“So I said, ‘I’m looking into having a child in the future. I don’t feel I should proceed with this,’” said Chevrier, an Anishinaabe who used to fish on the Ottawa River before her work on the Chalk River file. “So I go to leave, the guide puts me through this scanner, and of course, all the bells and whistles go off and say I’m highly contaminated. 

“And the guide goes, ‘Oh my, this has never happened before.’”

Chevrier had stayed above ground, over 100 feet from the reactor core, but her clothes tested high for radon — a radioactive gas formed from decaying uranium. Radon can often be found naturally inside homes and even well waters, causing minimal side effects.

As her colleagues descended into the site, she feared they’d be exposed to much higher levels of radiation. But since there was no radio communication between the underground and surface teams — another red flag for Chevrier — she had no way to warn them.

As she waited anxiously for her colleagues, Rosanne Van Schie walked amid twisted metal and other debris contaminated by spent nuclear fuel in the bowels of one of Canada’s oldest reactors.

“It was like this giant octopus of metal,” said Van Schie, an ecologist who works with the Kebaowek First Nation. “You’d have our Geiger counters going off as we came across pockets of radiation. It was eerie.” 

When the team resurfaced, they were all contaminated.

“They said ‘It’s probably just on your clothing, we’ll wait an hour and test again.’ An hour later, we tested highly contaminated again,” said Van Schie. “When we went back to the lunchroom they said, ‘It’s probably radon. You have it in your basement.’” 

Both she and Chevrier remarked that the CNL employees didn’t seem to take their concerns seriously, telling them to relax and offering them some pastries. When 5 p.m. rolled around, they were ushered off the site because CNL needed to “lock up here and close the gate.”

***

Mary-Lou Chevrier PHOTO: Isaac Peltz

There is enough radioactive waste at CNL to fill 400 olympic-sizes swimming pools. 

Moving it offsite and deep into the Canadian Shield would take 50,000 truckloads and likely encounter resistance from every community along the way. To store it at Chalk River, CNL will clear 37 hectares of forest, blast off the side of a mountain with explosives, excavate sections of the cleared area and build 10 giant disposal cells to store the refuse. Because of the site’s proximity to the Ottawa River watershed, the cells will each have a 13-layer geomembrane to prevent leaking.

Until the Kebaowek First Nation won a court battle with CNL to access and study the site in 2023, there was no way of knowing the risk this facility posed to wildlife in the region. The company hadn’t done a comprehensive survey of the animal population within its 37-square-kilometre campus.

“If the (Anishinaabe) communities didn’t show up and speak out, the site would be pretty much blasted out by now,” Van Schie said. “It’s that simple.”

Canada owns the Chalk River site, but the day-to-day operations are overseen by a consortium of private companies that includes Atkins Realis (formerly SNC-Lavalin). Because of the sensitive nature of CNL’s research, access to the campus has always been limited. Now that it’s largely operated by contractors, access to the property is only given in the rarest of circumstances.

Van Schie said that when she was finally allowed to do a proper inventory of the wildlife at Chalk River, the results were astounding: three active bear dens, old-growth forest, and a pack of at-risk eastern wolves that roam between Ontario and Quebec during the winter to hunt deer. All of these species are vital to the Anishinaabe communities who’ve thrived along the river for countless generations.

“It means evicting deer, moose, wolves, whatever animals would be on the site,” said Chevrier, who is Anishinaabe. She added that she’s hurt at the disregard for what she called the Anishinaabe’s “brothers and sisters.” 

“That's how we relate to them.”

But the findings at CNL paled in comparison to what lies beneath the water’s surface.

The section of the Ottawa River watershed that flows along the Chalk River site hosts a sprawling network of caves. Inside these caves is the world’s largest population of hickorynut mussels, an endangered species that plays a vital role in filtering Ontario’s freshwater. Mussels thrive in these parts because their larvae latch onto lake sturgeon, which help them propagate throughout the caves.

“If anything were to happen to those mussels or that lake sturgeon, it would be a disaster,” Van Schie said. “There are (Anishinaabe) communities who still rely on their treaty rights — hunting and fishing — to sustain themselves. This puts that at risk.”

This apparent resistance to oversight at CNL has put it at odds with 10 of the 11 Anishinaabe communities in the region. They all use the river as a source of water, from showering to washing dishes, although years of pollution mean that some don't drink it or eat its fish. 

Only the Pikwakanagan First Nation, which lies closest to the facility, has a working relationship with CNL. Under their agreement, signed in 2023, the community would assist the lab in monitoring the facility’s impact on local wildlife. 

The deal also came with a nondisclosure agreement.

“We could have kissed the brass ring and taken all the bells and whistles, all the agreements, the money that these folks were throwing at us,” said Chief Haymond of Kebaowek First Nation. “They say, ‘Come be a part of the process, you’ll have a say here, a say there.’ But to be a part of that process, you have to give up so much. For us… we need to defend our territory.” 

As a part of the disposal facility, there will be a pipe that allows tritium water to come out of the disposal into the lake for a 50-year period until it’s sealed.

“There are millions of people who would be exposed to this health risk for 50 years while they’re dumping the waste.” Ole Hendrickson, member of the Concerned Citizens of Renfrew, and holder of a PhD in Ecology, said. 

The Ottawa River is the main water source for millions of people and connects directly to the St. Lawrence River, the water source for millions more. Although CNL claims that this radioactivity would be diluted too significantly to affect people negatively, Hendrickson disagrees.

“There would be potentially significant, or at least measurable health impacts,” he said. “And more problematic is if there was some kind of accident or spill (because of) an extreme weather event.” He cited concerns over climate change increasing the probability of storms or flooding that could disrupt the site and cause overflow into the watershed.

Chief Haymond and Hendrickson both say that some of the waste has a half-life of up to 1,500 years, and the site is only designed to last for a maximum of 500 years. If this is true, the site would disregard the International Atomic Energy Agency’s international safety standards for disposal of radioactive waste, a recommendation for radioactive waste disposal, and possibly Canadian Nuclear Safety Regulatory Documents. There is no publicly available study on the waste being held at CNL.

***

Rosanne Van Schie PHOTO: Isaac Peltz

While there seemed to be a consensus across all the interviews that there is a disregard for the basic principles of safety and oversight at CNL, Chief Haymond says he thinks he knows why.

“We’ll all criticize the Liberals and Justin Trudeau for bad management, but it was the Tories who sold the farm,” Chief Haymond said. “They’re the reason our nuclear waste is managed by a private company.” And this privatization, he said, is the core reason for mismanagement. 

In 2009, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that he would sell the Chalk River nuclear laboratories to privatized businesses amid soaring deficits. The labs were owned and overseen by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), a Crown corporation subject to far more transparency and Parliamentary oversight than its counterparts in the private sector. 

In 2011, the federal government sold AECL’s reactor division to SNC-Lavalin (now Atkins Realis), a company plagued by a slough of scandals, including but not limited to: bribery, breach of trust, fraud, and a failed plot to extricate the son of dictator Muammar Gaddafi from Libya during the Arab Spring.

CNL is now operated as a GOCO by Atkins Realis and a consortium that includes Jacobs Engineering and the American firm Fluor Corporation. The Crown receives royalties on some profit, but in the final sale of the reactor division to SNC-Lavalin, Canada wound up $60 million in the red. CNL did not return The Rover’s requests for comment.

Harper’s deregulation of nuclear energy was twofold. 

While privatizing a key sector of the industry, the prime minister also took aim at the CNSC, the regulatory commission. The commission had ordered the shutdown of a reactor at Chalk River in 2008 over safety concerns. When the CNSC refused an order from the Conservative government to restart the reactor to help with a global shortage in medical isotopes, Harper’s team fired the commission’s president, Linda Keen.

Around the time of Keen’s dismissal, a new player in the industry became a reliable supporter of the Conservative government: Rumina Velshi. 

Velshi, a nuclear engineer, was vice president at Ontario Power Generation before being tasked, in 2007, to head up the Darlington New Nuclear Project. The vision for Darlington was to invest billions in new nuclear reactors that would provide clean-burning energy for 1.2 million homes in Ontario.

Velshi also started making donations to the Conservative Party of Canada during her time in the nuclear industry. From 2009 to 2010, she donated 10 times to CPC candidates, totalling $1,700. Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver appointed her to the board of the CNSC in 2011.

While sitting on the board and acting as a neutral arbiter in the nuclear industry, Velshi was still involved in Conservative politics. She made an additional six contributions for a total of $3,000 after being appointed to the CNSC. Her son, Alykahn Velshi, also served as director of issues management for Harper during his last mandate in government.

In an email to The Rover, the CNSC maintains that its board members are bound to the “highest standards of ethics and conflict-of-interest guidelines.” Specifically, that they must abide by the Conflict of Interest Act, the Public Service Employment Act and the CNSC’s code of conduct. 

None of Velshi’s donations violate either law because they were made before she was appointed president of the CNSC by the Liberal government in 2018. Upon her appointment, Velshi became a senior official in the government and was therefore barred from any political activity outside of voting in a federal election.

One of her last acts before stepping down as CNSC president in 2023 was to approve the near-surface disposal facility at Chalk River.

Velshi did not respond to The Rover’s request for comment.

The mill near Kebaowek. PHOTO: Isaac Peltz

Most of the CNSC’s other board members have extensive experience in the nuclear industry. Given the highly technical nature of their work, this isn’t abnormal. But in some cases, the lines between regulator and industry appear blurred. 

Jerry Hopwood, one of seven board members to sign off on the Chalk River project, served as a vice president for marketing and development at Atkins Realis between 2011 and 2015. Atkins Realis is one of the contractors that stands to benefit from the approval of the nuclear dump project. 

Current CNSC president Pierre Tremblay worked for AECL for years, leading trade missions to China, South Korea and India to “create opportunities for Canadian nuclear companies and their supply chain,” according to his biography on the regulator’s website.

Though they worried the deck might be stacked against them, Chief Haymond and Councillor Roy pushed for an in-person hearing with the CNSC in August 2023. After years of court battles, the First Nation had finally put together its study of the risks of the Chalk River project and legal arguments against it. Given the enormity of the file, they insisted on meeting commissioners face to face. They were denied.

“We wanted to have it in person but they said ‘No, we’re doing it virtual.’ We said, ‘No, we would like to come back full circle,” Roy said. “‘You gave us an extra year to come back and get this right. We want to present to you, in person, what we were able to find.’ But still, it was a no.”

Even so, Kebaowek First Nation, its sister communities Kitigan Zibi, Barrière Lake and Wolf Lake First Nation gathered en masse for the hearing. They rented out the National Geographic Society’s building in downtown Ottawa, presenting a short history of the Anishinaabe’s presence along the Ottawa River and the findings of their year-long study of the Chalk River site.

Still, the commission refused to meet them in person, tuning in via Zoom.

“So we spent almost a full day presenting, Kebaowek presents all our findings, comes up to the end, you would think they would have some questions,” Roy said. “Not one question. Zero.” 

“They gave us a year to do a study and they didn’t ask us one question about it. They were just checking a box off a sheet. They weren’t really listening.”

***

The CNL may be beholden to the restrictions of the CNSC, but there are concerns over their willingness to take all the necessary precautions to make sure the waste is stored safely. 

They do not have a good track record with safety measures — Chalk River was the site of one of the first largely publicized nuclear disasters in 1952, where they contaminated 4.5 million litres of water. The two most recent accidents were in 2009 and 2011, respectively, with the 2011 accident leaking 73,000 litres of demineralized water.

As of writing, Canada is in the middle of an election, with both candidates promising massive resource development projects. Pierre Poilievre, the conservative leader, is proposing to force projects through regardless of the Charter’s obligations. Liberal Leader Mark Carney has given mild acknowledgement to how the charter might block his plans. Both have reiterated the importance of developing nuclear energy to meet Canada’s climate goals and reassert its energy sovereignty. Neither party responded to The Rover’s interview requests.

One party that wants nothing to do with this project is the Bloc québécois, which represents the riding where Kebaowek resides. 

“Quebec will not be the dumping ground for the rest of Canada,” said Sebastien Lémire of the Bloc québécois. He was unwilling to move from his position, citing Quebec’s much more stringent environmental regulations against pollution. 

However, not everyone is in agreement about the purported safety concerns. 

“Based on what I’ve read about the Chalk River project, it is safe scientifically,” Raphael Guasch, Doctoral researcher in nuclear engineering, said. As he read through the technical details of the proposed site, he was not in agreement that there was a potential problem. “A 1,000 year half life, relative to radioactive material, isn’t that long.” 

A spokesperson for the CNSC said the regulator sees no problems with the project.

CNL Headquarters in Chalk River, Ont. PHOTO: Isaac Peltz

“The CNSC has a mature and well-established nuclear regulatory framework that does an effective job in protecting the health, safety and security of Canadians,” it said in a statement. Despite that, the court sided with Kebaowek.

In her ruling, Justice Blackhawk used the strongest terms possible to set a precedent, but more challenging legal cases are to come, and more precedents will be set as the case makes its way through the courts. 

Chief Haymond and Councillor Roy are exhausted. Ten years ago, when they took on this file, they didn’t expect it to last so long and be so significant. But now that they’re here, they have no intention of walking away until the fight is over. 

Haymond sighed as he spoke. The pulp and paper mill that employs many in the community recently shut down a portion of its factory and laid off hundreds of employees. 

“This pulp and paper mill … won’t be here forever,” Haymond said. “It provides us with well-paid jobs and financial security, it’s why there are so many non-Native people living in the area. But one day that mill will be gone. One day, the labs at Chalk River will be gone. And even after they’re gone, we’ll still be here.” 

For Haymond, and the Kebaowek community, they’ll fight this until the end — win or lose.

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