Canada's Debate

To the surprise of nobody, the Federal government is looking to sell AECL, one of the country’s last remaining profitable Crown Corporations.

The Harper government plans to put Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.’s nuclear reactor business up for sale.

It’s part of a major restructuring that will also mean private-sector management for AECL’s Chalk River research facility.

AECL is in the midst of two major crises; the continued disaster which is the production of medical Isotopes, and the legitimate possibility that shaken Canadian clients (the Ontario government) will opt for the more expensive, foreign, and actually reliable service of international vendors instead of its own… and is just starting to get clear of the fallout from the MAPLE reactor fiasco.

AECL is clearly an organization in trouble, and at first glance you could almost make the case that the government is justified in dumping them… That is of course if you accept the familiar and unproven Conservative proviso that the private sector is always more efficient than the public one. The fact is that the people making this decision are the same ones who deregulated the energy sector in Ontario, and that should give us pause at the very least. The parallels don’t end there either: the government has been desperately trying to minimize the impact of its current budgeting issues and maintain their Conservative bona fides, and the sale of a crown corporation helps both; much like the Tories in Ontario in the early part of this decade.

There are several ways to explain the government’s decision to try and unload AECL: trying to distance itself from a disfunctional organization, trying to play small-government Conservative, raising capital quickly, trying to limit the PR damage of future management calamities, or perhaps they genuinely believe that this change is necessary for AECL to survive (although this is less likely, and also the least likely to have the desired outcome).

The reality is that this move makes little economic sense at a time when the economy is the overriding concern of any and all Canadians; and that is all you need to know about this issue, and the Harper Conservatives.