Request for a Full Federal Impact Assessment, Including Transportation and Indigenous Rights

As a mother, I am deeply concerned about decisions that carry long-term and intergenerational risks. For this reason, I strongly support the call for a full federal impact assessment of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s proposed high-level radioactive waste project.

Excluding transportation from the scope of the impact assessment is unacceptable. Transportation is not a peripheral issue; it is a core component of the project’s overall risk profile. Removing it from assessment would eliminate public review of accident risks, routing decisions, cumulative exposure, and emergency preparedness, and would deny hundreds of communities along potential transportation corridors any meaningful opportunity to understand, prepare for, or weigh in on the risks they and their children may face.

The proposal to site Canada’s most long-lived radioactive waste in Northwestern Ontario is also deeply concerning because it fails to adequately address Indigenous rights and downstream risks. Communities and ecosystems located downstream from the proposed deep geological repository could experience long-term impacts that extend well beyond a single generation, yet these risks are not being transparently or comprehensively assessed. This approach undermines public trust and falls short of the level of care required for decisions with irreversible and intergenerational consequences.

A credible impact assessment must uphold Indigenous rights, including free, prior, and informed consent, as affirmed in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and required under Canadian law. It must also reflect principles of environmental justice by ensuring that all potentially affected communities, including those along transportation routes, are informed, consulted, and able to participate meaningfully in decision-making.

I urge the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada to require a federal impact assessment for this project, to include nuclear waste transportation routes and risks within the project scope, to protect Indigenous rights, and to ensure that environmental justice, public accountability, and the well-being of future generations are central to this process.