The Financial Post reports in its Thursday, Nov. 24, edition that CANDU is the victim of a bizarre form of reverse protectionism that favours overseas supply chains and technologies over homegrown ones. The Post's guest columnist Chris Keefer writes that the federal government recently announced a 30 per cent "Clean Technology Investment Tax Credit" to incentivize spending on a range of clean-energy technologies, such as wind, solar and storage. Small modular nuclear reactors (SMRS) are also covered, a bold step for Ottawa, given its historically lukewarm positions on nuclear energy. CANDU technology, however, which underpins the entire existing Canadian nuclear sector, is left out of the tax credit pending further consideration.
This is bad news for Canadian climate action and the Canadian economy. CANDU, ranked as one of Canada's top 10 engineering achievements, has a proven record of deep and rapid decarbonization. The CANDU supply chain, stretching from the world's richest uranium mines in Saskatchewan to power plants in Ontario and New Brunswick, is 96 per cent made-in-Canada. That stands in sharp contrast to the technologies that are eligible for the investment tax credit.
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