"Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked?"
Edward Thurlow 1781-1829


The West Beach 1955, an unhealthy place to go even then. The old Beach had lain for years on the Centre Pier under a plastic cover
enlarge the image

Nearly all the land south of the viaducts, from the river to the left side of this picture, is under occupation by a reckless and greedy industry. More public land to the left of the picture has been ceded by subservient town councils.
While many people profess a love for Port Hope, it continually suffers from the silence of its friends who've meekly watched as so much of our heritage has been taken away from us.

Not the least of our losses to the nuclear industry has been our good name.
from The Canadian Album: Men of Canada 1896
'Having enjoyed for years the reputation of being the prettiest and most healthy town in Canada, it is natural that Port Hope should become popular as a summer resort. During the summer months many visitors are entertained in the town, for whom ample sports and amusements are provided. The beautiful sandy beach affords a charming and safe place for bathing...'

Mayor Linda Thompson, in a newspaper interview on March 27, 2012 was quoted as saying:
"Councils of the past have been beat up because nobody wants to live here; everybody went to Cobourg."
If what she said is true, the likely cause would be the nuclear industry's decision to make Port Hope and area its toxic waste dump, in spite of which, successive mayors have declared the grim entity a 'good corporate citizen.'


Gordon Edwards, the president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, an environmental group in Montreal, said that contamination of the lake had been assumed, given the plant's age, history and location. "There's a long history of contamination at Port Hope," he said. "The whole siting of this refinery is absurd. It's right in the centre of town, it's on a flood plain and right on the lakefront."

Ralph Nader: 'Nuclear energy is unnecessary, uninsurable, uneconomic, unevacuable and most importantly, unsafe. The fact that it continues to exist at all is a result of a ferocious lobby, enlisting the autocratic power of government, that will not admit that its product is unfit for use in the modern world.'

Harvey Wasserman: 'As the reactor industry's lethal isotopes gut our ecosystems, from bottom to top, our tolerance for these 'safe doses' falls to zero. We may not fall over dead from them immediately, but the larger biospheric clock is ticking.'

Dr John Gofman, former chief medical officer of the US Atomic Energy Commission, said that nuclear power is an instrument of 'premeditated mass murder.'


from The Evening Guide  June 25, 1925
LETS GO! OLD TIME DANCE AT the Beach Pavilion on Friday evening, June 26th., at 8:30. Enjoy a good dance at the beach. Good floor. Good music. Admission 50c tax included.

from The Evening Guide  Saturday, May 18, 1929
The Board of Management of the Port Hope Parks Commission have a real pleasure resort for the people of Port Hope. The town is fortunate in having an excellent beach for bathing, and the building, formerly used as a dance pavilion, will be devoted to the use of the public. A capable official will be placed in charge and in case of rain, picnic parties will be able to use the pavilion. Tables and hot water will be provided and an up-to-date canteen will be opened.
The local beach is a very popular spot, especially in mid-summer and it is believed that a great many will take advantage of the facilities this year.

from The Evening Guide  July 30, 1932
ELDORADO STARTS PLANT TO REFINE RADIUM HERE
By the simple signing of a lease, Port Hope has acquired new standing in the scheme of things as the centre of an industry destined to bring incalculable benefit to suffering humanity.
Following months of careful investigation of various locations, officials of Eldorado Gold Mines, Ltd. have taken over the plant on John Street formerly occupied by the Morrow Seed Company and are gathering equipment for installation of the first commercial-scale radium extraction plant in Canada, Gilbert LaBine, managing director, announced Friday.
The plant, situated on the harbour, includes a two-storey building of steel and brick construction, warehouse, heating plant and garage, and bins suitable for the storage of ore and chemicals.
Railway sidings connect with the main lines of both Canadian National and Canadian Pacific and good harbour and dockage facilities are available.

West Beach is no longer a popular spot. Nuclear industry local PR flack, mockingly wonders why anyone would want a beach here
 click an image to enlarge. click to shrink

Because Port Hope is situated primarily in a river valley, the desirable waterfront area between the cliffs on either side is small, most of it west of the river. The nuclear industry now covers it like a fungus, virtually cutting off the town from the lake.
Streets that once ran on the south side of the viaducts and the houses that stood on them, expropriated under threat of eminent domain, have been deleted. Nobody lives there anymore.
A long standing neighbourhood of taxpaying homeowners was blotted out for the benefit of a grasping corporation.

The nuclear industry has made the West Beach a sad and dreary wasteland where people go to empty their dogs.
The tiny East Beach has been extended with sand from the bottom of the contaminated harbour.

There are differing views of the radioactive (euphemism - historic) waste problem. Only the sanctioned view is tolerated.

from Northumberland Today  Tuesday, March 27, 2012
by Ted Amsden
"We said a couple of years ago when we had those communication hits (a visit by anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott and articles in national media) that we weren't going to allow information to go unchallenged," she [Mayor Linda Thompson] said.

Dissenting voices are cried down and free speech restricted when the official Pollyannaish feel-good narrative is questioned.
Dr Helen Caldicott was kept from speaking in Port Hope in 2010, instead she was forced to give her talk in Oshawa:
"The mayor said I was not to speak in Port Hope. The inn [The Carlyle] where I was staying prevented me from staying there, and we couldn't have a fancy dinner that the people had set up. The church [St Mark's] that was going to sponsor me would not host me."


Dr Helen Caldicott's forbidden talk of Nov 16, 2010  (57 minutes)

from Northumberland News  Nov 18, 2010
PORT HOPE PONDERS LEGAL ACTION AGAINST LOCAL ANTI-NUKE GROUPS
by Bill Tremblay
Dr Helen Caldicott talks about Port Hope's nuclear industry during a press conference held Tuesday, Nov 16.

PORT HOPE - After a week of provocative commentary from anti-nuclear activist Dr Helen Caldicott, the Municipality of Port Hope may take legal action.
"We all know a fight's a fight, and you can defend and you can defend, but after a while you have to fight back," Deputy Mayor Lees said told council members Tuesday night.

Despite her strong convictions against the nuclear industry, the federal government, and most recently, calling Port Hope a toxic time bomb because of low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) buried in the community, Dr Caldicott said at a press conference on Tuesday that she has never faced any legal action.

"I say things that people are often afraid to say," she said. "In fact, you know, if someone wants to charge me with something, I'd welcome it."

But Deputy Mayor Lees is not interested in Dr Caldicott. Instead he wants to go after those who made her recent visit possible, and gave her the publicity that has resulted in a new nation-wide belief that Port Hope is unfit for habitation.

Dr Caldicott's visit was arranged by Families Against Radiation Exposure (FARE) and Friends of the Port Hope Cleanup, after she was quoted over a year ago saying the community is unsafe because of its exposure to LLRW. Her comments, repeated in the Toronto Star last week, received national media attention, much to the shock of the community, including FARE member Sanford Haskill.
"We did not ask for her to make those comments," said Mr Haskill.

Deputy Mayor Lees estimates that Port Hope has lost millions of dollars in retail sales, real estate transactions, as a result of the actions of both groups, and certain other individuals whom he would not name.
"And you know, it's strategically being done," he said.
Every November for the past three years, right before the busiest time of year for downtown merchants, he said the same organizations start a nation-wide blitz against Port Hope's nuclear industry.

"I agree with freedom of speech, but this is interfering with people's livelihoods, their incomes, and their retail businesses," he said. "It's affecting the whole municipality, and I think as a council we owe it to the majority of people in this municipality to look at seeking a legal opinion."

Although Mayor Linda Thompson was concerned about the optics of using taxpayers' dollars to fight their own citizens, she agreed the negative publicity is damaging.
"It is frustrating and I know I've had many residents suggesting the same thing who are looking at it themselves as doing something," said Mayor Thompson.

Following her visit, Dr Caldicott maintained that Port Hope is dangerous. In fact, she said with Cameco's uranium conversion facility operating on Lake Ontario, there is no other place on earth more dangerous to human health.
"I can't think of one," she said, insisting residents leave the municipality en masse, and on the government's dime.

"The town should be moved to a safe site," she said. "Beautiful new houses would be built. You can't tell me (the federal government) can't afford it, because they can. They're the ones I'm really annoyed with. They have had no right to pollute your beautiful little town like this. It's a tragedy."

Pointing in the direction of Cameco from the living room of Port Hope resident Stephen Smith's house where the press conference was held, she said, "You don't know how much water they're taking out of your lake per day, you don't know how much is being re-entered into the lake, you don't know if it's polluted or not, and with what," she said. "I was very disturbed to see fishermen fishing in the harbour. That spot should be absolutely prohibited for fishing."

The uranium Cameco releases into the air is also a concern for Dr Caldicott. Not only did she call the company "very secretive," she described Cameco as a "bomb factory," and suggested residents demand the information they have a right to know.
"It's in your community, and this is a democracy. And you must not be lied to," she said. "What they are doing is making rods for nuclear power plants from uranium, and that goes all around the world," she said. "Every country that has a nuclear power plant can make a bomb. So, in fact, that's part of the process in the proliferation of nuclear weapons."

Cameco spokesperson Doug Prendergast said he has many issues with Dr Caldicott's statements.
"She clearly did little research into Port Hope or Cameco before she made comments about the town or the company," he said.

Mr Prendergast is primarily opposed to her assertion that the company is secretive.
"Our information is readily available. We pride ourselves on being good corporate citizens, as well as being open and transparent," he said. "I'm not quite certain on what basis she's calling us secretive."
Mr Prendergast pointed out that Cameco only sells uranium for peaceful purposes for the generation of clean electricity.


Used to catch tadpoles near this spot on the beach

THE CAMECO HEARINGS: TWO VIEWS OF WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
from The Crier  October 21, 1999  page 9
The two worlds of Port Hope still aren't on the same page
by Penny Sanger
The two worlds of Port Hope politely stepped around each other in front of the Atomic Energy Control Board at its meeting in the Legion hall on Oct. 7. After citizens described for board members the acute health problems that plague families exposed to toxic emissions from Cameco (formerly Eldorado Nuclear Ltd.), a representative of the Canadian Nuclear Workers Council took the mike to say their workers couldn't understand what all the fuss was about.

"We only see these people every couple of years at these hearings," he said. Questioned by board member Yves Giroux about whether his union, the United Steelworkers of America, had done its own research into the health of past members, given the deaths, cancers and related diseases reported over the years, he said he was not aware of any such research or indeed if any health records were held by the union. United Steelworkers is especially proud of its health and safety standards, he maintained.

But Chris Conti of Port Hope's Environmental Advisory Committee spoke of soil contaminated with arsenic, lead and mercury in the area around Cameco, and poor air quality with no enforceable standards for uranium emissions. He said that 20 to 30 kilos of uranium particulate per month were being emitted from the Cameco stacks.

Faye More of the Community Health Concerns Committee echoed his concerns, noting the lack of any buffer zone around the plant. "Surely," she suggested, "we're seeing a pattern here?"

Other intervenors told their stories of growing up in the shadow of the plant.

Pat [Croft] McMillan's family moved to a house on south John Street, right across from the Eldorado plant, when she was a child. She remembers the thick yellow smoke that billowed out from the stacks: "We played in the park, on the beach and along the shore... and our eyes would sting. We thought it was normal to have to rub them." She and her siblings also ate her father's home-grown vegetables, "his pride and joy... We just wiped the dust off and ate them unwashed." She's had a brain aneurysm and her sons have a range of health problems, including severe asthma, allergies and Tourette's syndrome.

Pat Lawson said she thought these people represent the tip of an iceberg. Not everyone is willing to go public with their personal tragedies. She urged the board to act on a proposal submitted three-and-a-half years ago from the Port Hope Community Health Concerns group for a wide-ranging epidemiological health survey. It would start by studying the health of people most exposed to the effects of contaminants when emissions were much higher than they are now.

If cause and effect is established between the contaminants and their health, a much larger survey would take place. Every household would be screened.

In a day of carefully shrouded discussion, conducted in the generalities favoured by AECB staff, concrete commitments were as scarce as hen's teeth. Only a report on soil monitoring from David McLaughlin of the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, whose work has continued since 1973, delivered clearly practical advances. By sinking pots of clean earth in areas near the plant, he is tracking the amount and movement of certain contaminants.

The verdict on whether Cameco will have its license renewed, and for how long (one of the stated reasons for the meeting), will have to wait. Probably not for five years as Cameco wants, more likely two.

No, its license will not be suspended until its toxic emissions are cleaned up, as some of those intervenors with deadly sickness in their families want. But there will be a health study, of sorts. How soon, how wide-ranging and therefore how effective the study will be, seems, in the wake of the board meeting, to depend on the energy and skill of the Port Hope people who have been lobbying for one so reasonably and for so long.

Penny Sanger grew up in Port Hope, and was the author of 'Blind Faith': The nuclear industry in a small town (McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1981), a study of Eldorado's radioactive waste disposal in Port Hope.


The southern end of John Street before the withering hand of the nuclear industry was laid on Port Hope, showing a part of the community that was poisoned, confiscated, obliterated, and erased from the collective memory

from The Crier  October 21, 1999  page 9
TOO MANY DEATHS IN THE FAMILY
Why one woman chose to speak up
by Sophie Kneisel
Silence has its price, and long-time residents of Port Hope may find that it's considerably higher than the cost of raising their voices.
When Dorothy Hosking was on the verge of suing Eldorado Nuclear for what doctors believed was its part in causing her father's death, her mother and one of her brothers persuaded her to back down.
Her mother said "People in Port Hope are narrow-minded and they will say that we are trying to get money off Dad's death."

Hosking's brother, John [Harwood], was driving a CP express truck in town at the time. "He had to go in there [Eldorado Nuclear] with packages every day. He said 'If you do this, they will give all this business to CN, and I'll be out of a job.'"

Clearly it takes courage and conviction to describe your family's history to a panel of experts in the nuclear field with, ultimately, your entire hometown as an audience. During a 20-year period, four of seven members of the Harwood family have died; two of the remaining three are living with cancer.

But it wasn't her own family's tragedies that prompted Hosking to speak at the Oct. 7 Atomic Energy Control Board licensing hearing. It was the idea that a second generation of townspeople now appeared to be suffering the effects of living under the plume from the nuclear fuel refinery's smoke stack and in close proximity to radioactive waste (literally in their back yards in some cases).

After 19 years of silence, she was convinced to speak by Pat Lawson, who is well-known for her long struggle to get some answers about what living with low-level radiation is doing to people of the town. "Do you know about my Molly? She's dying," Lawson said. She pleaded with Hosking to "come out of the woodwork and for God's sake say something" at the upcoming AECB hearing.

"When she told me about Molly, I thought, okay, this is hitting too close to home," Hosking says. "We've lost too many young people. We're going to be without a generation if we don't watch it," she adds, explaining that Molly has no children because she was unable to carry a fetus to full term. And after many miscarriages, Hosking's only child, Anne-Marie, now has three healthy boys. Each of them was born about three months premature.

When Hosking's youngest brother, George, died at 39 of a heart attack brought on by other medical problems, her mother would not allow an autopsy. The family was deeply saddened, but had no idea this was to be the first in a series of tragedies.
Three years later, in 1980, Hosking's father died a sudden but "horrific" death from lung cancer.

"When the pathology report came out, the two doctors involved said that they would stand behind us (if we decided to sue) because they thought it was definitely caused by radon gas," Hosking says.

The century home where Albertand Margaret Harwood brought up their five children had a long history with radon gas. Just across the street was a bank that required stabilizing. Eldorado had provided fill in the form of waste from the process of extracting radium from ore.
This same material was dumped at many sites around town, particularly ravines, and was often used as fill for construction projects big and small, the best-known of which is St. Mary's School.

The Harwood's house at 14 Caldwell St. was also located in the path of the plume from the refinery's smoke stack. High radon levels on the outside of the house and in the basement prompted Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (the government body then in charge of Eldorado Nuclear, the Crown corporation that has since been purchased by Cameco, a private company) to dig all around the foundations four separate times between 1976 and 1980, Hosking says.


The desolated West Beach once was 'a charming and safe place for bathing,' 'a very popular spot'

The damage to the house and yards was such that the town's chief building inspector pronounced it unsafe due to its structural problems. "However, it is not the property damage that is our main concern," Hosking wrote to Atomic Energy of Canada Limited in 1980. "It is the personal damage that has taken place during these four years... nobody needs the aggravation that has been caused to our parents. "Dad has lung cancer, Mother has been treated throughout the whole ordeal for her nerves. One daughter has cancer, one son has a brain tumor... what have the rest of us got? Should we have been tested and why has this not been suggested?"

Hosking's father died a week after this letter was written. In response to the letter, an AECL representative phoned to point out that her father had signed a contract to have the work done, and that it was only done as a courtesy. "They 'didn't have to do it.' And he said radon levels in the house were never high enough to cause lung cancer."
The work was finally completed in 1980, but AECL put the radon gas monitors back on the house in 1981.

"We sold that house for $50,000," Hosking says. "It had been appraised, when Mum was alive, for $100,000. But who cared? I was bloody glad to be rid of it." Hosking made sure the new owners were aware of the building's history, but she isn't sure if subsequent purchasers were as well informed.

This is the kind of thing that really worries her, and this is the issue over which she feels the people of Port Hope are owed some compensation. She's certainly not speaking up to gain financially. If nothing else, dealing with the Crown corporation and government agencies during the four years of digging around her parents' house has taught her that this would not be, in any sense, easy money.

Like many other long-time residents, both silent and outspoken, she would like a health study to be carried out. In August 1981, such a study was announced for Port Hope. "This is what everybody wanted," she says. (Eighteen years later, it still is.)
[Hasn't happened yet, and is not likely to.]

It's a "catch-22" situation. There is no scientific proof that exposure to low-level radiation — whether in the form of emissions from the smoke stack of a uranium refinery, radon gas seeping out of contaminated fill into basements or radioactive material absorbed by plants in vegetable gardens causes cancer, miscarriages and other health problems. Without such proof, the federal government, which regulates the atomic energy industry, cannot compensate those who may have been affected. But for years that same government has put off conducting the study of the effects of 60 years of low-level radiation in Port Hope's environment on its residents.

At the AECB open house, held the night before the hearings, a board representative asked Hosking if she was bitter. "No," she said. "You can't live like that."
Still, she remembers that when her father was dying, he wrote her a note that said, essentially, "fight." "I always had the feeling at the back of my mind, he wants me to fight the Eldorado. I should have done it. And now I feel like I'm doing the right thing.

"I hope nobody gets the wrong impression. I don't want to see Eldorado (Cameco) leave Port Hope. Because there's nobody else would take them anyway. But that stuff has to be monitored, for the rest of... forever.
"But it's here, and we've learned to live with it."

Perhaps, but no longer in silence.


Love for sale. World's oldest profession

from The Crier  October 21, 1999  page 9
AECB certainly wasn't any "Truth Squad" but it had its moments
by Denis Smith
Canadians trust their governments. Sometimes that trust is not deserved. But apart from testimony to the aboriginal commission in the early 1990s, the country has yet to experience anything like the revelations of official crime and irresponsibility offered at hearings of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Yet there were long moments on Oct. 7, during the Atomic Energy Control Board's re-licensing hearing for Port Hope's uranium conversion plant, when echoes of the South African truth commission filled the air. The issue was the cumulative effects on the health of Port Hope residents from decades of activity at the uranium refinery that scars the town's waterfront — and all those years of federal indifference. If the agenda had followed the traditional pattern of AECB licensing hearings, there would have been technical evidence from Cameco Corporation about the safety of its operations, confirmation of Cameco's case by a meek AECB staff, grateful noises from members of the licensing board, and automatic renewal of the plant's license. The concern of the Control Board has always been to look confidently to the future in a world of nuclear bombs and nuclear power.

That is the way it has been since the Atomic Energy Control Board was created to supervise the nuclear industry in 1946.

Cameco felt so confident about its prospects in 1999 that it asked the board for a five-year operating license rather than the normal two-year term. Why bother with unnecessary public hearings if everything is going so well?

But everything did not go so well on Oct. 7. Cameco, which has owned the uranium plant only since 1988, was unexpectedly buffeted by waves of indignation and personal anguish directed as much at the Atomic Energy Control Board as at the uranium company itself.

The board heard testimony from six brave individuals, two local advisory committees and one international institute of public health asserting that the federal government and the licensing agency have, for decades, been grossly negligent in informing themselves about and protecting local health within range of the conversion plant.

Board members listened intently to moving accounts of illness and death among families living close to the harbour. They seemed surprised to discover (from their own staff) that previous incarnations of the Control Board had shown no concern for public health around the Eldorado refinery until 1969 — and that present AECB staff have been unable to locate any health records gathered by the agency from Eldorado and Cameco since that time.

The personal evidence offered at the hearing was historical and anecdotal rather than "scientific." But the testimony of shattered and destroyed lives points to the need for thorough exposure of what has happened to Port Hope in 60 years of dangerous industrial activity along the waterfront.

That is what the witnesses asked from the AECB. That is what the community deserves from a national government which owned and supervised the entire radium and uranium industry from 1943 onwards.

The intervenors requested that Cameco's operating license be withheld until after full environmental and health studies of the plant have been completed. Given the sorry record of federal supervision over 50 years, and continuing public ignorance about its effects, the request seems reasonable. We may learn in December whether the AECB has at last managed to liberate itself from unthinking subordination to the nuclear industry.


from johnwwarnock.blogspot   June 1, 2013
In 1999 Cameco created a subsidiary, Cameco Europe Ltd., and located it in Zug, Switzerland. Switzerland is well known as one of the favourite low tax hosts for corporations seeking to avoid paying normal corporate tax rates. Cameco 'sells' the uranium it extracts in Saskatchewan to Cameco Europe at the very low prices that were set in 1999. Cameco Europe then sells the uranium at the market price. CRA reports that Cameco is allocating its profits to Cameco Europe and recording very low profits for its operations in Saskatchewan.

The Ontario media reports that over the past ten years Cameco has avoided reporting income of $4.9 billion which allowed it to save $1.4 billion in federal corporate taxes. The corporate tax rate in Switzerland is 5% compared to 27% in Canada.

The Globe and Mail (May 1, 2013) reports that a study of Cameco by Veritas Research Corporation concluded that Cameco in Saskatchewan 'performed virtually all operating functions' for Cameco Europe. They concluded that all of Cameco Europe's profits should have been declared in Canada and taxed at Canadian levels.


"CAMECO IS A ROGUE CORPORATION, CONTEMPTUOUS OF THE COUNTRY IT OPERATES IN, AND SO ARROGANT IN ITS TAX AVOIDANCE SCHEME THAT IT CAN'T EVEN BOTHER TO TRY TO JUSTIFY IT"
from rabble.ca
Dear CRA: Don't let Cameco get away with its $2.2-billion tax evasion
by Murray Dobbin October 28, 2016
Cameco, the Saskatchewan-based uranium mining colossus, is currently in Federal Court facing charges by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) that it illegally avoided a stunning $2.2 billion in Canadian income taxes. It is not only the largest such case in Canadian history but one of the most shameless tax dodges ever hatched by a Canadian corporation. The court case has been delayed for years and just the fact that it has finally made it before a judge is good news. But the news could quickly turn bad if, facing defeat, Cameco makes a pitch to settle for less than the full amount. That would be a miscarriage of justice.

It is absolutely critical that the government not make a deal with Cameco for a smaller sum - as often happens in these cases. Because this is no ordinary case. Cameco is a rogue corporation, contemptuous of the country it operates in, and so arrogant in its tax avoidance scheme that it can't even bother to try to justify it. Confronted by the facts, Cameco just repeats its executive mantra: "We believe that it was established in accordance with sound business principles and in accordance with relevant laws and regulations."

At a time when more and more attention is being paid to off-shore tax havens and the billions we lose to them, Canada needs to make an example of this irresponsible corporate "citizen."

How Cameco avoids taxes
Here's the bare bones of the scheme. In 1999 Cameco decided to dramatically reduce its income tax bill by setting up a subsidiary in Zug, Switzerland, where the tax rate is 10 per cent - compared to the (then) Canadian rate of about 27 per cent. At the time the price was at rock bottom - $10 a pound. That's the price the Saskatchewan head office charged its Swiss "subsidiary." Then came the windfall manoeuvre: Cameco drafted a 17-year uranium supply agreement at a fixed price of $10 a pound. It was simplicity itself: Cameco would sell literally all of its uranium through the Swiss subsidiary and it would sell it for whatever the world price was. That world price went to almost $140 a pound in 2007 and is now around $35. All the revenue earned above $10 a pound was taxed in Switzerland at the low rate. (An insignificant amount is actually sold in Europe and, of course, not an ounce of the stuff ever finds its way to Zug.)

This scheme is known as "transfer pricing" and sometimes it is perfectly legitimate - companies that sell their products in multiple countries "sell" them to subsidiaries which then sell them in their jurisdiction and get taxed on the profits. But more and more multinationals have been abusing the law that allows this -- including Apple, "based" in Ireland, which is now facing a US$15 billion tax bill from the European Commission for its abuse of transfer pricing.

But Apple actually sold its products in European countries and has 5,500 employees in Ireland. Cameco? Not so much. According to a 2014 Globe and Mail story:
"While Cameco says Cameco Europe has its own board of directors and a full-time CEO, documents in the case reveal the European company had no other full-time employees, and no stand-alone office, instead renting space from the law firm performing its legal work."

Virtually all the substantive work was performed in Canada.
All of the uranium is mined in Canada, all of Cameco's sales are negotiated and completed in Canada, and literally all of its profits are generated in Canada. The company's scheme is pure scam which is why fair-tax activists in Saskatchewan call the company Scameco. A citizens' group, Saskatchewan Citizens for Tax Fairness, has been on Cameco's case for several years - paying for a billboard demanding Cameco pay up and collecting 36,000 names on a petition which it presented to the federal government.

Growing suspicion
But it isn't just citizens' groups looking askance at Cameco. Investment research firms, like Veritas, have questioned the company's scheme. In 2013 company analyst Pawel Rajszel stated:
"[A]ll the upside has been transferred to the subsidiary. Meanwhile all the risk has stayed with Cameco Canada. ... It's strange that the company would have created this Swiss subsidiary without having any real operations in Switzerland."

A Veritas report concludes: "It is therefore difficult to see a reasonable business purpose to [Cameco Europe's] existence, beyond tax minimization." In a further comment, Mr Rajszel told The Globe and Mail in 2014: "Based on our review of Cameco's [first quarter] results, the dispute with the CRA may force the company to borrow funds and/or cut its dividend in order to finance the back tax payments." Does that suggest Cameco's clever tax dodge could actually expose it to a charge of failing to carry out its fiduciary duty to its shareholders?

Another business-focussed group has been sniffing around Cameco's problems. The Bottom Line, a Canadian publication which bills itself as a "Forensic Accounting and Fraud" magazine, has been in contact with Saskatchewan Citizens for Tax Fairness about the case.

Companies like Cameco have for too long framed the tax haven issue as business as usual. But that is now clearly changing and people are starting to see this behaviour for what it is: the legalized theft of Canadian government services. Cameco started off as a public mining company and its technology was developed in Canada with the help of Saskatchewan government money. The Canadian transportation infrastructure allows them to get their uranium to market, they have enjoyed decades in a stable economy, with low inflation, cheap money, low crime and the legal protection accorded a "corporate citizen" under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Their workers received free and/or subsidized education and Cameco doesn't have to pay health insurance for its employees - as companies in the U.S. do. Adding insult to injury, the (federal) taxes Cameco is avoiding are amongst the lowest in the developed world: 15 per cent compared, for example, to 35 percent in the U.S.

Ironically - or maybe not - while the CRA is going after Cameco, Saskatchewan's unabashedly pro-business premier Brad Wall has said almost nothing about the case (the timid NDP opposition has said even less). That seems a bit strange given that Saskatchewan's share of the proceeds, if the CRA wins, would be over $700 million. Governments may govern in the era of globalization, but giant companies rule. It is long past time that we put a stop to it. A great first step would be for the CRA to refuse to negotiate and get all of our money back. Then we need to change the law.
Murray Dobbin has been a journalist, broadcaster, author and social activist for 40 years. He writes rabble's State of the Nation column .


The West Beach area July 18, 1940
Before the ball diamond was in place at the beach, softball was played across the inner harbour, north of the Sanitary near the viaduct.
Both the Riverside and Beach Pavilions can be seen in this picture. At some point the Beach Pavilion was moved north and west.
enlarge the image

from Northumberland Today  Wednesday  April 27, 2016
CAMECO A GOOD CORPORATE CITIZEN SAYS MAYOR
by Valerie MacDonald
This September Cameco Corp. (with its headquarters in Saskatchewan), will face Revenue Canada in a Toronto courtroom over allegations it owes about $2-billion in taxes.

Cameco Corp. is the mother uranium mining and processing company that includes Cameco Fuel Manufacturing plants in Cobourg and Port Hope, as well as the Port Hope Conversion facility at Eldorado Place in Port Hope and offices on Peter Street. Among products produced locally are fuel rods that power nuclear reactors. It employs over 600 full-time employees in this area.

When asked about the upcoming court case, Port Hope Mayor Bob Sanderson said he doesn't know anything about the "federal tax" situation that Cameco is facing but he knows "absolutely" that it pays its municipal taxes.
In addition, Sanderson called Cameco a good corporate citizen as it also relates to any of the municipal services it uses, and discussions are timely when required, he said.
"They are very much in touch with us and work co-operatively."

Last year, Cameco paid $1.2 million in municipal taxes, Cameco spokesperson Doug Prendergast said in an interview Tuesday. He confirmed that the company, with its operations in Port Hope and Cobourg, employs 640 people and pays millions in salaries and benefits. It also supports the local community with grants and sponsorships.

Asked about the upcoming court case with Revenue Canada concerning allegations of evading taxes, Prendergast said he could not comment because it is before the courts. But he said: "Cameco is confident it will be successful in our case… and we are in compliance with all of the rules in place regarding taxation."


The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Atomic Energy Control Board and the nuclear industry are illicit bedfellows working to promote an odious technology. When an industry has carnal knowledge of government bodies meant to regulate it, we all get screwed.

In February 2017 the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission rubberstamped another operating license, clearing the way for the nuclear industry to continue its 85-year-long abuse of the people of Port Hope for the next 10 years.

from The Northumberland News  March 9, 2017
Cameco's Port Hope facility's operating license approved until 2027
Decision made following public hearing last November
by Todd McEwen
PORT HOPE—Cameco Corporation's Port Hope conversion facility was given the green light to continue operating for the next decade.
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission granted Cameco a 10-year operating license that is set to expire on Feb. 28, 2027.

"We are very pleased that the CNSC has accepted our application for a 10-year operating license," vice president of Cameco's fuel services division Dale Clark said in a news release. "The decision demonstrates the commission's confidence in our ability to safely produce and protect the environment at this facility, both now and far into the future."

The decision was made following a public hearing held on Nov. 9 and 10 at the Town Park Recreation Centre in Port Hope, where members of the public were invited to voice their support or opposition to the licence renewal.

Some of those who spoke at the hearings included the Town of Cobourg; Northumberland Quint West MPP Lou Rinaldi; Habitat for Humanity Northumberland; Canadian Nuclear Workers Council; Mohawks of Bay of Quinte; Lake Ontario Waterkeeper; and Restore the Port Hope West Beach Committee, to name a few.

Among supporters were MPP Rinaldi, who called Cameco one of "the true community leaders" and stressed Cameco has been open in its ongoing efforts with public engagement.
"I think it is important to note that Cameco continues to be a leader in our business community and I wish them every success with this application," Rinaldi wrote in his intervention.

Among the opposition for renewal was Anna Tilman, an independent environmental services professional previously of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health. She concluded the Cameco plant is "well past its best-before date," and continues to operate outside of public scrutiny while producing "multitudinous amounts of radioactive and otherwise contaminated waste." "In 1976, the government 'discovered' the extent of radioactive waste contamination in the region and promised to move the plant and clean up the waste," she wrote. "Forty years later, that promise is still there, but yet to be fulfilled."

With the approval of the licence renewal, Cameco will continue to process and store uranium hexafluoride and uranium dioxide production.
"We are very grateful to all those who participated in the relicensing hearing," Clark said. "Public participation in the process ensures that all viewpoints can be considered by members of the Commission when they are making their decisions.
"We are very pleased with the outcome."


The nuclear industry produces a propaganda pamphlet called 'energize' that regularly shows up unbidden in Port Hope mailboxes.

from energize  News & Information from Cameco  summer 2017
'Cameco president and CEO Tim Gitzel visited employees at both Cameco Fuel Manufacturing sites and the conversion facility on May 25 to announce and celebrate a 10-year extension of Cameco's contract with Bruce Power.'

'As Canada celebrates its 150th birthday people in Port Hope may feel an extra measure of pride for the role the community has played, and continues to play in the development of Canada's nuclear industry.'


Celebrating the triumph of Profit over People — Kim Rudd (Liberal MP for Northumberland-Peterborough South), Bob Sanderson (Mayor of Port Hope), Tim Gitzel (Cameco President and CEO), Lou Rinaldi (MPP Northumberland-Quinte West) and Mike Rencheck (Bruce Power President and CEO)