Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Reporter

Members of Kebaowek First Nation and its environmental assessment team set up shop in the Pontiac Archives on Wednesday to raise awareness about their concerns with the plans to build a nuclear waste disposal facility at the Chalk River nuclear research station, a kilometre from the Ottawa River.
The group was made up of Kebaowek’s waterkeeper Verna Polson, land assistant Mary-Lou Chevrier, and Rosanne Van Schie, a forest conservation expert who has been working with the First Nation to do environmental assessments on the site of the future waste facility.
Kebaowek is 200 kilometres upstream of Chalk River, near Témiscamingue, Que. The First Nation has been leading efforts to challenge plans from Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), the manager of the Chalk River nuclear site, to build what it calls a near surface disposal facility for up to 1,000,000 cubic metres of what CNL says is low-level radioactive waste.
This spring the group from Kebaowek visited communities up and down the Ottawa Valley, meeting with residents and sharing the results of months of environmental impact research they have done – research that shows the waste facility could harm several species at risk that live on or next to the site.
“I’m hoping we can all come together. There’s strength in numbers, and that we can all learn and be on the same page and stop the NSDF [near surface disposal facility],” Chevrier said.
“It’s important we all get on board and voice our opinion now in case anything bad happens.”
The stop in Shawville was one of the last before Kebaowek heads to Ottawa this week for a federal court hearing where it will be challenging the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission’s (CNSC) January decision to grant CNL the license to build the facility.
In February, Kebaowek filed for judicial review of CNSC’s decision on the grounds that the regulator did not adequately consider the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and that free, prior and informed consent was not obtained from most of the 11 Algonquin First Nations with unceded claims to the territory.
Only one community, the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nation, consented to the nuclear waste facility going ahead, signing a long-term relationship agreement with CNL in June 2023.
Article 29.2 of the declaration says, “States shall take effective measures to ensure that no storage or disposal of hazardous materials shall take place in the lands or territories of Indigenous peoples without their free, prior and informed consent.”
This article is critical to the case Kebaowek plans to bring forward this week at the administrative tribunal for its court challenge, scheduled for July 10 and 11.
“The argument is CNSC knew full well of this legislative piece but administratively just didn’t address it,” Van Schie explained to those gathered at the archives on Wednesday morning.
The commission’s record of decision assures the disposal facility “is not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects,” and explains that because UNDRIP is not yet law, the commission is not empowered to determine how to implement it and must instead be guided by current consultation law.
But Van Schie said Kebaowek believes that because UNDRIP is supported by law, by way of the United Nations Declaration Act, and because the Canadian government has committed itself to the principles of UNDRIP, the nuclear safety regulator should be held accountable to this declaration.
Van Schie added that beyond concerns around absence of consent for the facility, the First Nation will also be making the case that proper forest management plans were not completed by the regulator.
“When we got on the ground we quickly determined there were a number of gaps they didn’t address, including the use of the site by moose and deer, and doing a count of the animals didn’t happen either,” Van Schie said.
“The objective is to find gaps in the administration of the environmental assessment.”
Several dozen people met with the team from Kebaowek at the archives on Wednesday, among them Warden Jane Toller who expressed the MRC’s ongoing opposition to the nuclear waste facility.
Shawville residents Melissa Smith and Hayley Pilon, both members of Kebaowek First Nation, spent several hours in the morning listening to the information the team from Kebaowek was sharing.
“It is a major issue and I don’t think it’s very well publicized,” Smith said. “I live in Shawville and I didn’t even know until 9:30 this morning that there was a meeting coming here.”
Pilon, a massage therapy student at Algonquin College, took the day off school to attend the event because she is concerned what impacts the nuclear waste facility might have on the health of the Ottawa River.
“I would love to know what I can do, what the next steps are, what we can do as a small community to help support the cancellation of the CNL nuclear dump,” she said.
“I was part of the meetings to do with the incineration they wanted to do in the Pontiac. It kind of just seems like that just got finished, and now this is starting up. It’s just one thing after the other.”