North Renfrew Times
March 3, 2010

Task force hopes for more

by Terry Myers

Members of a local group promoting a new "vision” of the Chalk River labs are hoping more people will sign on to show their support.

The Chalk River Employees Ad hoc TaskforcE (CREATE) launched an online letter campaign last month to support its vision of Chalk River as a new "national laboratory.”

That vision was the centrepiece of a report CREATE submitted last fall as the federal government announced that it was moving ahead with the next stage in plans to restructure Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.

In its report, the task force said the new "Chalk River National Laboratory” (CRNL) will be Canada's "laboratory for nuclear and related sciences” and "a resource for researchers from across a broad spectrum, from fundamental sciences to industrial applications.”

The new CRNL "will not merely restore CRL’s past reputation as an international centre of excellence, but will go beyond the past in many ways to provide industrial and social benefits to Canadians,” the report said.

As of Monday, however, only 631 people had gone online to support CREATE's campaign.

With more than 2,500 employees at Chalk River alone, not including the population of the surrounding communities, task force member Daniel Banks said he was disappointed in the numbers so far.

"We may have to consider how to promote it to get a better response,” he said.

Banks said it's always an issue in "any democratic process” that people may feel their one "vote” won't make a difference, but it's the "results all together” that will make the difference.

"It's hard to know how much impact it will have (on the government's final decision), but if people don't support it who should, that just makes it harder to get more support” from those who are not as close to the issue, he said.

"If we had 2,000 people from the local area, it would be a lot easier to convince people from outside the area (to support the concept).”

As far as what direction the government will go with Chalk River, Banks said he's hoping there might be some hint in this week's federal budget.

"Everyone's still in the dark, so to speak,” he said. "I don't have any insight on that, unfortunately.”

Banks said members of the task force will be watching the budget closely.

"Everyone will be interested to see what happens in the budget,” he said.

"I think that will determine what the group's next efforts will be.”

The full task force report, as well as the online letter campaign, can be found at the CREATE website, www.futurecrl.ca.