Government leaves secret documents at TV station

[Valdez]

CTV News says Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt or one of her aides left behind sensitive government documents at the network's bureau in Ottawa.

The report says the documents, some of which were marked "secret," show Ottawa has poured far more money into the aging Chalk River nuclear reactor than the public has been told.

Crown-owned Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., shut down the reactor on May 15 after a power outage. Officials found a heavy-water leak the next day and say the reactor, which produces a third of the global supply of isotopes used in cancer and heart scans, will be off-line for at least three months.

AECL has already run out of medical isotopes and doctors are scrambling to collect a scarce supply from the world's four other isotope-producing reactors.

This is the Chalk River reactor's second major shutdown in two years. A nearly month-long shutdown in late 2007 sparked a critical global shortage of medical isotopes, and ended only after Parliament voted to bypass the nuclear safety regulator's closure order.

The report says the documents, headlined "Background for discussion with chair of Atomic Energy Canada," list millions of dollars in funding for the corporation that have not been made public, including $72 million to "maintain the option of isotope production."

CTV News says the documents also include a hand-written note that lists total funding for Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd. since 2006 at $1.7 billion, and then a talking-point memo describing the spending as "cleaning up a Liberal mess."

The documents were left behind about a week ago and no one from Raitt's department has called about the missing documents, CTV News said.

Officials with the Ministry of Natural Resources were not immediately available for comment.

This incident harks back to last spring when former foreign affairs minister Maxime Bernier left classified documents at the Montreal home of Julie Couillard, his former girlfriend, for more than a month.

In late May of last year, Bernier resigned from the portfolio after he acknowledged leaving the NATO briefing documents at Couillard's home.

A review into the Bernier incident recommended a range of measures to beef up ministerial security, including better training, stricter monitoring and improved measures for tracking briefing books.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/090603/national/aecl_documents_ctv_1

Hah, I remember watching this on the news last night. When will the Harper government stop screwing up?

 

[$aturn¥oshi]

Only secret? Most likely just technical stuff...

 

[Geodude]

First the MP whose name I already forgot leaving classified documents at his girlfriend's house, now this. Nobody's perfect, but still that's really stupid.

 

[Valdez]

First the MP whose name I already forgot leaving classified documents at his girlfriend's house, now this. Nobody's perfect, but still that's really stupid.

Bernier?