Those who didn't see this coming, raise your hands

Harper and his hillbilly cabinet couldn't have screwed this up any worse if they'd actually set out to do it.

The United States is moving to develop its own source of medical isotopes as the lagging repair of a Canadian nuclear reactor leaves Americans “critically short” of the radioactive material.

Nuclear watchers in this country say the loss of Canada's biggest customer could doom the nuclear-research and medical-isotopes industry that was pioneered here a half century ago, prompting a brain drain and leaving Canadians dependent on the United States.

A senior official with the National Nuclear Security Administration said at a meeting of the National Academies in Washington yesterday that his organization is evaluating a broad spectrum of ways to convert reactors in the U.S. to produce a domestic supply of technetium.

The “current supply crisis has captured the attention of the White House” and other top U.S. agencies, Parrish Staples told the meeting. Dr. Staples estimated it will take $120-million to create a U.S. facility.

So what will eventually happen is this:

Canada's nuclear research reactors will go cold and a $4 billion industry which Canada has dominated for the better part of half a century will vanish. Forever.

Instead of selling the United States, with ten times our population, one-half of their demand for medical isotopes, we will purchase isotopes from wherever we can get them. Where Canadian requirements would appear on the list is open to question since we have less than one-tenth the demand.

Jean-Luc Urbain, president of the Canadian Society of Nuclear Medicine, said this country's abysmal handling of the isotope crisis has left the United States little choice.

“There's probably no better way to shoot yourself in the foot than to act as the Canadian government has been acting over the past 18 months,” Dr. Urbain said in an interview yesterday.

Exactly. Because the Harper government has done nothing to deal with the situation despite the fact that this is a glaring and obvious problem which required serious attention.

An expert panel set up by the federal government to explore ways of securing a long-term supply of medical isotopes plans to meet for the first time on July 16.

They might want to include the passport office on that panel. As the Harper crowd ships another industry off to the United States they'll also be looking at the backs of Canadian nuclear specialists trip across the border.

We, however, will continue to rape our northern landscape in an effort to sell melted-down goo. And that's all we'll do as we watch our balance of trade deficit balloon.

Harper's vision, if you can call it that, is to make Canada the "North American energy superpower". In fact, the actions and inactions of the Harper government are chewing away at our economic diversity and in areas where we possessed a significant lead. By the time he's finished ignoring real problems and shrugging off any endeavour he doesn't care about as a "sunset industry" we might be faced with the economic nightmare of having all our eggs in one basket - except it'll be worse. We'll have one egg - period.

As usual, Impolitical is on this and has more.