Toronto Star
May 16, 1999
CIDA program targets Thai teens in Candu drive.

Canada’s kind and helping hand in the Third World, the Canadian International Development Agency
(CIDA), has been enlisted to help sell Candu nuclear reactors in Thailand.

The revelation is seen as a scandal by those who monitor foreign aid.

As Ottawa’s primary agency for dispensing assistance abroad, CIDA’s goal is supposed to be the reduction of poverty in developing countries.

But a little-circulated report by crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL) shows CIDA approved and funded a “public education” program aimed at convincing Thai high school students of the benefits of nuclear technology. The program, launched in 1995 and still operating, is part of an over-all effort by AECL to sell Canadian nuclear technology to Thailand.

Students are targeted, the report says, because they can best influence their parents and their peers.

“This is shameful activity,” says Dr. Ursula Franklin, a Companion of the Order of Canada and professor emerita at the University of Toronto, where she taught engineering for 25 years. “To use these children for the `softening up’ process and doing it so blatantly seems to go beyond anything I’ve seen before . . . This is an incredible misuse of taxpayers’ dollars.”

Bob Johnston, director of CIDA’s Indochina, Thailand and Malaysia division told The Star, “We may have been wrong . . . We all have to learn from our mistakes.”

But asked whether CIDA’s participation was a mistake, Johnston replied, “I’m not sure.”

Canada’s own sensibilities on the nuclear issue appear self-evident: no new Candus have been built in Canada since construction began on the last one in 1982. And in August, 1997, seven of Canada’s then 21 operating nuclear reactors were shut down following a report from U.S. consultants saying Ontario Hydro didn’t have the managerial capacity to operate them safely.

The Thai education project is jointly funded by CIDA, AECL and the Electrical Generating Authority of Thailand. It is to run in Thai schools until next year and uses videos, booklets and even “essay contests” with “scholarships” going to the winners.

A 12-minute Thai-language video shown in more than 1,000 schools, makes a strong case against fossil fuel and hydro power, and uses upbeat pop music to introduce a gleaming, efficient, environment-friendly world of nuclear energy. A youthful Thai woman notes that while nuclear power presents challenges, they are manageable. Nuclear waste, for example, can be buried.

A second part of the program aims at improving and expanding the nuclear engineering program at Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University, to ensure Thailand has a core of engineers capable of handling Candu technology if sales are made.

Academics from seven Canadian universities made more than 100 short-term CIDA-funded visits to Thailand to lecture on nuclear engineering there.

CIDA’s contribution for both parts of the program came to $1 million in taxpayers’ money.

“Presumably this is money that might have gone to bring fresh water to a needy village or launch a life-saving inoculation program,” says Norman Rubin, a senior policy analyst at Toronto’s anti-nuclear Energy Probe.

“I’m outraged that my tax money, in the name of international generosity, is going to fund a public relations campaign to sell nuclear reactors.”

But more than money, it is the manipulative nature of the program involving young students – undertaken in the name of Canadians – that offends some most. The 1998 AECL report itself, entitled The Thai-Canadian Nuclear Human Resources Development Linkage Project, makes no secret of its manipulative intent.

The report states that in order to develop a nuclear power program in Thailand, securing “a level of public acceptance” is vital. And high school students are the means to do it.

“This target audience was selected in part because they will be directly affected by the expected introduction of nuclear power over the next 10 years, as well as their ability to influence their peers, family members and others in the community,” the report says.

A separate scholarly paper about the project, delivered at a conference in Banff last May, went on about the attractions of the Grade 11 Thai students, the program targets.

“They are more curious, by nature of their age, and in Thai society they are still very close to their parents . . . (At) the same time, the students may also have some influence on their parents’ behaviour, as seen in the case of smoking and electricity conservation.”

Says Grainne Ryder, a director with the Toronto-based foreign aid watchdog, Probe International, “Apart from the public funds issue, this is a cynical and shameless campaign to brainwash Thai citizens.

“CIDA seems to be operating on the old assumptions that people can be duped, told what to believe or what’s good for them . . . It’s the underlying assumption that Thai people are stupid or isolated from the rest of the world.”

Ryder wants a full parliamentary review of the agency.

Cranford Pratt, Canada’s pre-eminent scholar in the field of north-south relations and  emeritus professor of political science at U of T, called CIDA’s involvement with AECL’s efforts in Thailand, “terrible.”

“Unfortunately, this is just an extreme illustration of a fairly major emphasis, particularly in CIDA’s Asia branch programs, which attempt to develop activities that will be of particular benefit to Canadian exporters.

“It runs entirely counter to the putative primary emphasis of CIDA, which is supposed to be poverty alleviation – reaching out and helping the poorest.”

A CIDA spokesperson explained that the agency’s involvement in the program was justified on the basis that human resources in Thailand would be developed.

But Pratt said terminology like “human resources development” is sometimes just “an excuse” to prepare the way for Canadian exports.

“And that’s exactly what this is.”

Professor David Morrison, director of Trent University’s International Program and the author of a recent book on CIDA, Aid and Ebb Tide, A History of CIDA and Canadian Development Assistance, said he found it “upsetting” that the agency would use “aid money” to launch a “public education program about the value of nuclear energy.”

“Our aid program is supposed to reflect Canadian values,” he said.

“I regret very much that we are flogging an outmoded and environmentally insensitive technology around the world. And I find it particularly lamentable that we’ve used aid dollars to do that.

“I think this is really out of sync with Canadian sensibilities on this issue,” Morrison said.

“This (program) is something that would surprise, shock and upset people in the economic development community,” he added, “especially people in NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and people who have traditionally supported our development assistance program.”

At McGill University, Margaret Sommerville, who developed ethical guidelines for the National Research Council in Ottawa, said that, in principle, CIDA may have transgressed basic research ethics in helping fund a research program that targets young students, unless they’d obtained the students’ informed consent.

“Under NRC guidelines, for example, these students would be regarded as a vulnerable’ population,” she said.

“(CIDA) should also have had the program ethically reviewed.”

But CIDA’s Johnston said the project wasn’t ethically reviewed by CIDA. He said the agency has no ethical review process of which he is aware.

Asked whether the students were told they were participating in a research program, Johnston replied, “I can’t answer that. I don’t know.”

He added with some assurance, however, that “there hasn’t been much in the way of a nuclear power industry developed” in Thailand.

But only last Thursday, AECL hosted a gala dinner at the posh Sukhothai Hotel to celebrate the opening of its representative office in Bangkok. AECL predicts “long term co-operation for the future” with Thailand.

Canadian tax dollars, earmarked for foreign aid, helped that effort.