Once upon a time there was a company called Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.

Most people called the crown corporation AECL.

It is a secretive organization which uses billions of your tax dollars to build nuclear reactors called CANDU.

The corporation says CANDU nuclear power provides a smart, made-in-Canada solution for addressing the coming energy gap and helping to maintain our high standard of living. It accounts for 16% of Canada's total electricity.

AECL also sells CANDU technology to faraway places like Turkey, China and South Korea, sweetening the mega deals with low-interest federal loans financed by you.

One of the countries that was the recipient of this Canadian largesse was India.

In the early seventies, Canada gave India a nuclear research reactor and the South Asian behemoth promptly used the plutonium manufactured in the reactor to make a bomb.

India then tested the bomb at the infamous Pokhran desert site in 1974 triggering howls of outrage around the world and frightening neighboring rival Pakistan into speeding up its own nuclear program.

India cheated on its promise and AECL cut off nuclear assistance to New Delhi.

But India did not care because by then it had transferred enough technology to independently build seven CANDU 'clones'.

While AECL was struggling with the India syndrome, it was also helping Pakistan enhance its nuclear capabilities.

Two years after India tested the bomb, a fellow by the name of Dr A.Q. Khan, who was gaining nuclear expertise in Europe, returned home to Pakistan to head up the nation’s nuclear program.

Khan and AECL were buddies. Or at least that was what AECL thought.

Khan sent his trusted aides to Canada, men like Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Chaudhry Abdul Majeed.

These fellows got their uranium enrichment expertise courtesy of AECL, and Sultan Mahmood learned his stuff on a CANDU reactor near Karachi.

AECL also invited and trained some 50 leading Pakistani nuclear engineers in Ontario and New Brunswick.

In 1998, the Canadian taxpayer funded arms race between Pakistan and India blew up with India detonating five nuclear test bombs prompting Pakistan to explode six of its own.

Canada then stopped playing nuclear games with Khan and Pakistan.

But Pakistan’s nuclear godfather had by that time made millions by selling the technology he acquired from all over the globe to an underground nuclear K-mart.

Some of his scientists, unhappy with their lot under Khan left for unknown locations to sell their expertise for better money.

Khan, himself, operated a nuclear bazaar assisting weapons programs in Iran, Iraq and yes you guessed it North Korea.

Khan, who is under house arrest now counts among his assets, four houses in Islamabad, a palatial lakeside retreat, shares in two restaurants and a hotel in Timbuktu, Mali, that he named after his wife, who is of Dutch ancestry. He spent a million dollars on his daughters’ weddings and set up family businesses as conduits to channel millions of dollars in contracts for his nuclear bazaar.

Your tax dollars on the other hand, invested to create jobs and safer nuclear energy, was not doing that well.

In 2003, Khan admitted selling nuclear secrets to North Korea in exchange for missile technology that would carry Pakistani bombs. He remains under house arrest.

On October 9, 2006, North Korea announced it has successfully conducted an underground nuclear test, triggering a chorus of condemnation worldwide.

There are not many in the nuclear field who are willing to talk openly about Canada’s role in the global nuclear black market or investigate just how much of CANDU technology has been used to make this world more unsafe.

For what it is worth, Pakistan has said that despite Khan’s confession, there is “absolutely no link” between him and North Korea’s test explosion.

As for AECL, they have deemed the assertions made here as “unsubstantiated” and plan to continue using your tax dollars happily ever after.