The squawking over the the AECL isotope crisis has descended into embarrassing lows, and the Conservatives have to take part of the blame.

The NRU reactor run by the AECL was shut down because an emergency backup system was not installed. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission had required that a backup pump be installed as part of a re-licensing exercise. Licenses expire precisely to create moments to review and reconsider a system to see what improvements need to be added, improvements that might not have existed at the last licensing exercise.

For some reason, the AECL had not installed the system despite their assurance that they would, and the CNSC shut down the reactor.

In doing so, the CNSC cut off the sole source of isotopes used throughout the world in medical diagnostics, creating a crisis.

As an engineer, here's my take:

• To the AECL, if you said you were going to put in the pump, then put it in. If a problem occurs that holds up installation, talk to the CNSC and negotiate an extension and deliver a new plan of action to resolve the problem. And if you think that being a sole source for these isotopes means you are not subject to safety laws, well, I guess you know better now.
• To the CNSC, clearly the reactor has been running for 50 years without the pump. What is the probability that the pump is needed tomorrow? Don't let the AECL walk all over you, but a measure of pragmatic realism would go a long way in making people sympathetic to your point of view.

But my harshest criticism has to go to the Conservatives. Did Linda Keen, the head of the CNSC, put a lot of people at risk by shutting down the reactor? Yes, of course. But she did it believing that she was protecting a lot of other people at risk because they were living near a reactor she thought was as safe as it should be.

You can take issue with her decision and the way she measured the relative risks. You can also consider just how much of what was going on was a turf battle between the AECL and the CNSC.

I believe that either of those factors could have resulted in a poor decision on Keen's part.

But unless there is real evidence to support the allegation, I would not allow myself to be goaded into politicizing the issue:

[Prime Minister Stephen Harper] took another shot at the head of the CNSC, Linda Keen, mocking the Liberals for initially suggesting “the government should simply sit back and let Ms. Keen and the commission resolve this in their own good time.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Harper directly blamed the “Liberal-appointed” NCSC for keeping the reactor shut down and putting lives in jeopardy due to the resultant shortage of radioisotopes used in diagnostic cancer and cardiology tests.

Liberal-appointed? Hey, a lot of people in a lot of crown corporations and independent regulators were appointed by the Liberals. And many of those appointees are friends of Liberals (Linda Keen insists she is apolitical). But as I've said before, a relationship with the governing party of the day is not cause for disqualification.

Is there reason to believe Linda Keen is not qualified for the job? Maybe there is a reason, but being appointed while the Liberals were in power is not it.

More than that, it should not even have been raised, and raising it looks petty. Petty and worrisome. I, for one, don't like the idea of a McCarthyist purge of Liberal appointees.

If Linda Keen made a mistake, correct it. If it was an egregious mistake, discipline her. But franky, I would also take a moment to apologize to Linda Keen for the "Liberal-appointed" remark. And maybe an apology to the Liberals too. They're Canadians just like Conservatives. When they formed the government, I bet most of the appointments they made were done in good faith on the basis of qualification.

If the appointee was not qualified, deal with it. But show that the appointee was not qualified. Don't assume it because of some tenuous (or even strong and clear) link with the Liberals.

The relationship between the AECL and the CNSC is clearly poisoned. The government is taking heat for an isotope shortage created by this turf fight. The Liberals triggered Stephen Harper's response by casting this AECL and CNSC fight as an example of government mismanagement, when in fact the AECL and the CNSC are arm's length organizations:

Michael Ignatieff, the Liberals' deputy leader, said Parliament “should never have had to deal with this situation in the first place.”

“Government negligence, pure and simple, landed us in this mess,” he told the Commons, suggesting that AECL's failure to comply with NCSC safety regulations was at the root of the problem.

That's not fair. I think, though, the Liberals were being clever. I think they were trying to goad the Conservatives into saying something they would regret.

And the Conservatives stepped right into the trap by using the phrase "Liberal-appointed".

Trap or not, though, the government is the government, and the buck stops at the cabinet table of this government, regardless of who was appointed when.

All in all, the stress and the tension created by a crisis affecting a lot of seriously ill people has ended with a missed opportunity for all parties involved to rise above the panic.

The good thing, I suppose, is that the crisis has ended and soon hospitals will get their isotopes. Hopefully we'll see better from our elected officials when the next time crisis erupts.