Bill C-52 (Historical)

Canada Consumer Product Safety Act

An Act respecting the safety of consumer products

This enactment modernizes the regulatory regime for consumer products in Canada. It creates prohibitions with respect to the manufacturing, importing, selling, advertising, packaging and labelling of consumer products, including those that are a danger to human health or safety. In addition, it establishes certain measures that will make it easier to identify whether a consumer product is a danger to human health or safety and, if so, to more effectively prevent or address the danger. It also creates application and enforcement mechanisms. The enactment makes consequential amendments to certain Acts.

Canada Consumer Product Safety Act

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to come back to what my colleague from Richmond—Arthabaska said about the lack of judgment of the Conservatives. With all the other examples that we already have, I think that it reveals that they are not interested in an issue if there is not enough marketing, if people are not talking about the issue and if it is not on the front page.

That is more and more obvious in this case. And we have proof of it: back in her 2006 report, the Auditor General sounded the alarm. There were also other events after that. We did wait for a long time. Finally, that lack of judgment has turned into irresponsibility and incompetence. Examples of that are unfortunately numerous. I would like the hon. member to come back to this topic. We are under the impression that the Conservative government is more likely to act when the issue is purely a question of marketing.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his question. I believe he just put his finger on the problem. Let us give credit to this government. It is a master of communications. When the Prime Minister announced the reduction of the GST, he was in a car dealer's showroom standing beside a $40,000 minivan, with a big label showing a one percentage point reduction of the GST. This is just a series of photo-ops—excuse me for using the English term in French but I do not know any other one. The government makes big announcements, but does very little. In this case, as I mentioned earlier, the Prime Minister ended up at the Salvation Army, with gifts all around him, saying that children ought to have toys which are not dangerous for them. We are in favour of that. However, when he made that announcement, surrounded by gifts, a full year had already gone by since the Auditor General had sounded the alarm. I wonder why the government took so long to act.

I would also like to remind my colleague of the recalls which occurred. The government cannot pretend it did not know. In all, there were 32 recalls in 2006, and 90 in 2007. To this day, in 2008, there have been 37 recalls. Obviously, in the case of one single recall, millions of toys can be involved. And I am just talking about toys. I read this in the Protégez-vous magazine, which aims at protecting Quebec consumers. The recalls include millions of toys—21 million toys—most of them made in China, that have been recalled since last August. If this is not enough for the government to act, I wonder what it will take. In my opinion, making announcements in places where good photographs can be taken is just not serious. What is needed is legislation which will really protect people. The government must make this a priority and stop showing off.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great interest that I rise to speak to Bill C-52. For at least a year and a half, the Bloc Québécois has asked the minister to reinforce its hazardous products safety requirements in order to ban the production, promotion and marketing of any product that could present an unacceptable danger to health.

We are not only talking about health, or about situations where people get sick all of a sudden; we are also talking about long term effects, and that is what is pernicious. The legislation should be able to find a way to trace poisoning cases back on a long-term basis. I would even go as far as to say that the legislation should be able to trace back mental health problems that people could have developed after contact with certain products. This information is not always easy to find. This is why we would like to improve this bill because some of its provisions seem somewhat simplistic.

Obviously, we realize that this bill comes along after the legislation the Americans just passed. When the United States passes a law, Canada finally decides to legislate on the matter.

The government has known since 2006, since the Auditor General's report, that the legislation did not properly protect the public. This is not something new, and my colleague pointed that out earlier. I am emphasizing this because they would have us believe that they just realized that the public needs to be protected. The Bloc Québécois has been calling for this for a long time now.

We would also like Ottawa to give manufacturers the burden of inspecting products and demonstrating that they will not compromise consumer health and safety. I am talking about imported products, because the discussion with the hon. member for Malpeque earlier was very interesting. He was saying that Canadians are not asked to do inspections or pay for them because they would no longer be competitive.

However, when it comes to products imported from Asian countries—China and India in particular—producers of those products, and not the government, should have to prove that their product is acceptable. I am all for the government paying for the inspectors, but it should not have to pay for the tests to protect the public.

We know that some products are entering the Canadian market. These are products we have not had the privilege of consuming before because they came from abroad. I am thinking of commercial and residential paints in particular. Apparently, there is a whole movement by companies who are getting ready to import paint. Certain paint can be very harmful to one's health. Here in Canada, we have taken very important measures with respect to VOCs, volatile organic compounds, and also with respect to all the products that bind paints.

Naturally this makes paint more expensive. Therefore, if we produce paint here that respects our standards, foreign paint also has to respect our standards.

Will we protect people from this paint before it ends up our shelves, or will we do so once the paint has ended up on our shelves and people have proof that this paint is dangerous?

In my opinion, Bill C-52 should be clear enough on the fact that the imported products must be proven to be suitable and compliant with our health standards.

These health standards are not always very high in Canada. I am thinking in particular of lead and radiation coming from radioactive materials. Our standards, which are not very high, are not even being met. As was said earlier, standards are high in agriculture, but for other products, they are not. Therefore, we should review the quality of our standards.

I would stress that what I want to know is if we should let the products come in and then, determine whether they are acceptable or not, or if we should stop them from entering the country.

In Japan, a very well organized country, inspectors are sent to the point of origin of the product. If the product does not meet the Japanese standards, it does not leave the port and is not even taken aboard the ship. It is very important to understand that it is much easier to have inspectors applying our standards in foreign countries than to let the goods come in and then make sure they are properly inspected. Yet, presently this is how inspections are carried out: we let meat, vegetables and fruits come in.

I used to know someone at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Sometimes, it is difficult to inspect a large quantity of vegetables or meat once it has arrived, because these products are distributed very quickly across Canada, even before inspectors have time to see them.

It would be much easier to use a system similar to the Japanese one, that is to inspect, approve and seal the products, and then let them enter the country. This method would ensure that the products arriving in Canada meet the standards. If we fail to do this, there is a much greater risk that unacceptable products could be distributed across the country.

So, it is important that we improve this bill. It is also important that we preserve the spirit of the law at its highest degree of effectiveness. This means that we should not simply think about having more inspectors to implement the legislation. The implementation of the act is just one step in the process. Afterwards, we must have more inspectors to preserve the legislation's high degree of effectiveness. Sending inspectors abroad, at the departure point of the products, could significantly help maintain the high effectiveness of Bill C-52, which is currently before us.

There is a similar problem with pesticides. It was mentioned earlier. My riding produces a lot of apples, but it is not the only one. It is also the case for the ridings of other NDP members. Currently, the United States is sending us a lot of its apples, because its producers use organic pesticides that are accepted by Canada, as long as they are mentioned on the apples, and these pesticides are cheaper than the ones that we use here. However, the pesticides used in the United States and accepted once they are mentioned on the apples are not approved here in Canada as pesticides that can be used by apple growers.

So, we should not think that Bill C-52 alone will ensure a very high degree of safety and competitiveness. It is absolutely necessary that our producers be on a level playing field with producers abroad who export their products here. So, this issue will have to be examined very carefully. The legislation will have to make a distinction between imported and local products.

A cosmetic—cosmetics are indeed included in the bill—made in Canada must be inspected before it is put on the shelves. However, we cannot wait until production is completed. On the other hand, if that product comes from abroad, production will be completed. That is why I am insisting that we must absolutely inspect products on the premises, before they are shipped.

Bill C-52 includes safety requirements for dangerous products. It almost prohibits manufacturing some of them. I talked about importing, but there is also the selling, advertising, labelling and packaging of consumer products. Of course this impacts on labelling costs, which will be very significant, but we will know whether the product is imported, or manufactured here.

The 51% we were talking about earlier may no longer apply. Apparently, the packaging for Van Houtte coffees—not that I am naming names—constitutes 51%. It says “Made in Canada”, but it is coffee. As far as I know, Canada does not produce coffee, but because packaging represents 51% of the price of the coffee, it says “Made in Canada”. If people can put “Made in Canada” on products that are mostly made elsewhere, we will never be able to implement Bill C-52 because its priority is ensuring that imported products comply with Canadian standards. There is some work to be done on this bill. I am sure that the members who are going to be working on this in committee will come up with a special label to identify imported products and Canadian-made products more clearly.

Naturally, nobody believes that recalls are the solution. As I was saying earlier, it has to happen before the products even get here. The system has been too lenient. When toys were found to be dangerous, they were recalled. But they had already made it to the market. People had bought them and taken them home. Bill C-52 simply has to make it impossible for such items or materials to be distributed.

I would like to revisit my paint example. It will be difficult to determine whether four litres of paint—which is still known as a gallon—is imported or not, especially if the packaging is made here and is a well-known brand. Right now, Sico, a Quebec-based company, has to comply with American standards on volatile organic compounds before its products leave Quebec. I think that Bill C-52 should demand exactly the same thing of products being imported here.

We are talking about consumer products, particularly things as unusual and varied as cribs, tents and carpets. They are currently allowed to enter with no standards in place. There are no standards for tents. Does everyone know that there are no standards for tents, apart from flammability? Someone could suffocate in a tent. A tent could fall on top of you. They pose all sorts of dangers, but we are not protected by legislation. When it comes to products of this nature, all standards should be stricter and show greater concern for users.

The same is true for carpets. There are very few standards concerning carpets. Manufacturers are allowed to use nearly any chemical to prevent dust from settling or to preserve the colour. These are some of the products people breathe in unawares, when they are sitting at home, watching television. People can gradually develop illnesses that are hard to diagnose but that result from products made from just about anything, because of this laxity.

I am using carpets as an example, but I could also be talking about certain kinds of flooring that are currently being imported, such as plastic flooring. One rule of thumb nearly always holds true: when a product has a strong odour, it is toxic to some extent. Pick up the plastic flooring that is imported and sold in stores. If it was subjected to rigorous tests, it would be refused because it is toxic.

Thus, this would cover a wide range of products. Consider, for example, batteries used in toys or flashlights. We received some in Canada that exploded.

Such a battery exploding can burn the eyes of a child with the chemical products it contains and greatly affect not only the physical health but also the mental health of that child.

In fact, adults would react the same way. Recently, people bought imported rifles—always from the same country—and at the first, fourth or fifth shot, the rifles blew up. One can imagine the trauma for a person not used to handling firearms.

This bill is therefore very broad in scope and must be based on standards which will have to be stricter than the present ones.

The bill also deals with protection against the radiation coming from clinical or consumer products, such as X-rays or laser beams. As incredible as it may seem, cheap watches are still imported with dials emitting dangerous radioactivity. Even some cars from Asia have luminous dials which emit radiation harmful to human health. They can cause cancer. It can be particularly damaging for taxi drivers whose car is be equipped with such a dial, since they are always exposed to it.

This is harmful and it will be difficult to control. A little test upon entry into the country will not suffice. People will have to perform many more tests. Our standards will have to apply to everything produced outside of the country and they will often have to be made stricter.

We are not the first to adopt such legislation. Earlier I spoke about Japan, a country that is more advanced than ours in terms of domestic standards for all goods purchased from other countries.

As I mentioned before, the United States has just adopted regulations, in cooperation with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, that respond to the serious problems caused by these products. It is a veritable plague given that the U.S. imports 80%—if not more—of its toys, as does Canada. Dangerous toys are becoming a plague. On Radio-Canada, I heard some people talking about whether it was possible to find toys made in Canada. The woman answered no, that she had none in her store even though she carries a large selection of toys.

Europe is also addressing this issue. It will be important for the committee to look at what is being done in Japan. It is easier to see what is happening in the United States because we are much closer. However, what about Europe? The EU has proposed making standards more stringent and lowering allowable limits for other substances such as lead and mercury. It has prohibited about forty allergenic perfumes, perfumes not made of natural essences. We permit higher levels of lead and mercury in our products than Europe does. Europe has taken a stand and we should follow suit soon.

I would like the precautionary principle to apply to Bill C-52 and to truly serve as our guide to improving it. At the same time, we should examine our standards, which are sometimes lacking. We absolutely have to do this if we wish to protect all our citizens. Neo-liberal globalization is a new phenomenon that we did not have to reckon with previously.

We are proud to participate in this bill and we hope to be truly able to provide more money and more locations for inspectors to do a good job.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my question is not very complicated. With our good judgment and our sense of responsibility, we in the Bloc Québécois have had occasion to chastise the Conservative government about this issue.

I want to go back to the question I asked my colleague from Richmond—Arthabaska earlier, and I am sure my colleague touched on it briefly as well. Since August 2007, nearly a year ago, there have been numerous product recalls. The Auditor General sounded the alarm on this issue in 2006. Now it is nearly May 2008.

This is like a breach of contract, and confidence in the current Conservative government is eroding more and more. We could look at other events and issues on which the “new government”—as the Conservatives referred to themselves for quite some time, a little too often for my taste—has not kept its word.

I would like my colleague to comment on the fact that it took action by the Auditor General and repeated recalls for the government to come up with a bill. At the same time, we are wondering whether there will be enough inspectors to do the work and what regulations will be associated with the bill. Many questions have yet to be answered.

I am certain that my colleague is capable of mentioning it, but it is important to say that people in our party and other parties will act responsibly and pay close attention to this bill. They will examine this bill very thoroughly in committee. Voting for this bill does not mean automatic kudos for the Conservatives for introducing this bill, because they should have introduced it much earlier.

My colleague is certainly able to speak about this government's lack of judgment and its irresponsibility in waiting until numerous products had been recalled and had made the headlines before it finally took action.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his remarks and for his very pertinent question.

Clearly, we do not share the same ideology. Members of the Bloc have an ideology that prompts us to think and work for the people in our ridings, not necessarily for the people who organize society, who make money, who engage in free trade with other countries. We are closer to the workers and labourers, and therefore, to consumers.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Conservative Party's ideology means that it is in no hurry to introduce this kind of bill because it could hurt private enterprise, which may want certain privileges. The bill calls for traceability and documentation, but the minister may choose not to ask for these things if it is not in the companies' interest.

There seems to be a huge abyss between our two ways of thinking. We have before us a bill that we think is very important and should have been introduced a long time ago. But the government thinks that this bill, whose goal is to protect the average consumer, is not as important as a bill to protect the weightier interests of the people who are maintaining the neo-liberal capitalist status quo in this country.

We have to wonder if the Conservatives are doing everything they can to drag this bill out. They should have introduced it a year and a half ago. There would have been enough time to have it passed before an election. Now they might try to drag it out until after the election, which could happen who knows when, but possibly a while from now. It takes some time for a bill to be passed, and when it is introduced late in the game like this one, obviously there is a good chance it will never be passed.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this is in the same vein as what my colleague was saying. During question period today, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Status of Women and Official Languages spoke about how the market ruled. Why would the market rule? What should rule is justice, a sense of responsibility and the possibility of straightening out a situation that is wrong or that has become intolerable.

There are many examples of the problems we have had with products. I remember very well. Last week, I was in my riding, and once again we had to sound the alarm. People had to demonstrate in the street. They do not do this for fun. The cod fishers who were asking for a shrimp quota were forced to take to the streets to demonstrate in order to get it. Why did this not happen three weeks earlier, so we could have avoided the stress and the demonstration?

The Conservatives seem to be fond of the wait and see approach, where they let things go and let the markets rule. They wait for problems to come up, or rather they wait for problems to make the front page. When a problem makes the front page, they will do something. Otherwise, they do not.

I wonder if my colleague agrees that there are many examples that lead us to believe there are ideological differences.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I think my colleague from Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine sees the situation quite clearly. Ideology is what separates us from the Conservatives. A bill like this one is a bill that was introduced because of international markets and because almost anything goes. Trying to be on equal trade footing has brought us to our knees. We are prepared to sacrifice everything and do anything for trade.

Commercially speaking, it does not matter to us where our products come from. If we lose jobs it is not so bad. Trade with a capital “T” as big as this House is controlled by the market. That is what is happening. At some point, when we have compromised too much, we end up poisoning our citizens. That is what we are seeing. We are poisoning our children, our people and we are creating the possibility of long-term illnesses.

We used to talk about workplace illness. Now we talk about consumer illness. Because we have allowed the markets to spiral out of control, we are now dealing with consumer illnesses.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, sadly, there is only a few minutes left for me to point out the concerns I have with Bill C-52. I will cut to the chase and build on the comments of my colleague from the Bloc Québecois, who pointed out, quite rightly, that the root of our problem today can be found in the laissez-faire capitalism associated with free trade, which has led to further and further deregulation and, in fact, a reluctance for governments to regulate in the sense that it would have and should have to protect citizens of our country.

I note the Hazardous Products Act was put in effect in 1968 and has been virtually unchanged since then. That was a period of time when we made things in Canada. We were not worried about the import situation quite as much. We could control, modulate and regulate the input into the products. When it had the stamp “made in Canada” on it, we could assume it was probably fairly safe.

We have yielded that control now. The globalization of capital has made that irrelevant. In fact, we are condemned when we raise these issues. We are told that we are trying to put up non-tariff barriers to trade whenever we say that we should at least harmonize our standards, so the expectations are that we are not being poisoned by our trading partners.

However, my colleague is right. We are poisoning another generation of children in our zeal, in our enthusiasm to close down the last manufacturing plant in Canada and export every last job. We are in such a hurry to do this that we are not even being careful enough to ensure it does not have health consequences to the point where we are pickling the innards of our kids with some toxic super-chemicals that they are being bombarded with in this post-war era.

The petrochemical industry has gone nuts in our country and in the world in the post-war years. Mark my words, in the very near future one in two Canadians will die of cancer. It never used to be that way. Fifty per cent of all the people will die of cancer when my kids are my age. That is absurd. That means we have done something terribly wrong.

If anybody watched Wendy Mesley's show on television, the very sensitive investigative journalism done about her personal struggle with breast cancer and the questions that were not asked about what happened when we ingested chemical A and chemical B and it turned into chemical C inside our internal organs, those are the questions that are not being asked. We are being far too casual.

The one thing we are being extraordinarily casual about is the biggest industrial killer the world has ever known, which is asbestos. Canada not only allows the import of asbestos, it is the world's second largest exporter of the world's greatest industrial killer. Asbestos kills more people than all other industrial toxins combined, but yet in Canada not only exports it with great and wanton abandon, it heavily subsidizes the production and export of asbestos.

We can be critical of allowing toys coming in from China with asbestos and lead in them. When I said that there were toys with asbestos coming in to Canada, the Minister of Health stood and said that I was exaggerating, that the government would never tolerate it. A few short weeks later we found toys with asbestos in them, 5% tremolite asbestos in the CSI fingerprint game, which was such a popular seller last Christmas.

We are so cavalier about asbestos, we are not only mining it, producing it, selling it, exporting it, we are importing it as well. I believe the government is afraid to condemn the use of asbestos because it does not want to offend the province of Quebec, from where asbestos comes, the last remaining asbestos mine in the country.

The asbestos mines that I worked in are all closed. They were closed by natural market forces. Nobody will buy this toxin any more unless, for some magic reason, it is the benign asbestos that they mine in that province when all of a sudden it is subsidized and its export is promoted.

We send Canadian Department of Justice lawyers around the country like globe-trotting propagandists for the asbestos industry to find new markets and new places to pollute with Canadian asbestos.

We are just as guilty of that but we are not taking the steps to protect our own people from the import of toxins because, unlike Europe and the United States, Canada does not even have the power to issue a mandatory recall of a product. The United States can. In California and in a number of states they clearly take their hazardous materials more seriously. In a properly functioning public health protection system, when a problem comes to light about a product on the market there should be an obligation on the part of the government to inform consumers and remove it from the market. However, under this new law, the government may do this but there is nothing to require it to do this. It is still optional. The word “may” is used throughout.

Bill C-52 is inadequate on a number of levels, one of which I was just illustrating. I believe it should require the government to take positive action when it comes to light that a product on the market is harmful.

In the current context of the bill, if the government is made aware of a toxic chemical in a children's toy there would be no legal requirement for it to even make people aware of it. In the case of the asbestos in the CSI fingerprint toy, it was denying it. It would not even suggest that asbestos was bad for us. I made the government aware of it but there was no attempt by the government to recall the toy. We had a press conference downstairs in the 130-S room. To this day, the government has done nothing about it because for it to say that the asbestos in that children's toy is bad, it would need to admit that the asbestos it is subsidizing and exporting around the world is bad for people. It would be caught and hoisted on its own petard, as it were.

There is no legal requirement in the bill for the government to make people aware of a bad product and I think that is wrong. I suppose there would be political consequences if we exposed the government, which I did in the CSI thing, but it is hard because, as we know, after the fact accountability relies on the government getting caught.

Similarly, the minister would have the power to order companies to conduct studies to ensure that a product is safe but nothing in the proposed law would ensure that products are regularly tested for toxicity. This is the subject of another bill, Bill C-225, in my name, a pesticide bill where we believe there should be a reverse onus on the companies that want to sell pesticides, herbicides and fungicides and that it should not really be up to us, or even the Government of Canada, to prove beyond a doubt that the product is absolutely safe. It should be the company that must prove the chemical is safe before it is sold. There is no such obligation now. The company can sell anything and only if someone does all the testing and determines it is unsafe will the company be curtailed in the sale of products.

That is completely arse backwards. That is clearly the lobbyists and the petrochemical industry. The pesticide producers have done a very effective job in tying the government around their little finger. This reverse onus notion would put the burden of proof on the manufacturers that the products they are selling are safe and the precautionary principle should surely apply, especially when we are dealing with children and pregnant women who are that much more susceptible and vulnerable to chemical contamination. The cell walls of a developing child, as the cells are multiplying, are so thin that they are like little sponges for these chemical pesticides.

We cannot put a tonne of pesticides on our lawns and let our children go out to roll in the grass and not expect them to be affected and affected permanently.

We also believe and are calling for the nationwide ban on the cosmetic, non-essential, non-agricultural use of pesticides. The provinces of Ontario and Quebec have now done it but that is only in the absence of leadership and direction from the federal government that should have done it without having to wait for other jurisdictions to do its regulatory job for it.

I want to simply say that there are a number of independent agencies in civil society that are critical of the bill. I seem to have misplaced my press release from the United Steelworkers of America but it is certainly one that has had a campaign on toxic imports partly because of the job issue. I would be happy to continue this at a later time.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

When we return to the study of Bill C-52, there will be 10 minutes remaining for the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre.

The House resumed from April 28 consideration of the motion that Bill C-52, An Act respecting the safety of consumer products, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we are now moving from the world food crisis to something that I believe is equally important for the House to address, which is consumer product safety.

We all have a responsibility to protect and promote the health and well-being of all Canadians, but there are some circumstances where the system we have today has not met that need.

Bill C-52, if I may just highlight the summary, modernizes the regulatory regime for consumer products in Canada and creates prohibitions with respect to the manufacturing, importing, selling, advertising, packaging and labelling of consumer products, including those that are a danger to human health and safety. The bill will make it easier to identify whether a consumer product is a danger and more effectively prevents or addresses the danger.

The Liberals will be supporting the bill at second reading to go to committee. There are some very serious questions that need to be addressed, which cannot be fully handled at second reading because we do not have the opportunity to have the opinion of the expert, the stakeholder and a broad range of people. I suspect that the committee, should the bill pass at second reading, will have a very lively debate and hearings on the issues related to consumer product safety.

I reviewed the minister's speech when he introduced the bill. He noted that the vast majority of suppliers that make, import, distribute and sell consumer products take safety very seriously. He also noted that it is basically because these businesses value their reputations. I suspect that is a logical conclusion.

However, problems can and do occur, and Canadians will recall that there were a number of incidences. One which I even raised in the House with the minister at the time had to do with high levels of lead in the paints on children's toys. Those were, I believe, coming from China, if I recall the details.

The fact remains that there are problems that can and do occur, and there have been a number of them. The bill is timely and appropriate for Parliament to look at, particularly since the Hazardous Products Act has not been thoroughly reviewed in some 40 years.

Issues are changing. Technology is changing. We have a responsibility to ensure that the regulatory framework that we have is in a position to prevent and detect, so we can protect the health and safety of Canadians.

As I indicated, there will be some questions regarding the bill. One of those would be with regard to the issue of introducing the power to effect a recall of products. That does not exist right now under the current legislation. This is done on a voluntary basis.

Members and the public will know that there are numerous examples of where companies voluntarily recall their products because they have identified a problem through incidents that have occurred that have been brought to their attention and that indicate that there is a prevalence which is unacceptable. If they value their reputation, obviously there are companies which will want to remediate the problems quickly so that they do not have any other significant impact on their ability to provide goods, services or otherwise conduct their business.

The concern about the power to recall is that it may turn out that this would be used excessively by inspectors. That becomes a problem if there are complaints. Depending on the criteria and the assessment process, there may in fact be a situation where the pendulum swings very far to the other side, to the extent that there are some unintended consequences to businesses, maybe some harm to a business simply because recalls are becoming more prevalent.

There is a significant move toward the American way, a litigious society. People are going to start going to the courts. There is the potential for lawsuits in the future rather than to negotiate a recall or action by the private sector that is currently done.

The point is whether or not there has to be some clarification about when the power can be used and some of the options we may want to consider. These are important areas that the committee would be able to explore with expert witnesses. The committee would be able to call specific witnesses to find out what is happening not only in other jurisdictions but in similar circumstances with other legislation with regard to remediating or dealing with a problem area.

The second area that would require some discussion at the health committee has to do with staffing requirements to deal with this new power of product recall. I have had an opportunity to look at Bill C-52, at least up to the section where it requires regulation, and I am going to speak about those in a moment.

The way the bill is currently structured, it will require the collaboration of border security agencies, Health Canada inspectors, as well as CFIA inspectors. Of these three groups, the one that is currently least able to deal with this on the inspection side is Health Canada. It has the lowest number of inspectors and the bill puts a lot of responsibility on Health Canada.

The first committee I was ever on was the health committee. I have had substantial involvement with Health Canada, whether it be on tobacco labelling, aboriginal health issues, or reproductive technologies. Bill C-13, the reproductive technologies bill, I think took about three years of our lives and, incidentally, the regulations that were required under Bill C-13 still have not been fully prepared, implemented and promulgated. The regulations in that bill on which we spent so much time still have not been fully implemented. I will speak a little more about regulations in a second.

There certainly is that issue of staff. Those are two of the items that should be dealt with regarding the committee consideration should this bill pass at second reading, which I believe it will.

It is easy to protect the health and well-being of Canadians and to ensure safety if we are prepared to go to the nth degree and establish all of the checks and balances and procedures using all of the tools that Parliament could authorize Health Canada to put into place. However, if we take it to its logical extreme, we get into a situation where the commercial activity has been impeded and all of a sudden a business cannot provide the goods and services it normally would because of the regulatory environment.

A very serious issue for parliamentarians to consider not only with this bill but with many others is whether or not there will be the unintended consequence of impeding economic activity by increasing a regulatory regime that is not justified by the issue we are trying to deal with. It is never black and white. It is never a matter of touching one thing to take care of another. We have to look beyond that and find out what the consequential implications may be.

The issue here is whether or not we are moving into a new regime of policing the commercial activity to the extent that it will impose a regulatory regime. We do not know what that is right now and we do not know the extent to which it is going to be used. As a matter of fact, we will not know that until after the bill goes through all stages and receives royal assent because that is the way things are happening.

However, committees can, as the health committee did with the reproductive technologies bill, say that no regulations shall be promulgated unless they are sent to the health committee for review and comment in advance. Unfortunately, in the case of the reproductive technologies bill, the committee had no authority specifically in the bill or from the minister to make any changes to the regulations. The committee could only review and comment, and that is a problem.

If regulations are enabled by the legislation, but the detail gives us something different that we did not understand to be the case, Parliament has no tools whatsoever to deal with what I would call, and maybe it is strong language, draconian regulations. There may be some unintended consequences, such as an impact on legitimate businesses by increasing the burden of the regulations, the responsibility of the businesses to know what those regulations are, to monitor them and to ensure that their businesses are compliant. It is a very significant cost to business to understand and to know the law.

We are dealing with an area which, from a lay perspective, Canadians will certainly want to ensure that Parliament and the Government of Canada have taken appropriate steps to provide for the safety of consumer products. There are certainly a number of areas in which there will be some concern by the stakeholders who will be impacted by this bill.

I did not have a copy of the bill readily available so I printed out a copy. The bill itself is at least 48 pages long, but I was scanning it and I came to the part dealing with regulations. This is something that I raised previously in the debate on Bill C-33. Under “Regulations”, clause 38(1) of Bill C-52 says that the governor in council may make regulations for carrying out the purposes or provisions of the act. It does not say it will, or has to, or shall. It says may. I have always questioned that.

In this regard, because there is the potential that we are expanding the responsibilities of the border services agency, Health Canada and CFIA, all of a sudden the regulatory activity, and the cost and coordination of it, is going to create a significant demand of human resources and a significant risk in some respects to impeding or slowing down the current velocity of commercial activity, particularly with regard to imports.

There will also be differences in standards around the world. Certain products sold to Canadians have components made in various jurisdictions, but there is a final producer who puts them all together. Where the legal obligation and the rights and responsibilities lie also become very interesting questions to deal with.

It is important to remind members that the purpose of the bill is to protect the public by addressing and preventing dangers posed to human health and safety by consumer products that are circulated within Canada and those that are imported. As I indicated, we have products that are imported as finished products, but also components which go into other products. The bill covers everything that we should be concerned about in terms of public safety.

The current consumer product safety system functions on a voluntary basis, as I indicated. If a product is dangerous or poses a health risk, the corporation can issue a recall. This bill would prohibit the sale, import, manufacture, packaging, labelling, and advertising of consumer products that may pose a risk to consumers. While voluntary recalls would continue to happen, inspectors named under the act or by the minister would be able to order a recall of a consumer product.

I must admit that when I hear about a product recall in the media, I have often wondered how much it really costs. I have often wondered how much of that cost is effectively passed on to the consumer. Public safety is certainly an issue, but in terms of adding to the economic cost of a product increases more in recalls that may not be totally warranted and may be adding to the cost of the consumer product as well. Obviously due diligence should be used in exercising this extraordinary power.

The bill would also create a tracing mechanism. It would force corporations, manufacturers and importers to keep all documents containing information needed to identify the origin of the product and where it was distributed. This would ensure that when a recall was made, the products would be easily removed from the store shelves. Knowing the origin of the product would help to enforce the act and would prevent further occurrences. These provisions make some sense.

The bill would also substantially increase the fines and penalties, something that this House has dealt with significantly in a number of ministries not just through the amendments to the criminal justice act, but I can think of other ministries where fines or penalties are proposed.

Deterrence is an important aspect of the dialogue. At committee I am going to be looking for an assessment of whether or not the proposed increases in the fines and penalties when a product is deemed unsafe would have the intended effect based on the experience of other jurisdictions, other countries, or the experts who are proposing them, if there is not any research on that particular aspect.

The bill would also allow the minister to seek an injunction when an act is being committed or to prevent someone from committing an act that contravenes the bill. There is an enabling provision in the bill regarding the minister.

Inspectors would be given extraordinary powers to search and seize. They could effectively search any place they believe is involved in manufacturing, importing, packaging, storing, advertising, selling, labelling, testing or transporting consumer goods. A warrant would only be necessary in cases where an inspector wished to search the dwelling.

This is very serious. When there is that kind of list of broad-sweeping regulatory powers, we want to be absolutely sure it is not going a little too far.

This is a very difficult bill. It is a very long bill for us to assess and on which to give informed opinions on some of its aspects at second reading, but I will look very carefully, as I am sure all members will, to the proceedings at the health committee to find out what the facts are. Hopefully we will have better consumer protection for Canadians.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was interested in the member's comments on Bill C-52, An Act respecting the safety of consumer products. One of the areas that I am concerned about, and I know from his remarks that he is as well, is the whole question of the safety of imports into Canada.

One of the problems that I see with Bill C-52 is that it lacks any comprehensive system to ensure that items are safe before they enter Canada. The system it contemplates targets high risk sources for higher surveillance, but it depends more on reacting to safety problems that are identified through use after the fact. It relies on identifying a problem once the product has already been distributed in Canada. This seems to be a major problem. It might be better to try to identify those problems before the product reaches consumers in Canada altogether.

I wonder if the member might comment on that. Does he think it might be better to have some kind of pre-entry testing system or some pre-distribution testing system for imports that might make Canadians safer overall? That would not make the Canadian consumer the testing ground for whether there is a problem with a product imported from outside of Canada.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an excellent question. As a matter of fact, when the minister was here to propose the bill, it was a question that I posed to him at that time. There were a number of examples, particularly coming out of China, for instance, where product safety issues were raised. In fact, I think I quoted from a letter from a constituent who asked me why we did not have these things, every one of them, checked before they got onto the shelves for Canadians.

I think I addressed it to some extent in my comments by saying that we could protect the safety of Canadians 100% by putting into place absolutely everything we can possibly think of, including rigorous testing on every product, but we do not do that now. The member asks a good question: why do we not do more or should we be doing more to protect the safety of Canadians with regard to consumer products?

However, we do establish guidelines and requirements for the materials that are used, for the content. The lead content would be an example that people would understand. Products coming in with leaded paint is one example. Those are proscribed. We have to understand that if somebody is importing that product, where does the liability lie? Where does the responsibility lie with regard to imported components or finished products for distribution and sale in Canada in ensuring compliance with Canadian law and Canadian standards? That is where it is.

I think the member probably would agree that if we have an indication that a certain distributor or certain kinds of products become clearly problematic, and that is where some of the issues have arisen, there may be some middle ground where in fact there is a monitoring process of those areas in which there have been examples of product safety violations, as it were, or risks to product safety or the health of Canadians from products.

However, the question still becomes whether or not we want to guarantee 100% protection. I can tell the House that in the case of the U.S. Army, its threshold is to look at and check about 1%, I believe, between 1% and 4%, of products it purchases. Of course, it is one of the major consumers within the United States in terms of product acquisition, and statistically that is as effective as checking 40%. It is kind of interesting. I do not know what the science is and all of these other things, but I think we have to be careful about imposing requirements that may in fact have some serious unintended consequences on the economic side and may not get significant benefit improvements in terms of the safety side.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is great to have a supplementary question for the member. I appreciate his thoughtful response. My other question is around the resources that go toward actually enforcing this kind of legislation. In the past, we have had consumer protection legislation, but often there have not been the resources to actually enforce that legislation. I think there is some attempt in this legislation to improve the situation and to see a stronger approach to product safety, but without the resources to do the appropriate enforcement, that really does not make much difference at all.

I wonder if the member would support ensuring that there is something in the legislation that might hold the government responsible for maintaining an adequate inspection capacity, for instance, with adequate staff to process, investigate and respond to problems that do arise, and to make sure that the new reporting system contemplated by the legislation is actually effective.

Is there something we can do to make sure that the capacity is actually there to back up the legislation?

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is also a very good question. Coincidentally, we are facing that kind of situation in the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, which I chair. Right now, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner has a staff shortage. It has only about 70% of its authorized staff complement and has new responsibilities under the Federal Accountability Act. It has requested and is authorized to have another 20 employees. As it turns out, the privacy commission has had to rely on contracting people in because it cannot hire people quickly enough to fill some of these jobs.

In fact, we found the same thing in the Information Commissioner's office. From my work on the government operations and estimates committee, I have found that this is prevalent in a number of departmental areas where there simply is not the qualified and properly trained staff to discharge the responsibility.

In my conversations and directions to the Privacy Commissioner, I told her that she is asking for increased powers, more sweeping powers for the Privacy Commissioner to report more often and to initiate criminal investigations, et cetera, but she does not have the staff to do it. As a matter of fact, the backlogs in terms of investigations are so large that it is going to take her an awful long time to address them.

Therefore, the member raises a very important question. It is easy to add those powers, but can the responsibility be discharged in a responsible fashion? Can the job be done? There is no point in giving someone the responsibility unless there is the commitment not only of the dollars but of having the capacity in place to discharge those responsibilities. One makes those undertakings to the Canadian people that it is being put in place, and I think the member is quite correct, in that it has to be with the assumption that it can be delivered.