Mr. Glover.
Evidence of meeting #24 for Health in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was products.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #24 for Health in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was products.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:30 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
I'm attempting to respond to all of the members' comments.
4:30 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
The general prohibition is very broad and would allow us to move quickly, with respect to the previous commenter's comments. And the definition on page 3 does speak to...so chronic is covered in the act in terms of the definitions as it has been laid out. So again it comes back to whether we are duplicating CEPA, and is that beneficial or not? For you as officials, does that create confusion, and is it not beneficial?
The other concern we would have with this is in respect of how we would enforce this, given the implications of some of the things that are implied with this.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON
The science can move very quickly, and all of a sudden something can be determined to be pretty bad for you if you have some long-term exposure via the environment. I think our concern is that this would allow the government to deal with the new science very quickly, and I've not been reassured that CEPA could move that quickly in terms of getting a product off the market that, with the recent scientific evidence, has been shown to be harmful.
4:35 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
With respect to the member's comments, I will try to be as direct as possible.
The general prohibition would allow us to move quickly to deal with that issue without creating the confusion, the overlap, and the duplication. We do agree and acknowledge that the science is constantly evolving, and we are constantly monitoring that and we are doing our own research as well. But in short summary, if new evidence came forward that indicated there was a problem, the general prohibition would apply and would allow us to take action.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Cathy McLeod Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Actually, I think my question around the general prohibition was just answered, and whether it would meet the needs, so thank you.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Colin Carrie Conservative Oshawa, ON
That was my question. I thought the general prohibition would allow us to act very quickly—
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
Then we're going to go to a vote on this.
(Amendment negatived)
(Clause 7 agreed to)
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
I understand we stood clause 8. I understand that we don't have an amendment, but we have new clause 8.1. Is that right, Dr. Bennett?
4:35 p.m.
Liberal
4:35 p.m.
Liberal
Joyce Murray Liberal Vancouver Quadra, BC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
The idea here is that there is a particular subset of goods that creates greater vulnerability than general consumer products, and that's children's toys and children's products. We know that the impact of toxins on children is not in a ratio to weight. If the child has one-tenth the weight of an adult, that doesn't mean that one-tenth of the dose would have the same impact on the child. In fact, especially with babies, when their systems are still developing and their neurological development is still under way, products can have a much greater impact than the ratio to weight would suggest. We have to be more precautionary with babies.
We also know that there are conditions we don't yet have an explanation for, such as the explosion of incidents of childhood autism. I'm not suggesting that I know what the cause of that is, but this kind of situation causes us, the Liberal caucus members, to want to be more precautionary in how we approach Bill C-6.
So that's what the rewrite of the amendment is intended to do.
If you look at the schedules that cover which chemicals would no longer be allowed under Bill C-6, it's a pretty short list. If you go to the lists of chemicals that have been identified through cancer research and are listed as in new paragraph 8.1(1)(a), there's a larger list. What we're talking about is coming up with a broader list of chemicals that would place onus differently.
The onus in the general bill is that, other than for a very short list, the onus is on industry to figure out whether something is harmful in a toy or child's product, and they may not find that out. It may be affecting children for years, as some of the flame retardants and so on were. This is a more precautionary approach whereby we take the chemicals that have been identified as a problem for children and the onus changes. We say of them that unless it can be shown that it is necessary to use one or that it is not actually harmful, we consider these as being harmful, and they should be phased out over a defined time period. That's essentially what this amendment is about.
We have a printing or editing error in new subclause 8.1(4). I don't know whether this is the time to read the correction into the—
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Joyce Murray Liberal Vancouver Quadra, BC
I apologize for this. New subclause 8.1(4) is confusing because of editing errors.
The way it should read is this:
(4) A child's toy or child care article shall be considered to contain the substance on the list if the degree of concentration of that substance in the toy or article is so great that it would be reasonable to conclude that the substance was added to the product in the manufacturing or packaging process.
In other words, it's clarifying that we're not talking about background levels of lead or cadmium that may be in the air or in the soil; we are talking about concentrations that reasonably would be concluded to be added.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
Could we also have that in writing, Ms. Murray, please? Thank you so much.
Could we have some comments from the officials? Mr. Glover, just address this, and then I'll go to our next person.
4:40 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
Thank you very much, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to comment on this amendment.
The first point I would make is that this amendment would cause the department problems with respect to the scope of the amendment, as it differs quite significantly from what is in the original Bill C-6. Therefore, the resource implications around this are such that I would not be able to certify—as currently resourced for Bill C-6 and the anticipation of it—that we would be able to deliver these. It is a very broad departure and would have significant resource implications.
With respect to some of the more specific comments, I've already spoken about CEPA, which again does much of this, including children's toys and products. It does take care of the most vulnerable populations and does specific assessments taking those into account, whether they be children, aboriginal, or unborn children. There are a number of ways in which the assessments are done that are designed to be extremely protective and very conservative when designed to assess the substance and be protective of health.
With respect to some of the specific comments, such as the International Agency for Research on Cancer, those are ones that have specific health points. I would like to inform the committee that CEPA looks at broader sets of health points beyond only cancer and is concerned about developmental and reproductive health end points. Therefore, it is in fact more protective of human health. So while we are also introducing duplication, it is on a narrower set of criteria than that which exists under CEPA.
Furthermore, IARC, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, is very clear in their own preamble that this is a list of substances that are known may cause cancer in humans or in animals and they do not suggest this is a proxy for individual jurisdictions, but that each jurisdiction should do their own assessment. This would be using that list for a purpose which the authors acknowledge right upfront in their preamble to not use that list for.
Reviewing the list every 12 months goes back to the comment I made with respect to the workload on establishing all these limits, exemptions, and processes. This would be incredibly resource-intensive for literally hundreds of thousands of consumer products.
4:40 p.m.
Bloc
Nicolas Dufour Bloc Repentigny, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair. You read my mind. I wanted to know what the officials thought of the amendment.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
