Health committee  Can I just clarify? Do you mean in the context of an order?

Health committee  For every order that's provided for in the legislation, there is a review mechanism. I'll ask my colleague, Madam Labelle, to speak to the independence issue, but I would like to underline that for every order there is a review mechanism.

Health committee  I would just add that through the food and consumer safety action plan, one area that has been resourced is standards development, so that will also be quite beneficial in the context of your question.

Health committee  This is a Canadian approach, but we've certainly designed it to ensure a similar level of safety compared to our trading partners. In the EU, for example, they have a general safety requirement that is similar to the general prohibition, which really is an effort to keep the accountability for safety of products with industry.

Health committee  There isn't a provision in the legislation. I'm not sure we need a legislative mechanism to institute that kind of thing. We do have information on the web now about all of the recalls that have been undertaken. As well, we always work hard to make sure there is information about recalls where it's been an industry initiative.

Health committee  Given my previous statements that for the most part we have a very responsible industry in this country, I think the tangible impacts of this legislation would probably be marginal for most of Canadian industry, especially given, as I mentioned, that there's already a requirement in other jurisdictions and that much of our industry involves international players, so they do exercise such things as document retention.

Health committee  I would characterize the feedback generally as quite positive in the context, for example, of the general prohibition. The requirements that we are placing are requirements that already exist in large part. They are things that industry is aware of because of the results of decisions, for example, in liability cases that have been before the courts.

Health committee  Thank you. At the moment we have a system in place for tracking consumer complaints, and I believe it's a robust system. We have to build on that system, because for mandatory reporting we expect we will be receiving quite voluminous raw data. Whenever there is a serious incident, there will be a requirement upon industry to provide a report.

Health committee  Essentially, Madam Chair, the reference is to the precautionary principle. So this gives us the provision in cases where the evidence might be suggestive but may not be definitive. It may still be evolving. We would have the authority to act. I think a good example, although obviously not under the auspices of this legislation, is what we've done with bisphenol A and polycarbonate baby bottles.

Health committee  The minister would certainly be accountable for any intervention in such a situation.

Health committee  Do you mind if I continue to use the cadmium example?

Health committee  Okay, thank you. Right now with cadmium we do have some regulations pertaining to the use of cadmium in surface coatings, ceramic glassware, but we do not have established in regulation an allowable limit or any restrictions on the presence of cadmium, for example, in children's jewellery.

Health committee  Thank you for the question. In general, what we would anticipate would trigger a request like that would be a suspicion of non-compliance. If we think, for example, of a product such as children's jewellery, in which we think there may be a problem with the level of lead in it, we might ask suppliers—that provision, I believe, is related only to importers and manufacturers, so it stays at a higher level of trade—to provide test results to verify that their products are within the regulated limits.

Health committee  To the general question of whether I feel the resources are going to be there, yes. The funding that's been provided through the food and consumer safety action plan is considerable. It's approximately $70 million over five years, as well as ongoing funding. Specifically with respect to inspectors, the funding for the numbers of inspectors is doubled, so what we will see over the period of the first time period of the food and consumer safety action plan is an increase from approximately 45 inspectors to approximately 90.

Health committee  The bill does introduce a very much modernized scheme for fines and penalties, the upper limit being $5 million for serious offences, and even more if they're committed knowingly. That's up from a limit of $1 million under the Hazardous Products Act. It's important to say that I believe we have industry in Canada that wishes to be compliant.