Pest Control Products Act

An Act to protect human health and safety and the environment by regulating products used for the control of pests

This bill was last introduced in the 37th Parliament, 1st Session, which ended in September 2002.

Sponsor

Anne McLellan  Liberal

Status

Not active, as of June 13, 2002
(This bill did not become law.)

Elsewhere

All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.

Pest Control Products ActGovernment Orders

April 15th, 2002 / 1:20 p.m.
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NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

Mr. Speaker, I understand that the Canadian Alliance Party does not like the big thumb of the federal government or getting involved in other jurisdictions. In this case I suppose it would be the big green thumb, which is in fact the trademark of the pesticide company in my neighbourhood that sprays lawns with chemicals to keep them green.

I would argue that it is a legitimate role of the federal government to try to set national standards. If we just leave it up to the municipalities to deal with it community by community, that is an exhausting and tedious process and we may not have buy-in from all communities. Some communities will choose to participate and some will not. It is a legitimate role for the federal government to try to lead by example and set national standards when it is in the national interest.

As to using far fewer chemicals, I do not think there is anybody here who would disagree with the idea that we should be using fewer chemicals in our agriculture and in our cosmetic use. We should be pouring less toxic substances into the biosphere, into the environment.

My only point, and the only reason I raised it briefly in my speech, is that I thought it should have been at least one of the tenets of the legislation. Or it should be a goal or a stated objective that the purpose of Bill C-53 is to try to minimize the use of pesticides in our ecosystem. I do not stand back or apologize for that. I believe in it strongly. Whether they are old chemicals, current chemicals, modern chemicals or good or bad chemicals, we should be striving to reduce the chemicals we pour into the ecosystem.

Pest Control Products ActGovernment Orders

April 15th, 2002 / 1:05 p.m.
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NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

The hon. member says that some of us have yet to come out of the fog. Many have found their way into government, those fog sniffers of yore.

The failure to commit money for research into the long term effects of pesticides is a major shortcoming of Bill C-53, especially as it pertains to children and public education about the dangers of pesticides and support for alternatives. Chemical companies constantly advertise on television to use this or that product. If there are problems with pests, zap them with this or zap them with that. On one side in the media we are faced with a sales campaign promoting the further use of pesticides in our society. We in my party feel the government should have introduced a countervailing measure to mitigate that influence by telling the other side of the story. In other words, use a product if we have to but be aware of the dangers.

The NDP critic recommends that we oppose Bill C-53. We do not support Bill C-53 in its current configuration. Even though it is an improvement over the former Pest Control Products Act of 1969, the bill is still flawed and still fails to protect Canadians. It is not bold or courageous. It is not innovative or visionary. The bill is pedantic and rather sluggish in its tone and content.

Bill C-53 may bring up the standards somewhat close to U.S. standards, but it still falls way behind the European standards. It is not striving to achieve the best practices internationally, a favourite cliché. Let us scan the globe for the best practices and emulate them. It makes good sense. We have chosen to ignore the best practices in the world and instead have chosen to align ourselves with second, third or fourth rate practices such as we are finding in the American regulatory system.

The legislation is still an improvement over what we have, I grudgingly admit. However, it is not nearly as bold as it could have been if we really wanted to set some standards and show the world our concern about this issue.

Harmonization with U.S. regulations may have a dangerous effect in the long term because it will be harder for us to ultimately adopt the higher standards in the European model. Given the scientific evidence that exists, this legislation should have been much stronger in its efforts to protect human health and the environment.

I would like to recognize the contribution made by the member for Winnipeg North Centre on the Standing Committee on Health with regard to the bill. She points out that at least that committee is dealing with a piece of health legislation which, in the five years I have been a member of parliament, is a very scarce rarity. The House of Commons at least is dealing with an issue of preventive medicine. We support and encourage that.

We in the NDP are critical of the bill. We will be moving amendments to it. We hope we can convince the government side to entertain many of the issues we have raised.

Pest Control Products ActGovernment Orders

April 15th, 2002 / 12:50 p.m.
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NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak to Bill C-53. I note that Bill C-53 would replace the Pest Control Products Act of 1969. We do not have to do a lot of mental mathematics to realize that it has been over 33 years since this act has been revisited and revamped.

We all agree that the world has changed dramatically since 1969. It is overdue and welcome in many circles for us to be dealing with such a timely and topical bill.

I should note, and would be remiss not to, that the Liberal government first promised new legislation during the 1993 election campaign. It was the former health minister who promised the legislation by the year 2001. Some hon. members on the other side are seeing this as the fulfillment of an election campaign promise perhaps, albeit from the 1993 election campaign.

The Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development produced a study to assist the Minister of Health in advising what type of legislation would be necessary to deal with the management and use of pesticides. It included an examination of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, PMRA.

We note that in putting forward Bill C-53 the primary objective is the protection of human health and the environment, and finding some balance where both of those issues can be addressed.

We will admit that Bill C-53 is much stronger than the current legislation. We are pleased to be able to take note of that. We feel there has been some balance struck among the interests of health, environmental concerns and the legitimate concerns of industry, many of which have been raised in the House during this debate.

Bill C-53 would seek to introduce the use of modern risk assessment practices. In other words the further consideration or the enhanced consideration of vulnerable populations such as children and the aggregate sum or the total exposed cumulative effect on children. Speaker after speaker have raised in the House, and we all agree, that children are especially vulnerable to the proliferation of chemical and pesticide use in our cities, even in industrial settings where there is overspray, and of being contaminated by farm practices.

It is something about which we have come to realize more and more only recently. I will give one example from my own experience. The hon. member for Winnipeg South will possibly remember this. There was a time in Winnipeg when we had DDT foggers going up and down the residential side streets and through the city parks late at night. What did we do as kids? The hon. member remembers very well. We used to ride our bikes behind the fogging truck because it was pretty neat to lose sight completely in such a dense fog of DDT haze mixed with diesel oil which in fact compounded the effect. This was our entertainment for the afternoon, following a truck full of poison.

Children do things like that. Children by their very nature play on the grass. Kids put things in their mouths. They pick things up from the ground and put them in their mouths. There has to be a growing recognition that the interests of children must be our primary consideration in any piece of legislation like this.

The other thing that has only been recognized recently is that we do not have to ingest these chemicals to be put at risk by them. Skin absorbs them; it acts like a sponge. This is something I know from my background in workplace safety and health in the labour movement. Exposure to chemicals and toxins need not be oral. One can ingest them by absorbing them through the skin. They work their way through the body and find a natural state of repose in the organs, in the liver, kidneys and pancreas. There they sit for many years. The cumulative effect, the total aggregate effect of chemicals on our bodies is something we are only just starting to recognize and realize.

Another thing happens. Not only is that chemical ingested through the skin and not only has it found a natural state of repose in the organs, but other chemicals come to join it there. Chemical A sits in the kidneys or the liver. Then chemical B is introduced to the kidneys or liver and a chemical reaction of those two things causes chemical C . We might begin with two benign chemicals but combine them and we could have a very toxic substance. This is a risk we are starting to recognize in people in the workplace and in children.

Another thing I would point out in the labour movement is that in the workplace there is what is called the walking wounded. A lot of poisoned people are wandering around out there with a ticking time bomb in their internal organs which may or may not cause complications later on.

In dealing with the bill as it pertains to children, there is something I noticed as a hockey dad. Both of my kids played hockey right up through the high school level. I noticed with my older boy that quite a number of kids carried ventilators for the treatment of asthma. A couple of kids on his team had to use puffers throughout the game.

By the time my younger boy went through the system six years later, kids eight and nine years old would sit on the bench waiting for their turn to play hockey and their puffers were lined up on the boards. I think seven out of fifteen kids on the roster had to use inhalers, all labelled and ready for use. When they came off the ice after their shift they had to use their ventilators. At the risk of sounding alarmist, I cannot help but think there is something fundamentally wrong with that picture when seven out of fifteen otherwise healthy young athletes are so affected by asthma that they have to use ventilators to finish a one hour hockey game.

I point those things out to stress that nothing short of making the best interests of children the absolute primary consideration would be satisfactory to me. I think we have matured in our treatment of this issue. I do not believe there is a member in the House who would not acknowledge and agree that a key provision is the protection of vulnerable populations, such as children, from the total aggregate and cumulative effects of unnecessary exposure to toxic pesticides.

The other thing the bill acknowledges is how necessary material safety data sheets are. The workplace hazardous materials information system legislation is now law in all workplaces across the country. Key and paramount in the WHMIS legislation is the right to know and the right to refuse. Workers have the right to know what chemicals they are working with and they have the right to refuse to handle them if they believe they pose a risk to their health and well-being.

There is that recognition in Bill C-53. It extends and extrapolates that basic human right, that we do not have to touch things we know to be harmful to us. However it does not address the issue I tried to outline, that we can have a perfectly benign chemical in one hand and another perfectly benign chemical in the other but when we combine the two in the Petri dish which is the body, there is that third chemical which can and does sometimes hurt us.

I have tried to be balanced in recognizing some of the advantages of Bill C-53. One of the concerns my party has regarding the bill is that the legislation is extremely vague. This has been a developing pattern in the pieces of legislation I have witnessed in the short time I have been a member of parliament. More and more there is very little binding teeth in the legislation and so much of the details are left to regulation. In other words, the details are in regulations that will not necessarily be dealt with in the House of Commons but will follow after to give meaning to the language in the legislation that we pass here.

Some of the issues that will have to be dealt with in regulation are the details and the timeline for the re-evaluation process. Another issue is the type of tests to be used in risk assessment. Those are critical issues which I think should be debated in the House of Commons. They will not be. They will be regulatory, not legislative.

Another concern is that the precautionary principle is not really enshrined as one of the basic principles of the bill, not even in the preamble, not even in the soft language that is often the preamble to legislation. We believe that in any environmental bill in this day and age or certainly in a bill related to health care, the precautionary principle must be one that is adopted as a basic premise, as one of the basic tenets. The pillars of anything we do must adhere to and stem from that precautionary principle. It is noticeably absent in the bill.

There is a failure in Bill C-53 to ban the use of pesticides for cosmetic purposes. We thought that the debate around pesticide use had matured to the point where we could accommodate this basic issue. More and more around the country we are hearing about municipalities taking that step. Maybe there are industrial uses and reasons from a health care point of view that pesticides are necessary. Surely they are not necessary to make lawns greener.

There is nothing more perverse than driving down a suburban street and seeing a beautiful expansive green lawn in front of a house with a sign that reads “Danger, do not play on this grass, toxic substances used”. There might as well be a skull and cross bones planted on that beautiful lawn if so much poison is applied that it is dangerous for a child or a dog to be exposed to it.

It would have been a bold and courageous step on the part of government if it had introduced legislation that would deal with banning the use of pesticides for cosmetic purposes. We are disappointed that Bill C-53 fails to do this. We certainly hope that our member on the health committee, the member for Winnipeg North Centre, will be able to introduce amendments that will be entertained favourably which might give us some satisfaction on those pressing issues.

We are also critical of Bill C-53 at the lack of a fast track registration process for lower risk products. There could be a graduated scale where lower risk products could be dealt with in a fast track registration process. That was raised early on in the debates and consultations surrounding the legislation, but we do not see that reflected in the bill.

There is really nothing in Bill C-53 that would reduce the number of pesticides being used. We would have thought that the bill could have been introduced with the preface that it is the intention of the government to gradually reduce the number of pesticides in circulation. That would have been a very good place to start. That does not seem to have been one of the objectives in Bill C-53. We would have thought that most Canadians would have welcomed and celebrated that.

Nothing in Bill C-53 would really give satisfaction to those who are interested in reducing the number of pesticides in circulation. It talks about further regulating this. It talks about ways to protect Canadians from harmful exposure, et cetera. However it really does not talk about minimizing or reducing the use of pesticides in general and it does not prevent Canadians from being exposed to the most harmful pesticides.

I will balance this off so that my speech is not entirely negative, but I have to share with the House that some of our concerns stem from the failure in Bill C-53 to require the labelling of all toxic formulants, contaminants and microcontaminants. We flag that as a criticism as well.

The Pest Management Regulatory Agency was examined by the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. I noted earlier in my speech that this was done in May 2000, yet there is failure to set out the mandate of the pest management regulatory agency in Bill C-53. We are critical this basic recognition fails to show up in the bill. If we are going to rely on the regulatory agency for guidance, advice and direction in the future, then surely the mandate of the PMRA should have found its way into the bill.

Bill C-53 fails to commit money for research into the long term effects of pesticides. If our primary consideration is the best interests of children, we need to know more about that toxic soup I talked about. We need to know more about the long term effects of the liver becoming a repository for who knows how many different chemicals that get stirred around and mixed up and turned into yet another chemical, a brand new chemical compound for all we know. The long term effects of pesticides is not really known.

I shudder to think what it was like for me and the member for Winnipeg South cruising around on our bicycles behind that fogging truck full of DDT and 2,4-D. He and I seem to have survived to date, but I would not want to see what our organs look like through a fluoroscope. Our livers could look like whiffle balls for all we know.

Pest Control Products ActGovernment Orders

April 15th, 2002 / 12:40 p.m.
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Bloc

Mario Laframboise Bloc Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC

Mr. Speaker, first, I want to thank the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine for congratulating the Parti Quebecois and its minister, André Boisclair, particularly on an issue of such importance as pesticides and the environment.

It must be understood that the municipal level has full jurisdiction—as the hon. member pointed out—when the federal and provincial governments do not get involved, or when they do not have regulations in effect. Municipalities have been very successful in protecting their environment, particularly from pesticides used for so-called esthetic purposes.

Still, I would like to hear the hon. member's view on Bill C-53, which is silent on an improved registration process for less toxic pesticides. It must be understood that once the government gets involved with regulations, it prevents provinces and municipalities from regulating. So, there is some kind of a flaw here.

I would like to hear the hon. member's comments on the registration process which, in my opinion, should clearly be a quick process or phase for less toxic pesticides. I would also like to hear her comments on the incentives that such a bill could include for farmers who, among others, use pesticides for industrial purposes.

As far as I am concerned, the government made a mistake by not including a process to encourage, through credits, the industry and those who use industrial pesticides to find alternatives more quickly.

Pest Control Products ActGovernment Orders

April 15th, 2002 / 12:25 p.m.
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Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine Québec

Liberal

Marlene Jennings LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister for International Cooperation

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to be able to take part in this debate on Bill C-53.

As a number of members of the House are aware, I have introduced a bill on two occasions. The first bill was C-388 and it later bore the number C-267. This bill banned the use of pesticides for non-essential purposes.

The purpose of my private member's bill, which I am no longer able to sponsor, having been a parliamentary secretary since September 2001, is to place a moratorium on the cosmetic use of chemical pesticides in the home and garden and on recreational facilities until scientific evidence that shows that such use is safe has been presented to parliament and concurred in by a parliamentary committee.

We will recall that the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development tabled a report in May 2000 on the existing legislation on pesticide registration. One of the committee's recommendations was that the government should make major and serious changes to this legislation. The outcome of this we have before us in Bill C-53.

Bill C-53 is the new Pest Control Products Act that Canadians have been waiting for for a long time. Some would say too long. The purpose of the bill is to amend legislation that is already about thirty years old. The time had definitely come.

The House, through the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development, has examined the issue of the use of pesticides to eliminate pests. As I have already mentioned, the committee's report, entitled “Pesticides: Making the Right Choice for the Protection of Health and the Environment”, was tabled in May 2000. It is the result of a lengthy study and testimony from numerous people and experts who explained that the current legislation was outdated.

The committee made a number of recommendations, the first one being that the Minister of Health introduce new pesticide legislation as a top priority.

I am very pleased that our government, through the Minister of Health, heeded the main recommendation of the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development, and introduced a bill.

However, like many of my colleagues, I have studied the bill. Analysis of Bill C-53 reveals that the main purpose of the bill is to prevent people and the environment from being subjected to unacceptable risks resulting from the use of pest control products. This fundamental question or risk assessment is based on the health assessment of children, pregnant women, seniors and, in some cases, the specific risk associated with an exposure ten times greater than the allowable levels.

This bill does contain good elements, such as setting up a public registry. This will guarantee the public access to health information. This is a step forward. This bill also allows for the protection of whistleblowers and information sharing between departments with respect to pesticides.

Another major step is being taken in that there is a provision to the effect that the burden of proof for the safety and value of a product is clearly on the registrant or applicant. This is also a step in the right direction and it is a very positive aspect of this bill.

However, Bill C-53 has a number of serious flaws, in my opinion. For example, the precautionary principle and its application are very restricted under this act. The preamble does not even mention it. If the government, and I am part of it, is serious about achieving the primary objective of Bill C-53, which is to prevent unacceptable risks for people and the environment from the use of pest control products, it is essential that the precautionary principle be included in all aspects of the decision making process.

The Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development recommended, and I quote:

Appropriate preventive measures are to be taken where there is reason to believe that a pesticide is likely to cause harm, even when there is no conclusive evidence to prove a causal relation between the pesticide and its effects.

But there is not even a definition of an unacceptable or acceptable risk in the bill. I hope that when this bill is referred to the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development, the committee and all members will take a very good look at the few flaws I have mentioned.

The implementation of this bill will depend on the subjective interpretation of this concept which, as I mentioned, is not defined. The precautionary principle is only applied in the proposed legislation in re-evaluation or special reviews. At an operational level, the precautionary principle must be used in all decisions respecting pest control products.

Another flaw is that there is no science based inherent toxicity criteria, that is, there is no threshold for endocrine destruction, neurotoxicity or carcinogenic content of a pesticide specified for testing of the products. There is no requirement to re-register or evaluate pesticides for use on GMOs, that is genetically modified organisms. This is a problem.

The committee recommended that the regulatory agency be expressly mandated under the new legislation, or under another bill, to inform and educate the public about the risks associated with the use of pesticides and the availability of less harmful alternatives. Attitudes about pesticide use must be changed through aggressive public education programs.

The regulatory agency should not be given the exclusive responsibility to carry this out given that many federal departments make vital contributions to public awareness raising. It should be spread throughout the system. Public education should be a key component of the legislation.

We also need a commitment in the bill to the pollution prevention principle. There is no substitution principle included in the bill, that is, a requirement to deregister older pesticides once newer and safer ones are registered.

I think that this is an oversight in the bill, which could be corrected when the committee examines it.

Transparency should be a part of any new legislation and any new regulatory process introduced by government. This is something Canadians in the third millennium want. They want a government which is accountable, which behaves in a transparent manner. I think that the issue of transparency should be addressed in this bill. As we can see, there is no requirement for a sales database.

There is no direct mechanism for submission of independent scientific findings, as requested by the committee. We asked for that as well. There is no requirement to establish a database on reported adverse effects.

There is no specific mention of the Pest Management Advisory Council and there is no requirement for harmonization between the protection of human health and the environment in order not to weaken Canadian standards.

I think that Bill C-53 is a clear improvement over what we have right now. One of the members across the way mentioned that the Supreme Court of Canada had handed down a ruling with respect to the town of Hudson, Quebec. I believe that this ruling also involved other municipalities in Quebec which had regulated the use of pesticides within their boundaries and, in certain cases, had prohibited the use of pesticides and chemical products for cosmetic purposes. Companies accused the municipality of exceeding its powers and took it to court.

In a decision handed down in June 2001, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled very clearly that the federal government had jurisdiction over these matters, as do provincial and territorial governments. Municipalities have jurisdiction as well, provided that jurisdiction is not covered by the federal and provincial governments.

The Supreme Court of Canada went so far as to say that in today's reality there is more information available on how disruptive chemicals can be and how harmful to the health of our environment and our fellow citizens. As well, local governments are often in a better position to determine the needs of the population and the most effective means of ensuring their protection and of preserving or improving the environment in which their citizens live.

I was very pleased with this judgment. I have already met with several mayors and councillors of municipalities in order to encourage them to examine this matter and to pass bylaws on the use of pesticides in their municipalities. I must also congratulate the Government of Quebec, my government since I am a Quebecer, on the statements made by the minister, André Boisclair, on the Government of Quebec's intention to act on this matter. I am most pleased to hear this and am prepared to co-operate with my provincial government, because I feel this is a matter of vital importance.

If we want to have a healthy country a hundred years from now, we have to start right now taking care of the environment and of people's health. One very real way of doing so is to enact legislation that regulates the way pesticides and pest control products are used, particularly those manufactured from chemicals, based on the precautionary principle.

I will not take any more of the House's time. The Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development has done a good job. The outcome of that was its May 2000 report. The Minister of Health has done a good job as well. This is an excellent start, but once the standing committee has had the bill referred to it, I expect it to pay very serious attention to the comments, recommendations and suggestions originating with both sides of this House, in order to improve the bill and ensure that its objective of health and environmental protection is attained by the mechanisms contained in the bill, or to be added to it.

Pest Control Products ActGovernment Orders

April 15th, 2002 / 12:05 p.m.
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Canadian Alliance

Bob Mills Canadian Alliance Red Deer, AB

Mr. Speaker, as the other vice-chair of the environment committee it is my pleasure to speak to the bill.

As we have heard from my hon. colleague across the way, I was not part of the environment committee when Bill C-53 was discussed so I am not familiar with all the work put into it during that year. However I will add a few comments that might be helpful to the health committee as it looks at the bill.

My involvement with environmental issues dates back to my reading of Silent Spring , Rachel Carson's book that pushed into the forefront the issue of pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and so on and the impacts they might have. In those days a lot of mistakes were made. A lot of chemicals were developed that were effective, but no one looked at what they might do to our water and wildlife down the road. No one looked at the cumulative effects they might have for future generations.

I am pleased this piece of legislation is being revised. As the hon. member across the way mentioned, it has not been updated since 1969. An awful lot has changed in the area of chemistry regarding what works, what does not work and all the problems I mentioned.

I recognize the pressure on farmers trying to make a living who have had to deal with low commodity prices, increased input costs and so many environmental concerns. Other legislation before the House, Bill C-15B, is causing major concern regarding the definition of animal and the rights animals should have. We are all against cruelty to animals. However by taking the issue to the extreme we could put an awful lot of pressure on our agriculture community. Bill C-5, the endangered species legislation, could put even more pressure on farmers as it comes through the House later this week.

Now we are discussing pesticides. A lot of farmers are afraid the government will come after them and attack the very things that constitute their way of life and means of income. We want to make sure members of the farm community understand that Bill C-53 would not target them. It would simply modernize a piece of legislation that has not been touched since 1969. I know many farmers who do not like using chemicals. They would rather not have to use them. However using various fungicides, herbicides and pesticides is a matter of survival for them.

Bill C-53 says the federal government would not interfere in the urban use of pesticides. It would leave it to the municipalities. That is a wise decision. It would allow each city to listen to its grassroots and make its own decisions. The most important emphasis for the health committee will be to look at the effect pesticides would have on children, animals and people in the community.

The new farming methods depend fairly heavily on the use of new herbicides and pesticides. Direct seeding is very common across most of western Canada. Saving fuel, reducing CO

2

and preventing erosion are all important when it comes to the new farming techniques. The downside is that farmers are fairly dependent on herbicides and pesticides to keep down weeds, insects and so on.

There is the matter of the runoff of these chemicals into our dugouts, streams and lakes and the effects it might have. We need a full study of water and the implications of pesticide and herbicide use on our water supply. The government has talked but has come forward with very little action regarding the survey of water.

We need to understand our aquifers. We need to understand the environmental implications on a much bigger scale than we now do. That is in the realm of federal concern. The federal government needs to show the provinces it wants to work together to develop a water inventory which includes the runoff of chemicals into our water supply. We have gone far too long without doing adequate studies to know what this means.

As I mentioned, the technology has improved. The modernization of chemicals and use of safer chemicals is all part of the new R and D. Chemical companies know they must have safe products. Because we have had such outdated legislation Canada has been pretty lax in the use of new chemicals. Bill C-53 would move us along those lines.

As has been mentioned before, when an OECD country says a chemical is suspect because it does not do the job it is supposed to and has other effects, Canada will start to look at that. This is a positive move. We need to register these chemicals. We need to understand their implications. These are all positive aspects of Bill C-53.

A big concern I have and that our agriculture and health critics have spoken to is that we need to put this piece of legislation into committee where we can make amendments and so on. However I am a little tainted and unhappy because that is exactly what happened to Bill C-5. Government members, opposition members, environmentalists and so on all found fault with it. It went to committee. We worked for nine months to improve it. All members of the House worked hard and co-operatively on that piece of legislation.

When the government got the legislation back from committee it decided to reverse most of the amendments we had won in committee. If that is the sort of thing that happens with Bill C-53 I will question what the committee is doing or whether it is wasting its time with the amendments. I will get over it. However when I see something sent to committee and have great hopes for amendments, I hope the government will listen to the committee. Committees listen to hundreds of witnesses before making recommendations to make better pieces of legislation.

When we talk about pesticides we should also talk about labelling. All of us have experienced difficulties with labelling. Whether we spray a chemical on our lawn or on a bug we do not want in our roses, we sometimes have difficulty reading the labelling. I have always thought that needed a lot of improvement.

The labelling sometimes talks about the mixing of quantities but talks about spraying only one rose bush. This does not mean much to the user who may not be dealing with only one rose bush. Sometimes it is very unclear what one is supposed to do to safely use a chemical. Farmers have the same difficulty when mixing batches of pesticide. Clear labelling is needed. Anything the committee can do to improve labelling for the use of pesticides would help.

We need to speed up the registration process whether for drugs or the use of pesticides. We need to learn from others. We need to look at what the EU, the Americans and other countries are doing. We need to see why they are outlawing certain chemicals and bringing in new ones. Many new chemicals are cheaper, more effective and do a much better job. We need to be able to speed up the process. Again, I hope the committee deals with the issue of registration.

As I mentioned, the mandatory review of any chemical banned by an OECD country is a good move because it means those 50 some countries have done their research. If they find a reason to ban a certain chemical it is good to evaluate the information. However we want the evaluation to be based on sound science and not the whims or lobbying of chemical companies and agricultural groups. This is something the committee could amend and improve in Bill C-53.

When we put forward a piece of legislation like this we need to recognize that farmers are in competition with members of the European Union and their American colleagues, and that the competition is real. There is an awful lot of work we can do. As long as the committee is given the freedom to bring in the witnesses it wants and put forward the recommendations it wants, and as long as the government is committed to listening, we will go a long way toward having an improved piece of legislation.

As my party's agriculture and health critics have said, we will support this piece of legislation. We will take it to committee. We look forward to getting amendments with respect to labelling, use, evaluation and so on. Provided that all comes together, we look forward to supporting Bill C-53 when it comes to report stage and third reading.

Pest Control Products ActGovernment Orders

April 15th, 2002 / noon
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Liberal

Karen Kraft Sloan Liberal York North, ON

Mr. Speaker, as I began my portion of the debate on this very important topic, I reminded members of the House and indeed Canadians who might have been watching, that the Pest Control Products Act was 30 years out of date.

The new PCPA that amends and would replace the Pest Control Products Act is a very important act and is long awaited. No doubt science has improved in the past 30 years as well as has our understanding of developing an appropriate regulatory regime. We are very pleased that the minister has brought this act forward.

I also identified a number of things in Bill C-53 that I supported. I would like to make an additional comment on this and that is there will be a mandatory special review of any pesticide that has been banned or voluntarily withdrawn by an OECD country as we recently saw in the United States. I identified a number of positive things in the act, and I want to remind members of the House and people watching that, less I be accused of being too cheery, I believe there are some shortcomings to Bill C-53; instances where the environment committee's recommendations are not reflected in the bill.

I am currently the government vice chair of the environment committee that undertook a one year study of pesticides and the regulatory regime in Canada around them. I am optimistic that the health committee can address some of these shortcomings, but I would like to focus on just a few now.

For example, the committee called for a clear and unequivocal statutory mandate to be given to the Pest Management Regulatory Agency. The PMRA, although currently not an arm's length agency, has all the attributes of one. We felt therefore, that clearly identifying the de facto decision maker would be an important step in making the regulatory process more open and transparent. This has not been done in Bill C-53. The agency is not even mentioned in the bill.

The committee also called for a clear definition and application of legislation of the so-called substitution principle as is used in Sweden's environmental code. This would require that older pesticides be replaced with newer, less toxic products and non-chemical alternatives as they became available. This has not been done.

While I am talking about principles, a popular theme these days, let me address the question of the precautionary principle. The committee recommended the precautionary principle be enshrined in the bill's preamble as it is in the Canadian Environmental Protection Act or CEPA and this was not done.

The committee called for the precautionary principle to be enshrined in the bill's administrative section as it is in CEPA and this was not done. The committee also called for the precautionary principle to be enshrined in the operative sections. Under the bill, the minister may invoke the precautionary principle in the course of a re-evaluation or a special review. Unfortunately, it is not mentioned. At a minimum, and in the interests of cross-statute consistency, Bill C-53 should reflect CEPA in this matter. The result is a weak acknowledgment of the precautionary principle.

Finally, the committee recommended that the new legislation contain measures that would allow for the broadest public disclosure of information to the public similar to those requirements in sections 51 to 53 of CEPA. However sections 42 to 44 of the bill, which outline the proposed access to information, are not equivalent to the CEPA provisions. Again, for the sake of cross-statute consistency, this should be addressed.

The committee recommended that so-called confidential business information be narrowly defined in the new legislation to encompass only information that would be truly prejudicial to the financial or competitive interests of the person to whom it belongs. Unfortunately Bill C-53 uses too broad a definition. I hope this will be addressed when it moves to the health committee.

In closing, I look forward to working with my colleagues on the health committee in the weeks to come on this important legislation. During the environment committee's study of the pesticide regime I learned first-hand how passionately Canadians feel about the issue. I am optimistic that at the end of the day the minister and the government can deliver a modernized Pest Control Products Act that will protect the health of all Canadians, particularly children and other vulnerable groups.

Business of the HouseOral Question Period

April 11th, 2002 / 3 p.m.
See context

Wascana Saskatchewan

Liberal

Ralph Goodale LiberalLeader of the Government in the House of Commons

Mr. Speaker, I first want to congratulate the member for Saskatoon--Rosetown--Biggar, a fellow Saskatchewanian, upon her appointment as deputy House leader for the official opposition.

This afternoon we will be continuing with the debate on Bill C-15B, the legislation relating to cruelty to animals. When that is completed, I expect to move on to Bill C-15A, the legislation relating to pornography. If there is time after that, we will go on to Bill C-53, the pest control bill, followed by Bill S-40 respecting financial clearinghouses.

Tomorrow the business will be Bill C-43, the miscellaneous technical amendments legislation, followed by the consideration of the Senate amendments to Bill C-33, the Nunavut legislation.

On Monday I would expect to begin the day with Bill C-53 but after 3 p.m. we will turn to Bill C-54 which relates to sports in Canada.

Commencing on Tuesday we will return to the report stage debate of Bill C-5 respecting species at risk.

Pest Control Products ActGovernment Orders

April 9th, 2002 / 5:45 p.m.
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Liberal

Karen Kraft Sloan Liberal York North, ON

Mr. Speaker, before I begin my speech I want to make a comment on the issue of DDT for the member of the Canadian Alliance who asked the member from the Bloc why he mentioned the issue. I think the issue of DDT is very informative in terms of what we are looking at with regard to the Pest Control Products Act.

First, in 1951 studies indicated issues with regard to human health. If I may share a personal anecdote with the House with regard to DDT, in 1951 my mother was carrying me. I was born in 1952. All members can do the math. I am getting very old now. In 1951, a year before I was born, studies showed that DDT was affecting human health in a negative way. DDT was not banned in Canada until 1978. In January 1978 my daughter was born. Here we have a situation where two generations have been affected by a chemical when it was understood that there were human health problems associated with the use of that chemical.

How does this relate to the Pest Control Products Act, an act that is 30 years out of date? When we talk about the kinds of pesticides and chemicals being used to control pests, yes, as the speaker from the Canadian Alliance said, there has been a new generation of pesticides, but there also is a huge proliferation of pesticides of which we have no understanding and no real knowledge in regard to some of the human health and ecological problems. As well, we have information on pesticides which we are not acting on.

Therefore I am pleased to rise in the House today and speak to this long awaited Bill C-53, the new pest control products act. Indeed, it is an act that many people have been anticipating for a long time. It will amend an act that is 30 years out of date. In May 2000, the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development tabled a report in the House of Commons entitled “Pesticides: Making the Right Choice for the Protection of Health and the Environment”. It was the result of a long study of the pesticide regime in Canada, during which the committee heard a great deal of disturbing testimony about life under the very outdated Pest Control Products Act.

The committee's first recommendation in the report was that the Minister of Health introduce new pesticide legislation as a matter of top priority. Despite the delay, I commend the minister for finally bringing forward Bill C-53. Canadians have been looking forward to the arrival of the bill for a long time.

More important, I congratulate the minister for what is in the bill. On a number of critical issues, the government clearly has listened to the testimony of witnesses and to the recommendations of the committee. The new PCPA strengthens our pesticide regime quite simply by bringing it up to date with modern science, with modern concerns about these products and with modern expectations of government transparency in the protection of human health and the environment.

What is to be applauded about the bill? There are a number of things. To begin, the emphasis of the standing committee's work was on vulnerable populations and, of those, especially children. As we heard over and over from witnesses, children are not little adults. They run a greater risk of exposure to pesticides because of specific characteristics of their physiology. They are developing organisms. For example, they drink more water and breathe more air per kilogram of body weight and thus can absorb larger quantities of pollutants present in the environment. Their diets are appreciably different, consisting largely of fruits, vegetables and mother's milk. They have habits like rolling about on the grass, and little kids like to eat dirt. Because of this, compared to adults, they are exposed to pesticides to a greater degree. For this reason, the committee was greatly concerned that a new pesticides bill grant legal recognition to vulnerable populations, including infants, children, aboriginal people, professional users of pesticides, people in poor health, pregnant women, seniors and others. I am pleased to note that it does.

In addition to recognizing vulnerable populations, the bill would apply margins of safety for protecting them. The U.S. food quality protection act requires the Environmental Protection Agency to use an additional safety factor of 10 when assessing the risks posed by the presence of a pesticide in the diet of children. There is no such legislative requirement in Canada under the current act. For this reason, the committee called for the use of an additional safety factor of 10 in determining the tolerance of pesticide residues in foodstuffs. This recommendation is addressed in the bill. However, I believe it requires clarity and perhaps some amendments to provide that clarity. I hope that the health committee will look at clause 11 very closely.

The bill also calls for a greater margin of safety in using pesticides around schools and homes, which is commendable. During its hearings, the environment committee heard alarming stories about the safety of workers handling pesticides. The committee agreed that such workers need the same level of protection now afforded to workers handling other hazardous substances. For this reason, it recommended that the new legislation ensure that pesticides meet the workplace hazardous materials information system requirements. Although the bill does not specifically mention WHMIS, I am pleased to note that it does include the ministerial requirement that a material safety data sheet for each product be provided to workplaces.

The committee was also greatly concerned about the state of product re-evaluation under the current act. Presently there is no timeframe for re-evaluating pesticide products. Re-evaluation ensures that product registrations are supported by up to date science. Not surprisingly, with no timelines we are far behind in reassessing them. Under Bill C-53 all pesticide products would be re-evaluated every 15 years. Unfortunately, there are no timelines associated with the completion of the process. Again, this is an area that I hope the health committee will address.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that when we continue debate on Bill C-53 I will be able to continue my presentation on these issues.

Pest Control Products ActGovernment Orders

April 9th, 2002 / 5:20 p.m.
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Bloc

Jean-Yves Roy Bloc Matapédia—Matane, QC

Mr. Speaker, as my colleague from Rosemont—Petite-Patrie mentioned yesterday, I want to say at the outset that the Bloc Quebecois will support Bill C-53, an act to protect human health and safety and the environment by regulating products used for the control of pests.

I also want to thank my colleague from Lac-Saint-Louis, who just spoke. He was environment minister in Quebec. In many respects, I agree with what he said, particularly with regard to the number of years that we have been using pesticides and the impact they can have on human health.

We have been using pesticides for many years. We started using chemical pesticides 40 or 50 years ago perhaps. We have very little knowledge of the impact that these pesticides may have had on our lives, on the lives of our children and on the lives of the elderly, as the member pointed out.

He gave a very good example when he mentioned the use of DDT. Everyone will remember that 25 or 30 years ago, DDT was used on a large scale. Researchers found traces of that product in animals in Canada's and Quebec's far north. These animals were still carriers years after the use of DDT, a very common pesticide at one time, had stopped.

I clearly remember that in Quebec, before the introduction of Bacillus thuringiensis—which, incidentally, was developed by a Quebecer—highly toxic chemical pesticides were used in our forests to control pests such as the spruce budworm in New Brunswick and in other provinces. There was no real control over the spraying of that pesticide. It was sprayed all over our forests and even over inhabited areas. As a child, I was exposed to these highly toxic products before biological pesticides were developed. It happened in my province as well as in other Canadian provinces. I am sure that many people my age were affected by the chemical products that were used in those days.

So what is the purpose of this bill being introduced? This bill is to replace legislation that dates back to 1969. It is legislation that is now outdated and should have been replaced before now, given the environmental awareness that has developed in recent years, and our awareness of things that have been done and the impact pesticides can have on our lives, on the lives of our children and on our environment.

There is another element that I consider important. I am the Bloc Quebecois critic for fisheries and oceans. As such, I am fully aware that chemical pesticides used, which in most cases are not biodegradable, can be found in the environment, in streams and rivers, and ultimately, in the oceans. They can also be found in the food chain.

What are the consequences? Obviously, when fishing in a polluted ocean, the resource is polluted. If you eat what is caught in the ocean, you are ingesting a resource that is highly toxic.

At the present time, we do not know enough about the consequences of using this resource to be 100% reassured about what has taken place until now.

As I was saying, we obviously support Bill C-53 in principle, but we would like to see a number of amendments. We know that the bill will be referred to the Standing Committee on Health.

I will summarize, as my colleague from Rosemont--Petite-Patrie did yesterday, the main amendments to Bill C-53 that the Bloc Quebecois hopes to see.

The first amendment that we would like to see stems from the fact that Bill C-53 does nothing to speed up the registration process for less toxic pesticides. A focus group was set up in Quebec by Minister Boisclair last October.

In fact, this group wanted the registration of less toxic pesticides to be speeded up. The reason is quite simple. Currently, non organic pesticides are being used. It would be necessary for the government to invest into research and to foster the registration of less toxic pesticides, particularly organic ones. But it should also be cautious.

The government should foster the speeding up of registration, but in taking the precautionary principle into account, as my colleague from Rosemont—Petite-Patrie mentioned yesterday, and as my colleague from Lac-Saint-Louis said earlier. It seems to me that the precautionary principle is lacking, or at least not present enough in the bill before us. As my colleague from Lac-Saint-Louis mentioned, this is an essential element, and we ask that the bill be changed, amended, improved. This opportunity to amend the bill would allow us, as a society, to have less toxic products that can be used in a much safer environment.

Second, the bill does not suggest any alternatives to current pesticides. As I indicated, we should have alternatives. Of course, the government can ask people to stop using specific pesticides, but it must at least provide alternatives. Alternatives are necessary, not only in terms of biopesticides, but also when it comes to agriculture; reference is made to organic agriculture. Since I represent a rural riding, I know full well that, in the industry, farmers are still using products that may be considered as highly toxic and that it is necessary to have some control on the way these products are used.

There is also another element that is close to my heart. I remember quite well that, in the last 20 or 30 years, when a highly toxic pesticide was banned in more advanced societies like Canada or the United States, the companies manufacturing these products would make them available in the third world. This may not have been taken into account in the bill, but it might be important to do so.

Today it would be necessary to consider that what is going on elsewhere in the world may have an impact on us, on our societies, in the long term. What goes on in the third world can have an important impact. If highly toxic products are used in the third world and end up on our market, then we will have a serious problem in the more or less long term.

As I said, this bill proposes no alternatives to the pesticides in current use, as was recommended in their respective reports by the focus group on the use of pesticides in urban areas I have already referred to—and will come back to later—created by the Quebec Minister of the Environment, and the Standing Committee on the Environment of the House of Commons.

In its report, the standing committee even recommended incentives be given for organic agriculture, as I have already mentioned, as well as sustainable pest control strategies. What does this mean? It means developing new approaches to controlling pests and stopping the use of highly toxic products which can be harmful to human health.

For example, as my colleague from Rosemont--Petite-Patrie pointed out yesterday, certain European countries offer financial incentives to encourage growers to eliminate the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, that is chemical fertilizers. Bill C-53 seems to have been completely stripped of any recognition of the importance of research and development of biopesticides.

We can hope that chemical pesticides, pesticides potentially hazardous to human health, will disappear, but there must be alternatives available, and research must be developed and encouraged if the process is to be speeded up.

Another thing that was recommended by the standing committee is for there to be a re-evaluation by the year 2006 of all pesticides that were registered prior to 1995. Once again, the bill seems not to have set a time limit for the re-evaluation of old pesticides. This is an important point.

Basically, even though we have a bill and are trying to replace pesticides said to pose health risks to humans, if we do not re-evaluate the pesticides that are being used, that were used in the past and that are still used today, it is obviously useless to try to go any further.

It is important to consider that we can already, through serious research, come to the conclusion that the pesticides that were in use 20 or 30 years ago—earlier, DDT was mentioned—can be considered as posing health risks to humans. We have a laboratory precisely because these pesticides were used for so many years that we can now evaluate them in a very real and serious fashion. When it comes to evaluating biopesticides, it is the same thing. We are told that it is always a matter of time, that it takes a lot of time to evaluate these products.

There is another important factor to consider in the bill and regarding which amendments are desirable. The bill includes what I would call a wish, in the form of a special protection for children, infants and pregnant women.

I find it hard to see how, through a bill such as this one, we could, without being specific, protect children and infants in a special way, considering that it is society as a whole that is affected by pesticides. In light of this, how can we single out infants, except when they are directly affected in their immediate environment by chemical pesticides or by pesticides that pose health risks?

Earlier, I discussed the position defined by Quebec, by the focus group set up by Minister Boisclair. This position goes much further than the bill before us. On October 15, Minister Boisclair announced the creation of the focus group on the use of pesticides in urban areas. The objective of the focus group was to identify possible solutions that would allow Quebecers to reduce their dependency on and the risks of exposure to these products, including those used to maintain lawns, for environmental horticulture and for extermination purposes, while developing a sense of responsibility among citizens.

A sense of responsibility is very important, and one of the aspects I wish to mention is developing people's sense of responsibility. This is an aspect which is very difficult to control, however. Developing people's sense of responsibility has to do with methods of pesticide use, with people using pesticides in their immediate environment, either on their lawn or on their fruit trees. People often have very little information about how these pesticides should be used. They use them any old way. Sometimes they may very well misuse products and not be aware of their possible hazards. Even if each of these products is very clearly labelled and the recommended use very clearly indicated, not everyone is an expert on pesticides and sometimes amounts can be considerably increased and pose a threat to human health.

Some fifty or so organizations and individuals presented briefs to the group formed by Minister Boisclair. Over half of these organizations, representing municipal government, the research, health and business sectors, and ecological groups, expressed their views during the four days of consultations held in January 2002.

The focus group and the people who presented briefs at the hearings made 15 major recommendations designed to considerably reduce the use of pesticides in urban areas.

But I would like to see this go a bit further than the urban setting. I would like to see rural areas included, because we are well aware that pesticides are also used in farming. They are not restricted to urban areas. They are also used in our towns, our villages and our countryside. I would like to see a broader approach taken and all of society made aware of the problem of using pesticides, which can be potentially dangerous to human health.

The first recommendation of the focus group is to ban pesticides, unless action levels have been reached or the survival of plants is being threatened, as one of my colleagues mentioned earlier.

The group asked that this be done within a quite short deadline. This provision seems to be lacking in the bill. In the bill before us, it seems that the government does not wish to ban the use of pesticides in the more or less long term, among other places in urban centres, as other members have mentioned. These are pesticides that are used only for lawn and park improvement in cities.

We will have to raise people's awareness. We will have the raise the awareness of businesses that are using such pesticides. We will have to allow them to have access to organic pesticides and make them aware that the use of specific chemical non biodegradable pesticides may be harmful to human health, even to those who spray them, that is workers in these businesses. Consequently, it seems important to me that the government should try, through an amendment to the bill that will be sent to the Standing Committee on Health, to set a deadline to ensure that the use of potentially harmful chemical pesticides be banned in green spaces and on our lawns.

Other recommendations were made by Minister Boisclair's focus group on the use of pesticides, including environmental management training for those working around the public, such as lawn care businesses, those who sell pesticides, professionals who provide services or those who work in public areas, so they can give advice and set an example. Those who work in public areas include municipal employees.

Public information and education with regard to the risks associated with the use of pesticides, with regard to environmental management and with regard to alternative methods and products must be an important part of the bill. The public must be informed and educated on this issue as quickly as possible so that people become aware that the use of these products can be extremely harmful to their health and, in the long term, to human health and to the environment.

One wish expressed by the focus group, and it is something that I mentioned myself, is that alternative methods using less harmful products be made available. We cannot ask people to stop using pesticides if they do not have access to much less dangerous products that would therefore be less harmful to their health.

The focus group also wanted to see an adequate regulatory framework, including the adoption, in the near future, of a pesticide management code that could accelerate the implementation of environmental management.

Since I am running out of time, I will conclude by saying that we agree with the principle of the bill, but it needs to be amended to give it more teeth because, as it is now, it seems to be nothing more than a paper tiger.

Pest Control Products ActGovernment Orders

April 9th, 2002 / 5 p.m.
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Liberal

Clifford Lincoln Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC

Mr. Speaker, I would like to read from a book entitled Our Stolen Future written in 1996 by three famous scientists: Theo Colborn, Diane Dumanoski and John Peterson Myers. It states:

Through the creation and release of billions of pounds of man-made chemicals over the past half century, we have been making broadscale changes to the Earth's atmosphere and even in the chemistry of our own bodies. Now, for example, with a stunning hole in the Earth's protective ozone layer and, it appears, the dramatic decline in human sperm counts, the results of this experiment are hitting home. From any perspective, these are two huge signals of trouble. The systems undermined are among those that make life possible. The magnitude of the damage that has already occurred should leave any thoughtful person profoundly shaken.

Theo Colborn appeared before the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development during its review of pesticides. She urged us very strongly to review our legislation and to bring in better and improved legislation.

I would first like to commend the minister for bringing forward this new legislation which is, by any standard, an improvement on the existing one which goes back to 1969 and is therefore 33 years old.

I should mention that the process for managing and regulating pesticides goes back quite a long way.

The previous Conservative government produced a report that was known as the purple book. In October 1994, I was one of four parliamentary secretaries assigned to implement the recommendations in the purple book. One of the recommendations called for the establishment of a pest management agency, which is now called the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, that would be transferred from the department of agriculture to the department of health in 1995.

After the environment and sustainable development committee held hearings over many months, it made recommendations in a report produced on May 16, 2000 entitled “Pesticides: Making the Right Choice”.

I would like to take a minute to congratulate my colleague from Davenport who was chair of the committee at the time. The committee did very deep study on a critical issue for all of us concerned with human health and the environment. It was a groundbreaking report that led to the introduction of this legislation, which thankfully follows many of the recommendations contained in the report.

We can see many improvements reflected in the recommendations from the report. The bill's primary objective is to prevent unacceptable risks to people and the environment from the use of pest control products. The critical question of assessment of risk is based on the consideration of children's health, pregnant women, seniors and, in certain cases, of special risk in a safety margin 10 times greater than would otherwise be predicated.

The bill provides for a public registry which is a good start to giving the public access to health information. Whistleblower protection is provided in a meaningful way. There is the possibility of sharing information among government departments, a question which was raised by the commissioner for sustainable development who had strongly criticized the government for lack of communication among its departments with regard to pesticides. The bill provides for the burden of proof for the safety and value of the product to be clearly on the registrant or applicant, which is a big step forward.

As my colleagues have stated, there is room for a lot of improvement. I say this constructively hoping that when the bill reaches the health committee much improvement will occur and it will be treated in a very constructive manner by the government in addressing the question.

Let us look at the Pest Management Regulatory Agency which licenses and re-evaluates pesticides so they can be sold to the public. No statutory mandate in the legislation is given to the PMRA. All responsibilities and obligations fall on the Minister of Health.

In 1995 the PMRA was established as an administrative branch within Health Canada. We need to create an arm's-length agency. As we recommended, the PMRA should be accountable to parliament. The committee report gives the example of the patent office which is an agency set up within a department but given a full statutory mandate.

The committee also recommended a very clear mission for the PMRA. It recommended that it give absolute priority to the protection of human health and the environment when considering whether to approve a pesticide for use in Canada or allow its continued use. The committee recommended that it promote the use of sustainable pest management strategies that seek to reduce use, risk and reliance on pesticides. It emphasized the development of safer pest control products and to inform and educate the public about pesticides and the risks associated with their use. No such provisions are contained in the law and they are in my view essential.

My colleague from Davenport referred to the precautionary principle and its narrow application to the act. There is no mention of it in the preamble and there is a narrow application in the legislation itself. It is essential that the new act implement the precautionary approach in all aspects of decision making. Mrs. Barbara McElgunn of the Learning Disabilities Association of Canada made the following statement at one of our hearings:

Critical to this issue is the fact that for the majority of priority chemicals or for important new innovations, there exists very little, or no, human health safety data. Many decisions on chemical safety have been taken on very limited toxicological data re their safety to developing organ systems, i.e. children. It takes many years to obtain these data. Under current law and policy in Canada, it takes many more years to develop regulations to protect public health and the environment. Therefore, under the Canadian Perspective on the Precautionary Principle, the health and safety of Canadians is placed in a “Catch-22” situation, that says, “We must have strong scientific evidence before precautionary action can be taken--but we don't have that exact evidence, and therefore we cannot use the precautionary principle to act in a timely and protective manner

This is why we need the precautionary principle which Canada endorsed way back in 1992 at Rio in all facets of this legislation. The definition in the proposed legislation falls short of what the committee recommended and short of international standards. The committee recommended the following clause:

Appropriate preventive measures are to be taken where there is reason to believe that a pesticide is likely to cause harm, even when there is no conclusive evidence to prove a causal relation between the pesticide and its effects.

There is no definition of acceptable or unacceptable risk in the bill. In fact the whole purpose of the bill is to avoid an unacceptable risk. The implementation of the bill would depend on the subjective interpretation of this concept, which is not defined. The precautionary principle is only applied in the proposed legislation in re-evaluation or special reviews. At an operation level the precautionary principle must be used in all decisions respecting pest control products.

There is no requirement to consider aggregate and cumulative exposure. The committee addressed at length that the minister shall consider available information on aggregate and cumulative exposure when determining maximum residue only. That is not sufficient.

There is no science based inherent toxicity criteria, that is, there is no threshold for endocrine destruction, neurotoxicity or carcinogenic content of a pesticide specified for testing of the products. There is no requirement to re-register or evaluate pesticide for use on GMOs.

Another issue that the committee dealt with was an educational mandate. I remember legislation I passed in Quebec, in 1987, where one of the central features was an educational mandate. Without educating the public at large or the people who use pesticides, farmers and others, we will never change attitudes toward pesticides. We had a system where CEGEPs and schools gave instruction on pesticides and changed attitudes in the public mind.

The committee recommended that PMRA be expressly mandated under the new legislation to inform and educate the public about the risks associated with the use of pesticides and the availability of less harmful alternatives. Attitudes about pesticide use must be changed through aggressive public education programs. PMRA should not be given the exclusive responsibility to carry this out given that many federal departments make vital contributions to public awareness raising. It should be spread throughout the system. Public education should be a key mandate of the legislation.

We need a commitment in the bill to the pollution prevention principle. There is no substitution principle included in the bill, that is, a requirement to deregister older pesticides once newer and safer ones are registered.

There is a lack of consideration given in the bill to alternatives, to the essential need to use alternatives when they are available and use them on a fast-track basis. Track 1 toxic substances of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act are not explicitly disallowed, again a breach of committee recommendations.

There is no requirement to obtain information or to evaluate registered formulants and contaminants. There are no requirements either for the establishment of a government-use database or to develop reduction plans. There is no phase-out of cosmetic pesticides as referred to by my colleague from Davenport.

I will address the question of transparency under the bill. The need to involve Canadians in the decision making process and to inform them about pesticide use in the environment is clearly evident in the amount of attention this issue has garnered in the press and in the public forum for several years now. The key to fostering public confidence in pest management is to develop an open and transparent system. Canada does not have a tradition of allowing the public to act as a watchdog to the extent the U.S. does now. We have many lessons to learn from our American neighbours in enabling public participation in decision making.

That includes access to what we call CBI, confidential business information. Yesterday, the minister stated:

Confidential business information will be defined very narrowly in Bill C-53 and will include only financial information, manufacturing processes and formula ingredients that are not of health or environmental concern. This means that the identity and concentration of formulas that are of health or environmental concern will not be held in confidence and can in fact be made available to the public on labels and material safety data sheets and through the public registry.

That is a good step forward but it falls far short. The restrictions on CBI should be much tighter. For example, there is no definition of what financial information should be protected. Knowing how wily industry is on all these issues it will find a way to make confidential what the public wants to be transparent.

It is my hope that the details of this legislation will be examined closely by the Standing Committee on Health. What constitutes confidential business information is broadly defined in the bill in that the person who is providing the information decides if the information is CBI or not.

Another point regarding transparency is that there is no requirement for a sales database, for which we had asked. There is no direct mechanism for submission of independent scientific findings. We asked for that as well. There is no requirement to establish a database on reported adverse effects. There is no specific mention of the Pest Management Advisory Council. There is no requirement for harmonization between the protection of human health and the environment in order not to weaken Canadian standards.

Nicholas Ashford, a professor of technology and policy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology warned us in 1996 of the most serious environmental problem facing industrialized countries today. He is known for his work on the theory of multiple chemical sensitivity, MCS. He was one of the first to suggest that people who become sensitized by exposure to one form of contamination are much more liable to be affected by a whole range of other pollutants, including detergents, traffic fumes and tobacco smoke. He gave many examples.

Theo Colborn and her colleagues stated that only after DDT had been spread as liberally as talcum powder across the face of this earth did we realize that DDT brought death to wildlife, but in a different way. She added that when concerns emerged about the persistence of DDT and its impact on wildlife, regulators imposed controls on less persistent compounds such as methoxychlor and we now know that the same chemical which is still in wide use disrupts hormones.

We have gone from one pesticide to another, from one chemical to another, producing more millions of chemicals and pesticides all over the world and spreading them all over our earth thinking that each new one is better than the other and we will be safe. Yet we are finding out time and again that what we judge safer this time is found to be toxic and dangerous to human health and the environment, especially for children, seniors and pregnant women.

We owe it to ourselves to accept the bill as a big improvement on the previous legislation, but to also ask the minister constructively to allow the committee on health to look at the improvements we have all suggested and make the bill into leading legislation for the federal government. This is my strong hope.

Pest Control Products ActGovernment Orders

April 9th, 2002 / 4:25 p.m.
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Liberal

Charles Caccia Liberal Davenport, ON

Mr. Speaker, let me start by thanking the Minister of Health for her speech yesterday and particularly for what she said at the outset:

--the purpose of federal pest management regulation is to protect Canadians and their environment from the risks associated with pesticides.

She went on to say:

The proposed new PCPA would ensure Canada's children and other vulnerable populations were given special protection from the health risks posed by pesticides. It would do so by enshrining in legislation the requirement to incorporate modern risk assessment concepts--

She also said:

It is important to keep in mind why we regulate pesticides. We do so for a variety of reasons including the following: Some pesticides may pose risks to people and the environment; many pesticides are released into the environment; our exposure to many pesticides is involuntary; and redressing harm from pesticide exposure is generally difficult.

Human exposure can occur when pesticides such as those used in agriculture, forestry, lawn and garden care, and on golf courses are released into the environment where people may be exposed to them involuntarily. In addition, since pesticides are often applied to crops and livestock we may be exposed to their residues involuntarily through the food we eat.

It would be an understatement to say that the bill is long overdue. It amends legislation passed in 1969. It is therefore highly welcome, badly needed and most appreciated by anyone concerned with public health as affected by pesticides.

Before going into the pros and cons of the bill, it would seem desirable to say a couple of words about its title. The official title of the bill is “an act to protect human health and safety and the environment by regulating products used for the control of pests”. However, the short title of the bill is same as the title of the legislation it is supposed to replace, namely “pest control products act”.

It would seem to me that to continue with the use of the old term, pest control products act, would mean adopting an industry oriented title, not a publicly oriented one as the full title conveys. If the intent of the bill is truly to protect human health and welfare, then this contradiction in titles should be corrected.

An appropriate short title might read “an act on the use of pesticides” or “an act on dangerous substances used to control pests” or simply, “the pesticides licensing act”. Instead, what is being proposed is a short title with a focus on pest control products and as such, it sounds pretty good to consumers. After all, who could be against the control of pests? To conclude, the long title is good, but the short title leaves much to be desired.

Bill C-53 has been in the making for some time. In its report on pesticides, the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development made many recommendations, some of which appear to have gone unnoticed. I will mention some shortly but first I have a few words on the new and positive features of the bill before us today.

First, human health and the environment, as other members have commented before me, are now leading principles of the proposed legislation.

Second, in evaluating the health and environmental risks of pesticides, the minister must now apply appropriate margins of safety for pregnant women, infants, children, women and seniors and must apply a margin of safety 10 times greater than now if a product is to be used around homes or schools.

Third, in determining maximum residue limits in foods, the law will require the use of an additional safety factor of 10 in determining the tolerance of pesticide residue in foodstuffs.

It will require the application of appropriate margins of safety for pregnant women, infants, children, women and seniors. It will require the implementation of government policy as defined in the toxic substances management policy, which I am told does include track one toxic substances under CEPA. Finally, it will require the application of such government policy through sections 7(8) and 19(3).

Fourth, pest control products must now meet the requirements of the workplace hazardous materials information system. This insertion is in answer to many interventions, including the one by the member for Ottawa West when we were in committee.

Fifth, there is a very narrow application of the precautionary principle. For instance, the minister may cancel or amend the registration of a pest control product if, in the course of a re-evaluation or a special review, the minister has reasonable grounds to believe that the cancellation or amendment is necessary to deal with a situation that endangers human health or safety or the environment.

Sixth, as to the re-evaluation of existing pesticides, with this bill all pesticides are to be reviewed every 15 years, which is not as good as the recommendation made in committee which suggested that by the year 2006, if I remember correctly. The term in the special review will be mandatory for any pesticide banned or restricted by an OECD country, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris.

These positive features tell us that the government recognizes the fact that pesticides, euphemistically called pest control products, are highly dangerous substances which should be used rarely and with extreme care. Otherwise how could one explain the symbol of the skull and crossbones used to identify most pesticides, softened in its impact by the intensive advertising campaign by pesticide manufacturers who find it necessary to try to convince the public that everything is fine with pesticides? For instance, in the mollifying ads promoting lawn beautification the word pesticides never appears. What we are treated to are bucolic green lawns, happy children playing and pets frolicking in a sea of perfectly uniform green blades of grass.

It should also be noted that in its attempt to dominate the market, industry avoids the word pesticides and instead uses intriguing, scientific sounding formulas like 2,4-D or other fancy abbreviations intended to reassure the potential consumer of chemicals about using pesticides on his or her front yard lawn. Fortunately, municipalities have not been bamboozled by the pesticide industry's public relations campaign. Today over 30 municipalities have banned the cosmetic use of pesticides on private property and in some cases on public property.

All this is after prolonged and extensive legal battles which peaked last June when the Supreme Court of Canada hit the pesticide industry on the head and gave it a lesson in constitutional law. The court declared that yes, municipalities do have the power to ban the cosmetic use of pesticides and that yes, the public interest can and should be served by municipal governments.

Before leaving the subject, I would like to pay a warm tribute to the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce--Lachine for her bill on banning the cosmetic use of pesticides. The bill was unanimously adopted at the last national convention of the Liberal Party of Canada. Unfortunately, the cosmetic use of pesticides is not mentioned in Bill C-53, one of several shortcomings which of course could be corrected in committee by way of appropriate amendments.

There are other serious shortcomings in Bill C-53 which I would like to bring to the attention of the House.

There is no statutory mandate and responsibility given to the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, which makes it a rather unique feature in the government structure.

There is no inclusion of the substitution principle, therefore no requirement to deregister older pesticides once newer, safer products are registered and brought to market.

There is a very narrow application of the precautionary principle. Why is it applied only at the consultation or amendment stage of the registration of a pesticide and not right at the beginning of the process, namely when deciding whether to register it or not? That is the question. It would make enormous sense to apply the precautionary principle all the way through as it was already advocated yesterday, if I remember correctly, by the member for Rosemont--Petite--Patrie.

There is no definition of acceptable or unacceptable risk and that is also a very serious matter which needs to be brought to the attention of members.

There is no requirement to take into account aggregate and cumulative exposure when registering a product. Time and again witnesses at committee hearings brought this to our attention, particularly the Canadian Institute of Child Health and other organizations concerned with the health of children.

There is no room for independent scientific findings which could be followed by mandatory feedback. Let us be realistic. Only so much can be achieved through public consultations and comments on decisions. More needs to be done in the public interest.

There is the matter of what constitutes confidential business information and that matter remains the same in this bill as in the 1969 legislation. It seems to me that surely there are situations when the public good can be of greater importance than confidential business information, or am I living on another planet?

Another shortcoming is the fact that the bill focuses only on the active ingredients of a pesticide but not on ingredients that can pose a threat to human health and the environment and are not necessarily active.

Finally, and this may be a budgetary requirement and not necessarily a legislative one, there is a need also identified by the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development for better statistics on pesticides, be it their sales or other related data. There is indeed an important challenge here for Statistics Canada.

As others have already outlined, Bill C-53 is definitely an improvement over the 1969 legislation. It should however be stronger in ensuring a healthy and safe environment for Canadians. The bill relies too heavily on product, product management and product regulation, and too little on the reduction in the use of, the reliance on and the risks posed by pesticides. That in a nutshell would be my way of assessing the bill.

It is my sincere hope that colleagues on the health committee will be able to address these shortcomings and amend the bill, which is quite possible at the committee stage, as members present have experienced.

To conclude, it seems to me that the Canadian population can expect a law which will give full and unconditional precedence to human health and the environment over pesticides and the very powerful industrial interests behind them.

Pest Control Products ActGovernment Orders

April 8th, 2002 / 6:15 p.m.
See context

Progressive Conservative

John Herron Progressive Conservative Fundy Royal, NB

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to participate at long last in this evening's debate. In my view and the view of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada Bill C-53 represents a lack of political will to bring forth the legislation we need to address the issue.

The framework legislation that currently manages pesticides was established in 1969. Over the past 30 years we have gained a more comprehensive knowledge of the effects of pesticides on human health and the environment. It is in good form for us to update legislation of that vintage.

I compliment the new minister who has been in the portfolio only a short time. The issue has been a thorn in the side of health care professionals, environmentalists and concerned Canadians from coast to coast for quite some time. Our hats are off to the minister for tabling this piece of legislation.

I am a bit concerned about the issue. A few weeks back I sent out a press release asking why the bill was being tabled at that time. Was it because of the myriad rumours we had heard in the House and in the hallways that the House could prorogue? It is reasonable to ask whether it is a disingenuous effort to table a bill that will never see the light of day in terms of royal assent. On the positive side, perhaps it gives the government a chance to test the legislation to see what benefits there should be.

I will refer to one aspect of the pesticide debate. Mr. Speaker, I am sure you read the Progressive Conservative Party's platform comprehensively throughout the election campaign of November 2000. I will bring to light a plank of our electoral platform. We called on the Government of Canada to bring in modernized pesticide management. There were two main points in the platform concerning pesticides. I will read them for the record:

A Progressive Conservative government would table new pesticide legislation that would modernize the existing 30 year-old legislation. Exposure levels and toxicity of pesticides will be evaluated with consideration on the effect on our most vulnerable populations.

This refers to the elderly, children and pregnant women. We would also establish a comprehensive reduced reliance program. The platform states:

A Progressive Conservative government would initiate educational initiatives to inform Canadians of the risks of pesticide use with a goal to reduce usage particularly for cosmetic purposes.

For the record, that is a goal the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada has had with respect to this debate.

I will illustrate how lax the government has been at tabling legislation. I asked the Minister of Health in December of 1999 when we could expect legislation given that Claire Franklin, chair of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, had said draft legislation had been in place for three years and was coming soon. I asked again on November 22, 1999. The Minister of Health said legislation would be tabled shortly. I asked again on June 13, 2001, nine months ago. The government said it would soon table legislation that would reflect the recommendations and protect the health of Canadians.

We have been a little slow at this, so to make up for the government's lack of energy in getting the legislation tabled perhaps we can put our shoulders to the wheel and make some improvements.

I will speak to the bill itself. There are some solid aspects to Bill C-53 that deserve the appropriate accolades. One is Bill C-53 clearly places the burden of proof on the person who is trying to register the particular pesticide. The applicant must demonstrate to the minister that the health and environmental risks of that product are indeed acceptable to the Canadian public at large. We think that is a positive step.

It follows the report of the committee that was developed in May 2000 entitled “Pesticides: Making the Right Choice for the Protection of Health and the Environment”. That was a comprehensive study by the standing committee on the environment of which I had the privilege of being a member.

Accolades to the government for being inspired by the United States food quality protection act. The government has said that when it comes to establishing toxicity levels, testing will be done on vulnerable populations, children, the elderly and perhaps pregnant women, as we advocated in our last platform. The act also enables the application of a 10-fold safety margin on pesticide standards and extra protection for children.

I think the government was also inspired by the report of the standing committee which was tabled in 2000. That plank was recommended by all parties with the exception of the Reform Party at that time.

I also would like to provide some accolades on the issue that re-evaluations are required and special reviews are made possible. Most of the pesticides currently used in Canada were registered long ago. The act requires that the Government of Canada establish or initiate re-evaluations of registered pesticides at least every 15 years. Further, if a member country of the OECD, the Organization for Economic Co-operation Development, bans the use of an active ingredient, then the minister must conduct an immediate special review. That is a good thing.

I do not know if members particularly recall that the auditor general performed a comprehensive review of pesticide management in Canada. He pointed out that Canada was among the most lax of industrialized nations. As a testament to that, Canada and the Slovak Republic are the only two OECD countries that do not measure pesticide consumption. This is fundamentally important because further decisions would eventually include consideration of cumulative effects and aggregate exposures once the methods of doing so were confirmed.

That is the methodology the Government of Canada wants to follow, which follows the same train of thought that is in the U.S. food quality protection act. If that is so, then we need to ensure that we have a proper inventory of consumption of pesticides in the country. That makes a lot of sense.

If that re-evaluation will be a component of the act, then we need to ensure that Health Canada has the added financial capacity to conduct those reviews and do them in an extremely timely manner.

I would also like to touch on a few aspects that need some improvement. Some of those issues refer to the aspect that the law in its current form does not emphasize that it is necessary for us to reduce the reliance of the risk of pesticides. It is incumbent on the Government of Canada to educate the Canadian public at large, in particular on the cosmetic use of pesticides. There is indeed a cumulative effect and additional exposure and prolonged exposure does have a detrimental effect to human health and the environment

If that is true, then why does the federal government not initiate a public awareness campaign about the harmful and cumulative effects of pesticides, particularly in our urban areas, in the same stead that it does with anti-tobacco campaigns. In my view this is something that would at least ensure that Canadians think twice. That is one aspect for which we should find an innovative way of encompassing it in this legislation, perhaps in the preamble.

The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada believes that Bill C-53 fails to entrench the precautionary principle as a guiding principle or to effectively operationalize it. The bill needs to be amended to include the internationally acceptable precautionary principle in the preamble and purpose.

There is an accepted definition established at the United Nations for the precautionary principle. The all party committee called on the Government of Canada to utilize that form of definition. We reviewed the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. It was the intent of the committee when we tabled the review in May 2000 on pesticide management in Canada that it was a process that the Government of Canada absolutely needed to follow.

What is the precautionary principle? I would explain it as follows. If the weight of evidence and science says that there is an immense likelihood that a particular substance can have a detrimental effect on human health and the environment, perhaps potentially the loss of life, we do not have to wait for the absolute finality of information before the Government of Canada actually acts.

When it comes to public awareness the leadership on reducing the reliance on the cosmetic use of pesticides has not come from the federal government. I believe we should follow a public awareness campaign as we do for the use of tobacco by encouraging individuals to reduce their reliance on the cosmetic use of pesticides.

We have seen leadership from the provinces on some occasions but for the most part we have seen leadership at the municipal level. Cities, such as Halifax, and communities such as Hudson, Quebec were really the first municipalities to step up to this challenge.

We have public awareness advocates from coast to coast. Patty Donovan from Quispamsis in my riding of Fundy--Royal has been an ardent advocate for the reduction of pesticide use in Canada and particularly the cosmetic use. It is not some mission or crusade that she is on. For her it is the very vitality of her son Zack. If Zack were exposed in any kind of serious way to pesticides or pesticide residue it would have an immense effect on his human health immediately that may potentially cost him his life.

This is a clear indication that we need to manage pesticides in a responsible way and take into consideration where individuals could be at risk.

We see pesticide campaigns in the west as well. Jennifer Wright from Calgary has made a number of presentations to the municipality of Calgary encouraging it to reduce its reliance on pesticides.

Canadians and municipalities are way ahead of this and the Government of Canada should get with the program on that particular aspect as well.

Another good aspect of this proposed legislation which needs a bit of ratcheting deals with the pesticide management process. It must come out of the dark ages and recognize that public awareness and access to information is critical and that public consultation should be sought prior to registering any new substance. The Government of Canada has done a good thing on that particular aspect as well. It must ensure that we catch up with the rest of the industrialized world.

I have a document before me which was produced in September 2000. It is not even a comprehensive list. There is a list of 60 pesticides that are banned by other OECD nations but are still permissible here in Canada.

The problem is that the Government of Canada is not taking leadership in addressing this issue. Clearly, within the agricultural community pesticides are a responsible component to farming, but we need to ensure that access is available to lower risk substances. We should utilize substances that are already used in the OECD and which may be more cost effective. We have been denying our farming community access to these lower risk substances. We are putting the health of farmers at risk by leaving them with only products that are high risk to themselves, to human health in general and to the environment.

I must emphasize that any new pesticide legislation has to evaluate toxicity on the most vulnerable in our population: children, pregnant women and the elderly. The Government of Canada has moved in that direction. That is a step we should applaud.

When evaluating a pesticide, we need to ensure that we evaluate the formulants as well. Quite often the formulants in the pesticide can have a more detrimental effect as a toxin to human health and the environment than the active ingredient. As the legislation is shaped at the moment there is not the appropriate due process that challenges the proponent of a new pesticide, or an existing pesticide if it is at the re-evaluation stage, to ensure that all active ingredients are evaluated as well.

Our very learned health critic, the member for Richmond--Arthabaska, has recommended to me that the Progressive Conservative Party will support the legislation. It is long overdue. Sometimes that line seems extremely trite, but the existing act is 30 years old.

The Government of Canada spoke about this in its throne speech in 1999, three years ago. When something is in a throne speech it usually means that action will take place immediately and we are only seeing the legislation now. This is respectable framework legislation which we hope to have the capacity to improve at committee stage.

I am very pleased the Liberal Party of Canada has taken a page, page 25 to be exact, out of the election platform of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. It has followed our commitment to Canadians to provide pesticide legislation which includes evaluation for toxicity of formulants, evaluates the toxicity on the most vulnerable in our population and updates the current regime which is nearly 30 years old.

I look forward to the debate as the bill moves through the legislative process.

Pest Control Products ActGovernment Orders

April 8th, 2002 / 5:10 p.m.
See context

Bloc

Bernard Bigras Bloc Rosemont—Petite-Patrie, QC

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today on Bill C-53, an act protect human health and safety and the environment by regulating products used for the control of pests. This bill, more than 60 pages in length, was designed to improve a statute that dates back some 33 years, believe it or not.

Since I have been given 40 minutes, I will try to summarize our party's position, with four points.

I shall begin by outlining the current situation regarding pest control in Quebec and Canada. Then I will quote some of the recommendations from the report of the Standing Committee on the Environment—the Chair of which I now see opposite—the report on pesticides published in May, 2000. Third, I will discuss a recent report submitted to Quebec's minister of the environment on March 27, by the focus group on the use of pesticides in urban areas. I will also discuss the 1999 report from the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development. Finally, I will outline our position on Bill C-53.

First I would like to say that my party believes Bill C-53 to be a step in the right direction. It was time, as I will demonstrate later, that this statute dating back to 1969, and therefore close to 33 years old, be renewed. We believe there should have been legislation to improve the current law. As such, it is a step in the right direction, as I said, but naturally, we fundamentally believe that there needs to be improvements.

The precautionary principle must prevail at all stages of the study of this bill, including the examination by the Standing Committee on Health that I plan on taking part in, as well as during every opportunity given to parliamentarians to study this bill.

Second, we recognize that public health risks, especially those involving children, nursing infants and pregnant women, must be given special attention. We recognize that exposure to pesticides, especially the active ingredients found in pesticides, has a significant impact on public health. This might seem ridiculously obvious, but I believe that it is important that our first premise establish this as a priority.

As far as jurisdiction is concerned, jurisdiction over pesticides appears to be divided. The federal government has responsibility for the legislation relating to the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, or PMRA.

The purpose of this agency is to administer the Pest Control Products Act and to facilitate safe access to methods of pest control, while reducing hazards. The federal legislation controls the certification, marketing and labelling standards for products. At the present time, there are more than 6,000 certified products on the market and these contain more than 500 registered active ingredients. This is where the hitch comes in.

Until now, very little effort has been made as far as the mission and objectives of the Canadian legislation are concerned. Very little effort has been made by the agency precisely to make available products that are safe. I use that word because that is the very objective of the agency. When we come a little later on to look at the report by the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development, we will see that there are grounds for concern as far as reassessing the entire matter of products on the market which contain active ingredients is concerned.

There is one other aspect. As I said, the purpose of the PMRA is to ensure the availability of safe products on the market. It therefore has a certain responsibility as far as products containing biopesticides are concerned, products with the potential to be an alternative solution.

We must acknowledge that there are alternative products available on the market, the biopesticides. Unfortunately, however, their availability is very limited. At this time, only 30 biopesticides are available on the Canadian market, whereas there are in excess of 150 in the United States.

Not only is the Pest Management Regulatory Agency not involved in the reassessment of currently available pesticides, it is also not fulfilling its responsibility to provide alternatives to traditional pesticides on the market. Finally, under the federal legislation, the agency must monitor labelling standards for products.

Let us take a look at what I would call the federal problem. It exists because the current act dates back to 1969. The existing rules and standards are obsolete in many respects. In its current form, the act may be considered a danger to public health. In a few minutes, I will quote some comments made in 1999 by the environmental commissioner. These comments are disturbing to say the least, when we look at products currently on the market, in terms of their safety for women, children and infants.

For example, the problem with some pesticides that are currently on the market has to do with the active ingredients that they contain. There are 500 active ingredients in the pesticides currently available on the market. Believe it or not but, out of these 500 active ingredients, 300 were approved before 1981, and more than 150 were approved before 1960.

This means that there are currently on the market pesticides that are sold to the public, even though they contain active ingredients that were assessed based on standards that were often far from those that are now deemed acceptable, both from a scientific and a public health point of view. This is all the more reason to act quickly.This is also why we believe that the existing pest control legislation had to be reassessed, redefined and updated, since public health is at stake. We must act in the best interests of Canadians.

Let us not forget—since I am dealing with jurisdictions—that pesticides are a shared jurisdiction. The federal government has a responsibility, but so do the provinces. I should point out that Quebec has had its own pesticide legislation since 1987. The purpose of this act is to avoid and reduce threats to the environment and public health.

The primary responsibility is to develop public awareness through sustained campaigns on the dangers related to the use of pesticides. Second, we must support municipalities and organizations and, third, the government must fund research and development on alternatives, including biopesticides.

The government of Quebec supported establishing a pesticide management code that would govern the entire process, from pesticide production to the sale and storage of pesticides.

Another aspect concerns municipalities. In recent years, the responsibilities of municipalities for pesticide management and control have increased. Why? Because following a ruling by various tribunals in Quebec and based on supreme court decisions regarding the passing by the municipality of Hudson of a bylaw prohibiting the use of pesticides, certain courts in Quebec ruled in favour of the municipality of Hudson in its decision to ban the use of pesticides.

In recent years, the authority municipalities have to establish regulatory codes has increased. Under the Cities and Towns Act, municipalities may regulate and prohibit the use of pesticides. As a result, we have seen, and will continue to see municipalities pass regulations prohibiting the use of pesticides in the coming months and years.

In response to these court decisions and to Quebec's tendency to reduce and ban the use of pesticides, the government established a committee, a focus group that submitted its recommendations to the environment minister on March 27. The committee's main recommendation was to develop a management code to govern all activities involving pesticides.

It is important to recall that this work and this bill were not dreamed up overnight. Here in the House, and more particularly, within the Standing Committee on the Environment, there was a great deal of thought given to this important phenomenon involving the use of pesticides and their impact on health. In its recommendations made in May, 2000, the committee urged and proposed that the new act establish human health and the environment as priorities by creating databases on the sale of pesticides, their adverse effects, and alternatives to pesticides.

One could even go so far as to say that the bill fulfills these expectations. The problem lies with the committee's second recommendation, the most important one, which would have made it possible to ensure that, by a specific deadline, the use of pesticides could be phased out in Canada. I am referring to Recommendation No. 2, in which the committee recommended, in May 2000, that pesticides used for cosmetic purposes be phased out within five years.

We can clearly see, and the government must also admit this, that there is nothing in the bill, which we are studying today and which we are going to study in committee, that sets any kind of deadline with respect to the non-use and elimination of pesticides.

We on this side of the House are very disappointed. Not only was this the position of the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development, but it was also one of the recommendations in the May 27 report by Quebec's task force on the use of pesticides in urban areas, i.e. that the use of pesticides in public areas be phased out over a period of three years.

Quebec's task force goes even further than the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development. The committee and Quebec's task force, which is chaired by Mr. Cousineau, an MNA, feel that we should phase out the use of pesticides in urban areas over three years.

When we look at this bill and see that there is no indication of any intention to phase out the use of pesticides at all, let alone over five years, we are rather disappointed. The House can rest assured that we will fight hard in committee to keep this bill. The government's tendency is to renew the legislation approximately every 33 years. We must be more vigilant than ever and ensure that this five-year phase out becomes law.

The standing committee on the environment made various recommendations. One of these was that the sole mandate of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency should be to protect health and the environment.

In the committee's opinion, PMRA should not also be responsible for encouraging the competitiveness of the agricultural, farming and manufacturing sectors. It felt that there should be an open and transparent process in order to build the public's trust in pest management, and that the new legislation should make it a condition of registration that applicants carry out ongoing monitoring after registration and that existing pesticides be re-assessed.

Once again, with all the measures proposed by the committee, there is no deadline set for re-evaluating these old pesticides. There is no deadline for the conditions for authorizing any pesticide. So we are in the most total vacuum possible.

Yes, this is a step in the right direction with the new process we want to put in place, but there are never any clear indications of the deadlines for attaining these objectives, whereas it would have been simpler to make provision for this, to say: we want pesticide use eliminated within five years, or three. But no, there is no measure relating to this, which is somewhat of a disappointment.

I have already referred to the Groupe de réflexion sur les pesticides en milieu urbain, whose report was released this past March 27. The federal government, as a government with a desire to work in collaboration with the provinces, could have waited for that March 27 report, having waited 33 years already to introduce an amended act. But no, they had to decide to move on it a few months ahead of time. I should remind hon. members that the decision was made last October 25 by the Quebec Minister of the Environment, André Boisclair, to mandate this task force on the use of pesticides in urban areas.

The task force met with more than 50 organizations or individuals who had submitted briefs. These came from health, environmental, ecology, business and municipal backgrounds. We are of the opinion that we are bringing to this House the Quebec consensus reached by that task force, which was struck last October 25 and whose report was released on March 27.

The task force addressed this issue, and set out its objective as follows:

The objective is to identify avenues for solution which will enable Quebecers to reduce their dependency on, and the risk of exposure to, these products which are in common use in lawn care, ornamental horticulture and extermination.

The task force has indeed managed to come up with alternative solutions and an approach to true pest control in Quebec.

This report, on which the committee held hearings in January, contained a certain number of recommendations. There were 15 recommendations. The task force's first recommendation serves as a main underlying theme. We must quickly reduce the use of pesticides in urban areas. This is the main them underlying the task force's recommendations.

The task force made 15 recommendations. First, it proposed banning the use of pesticides in public and municipal green spaces and in schools and daycare centres in three years' time. Therefore, the recommendations involve prohibiting the use of pesticides on lawns in three years, and on shrubs in five years. So, the shorter deadline is three years, and the longer deadline for public green spaces, whether they be parks, daycare centres, schools and all public green spaces, is five years.

Another recommendation consists of training stakeholders in environmental management. People must be made aware that the use of pesticides constitutes a threat to public health. If we start from the premise, as I stated at the beginning of my presentation, that the precautionary principle should guide all of our thoughts and actions, stakeholders need to be made aware of risks, and trained, whether they work in ornamentals or horticulture, as municipal employees, or in maintenance. They must be educated about the dangers of pesticides.

The task force recommends establishing a training program that would lead to a vocational diploma in the field to raise awareness among pesticide users, the stakeholders themselves.

Third, more emphasis should be placed on making alternative methods and less dangerous products available. If we set deadlines banning the use of pesticides, as we want to do, then we need to work now on making biopesticides, or alternative solutions available. So, we need to increase the availability of alternative solutions, in order to allow us to reach these same quality of life objectives down the line, using a very different approach.

Another issue is the establishment of a pesticide management code. In my opinion, this is probably, along with banning the use of pesticides within three years, the strongest recommendation of the task force. It is proposed to put in place a pesticide management code that would set standards regarding the sale, storage and use of pesticides. Why? Because, among other reasons, the rulings made by Quebec courts now give municipalities the option of regulating the use of pesticides.

Therefore, we believe that we must have regulations and legislation based on the same standard, and establish a single standard. What is being proposed is a Quebec management standard that would be put forward by this pesticide management code. In my opinion, this is probably the strongest recommendation.

The fourth point that I wish to raise is the issue of the environmental commissioner.

In 1999, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development tabled a very eloquent report on how the federal government manages the certification process for pesticides and their reassessment. The commissioner passed rather harsh judgment on the government's way of managing pesticides.

He emphasized the significant lack of reassessment programs. Moreover, he noted that Canada was seriously lagging behind other countries, including the United States, and that the percentage of expenditures allocated for the reassessment of pesticide certification, and also for the whole assessment process of pesticides, was very low compared to that of some other countries. The commissioner also said that pesticide reassessments were a rarity in Canada, something which is very worrisome from a public health standpoint. Again, the reassessment of pesticides is rarely done in Canada.

I remind the House that of the 500 active ingredients in the pesticides, 300 were approved before 1981 and over 150 before 1960, according to the environmental commissioner's last report submitted in 1999. In terms of public health standards, pesticides are now available on the market and have been evaluated on the basis of standards which I consider outdated, or which should at least be re-evaluated.

So, not only are re-evaluations rare, but there is a lack of transparency in the process on the part of this government.

Before continuing, I wish to cite four passages from the environmental commissioner's 1999 report. The first has to do with available re-evaluation programs:

The absence of an effective re-evaluation program means there is no assurance that Canadians are not being exposed to unacceptable risk.

This is what the environmental commissioner wrote in 1999. There is no assurance that Canadians are not being exposed to unacceptable risk. Here is another quote:

We are particularly concerned by the lack of clarity about the role of federal science-based departments [in the re-evaluation of pesticides].

This is from the 1999 report by the environmental commissioner. Here is the third quote:

Many pesticides were approved when the standards were much less stringent than they are today.

Again, this is taken from the 1999 environmental commissioner's report. I will give one final quote, although I could give many more:

We found Canada's track record to be one of inaction and unfulfilled commitments.

This is the fourth quote from the environmental commissioner. According to the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Canada has not done its work and, 33 years later, he is proposing a remodeled, redefined act which could meet the expectations of Quebec's task force on the use of pesticides in urban areas, which could provide a satisfactory response to the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development, which has examined this issue, which could respond to the expectations of environmental groups on this issue, and which could, above all, respond to the need of Quebecers and of Canadians to be protected from a public health point of view so that the precautionary principle is first and foremost.

As for Bill C-53, the purpose of which is to update the regulations governing the use of pesticides in order to protect the health of children and others, the government says it has adjusted its proposals in the light of the recommendations made by the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development.

If the government really wanted to provide a proper response and to adjust the present legislation to reflect the recommendations, it would call for elimination of pesticides over five years, as the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development has proposed, or it would propose, in keeping with the Quebec task force's suggestion, their elimination over three years. We are, however, forced to admit there are no such measures within the bill we are examining at this time.

We are disappointed because we believe that the principle of precaution ought to take precedence over any other as far as examination of this bill is concerned, not solely commercial and economic ones. The government must not be influenced by major pesticide producers but must instead put the health of Quebecers and Canadians first.

We are disappointed because we had thought there would be elimination over five years in response to the committee's demands. Disappointed as well, because we see there is no measure whatsoever that will speed up the certification process for less harmful pesticides. Nor is there any deadline for the accreditation of biopesticides.

Need I remind hon. members that an effective battle against pest control products requires alternative solutions? These will, of necessity, require the availability of biopesticides and pesticides that are less of a public health hazard.

I would like to quote some figures. In Canada at the present time, there are a mere 35 biopesticides on the market, under 150 brand names, while in the U.S. there are 175 different biopesticides marketed under 700 brand names.

What we want to see in this bill—and we will be presenting amendments in proper form in committee when the time comes—is that this battle against pests will involve speedier certification of biopesticides. There is no sign of this in the bill as presented by the minister.

A second aspect we also find disappointing is that it contains nothing in connection with the proposed use of less harmful products. I have already referred to the biopesticides but there are other more environmentally friendly solutions available in modern societies, as I hardly need remind the government.

Why would the government not have taken the time to develop legislation containing incentives to organic agriculture? Why not include in this bill incentives aimed at a real sustainable pest control strategy? Why has Canada not looked at what is being done in Europe and taken its inspiration from European countries that offer financial incentives to farmers to eliminate pesticides and synthetic fertilizers?

There is nothing in this bill to provide for alternative measures. There is nothing to provide for financial incentives for farmers to eliminate the use of pesticides. This bill does nothing to promote organic farming, it is as though it were a concept that was a surprise from a Cracker Jack box, and the government was suddenly made aware that it exists. This bill could quite easily have included measures to promote organic farming.

A fourth aspect proposed by the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development, and that we would like to see included in this bill, involves the re-evaluation between now and 2006 of all pesticides registered prior to 1995. This bill does make an attempt to re-evaluate pesticides.

Yes, there are some measures to accelerate the registration of some older pesticides, but there is still no deadline, no specific timeframe, which is what the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development had wanted, to re-evaluate all pesticides registered prior to 1995 by the year 2006. It is not simply a matter of reassessing the 500 active ingredients contained in pesticides, it needs to be done in a realistic timeframe that also allows for the protection of public health.

The committee examined this issue and heard from young people, from children. They were victims of pesticide use in certain municipalities of West Montreal. On some golf courses, dangerous pesticides were used; had these pesticides been re-evaluated, some of today's victims might have been spared. One had to have sat on the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development to understand the impact of the use of these harmful products on the public health of citizens.

We must ensure that all products currently being sold on the market are re-evaluated based on adequate and modern standards by 2006. This is how we can truly provide pest control.

Another aspect to consider is the concept of special protection for children and infants. We are trying to understand, and we will be making presentations in committee on this concept of special protection for children and infants. I thought this was included in the bill. We will therefore have questions on this concept of special protection for children.

I will conclude by saying that Canadians, but also Canadian businesses, those who use pesticides every day, are prepared to go along with the committee's recommendation, which is a five-year phase out. By way of example, I will simply mention the Fédération de l'horticulture ornementale du Quebec, which said it would agree to use pesticides as little as possible, provided that alternative products were available. Civil society in Quebec and in Canada is prepared to engage in this effort, to phase out pesticides, provided that alternatives are available.

These alternatives require two things: first, faster registration of Canadian biopesticides—there is no need for us to trail behind the Americans—and, second, the introduction of a sustainable development strategy for pest control. Among other things, this will require development of organic farming through financial incentives.

I will have an opportunity to debate this bill in committee, in the hope that the government will respond satisfactorily to the needs and expectations of Quebecers and Canadians, of the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development, and of Quebec's task force on pesticides in urban areas.

Pest Control Products ActGovernment Orders

April 8th, 2002 / 4:35 p.m.
See context

Canadian Alliance

Rob Merrifield Canadian Alliance Yellowhead, AB

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise and speak to this important piece of new legislation. It is a remarkable piece of legislation and important to all Canadians.

We are all concerned with the environment, our health and safety and what we are doing to our environment, whether it is air pollution, our water supply, or what the person next door is doing. As our population grows Canada and nations around the world become challenged in some ways.

Bill C-53 deals with some of the things we are doing with pesticides, herbicides, insecticides and fungicides. There is an overwhelming desire for consumers to understand and discern exactly what is happening to the environment. It is important for them to understand what is involved with the use of herbicides, pesticides and fungicides. To that end this is an important piece of legislation and comes at a time of tremendous interest by the population.

I am a farmer and come from a farming background so I have some personal experience with working with pesticides. There is not a farmer I know who really enjoys working with pesticides. It is something we do as a matter of practice because they are a tool that is available for us to efficiently and effectively look after our lands in the most effective way possible

When dealing with pesticides we must realize that there is a need to respect the dangers as well as the benefits of their use. There are a tremendous number of benefits but there are perhaps some fears and other things that we should be cautious about.

One of the things we need to be cautious of when we are dealing with pesticides is their application outside of the agricultural community. We need to be cautious of their use in urban settings where pregnant women and children can be affected. We must be concerned about how these pesticides are applied. It is fair to say that some of them are perhaps applied too rigorously in those situations.

We must recognize the value of herbicides in our society and in our agricultural community. As farmers use herbicides they need to till their soil far less and this results in less air pollution. Diesel tractors go up and down the fields far less times, some say 7 to 10 times less, because of some of the pesticide uses today than compared to what has been practiced before. There is much less soil erosion. Pesticides are able to restore soil and farmers are able to utilize their soil more because they do not have to work the land so much.

There is more moisture conservation. We hear of a fear of global warming and the lack of moisture allowing farmers to grow crops and yet with the use of pesticides a tremendous amount of moisture is conserved to sustain agriculture in areas that would never possibly have been sustained before.

Agricultural efficiency has enhanced tremendously because of the use of herbicides and pesticides. Chemicals are tools that protect the environment from being overrun by pests from other countries which come in all the time and are difficult to control. We have herbicides for different foliage and weeds that come in from around the world and it is a way of keeping them in balance. If we never had pesticides we would have a very difficult time dealing with that problem.

Recently I have seen many advancements in safer chemicals. There is much less residue in herbicides used today than what was used back in the sixties when the first piece of legislation came to be. It is important that we discern and understand the new technologies coming in and take advantage of some of that technology, but at the same time we must be careful to think of the safety and health of our society. Our number one overwhelming responsibility is to look after the people we serve.

I make these personal remarks because of my understanding of where agriculture is at and what I sense as being some of the problems with the application of pesticides. I also have a primary hat that I would like to wear today as the senior opposition health critic.

The Canadian Alliance would generally support the intent of health and safety in the bill but we must be cautious listening to the minister's remarks. We will be interested in getting this to committee where we can take a good look at exactly how this piece of legislation would be applied. Generally we are in favour of a piece of legislation that would address the health and safety of the population but I will reserve my judgment on it until we get it into committee and we take a good, serious look at it.

We support the goals of strengthening health and environmental protection, making the registration system more transparent and strengthening the post-registration control of pesticides. However it is important too that our current regulatory framework, dating back as late as the 60s, be updated to incorporate the modern risk assessment concepts, to entrench current practices into law, to account for new developments in pesticides in regulations around the world, and to reflect the growing concerns for the health of children and others.

We believe there are some shortcomings in the bill and a number of amendments should be made. I will outline some of those concerns later in my presentation.

The primary objective of the bill is sound. It is to prevent unacceptable risk to people and the environment from the use of pesticide control products.

As health critic I am committed to promoting and protecting the health of Canadians. The health of Canadians should be paramount when it comes to pesticides. I believe that most farmers who use pesticides are committed to protecting human health as well. Their livelihoods depend upon producing safe and healthy food products.

There are three main objectives in Bill C-53. I will speak to each of them in turn.

The first objective is strengthening health and environmental protection. These are important goals. Increased efforts to protect the health of infants, children and pregnant women are welcome. Entrenching in law current practices of additional margins of safety for pesticide use around homes and schools is appropriate.

We support the provisions related to the labelling of pesticide products and the requirement that the product safety information be available in the workplace where these products are used or made. Those who make and use pest control products deserve to know what they contain and how they are to be used with appropriate and safe measures.

Labelling on containers, from my experience, is very important. We have come a long way when it comes to that. One of the problems we saw at the farm gate level when dealing with pesticides was when metric conversion happened in Canada. It became difficult for the agricultural community to be able to discern exactly how to mix appropriately. Labelling has come a long way. We must enhance that and become even more clear on the labelling. If members have ever read the labels on containers, it is easy to become confused

The second objective is to make the registration system more transparent. The objectives of increasing transparency in pesticide regulation is noteworthy. Who would oppose more openness in the operations of government, particularly in the matters of health and safety? To that end we support the proposed establishment of a particular registry that would allow access to detailed evaluation reports on registered pesticides.

We believe that this commitment to greater transparency is so important that it should be carried over into areas of drug safety regulations because we have a serious problem when it comes to drug safety.

We think that the pesticide problem is large and is endangering our society. I will be explaining in the next few weeks just how dangerous it is and what actually is happening on the drug safety side of our society. I will not dwell on it now because of the bill that is before us, but I would suggest that if we can have such concerns when it comes to pesticides that we certainly can follow this as a pattern on the drug safety side.

The third objective is to strengthen the post-registration control of pesticides. The provisions requiring pesticide companies to report adverse effects are of obvious importance. Effective and meaningful provisions must be in place to ensure that pesticides, once on the market, can be reviewed and if necessary pulled from the market. Again, this hearkens back to the drug safety issue.

Regarding the required re-evaluations of pesticides that have been on the market for over 15 years, we are somewhat concerned that this might unduly strain the resources of the pest management review agency.

As mentioned, we support the overall direction of the legislation but we have a number of concerns. Let me briefly outline some of those.

First, the bill's laudable objectives may be difficult to achieve if management problems and the misallocation of resources at the Pest Management Regulatory Agency are not corrected.

My colleague, the member for Selkirk--Interlake, the Canadian Alliance agriculture critic, is perhaps better able to speak on some of the shortcomings of the PMRA. He has done so on numerous occasions and will undoubtedly do so again as he speaks to the legislation.

Suffice it to say that there are fundamental flaws at the Pest Management Regulatory Agency which the bill has not sufficiently addressed.

Accordingly, we propose the following amendments. First:

That the PMRA be required to consider credible research and acceptable data from re-evaluations done in other jurisdictions where the pesticides are used under similar conditions.

I note that the bill specifies in subclauses 17(2) and (3) that information from other OECD nations and from other federal and provincial jurisdictions can trigger special reviews of registered pesticide.

On the positive side, the bill does not specify that information from such jurisdictions could or should be used to support the registration or the re-evaluation of the pesticide.

We would like to see the PMRA work more closely with the regulatory bodies in other countries and end unnecessary duplication and thus save valuable resources. We would also like to see it help to ensure that safe and efficient new chemicals come from the Canadian market more quickly.

Farmers in this country have expressed repeated concerns over the inability to access some of the new products because of the roadblocks set up by the PMRA.

Second:

That the re-evaluation provisions be amended so that the chemicals are only re-evaluated if an effective alternative product exists.

This is necessary to prioritize scarce PMRA resources.

We would also amend the bill to include specific approval procedures for minor use chemicals.

Unlike legislation in other jurisdiction, the bill requires manufacturers to show that their chemicals are more effective as part of the approval process.

I would like to refer to clause 7(6)(a) which states:

During an evaluation, the applicant has the burden of persuading the Minister that the health and environmental risks and the value of the pest control product are acceptable--

The notion of value is defined in the bill definitions under clause 2, Interpretation and, among other things, includes the notion of efficacy. The requirements to prove efficacy may add unnecessary costs and time to review the process.

The PMRA should only be concerned with safety. The market will decide if a pesticide is efficient and few companies will go through the process for a chemical that does not work.

We look forward to discussing and debating those proposed amendments in committee.

I would like to note that we were pleased to see that the bill did not impose a ban on the use of pesticides for cosmetic purposes. We believe the government is correct in allowing municipalities to maintain control over such decisions.

While the official opposition is supportive of developing and using proven alternatives in urban environments, we do not believe that the moratorium on pest control products should be in place before there is a substantial body of conclusive scientific evidence that unequivocally links such products to human disease or ill health.

The official opposition believes that proven, sound science, domestically and internationally, should continue to be the cornerstone of debate.

In conclusion, we look forward to reviewing the bill at committee, to hearing from the interested parties and to proposing amendments that will produce the best legislation that we can.