Bill C-52 (Historical)

Canada Consumer Product Safety Act

An Act respecting the safety of consumer products

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

Canada Consumer Product Safety Act

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we are now at third reading of Bill C-36, An Act respecting the safety of consumer products. We were debating it at second reading not even a month ago. My colleagues in committee really worked together to properly study this bill and to agree on amendments that would clarify certain aspects related to the protection of personal information. Clarifying these aspects is absolutely necessary, since the public expects the government, institutions and the legislation to ensure that their personal information is protected.

I cannot help but smile though. We went through the whole process two times already, the first time with Bill C-52 and the second time with Bill C-6. I have to wonder whether, now that we are so close to the goal, the Prime Minister will call an election or prorogue Parliament. That is what he did the last two times.

The members opposite find that funny. I think that the Minister of Health will talk to the Prime Minister to ensure that nothing like that happens and that Bill C-36 will make it through. The minister keeps saying, as we have been doing, that the current act is 40 years old and that it is time to update it. The Auditor General produced a report four years ago that revealed several problems and also highlighted the risks related to consumer products. We cannot wait any longer to move forward with this bill.

Canada is not the only country to be tightening up its legislation. I want to talk about what happened south of the border, in the United States. On August 14, 2008, the then president, George W. Bush, signed the Danny Keysar Child Product Safety Notification Act. This act set new, modern standards and strengthened the legislation on toy safety. Thus, the American agency responsible for overseeing the safety of consumer products was given measures that enabled it to have better control over toys. This legislation assigned more responsibilities, expanded authority and granted related powers to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the CPSC.

Since 2009, the agency has gradually been requiring that manufacturers and importers certify that their products meet the new standards, requiring that companies have their products tested by an independent third party and imposing harsher sanctions for non-compliance with product safety requirements. The law also proposed an increase in the agency's budget every year until 2015, as well as an increase in staff of at least 500 employees by 2013 in order to effectively enforce the new safety standards.

On September 10, 2009, the chair of the CPSC, Inez Tenenbaum, testified before the Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee, saying that she intends to make her agency a world leader in consumer protection.

With that statement in mind, I hope that it is also the government's intention, following the passage of this new bill, to see to it that we, too, are leaders in terms of consumer protection by ensuring that our consumers are buying safe products.

Throughout my speech, I will refer to elements that have been included in the American legislation to ensure that there is no shortage of money or inspectors to enforce this law. That is what we also need to see on this side of the border to ensure that we can do the important work of strengthening the current law, which dates back 40 years.

Now I would like to read the bill summary because it serves to explain the scope of this new legislation, which I hope will be passed quickly.

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

That is the scope of the bill.

At second reading, I made several statements and asked a number of other questions that must be answered by meeting with officials and talking to the minister so we can be sure this bill really meets the needs and expectations we expressed when we supported Bill C-52 in principle a few years ago.

Speaking of what led to Bill C-36, there was Bill C-6, and before that, Bill C-52. The same bill has come up under three different numbers. I would invite those watching to reread my speech at second reading because I reviewed all of this to explain why the Conservative government took so long to bring this bill forward.

As I said earlier, the committee members worked well together. At this point, I would like to thank my colleague from Repentigny, who worked with me to ensure the Bloc Québécois' presence in committee and who asked excellent questions. Among the answers to the questions the committee had are some questions from the member for Repentigny and the answers provided by officials who appeared before the committee.

When we discussed Bill C-6, a number of people wrote to us to express their concerns about whether Bill C-36 was constitutionally acceptable. I will read the answer provided by Diane Labelle, general counsel, legal services unit, Health Canada, during her appearance before the committee:

As you are well aware, the Minister of Justice is tasked with reviewing each bill in order to ensure that it properly reflects the government's obligations pursuant to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That review was done by the minister and the Department of Justice. Moreover, a bill is also examined to see whether it is well founded, i.e., whether Parliament does indeed have the power to adopt such a bill. In fact, we can confirm that we have conducted such a review and that the bill falls within Parliament's authority regarding criminal matters and properly reflects the government's charter obligations.

Another concern that some of our constituents had a number of questions about was the fact that Bill C-36 could apply to natural health products. They did not want the bill to regulate natural health products any differently. That is clear in subclause 4(3) of the bill, which I referred to in my speech at second reading. I would like to quote it again:

For greater certainty, this Act does not apply to natural health products as defined in subsection 1(1) of the Natural Health Products Regulations made under the Food and Drugs Act.

I thought that was relatively clear in the bill, but I asked the government officials about this anyway. I will now quote myself, which is unusual, but I will in this case:

Could there be a way around this provision so that the bill applies to natural health products?

I was referring to Bill C-36. This is the reply from Athana Mentzelopoulos, the director general of consumer product safety directorate at Health Canada:

No, there is no way. There is a way, but it would have to come back before Parliament to be amended so that the scope of the legislation would be changed—for example, to remove the provision in subclause 4(3). So yes, there is a way, but certainly it would be the purview of parliamentarians to do so.

In response, I asked another question.

But the version we have before us, i.e., Bill C-36, in no way affects natural health products. Is that correct?

In response, Diane Labelle added the following explanation, addressing the chair of the Standing Committee on Health:

...evidently, neither the Governor in Council nor the minister could amend the wording of the legislation. Parliament alone has that authority. Therefore, the wording of the legislation cannot be amended as regards natural health products.

What we can deduce from this is that if Parliament wanted the bill to apply to natural health products, a new bill would have to be introduced in Parliament to amend subclause 4(3), as Ms. Mentzelopoulos indicated.

Another question we raised a number of times during consideration of Bill C-6 and Bill C-36 is whether the number of inspectors is sufficient. As I was saying earlier, the U.S. has truly taken responsibility and considerably increased the number of inspectors. They want to ensure that their legislation has enough teeth to be properly enforced. To the Bloc Québécois, it is clear that we cannot leave it up to industry alone to ensure that the products it puts on the market are safe within the meaning of the law. In committee, we asked whether the number of inspectors was sufficient, and this is what Athana Mentzelopoulos said:

Essentially, there was a recognition that we needed more resources amongst our cadre of inspectors. We have done the analysis to ascertain, for example, where we have.... We want to go where the work is, essentially.

In my own travels recently, as the new DG, I visited with the regions. We do not necessarily have a uniform number of inspectors associated with each region. In British Columbia there is a lot of volume with imports, and we need to make sure we are resourced appropriately. It is the same in Ontario; a considerable extent of industry is found in Ontario. Obviously we would have—and this is the case—more resources in Ontario than we might find in areas where, for example, there is less industry, less import activity. In Quebec as well we have obviously larger numbers; it correlates to going where the work is and making sure that we are addressing the need.

Robert Ianiro, Director of the Consumer Product Safety Bureau, Health Canada, provided the following information in response to our question.

I think part of the answer also is that we've been focusing a lot around solely increasing our capacity of inspectors, which is clearly very important. We are doubling that capacity. By the fifth year of the action plan, 2012-13, in fact we will have overall doubled the entire complement in consumer product safety. We actually will have increased by about 125 employees.

I think it's important to recognize that we also are hiring more analysts to do testing and verification at our laboratory. With the introduction of the general prohibition, there's going to be a lot more research, hazard evaluations, hazard assessments, risk assessments. We're bringing in mandatory incident reporting. We need to have people sitting behind computers triaging the data, analyzing the data. These are all individuals beyond and in addition to the inspectors.

So it's a fairly broad complement of new employees. Inspectors are obviously very critical. We have those who would be devoted to risk assessment, those devoted to standards development. I think also a very critical piece, given the post-market regime of consumer product safety in Canada and worldwide, is the critical importance of outreach. There are also resources and new staff devoted to outreach. That includes outreach to industry in terms of understanding their obligations, as well as outreach to consumers, since we all have a role to play. As regulator, obviously, as government we have a role to play. Consumers have a role to play. Obviously manufacturers and industry have a role to play.

So it's much, much broader than just inspectors.

Based on Mr. Ianiro's comments, it is clear that we will stay on top of this issue. We will make sure that it is not government funding that determines the number of employees responsible for inspections and for proper implementation of the bill, but vice versa. And once we know what is needed on the ground in order to do the work correctly, we need to ensure that the division carrying out the organization and implementation of inspections has enough staff.

As I said earlier, the entire burden cannot be put on the industry. It is obviously in the industry's interest to not have any products recalled or any nasty incidents reported, but the government has the primary responsibility to ensure that this legislation is adopted by Parliament—and quickly, I hope—so that it can be correctly enforced.

I will not have time to talk about two other questions that we had asked about the government's interpretation of the preamble, notably concerning the precautionary principle.

In any case, I would invite citizens who wish to enquire about these answers to do so by visiting the parliamentary website and consulting the transcripts of the committee debates concerning Bill C-36.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Yes, as the member for Outremont said, the Prime Minister is quite stubborn. He always wants his own way, and does not want to get to the bottom of things or find an efficient way of adopting bills that are deemed important, as the minister herself said in her speech earlier today.

Now we have Bill C-36. As I said earlier, this bill is essentially a carbon copy of Bill C-6, but they have already incorporated—and it would have been silly not to—the amendments already made in parliamentary committee when Bill C-6 was being studied. Members will recall that Bill C-6 was itself a carbon copy of Bill C-52. The only difference—people will perhaps remember—was that when the government introduced Bill C-52, a number of our constituents had a problem with the fact that natural health products would be subject to this bill.

However, there was a proposal to amend and modify the bill so that natural health products would be exempt. I would like to read subclause 4(3) of the bill:

For greater certainty, this Act does not apply to natural health products as defined in subsection 1(1) of the Natural Health Products Regulations made under the Food and Drugs Act.

This clarification having been made, I would, for the benefit of the House, like to raise some questions and ideas that would be interesting to study during the meetings of the Standing Committee on Health that will be dedicated to studying Bill C-36.

First of all, the preamble to the bill proposes a definition that approaches the precautionary principle:

Whereas

the Parliament of Canada recognizes...

that a lack of full scientific certainty is not to be used as a reason for postponing measures that prevent adverse effects on human health if those effects could be serious or irreversible;

After having read the preamble, we would really like to study compliance with this bill in more detail. What does the government mean by this statement? That is the question we will try to answer during the committee meetings that focus on studying Bill C-36.

The second point I would like to make is about the complementary system regarding the environment. The preamble also gives an overview of consumer products and the environment:

...recognizes that, given the impact activities with respect to consumer products may have on the environment, there is a need to create a regulatory system regarding consumer products that is complementary to the regulatory system regarding the environment;

That is only found in clauses 16 and 17. The Fertilizers Act and the Seeds Act are excluded from this bill. There is one link with the environment in this bill and it deals with disclosure of personal information. We could ask the government if it intends to develop environmental requirements as part of the regulations.

The third aspect, which is fundamental, is self-regulation of the industry. Following the many cases of unsafe food products on our supermarket shelves, the media have exposed some worrisome phenomena, namely the lack of quality control and insufficient labelling on food products imported into Canada. On April 1, a number of newspaper articles reported that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency was inspecting barely 2% to 5% of food products and that this low percentage represented nearly 98% of the risk. These statements opened the debate on deficiencies in the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's tracking system and on the labelling and food inspection regulations.

When Canada's new food and consumer safety action plan is being reviewed, the Bloc Québécois will ensure that the federal government does not delegate food inspection entirely to the industry and that the federal government fulfils its mandate to ensure the safety of food, therapeutic and consumer products.

The recent listeriosis outbreak that has shaken consumer confidence is another example. We have to rectify this immediately for everyone's sake. The Bloc Québécois is urging the federal government to implement stricter food safety standards in order to restore people's confidence in the food they eat. The same standards should apply to consumer product safety.

We completely reject the notion that the industry should regulate itself entirely when it comes to food inspection, as we saw last summer with the listeriosis crisis that resulted from a self-regulation pilot project. We do not want the industry to be wholly in charge of consumer product safety. That goes without saying. Health Canada must continue playing a role in ensuring public health, for instance, by making sure it has enough inspectors to fulfill its mandate.

On that last point, back in 2006, the Auditor General indicated that Health Canada did not have sufficient financial and human resources to carry out its inspection duties. We can have the best possible bill, the best legislation to prevent the public from purchasing products that could be unsafe for themselves or their loved ones, but we still need to take every possible action to ensure that the law is obeyed. We must not allow the industry to be both purveyor and inspector of the same goods. That would be absurd, although, I must admit, no company wants to see its name in huge bold letters splashed across the front pages of newspapers, saying that it put unsafe products on store shelves.

Clearly, all stakeholders know that for everyone's sake, consumer products that pose a risk to public health must not find their way onto our store shelves. The fact remains that we need ways to ensure compliance with the law and to make sure that the industry does not put the people who provide consumer products to the public in charge of overseeing the safety and security of those products.

The fourth point I would like to discuss, and which we will address in committee, pertains to the regulations. Bill C-36 frequently refers to measures that the minister may take with respect to regulations. Broad regulatory powers are also mentioned in clause 6, as well as clause 37. The Bloc Québécois has questions about several aspects of the regulations provided for in the bill.

We must ask some important questions. Given the minister's discretionary power, how would the recall be carried out and for what reasons could she decide to not recall a product in certain cases? How will the minister decide that a product is dangerous? It is a matter of common sense, and we must have an answer before the bill is brought into force. On a few occasions when considering a bill, the members of the Standing Committee on Health agreed that the minister would have to provide a certain number of regulations to convey how she intended to interpret, through the regulations, the bill to be passed by Parliament.

Also, what parameters would the minister use in deciding to recall one product but not another? In this regard, we still have questions, and we hope that the minister or the officials will explain their intentions to the committee, and that the officials will also be able to provide more information about the pending regulations.

It is clear that this bill will receive quick passage through second reading since we have unanimously agreed to it. My colleagues on the Standing Committee on Health and I are looking forward to a more in-depth study of Bill C-36 in the days to come.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as most hon. members here know, when a government bill is introduced, the same member cannot deliver a speech more than once at each stage. Therefore, at second reading stage, like today, it would normally not be possible to speak more than once to this bill, an act respecting the safety of consumer products. In the present case, it will be possible because this is the third time this bill is being introduced by this same government. Why is this so? Because the Prime Minister said so. He decided, through various manoeuvres, to draw out the debate on this much anticipated and necessary bill.

That is why, when I read the Minister of Health's press release that was printed and distributed on June 7, 2010, I could not help but laugh. I will read an excerpt:

“The safety and well-being of Canadian families and children remain a top priority for our government,” said [the Minister of Health]. “Canada's current product safety law is now over 40 years old and we need to do more to update and improve this law to help protect our families from harmful products.”

About four years ago today, the Auditor General pointed out the problem and emphasized that we should redouble our efforts to modernize this old legislation going back 40 years. She submitted a report in November 2006 that showed the Government of Canada was aware of the risks that consumers were running as a result of the lack of funding for the product safety program and knew that managers could not comply with their mandates. That was in November 2006. So what happened after that? Let me summarize the period of time since November 2006.

In the summer of 2007, thousands of toys made in China were recalled by their manufacturers because of the lead they contained. The Bloc Québécois said at the time that the minister should act without delay to tighten the safety requirements for dangerous products in order to prohibit the manufacture, promotion and marketing of any product entailing an unacceptable risk of harmful effects to health.

Although the Auditor General made her determination in November 2006, it was not until December 2007 that the government announced—not that a bill was being introduced—but that an action plan had been created to ensure the safety of food and consumer products. The government promised a bill in the days or weeks or months to come. It finally appeared in April 2008. A year and a half had passed, therefore, between the Auditor General’s findings and Bill C-52.

You know something about this, Mr. Speaker, because you were affected like all of us. The bill was prevented from continuing through all the stages of the legislative process and becoming much-needed legislation because in September 2008—despite the fine fixed-date election bill the Prime Minister had decided to introduce and get passed—he decided, because he was the Prime Minister and could use his prerogative, to call a general election and slam the doors on Parliament. Never mind the very necessary and important bills that are pending, let us have an election. That was in September 2008. So the process for passing this bill on the safety of consumer products was dragged out even longer.

In January 2009, once the election campaign and the Christmas holidays were over, C-6, essentially a carbon copy of Bill C-52, was introduced.

The only thing that happened at the end of January was that the bill was introduced. Actual debate began only in April 2009. Once again, there were delays. I can tell you that the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health was not where the process was dragged out, because in five meetings we were able to hear all the people involved and all the people with an interest in the issue. Amendments were presented and we managed to find common ground among all the parliamentarians on the committee. However, we did not make it to the end of the legislative process for the bill, because in December 2009, Parliament was prorogued. The Prime Minister, again because he is the Prime Minister and he has the power to do it, decided to shut down Parliament, to leave us in our constituencies and not to allow the House of Commons to complete the entire legislative process then underway, and in particular the process of passing the consumer products safety bill, a bill that, I repeat, is necessary and one that people are waiting for.

In March 2010, Parliament returned. But did the government introduce the bill? No, it waited a few months. In June 2010, Bill C-36 was introduced, the one we have before us and that we will be debating today and in the days that follow. And since June, have we been debating this bill, a bill that is needed and that people are waiting for? No, we have been waiting, we let the summer go by, and here we are on October 7, debating it at second reading.

It is somewhat odd that we had to wait four years and still not have passed it, and be starting, once again, to consider passing the bill, a bill that has, in general, the agreement of the parliamentarians in this House. This is cause for concern, to say the least. That is why I smiled a little when I read this paragraph from the minister. A little farther on in the same news release, the minister tells us that she looks forward to speaking with us about the bill in greater detail in the coming days. We have had to wait until October for her to address the subject in this House.

Furthermore, we are falling behind, and everyone knows it. Earlier, the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons had to rise and ask for unanimous consent to have only one round of speeches. Everyone knows that we are behind, but if the government, headed by the Prime Minister, truly—

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-6, an act respecting the safety of consumer products, which I support. This bill is long overdue. Last year and the year before I stood in the House and asked the minister a question about toxic toys. I mentioned how a lot of the toys available for children contained lead and other kinds of very dangerous chemicals in them. Therefore, it is a great pleasure to see a bill that begins to make consumer products safer.

I want to focus particularly on several of the chemicals. We note that the U.S. has tested some of the popular toys and have found that a third of them have medium to high levels of lead, cadmium, mercury and other dangerous chemicals. Why are these chemicals particularly hard on children? We know their brains and their bodies develop the most during that first six years. Children under the age of two tend to put whatever their hands can grab into their mouths. Imagine what would happen if the products they put in their mouths contained dangerous chemicals. The impact is hardest on kids are under six, especially children two years old or under.

Two or three years ago in the U.S., a four-year-old child swallowed a heart-shaped charm and subsequently died. That charm was made almost entirely out of lead. Therefore, last year the U.S. took action and passed a bill similar to this one, which takes effect this year.

When there are high levels of lead, it causes brain damage, learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders, behavioural problems, stunted growth, impaired hearing and kidney damage. Some of the symptoms could be vomiting and, if severe, as I said earlier, even death. Therefore, parents desperately want to know that the toys and the products around their children are safe.

We have seen that it is not just lead, it is also cadmium. Cadmium can have an impact on children and pregnant women. It can cause bone losses, increased blood pressure, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting and, if serious, even death. It could even cause lung and prostate cancer.

Another kind of chemical, phthalates, especially DIMP, which is most often found in rubber ducks and bath toys, has an impact on the kidneys, liver and blood. There are all kinds of chemicals. In fact, 80,000 of them are used in the products that surround us. The European Union has banned phthalates since 1999 because of their impact.

The United Steelworkers, for example, has been asking parents to go around and check products, especially toys, to see whether they are safe for children and household use. For a while last year and the year before, before this act was finally in front of us for approval, I told my constituents to go leadcheck.com where they could purchase a pen that they could use to test products.

I will be splitting my time, Mr. Speaker, with the member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River. I forgot to mention that earlier on.

The United Steelworkers have this campaign. If the government is not checking these things, it is encouraging ordinary Canadians to do it.

I am glad we are finally seeing some aggressive regulations. For regulations to be successful, they require three elements. They require legislation, enforcement and education. We need to carefully ensure there are enough funds in the budget for enforcement. We know that 65% of consumer products are imported into Canada. We need to ensure the products are safe and importers should be required to prove they are.

In the past everything has been voluntary. The checking, enforcement and recall were voluntary. We did not know if a product is off the shelf. The item could be recalled by Health Canada, yet some of the product could still be on the shelves. We need to have mandatory recall and the kind of enforcement to ensure the item is off the shelf if it is dangerous.

Finally, an element of the bill includes natural health products, which has caused us some concern. However, I am glad it has now clarified. Last year we had Bill C-51 and Bill C-52. Bill C-51 especially dealt with natural health products. At that time, there was a great deal of concern over that kind of legislation because natural health products were lumped into the Food and Drugs Act. I am glad the bill did not pass. People who sold natural health products were extremely concerned that if the bill had passed, they would have been thrown in jail.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-6 this morning, An Act respecting the safety of consumer products. I think this is a very important bill.

We certainly still have reservations about the bill, but by and large we are in support of it. This is evidence once again that collectively we can make this chamber work and I think that bodes well. If the parties continue to cooperate a little more than they have in the past, we can get some good legislation out of this minority Parliament and perhaps extend the minority Parliament for some time into the future.

I have had some experience with a minority government in Manitoba a number of years ago. We worked with the Gary Filmon government in Manitoba for a period of 18 months and got through a lot of very good pieces of legislation.

As a matter of fact, I am a very big fan of minority governments. When we look back to 1972-74, that was a very productive period in our politics, and as well when Mike Pearson was the Prime Minister in the sixties. We had several minority Parliaments and they worked very well too. That is when we got the flag. We had a number of issues that were resolved in a very good way.

I want to say at the beginning that our critic for this area did a tremendous job on the bill, as she does on pretty much everything she touches. She and I go back a long way. We were both elected to the Manitoba Legislature March 18, 1986. I have had a lot of experience watching her over the years in various capacities, and she takes a very aggressive and very thorough approach to her duties. When she makes a recommendation, we know that it is well-researched, well thought out and there is really nothing given to chance.

Bill C-6 follows a previous bill, Bill C-52, the original piece of legislation that was intended to strengthen the Hazardous Products Act of 1969, which is quite a long time ago. It has been proven increasingly ineffective in identifying and removing dangerous consumer products.

Let us look back to the period of 1969 when the original legislation was brought in. This was at a time when consumer products and so on were coming on the market in large numbers.

Ralph Nader was essentially the father of consumer protection in North America. Most of us were around in the 1960s. Some here probably were not, but most of us were. Most of us actually grew up with Ralph Nader and we know that he challenged the North American auto industry on the basis that consumer products, when they are produced and sold to the public, should be as safe as possible, and that the onus should be on the company producing the product to be liable if its product is defective.

Our thinking in Canada has always been the opposite, that somehow it is the purchaser and end user's responsibility and fault if something goes wrong with a product. Over the years, through people like Ralph Nader driving this envelope, we have seen consumer protection rise greatly. The man has done a terrific service for all consumers in North America by his actions.

We remember the Ford Pintos. I believe he called them rolling Molotov cocktails. These were cars built in the sixties that had gas tank problems and were subject to catching on fire in accidents. There was a statistically large number of these. Any time something like this happened, the car companies blamed the driver. It was never the car company's responsibility; it was always the driver's responsibility. Ralph Nader collected statistics to show that these accidents were happening in large numbers and only with that particular type of car, the Ford Pinto.

He took action against the companies and was able to get compensation for many Americans. He later went on to deal with the rusty Ford issue and a number of other different areas. When he did get settlements for people, at the end of the day, the settlements were always done on the basis that the settlement had to be private because the car company would always want to keep it out of the public view.

The reality is that the public view of how dangerous these consumers products were was enhanced by Ralph Nader's actions. However, that was only the tip of the iceberg. When people did have problems and took action against the car companies, in this case, there was always a settlement, but the people receiving the settlement had to sign a release that they would not talk about it. The public is literally totally unaware that there were probably hundreds of thousands of settlements made that people could not talk about by virtue of the fact that they had signed confidentiality agreements in order to get their settlement.

That is the beginning of how and why legislation such as this was developed. In the 1950s there were not a lot of consumer products to begin with. In those days, people never thought that their children were going to be poisoned by toys. It was something that was never even contemplated. In those days, people were not dealing with consumer products like cellphones, which some people feel are linked to brain cancer. I do not know if there is a link or not, but it is certainly being studied.

A member of my family was found to have a brain tumour just a few weeks ago. It was removed and it has been determined that it was cancerous. He evidently spends a lot of time on a cellphone. The family is certainly questioning as to whether or not there is a connection. Over time, I think that we will have to do studies to show whether or not cancers are in any way connected to cellphone use.

However, these were issues that we never had to deal with in the 1960s because we did not have products like this. In the 1960s the wiring in houses was probably 60 amp and one was lucky to have a refrigerator, a television and maybe a radio. That was all one would have in a house. Today, when we go into our bedroom or any other room in a house, I am sure we all agree that the whole room lights up at night. There are all kinds of consumer items plugged into the wall.

People have suggested that these products are generating electromagnetic radiation and they provide concerns in some cases. I know that we have had some studies done on people who live around power lines. There is a demonstrated suggestion that cancer rates are somehow increased for people who live around power lines. When we are looking at issues like that, it makes sense that we in this country have to come up with very strong consumer product legislation just to deal with the unknown and unforeseen health effects of consumer products.

We have another whole area of involvement here, with producers of products who are less than ethical in their manufacture. Years ago, products were manufactured in Canada. They were done under some sort of quality standards. When producers were in Winnipeg, Saskatoon or Ottawa, producing for the Canadian market, they would know that if they did not produce a good quality product, it would not be purchased any more. Eaton's would not buy it from them. They would be out of business and there would not be any other place to sell their product.

With a huge amount of consumer products today, it seems that almost everything is being outsourced and made in Mexico, China, Indonesia and other areas. I am sure that a lot of those products are of good quality, but there certainly is a temptation, when a supply source is so far away and the competition is so extremely fierce, for quick solutions and shortcuts becoming the order of the day.

That is what has happened. Children's toys have been manufactured inappropriately, and we are paying the price. We have to deal with this essentially because of multinational corporations and their free trade deals that have led to a race to the bottom for the lowest possible cost of production. We see that as a positive thing in society, but we do not tend to look at the negatives. The long-term liabilities and responsibilities come back to bite us at the end of the day.

For example, 90 consumer products were recalled last year, and there were 37 more in this year already. Many of these products were not made in Canada; China was identified as the frequent country of origin. The original act, as has been pointed out, has not been effective in identifying or removing these dangerous products, leaving Canadians dependent on product alerts and recalls by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission instead of Health Canada.

We see the same thing in the financial services area. Legislation and enforcement in the United States are tougher. There are almost no convictions in Canada under securities violations, for example, with the Ontario Securities Commission, whereas there are a couple of thousand in the United States. I have mentioned before that Conrad Black committed his white-collar crimes in Canada, and he was not touched by any Canadian authorities at all. It was under American laws that he was picked up; it was the American system that cornered him, eventually convicted him and put him where he belongs and where he is now, in jail, at least for the next few months.

Clearly, Canada is not in a very strong position relative to other countries. This bill will help deal with that to a certain extent. However, once again we have left out some very important areas that should have been dealt with.

One of the areas that was left out, and it is certainly an issue that is near and dear to me, is the issue of smoking. Presentations were made in committee. It was a very big disappointment to me and others that cigarettes were exempted from this bill. I cannot think of a better example of a product that should be covered by this type of legislation.

I want to read a letter from the Canadian Cancer Society, which was sent to the chair and members of the committee on April 21, 2009. I know there are people watching the debate today who would not be aware that this was the case. I think it is important for them to know that the Canadian Cancer Society wrote a letter to the members of the committee regarding Bill C-6.

While it says it strongly supports the bill and commends the Minister of Health and the government for bringing forward the legislation, at the same time it recommended “the removal of the permanent exclusion for tobacco products found in the bill. The proposed amendment is short and simple but very important. In particular, we recommend the exclusion of subsection 4(2) to be deleted and that tobacco products instead be listed in Schedule 1, along with pesticides, cosmetics, explosives and other indicated products.”

If the majority of the public were aware of this bill and that this exclusion was in the bill, I am sure MPs' phones would have been ringing off the hook. We would have received a lot of feedback from the public on this issue, from both sides, I am sure, because there are still avid smokers who would defend their right to smoke.

I know at least one colleague, who may or may not be close to me at the moment, is a smoker, but I do not know how tough she would be in defending her right to keep smoking.

I am an ex-smoker, so I guess we are the worst people to be talking about this issue, but even people who do smoke tend to take a different view today of that issue. Even 20 years ago, when a member of my original caucus had a party at his house and announced that people had to smoke outside, we all shook our heads and thought there was something wrong with him.

Today it would be the absolute opposite of that. Even the smokers walk out of their houses and smoke on the front steps. If they recognize it is doing damage to their houses, it makes me wonder why they keep smoking in the first place.

I recall that people years ago would not have had a problem purchasing a car that was owned by a smoker. Today it is very difficult to sell a car that was owned by a smoker, so smokers are smoking outside their cars.

Would anybody in this Parliament believe us if we told them that only a few years ago we could smoke on airplanes? It was very, very common, and now that is past history.

We are making progress. It has been reported that smoking rates have dropped, but it is still a big problem. We have legislation before the House right now dealing with the whole area of tobacco and trying to find ways to reduce the number of smokers in the country. I really believe we are going to have to go a step further at a certain point and offer some sort of financial inducement to people who embark on a non-smoking program supervised by a doctor.

I draw the analogy between that and what we did in Manitoba with the car immobilizer program four years ago. We offered it as a voluntary program, with a reduction on insurance if people put immobilizers in their cars. Even though it made imminent sense, very few people took the government up on the program. We made the immobilizers free, and as a reward we gave people the reduction on their insurance anyway. We made them free but we mandated that people had to install these immobilizers or they could not insure their cars anymore.

There was a bit of grumbling, but by and large people complied with the program. We had our auto theft rates drop to the point where we had one day last month when we had zero. We went from the number one car theft capital of Canada three years ago down to having one day with no thefts.

That is a perfect example of how providing a free product and making it mandatory actually has solved a lot of the problem. We may have to do the same thing with smoking to get those final smokers. I am looking at another smoker down the aisle here.

At the end of the day, if the advertising does not work, all the other prohibitions do not work and the social stigmas do not work, we may have to look at offering some sort of a program, administered by the Canadian Medical Association, where we offer financial incentives to people if they quit smoking. They already have financial incentives to stop smoking through their home and life insurance programs, and other programs. I am sure it works in a few cases, but not in all.

The letter goes on to say, “Tobacco products cause more damage to public health than any other consumer product, killing 37,000 Canadians a year. It makes no sense that Bill C-6 in section 4(2) would permanently exclude tobacco products under virtually all circumstances from any of the bill's provisions. The following rationale further supports the proposed amendment. Adopting the amendment would mean that in the future the government would have the flexibility to deal with the tobacco epidemic in a rapid manner should the need arise and the Tobacco Act be inadequate.”

There would be an escape valve available to protect the public interest if necessary—

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, I had not yet been elected when Bill C-52 was before the House. However, I have to say that we worked very hard with the NDP to ensure that some of the clauses in Bill C-52 were included in Bill C-6, and most of the amendments were passed.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one of the issues over disclosure by the minister was reintroduced. There was an NDP and a Bloc motion that brought that back. Perhaps the member could briefly discuss the issue of ministerial disclosure and why it is important. It was part of Bill C-52, the precursor to this bill, and is now part of this bill.

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank and congratulate all members of the Standing Committee on Health, on which I sit, for all their work on this bill.

I believe this is proof that, when we have a good bill, one that is well drafted and one we can work on, when the amendments proposed by the opposition are adopted by the majority, and when the committee operates under good discipline, all of these elements move things along even more quickly and solid common sense always prevails. That is what has led to the bill we have before us which will have the support of the Bloc Québécois, the NDP, the Liberal Party and the government, or so I understand. That same solid common sense is what makes me a sovereignist.

Getting back to Bill C-6, according to an Auditor General's report, the government had known since at least 2006 that the current legislation, the legislation amended by Bill C-6, did not protect the public properly.

It was not until the incident in the summer of 2007, when toys containing lead were recalled, that the government indicated its intention to amend this legislation. Three months later, it made the official announcement of its action plan to ensure food and consumer product safety.

At that time, the Bloc Québécois had called on the minister to tighten up safety requirements for dangerous products so the manufacturing, promotion and marketing of any product that might present an unacceptable risk or be harmful to health could be banned.

We also called upon Ottawa to put the burden on manufacturers to inspect their products and prove that they are not hazardous to consumer health and safety. This is included in the amended Bill C-6.

We also insisted that the approach taken by the government should not put the industry wholly in charge of the safety of consumer products, thereby leaving the public's health in their hands.

One of the amendments I proposed called for beefed-up financial and human resources in order to ensure there would be enough inspectors to enforce the law that Bill C-6 will eventually become.

This bill is a good one and is based on fine principles. We all agree with this bill in principle. However, the problem we come up against every time is the number of inspectors. The Bloc Québécois often raised this issue in committee, because if we implement this bill without having the necessary inspectors or the financial and human resources that are needed, it could quickly become useless.

The Bloc Québécois succeeded in getting an amendment through calling for beefed-up human and financial resources so that the law is properly enforced.

We cannot leave it up to the industry to regulate and manage itself. That could create problems. It is not that we assume that any industry is acting in bad faith, but a company could unfortunately make a mistake in its data or in its research on toys, food or something else.

We want to ensure that the government makes good on a promise it has made many times but unfortunately never kept. It was to ensure that it had enough inspectors.

In committee, we heard from Mr. Burns, vice-president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada. He told us essentially the same thing: if we do not have enough inspectors to enforce the law, the bill will do absolutely nothing.

The Auditor General had also pointed out that Health Canada did not have enough inspectors to do the work properly. Her findings were consistent with what Mr. Burns said and the questions I repeatedly asked in committee.

Even though the bill requires that companies ensure that products are harmless, the government will have to ensure that there are enough inspectors, as I said.

We support Bill C-6 as amended. I would like to provide some background. This bill is the old Bill C-52, which was tabled on April 8, 2008, and passed at second reading in May 2008. It is part of the food and consumer safety action plan, which the Conservative government announced on December 17, 2007. Budget 2008 allocated $113 million over two years to implement the plan. We have yet to see what kind of structure will be put in place and whether more people will be hired to ensure consumer product safety.

Currently, the federal government's primary legislative instrument regulating consumer product safety is the Hazardous Products Act, which was enacted in 1969. Over the past 40 years, technology and inspection systems have advanced tremendously in the industry, Health Canada and the federal government. The new Bill C-6 has come not a moment too soon and may in fact be a little too late. The government could have done a course correction a long time ago. Unfortunately, frequent elections have killed various bills, including Bill C-52, which was at second reading.

Part I of the Hazardous Products Act deals with regulated consumer products or those prohibited from being advertised, sold or imported into Canada. Some 30 products and categories of products are regulated, including toys, chemical products and about 25 other prohibited products, such as baby walkers, lawn darts with elongated tips, and products containing toxic materials, such as jequirity beans, which contain a resin-like toxin. The manufacture, import and sale of these products may also be regulated and restricted by other laws.

Bill C-6 repeals Part I of the Hazardous Products Act and replaces it with:

At present, in the event that a consumer product that is not regulated or prohibited poses a health or safety risk, it is up to industry to voluntarily issue and manage a product recall. The federal government’s authority in this regard is limited to issuing a public warning and, in the event that it is deemed necessary, subsequently taking steps to regulate or prohibit the product under the HPA.

Bill C-6 appears to tighten up the safety requirements for hazardous products. It creates prohibitions with respect to the manufacturing, importing, selling, advertising, packaging and labelling of consumer products, including those that are a danger to human safety. It also makes manufacturers and importers accountable, and requires them to ensure that their product is not a danger to human health and safety.

However, although clauses 7 and 8 are more strict concerning the responsibilities of manufacturers, importers and anyone selling similar consumer products, clause 6 refers to requirements set out in the regulations. Clause 6 states:

No person shall manufacture, import, advertise or sell a consumer product that does not meet the requirements set out in the regulations.

So, just how some of the requirements for consumer products will be tightened up will be stipulated in the regulations, but the committee will not have any details.

Still, we believe that the government is acting in good faith, and as proof we have the creation of an advisory committee on labelling, for example. It is now in the hands of the government, which plans on discussing with the opposition parties how the issues of labelling and potentially hazardous products will be referred to the committee. We are putting our faith in the government on this. It is very rare, but in the case of the advisory committee on Bill C-6, we are going to give them a chance.

The bill defines an “article” as a consumer product, which is a product, including its components, parts or accessories that may reasonably be expected to be used for non-commercial purposes, including for domestic, recreational and sports purposes. This definition naturally also includes its packaging, any object used to manufacture, import, package, sell, label, test or transport a consumer product or advertise it, or the documents pertaining to these activities or any consumer product.

The bill contains five measures to reverse the burden of proof regarding safety. First, let us examine the safety of consumer products. At present, there is no constraint whatsoever imposed upon manufacturers or importers. They do not have to demonstrate that their products pose no danger or threat to consumer safety. Bill C-6 proposes to reverse this burden of proof and to impose it on manufacturers in future, under the supervision of federal inspectors from Health Canada and other departments.

The bill suggests that manufacturers and importers of consumer products will be required to test their products for safety on a regular basis and, significantly, to disclose the results of these tests. As I mentioned earlier, we cannot allow only the manufacturers to examine these tests. Far be it from me to doubt their good faith, but independent government inspectors should conduct surprise tests from time to time. It is extremely important to me that we ensure that the studies are conducted properly and that there are no irregularities in these reports. I would have to say that, in the committee proceedings, based on what I heard and the questions I asked of Option consommateurs representatives—who were very well received and kindly answered our questions—and businesses or groups of businesses, having surprise inspections did not pose a problem. Many companies encouraged us to do so and to have enough inspectors, as did Mr. Burns, the vice-president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada.

Inspectors need to be given greater authority. As I have already indicated, the Auditor General stated in a report that in order to ensure that this bill is implemented and effective, inspectors on the ground will have more powers when Bill C-6 comes into force. For that to happen, consumer products will have to be subject to recall or a licensing amendment. These inspectors will be the means to enforce this bill's most important provisions. However, such an increase of duties and responsibilities can raise a certain number of concerns and questions, which is why we hope to pass an amendment to ensure more human and financial resources

Bill C-6 also gives the minister new powers concerning recalls. At this time, health authorities do not have the power to recall consumer products found to be dangerous. Recalls are issued on a voluntary basis by manufacturers and importers themselves. Bill C-6 corrects the inadequacy in the current legislation. That is why we want this bill to pass quickly, since at this time, industries recall products on a voluntary basis, and that goes for toys and all other consumer products. We must ensure that the minister has the means to recall products herself, instead of simply leaving it in the hands of the companies.

Bill C-6 would give the minister the power to recall any products that are defective or endanger consumer safety. However, the regulations will stipulate the requirements and the conditions under which the minister can act.

Stricter punitive measures will also provide a greater deterrence. The fines imposed on manufacturers were usually around $5,000. Now, with Bill C-6, an offence could lead to a fine of up to $5 million and the guilty party could face up to two years in prison.

Issuing a $5,000 fine to a company that might make millions or billions of dollars a year is rather laughable, especially when we are talking about safety, and we could jeopardize the safety or even the lives of the youngest members of society: our children.

We have already seen extremely hazardous products with lead toys. A simple $5,000 fine means nothing to these large and multinational companies. I think that it is an excellent idea to make the fines higher.

With a fine of $5 million and the possibility of imprisonment, at least companies will pay much more attention during their research, to ensure that products will not cause problems, as well as during recalls.

Bill C-6 proposes the creation of a system for preparing and maintaining documents, similar to a product traceability system. The bill states:

13. (1) Any person who manufactures, imports, advertises, sells or tests a consumer product for commercial purposes shall prepare and maintain

(a) documents that indicate

(i) in the case of a retailer, the name and address of the person from whom they obtained the product and the location where and the period during which they sold the product, and

ii) in the case of any other person, the name and address of the person from whom they obtained the product or to whom they sold it, or both, as applicable.

(b) the prescribed documents.

(2) The person shall keep the documents at their place of business in Canada or at any prescribed place and shall, on written request, provide the Minister with them.

(3) The Minister may, subject to any terms and conditions that he or she may specify, exempt a person from the requirement to keep documents in Canada if the Minister considers it unnecessary or impractical for the person to keep them in Canada.

This requirement to keep the product provenance documents for a set period as determined by our studies in committee will make it possible to quickly trace merchants who are in possession of the product, as well as its origin. What is more, should an incident arise concerning this product, in Canada or anywhere else in the world, the manufacturer or importer has an obligation to notify the minister.

Returning to the text of the bill:

14(2) A person who manufactures, imports or sells a consumer product for commercial purposes shall provide the Minister and, if applicable, the person from whom they received the consumer product with all the information in their control regarding any incident related to the product within two days after the day on which they become aware of the incident.

I am getting the two minute signal, but I could have gone on for hours. I will just say quickly that we examined similar legislation on the international level. We checked with companies in committee. So we did a good job.

I would like to congratulate the chair of our committee for her extraordinary job of keeping us on track. Not that the members of the Liberal Party, the Bloc Québécois and the NDP are an unruly lot, far from it. She did, however, do an excellent job of making sure everything moved quickly and in an orderly manner. Once again, my congratulations to her on that.

I also wanted to point out that we have worked extremely hard, we listened to both consumers and businesses, and I believe we have here an excellent bill, which, as amended, will receive the assent of the entire House.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, I share some of the member's views and, given the recalls that have been escalating over the years under the Hazardous Products Act, we need to have this bill quickly.

The member may know that earlier in the debate I expressed some concern about the regulations and the breadth of the regulations required, which seem to be fairly expansive. I just checked in the legislative summary prepared by the Library of Parliament and it reads:

Bill C-6 gives the Governor in Council very wide powers to make regulations to carry out the purposes and provisions of the CCPSA. For example, the Governor in Council may make regulations exempting products, classes of products, persons, and classes of persons from the statute’s provisions, add or delete consumer products found in the Schedules to the bill, specify the types of documents persons must provide to the Minister of Health....

We can see that even the concerns seem to be implicit in the Library of Parliament's assessment. These are much wider, broader than they were in the previous Bill C-52 in the last Parliament.

I wonder if the member could indicate whether or not at committee the Bloc will be requiring and asking Health Canada to tighten up this process to the extent that if there is any question on major categories or groupings, such as natural health products, that would be specifically put into the legislation and not have to wait for some regulations that may or may not come out.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today on Bill C-6, previously known as Bill C-52, which was introduced in April 2008 and was read for the second time in May 2008. I hope it will get through all the stages this time and that the Bloc Québécois will have an opportunity in committee to make some comments or changes in order to clarify certain things in the preamble to the bill and get answers to some questions we have about the application of the law.

This bill is part of an action plan to ensure the safety of consumer products and foods. The government announced this action plan in 2007, and the 2008 budget mentioned it and earmarked $113 million over two years to implement it. What we want to see now is the framework that will be established, that is to say, whether the number of employees will increase to ensure the safety of consumer products. I will explain why.

The current legislation goes back 40 years and the government wants to modernize the way in which consumer product safety is handled. The main piece of federal legislation on consumer product safety is currently the Hazardous Products Act, which was enacted in 1969. This bill is designed to repeal and replace Part I of that act.

Are the bill’s provisions adequate? Will adequate budgets be provided to implement it? I wonder. The bill regulates products that pose a health or safety risk. At present, it is up to industry to voluntarily issue and manage a product recall. The federal government’s authority in this regard is limited to issuing a public warning and, in the event that it is deemed necessary, subsequently taking steps to regulate or prohibit the product under the Hazardous Products Act. This information is taken from the legislative summary on Bill C-52 that the Library of Parliament has provided.

Bill C-6 seems to tighten the safety requirements for hazardous products. Clauses 7 and 8 spell out the precautions that must be taken, the responsibilities of manufacturers and importers, and their obligation to ensure that their products do not pose a danger to human health or safety. However, even though the responsibilities of manufacturers, importers and any person who sells consumer products appear to be thoroughly covered in clauses 7 and 8, the fact that there is a reference to clause 6 and to some regulatory requirements leads us to think that the provisions of the bill may not be adequate.

We have seen how regulations have been used in practice in the case of immigration and citizenship. When the government does not necessarily want to act quickly, the process can take a tremendous amount of time and put undue pressure on industry, which does not know what the rules will be and what safeguards will be expected of it. The way in which the bill is worded also confers a lot of discretionary power on the minister’s office. These are my concerns about the bill. It also does not specify when the regulations will come into force.

Natural health products are not covered by this bill. Will we have the same problems as the natural health products industry since the creation of the Natural Health Products Directorate at Health Canada? I have some examples. Two companies in my riding are in a difficult situation. They manufacture products that were licensed by the directorate and have a natural product number.

When a product is licensed by Health Canada, there should not be barriers to its export.In this case, Health Canada did not act fast enough or efficiently and forgot that dairy-based natural health products first require inspection by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Today, because Health Canada's Natural Health Products Directorate did not foresee that this document was required, these companies are having difficulty exporting their products.

In my opinion, in a difficult economic context, our structures should not hinder the initiatives of companies that are growing. Exports are jeopardized because of the inability to issue a health certificate for a dairy-based natural health product.

I am emphasizing this point because this bill on the safety of consumer goods could be more harmful than helpful if it is not implemented quickly, efficiently and with all the necessary resources.

I sincerely hope that this situation, which is so devastating for the economy of my region of Vaudreuil-Soulanges, will be resolved. Businesses should not lose a competitive advantage because provisions are missing or inadequate to support new federal regulations.

The bill contains five types of measures designed to strengthen the burden of proof with regard to safety: measures on consumer product safety; measures to give inspectors greater authority; a new power for the minister to recall products; more severe penalties; and product traceability.

Clauses 13 and 14 of the bill seem to indicate that the government is proposing to introduce a record-keeping system that is similar to a product traceability system. We still have questions about this bill and the direction it takes.

As I said, the preamble to the bill proposes a definition that approaches the precautionary principle. It reads as follows:

Whereas the Parliament of Canada recognizes that a lack of full scientific certainty is not to be used as a reason for postponing measures that prevent adverse effects on human health if those effects could be serious or irreversible;

We would like to be able to analyze this statement in more detail in committee and get a better understanding of the guidelines and conditions behind the bill, as well as what the government intends by this statement.

The preamble also refers to connections between consumer products and the environment. We would like to ask the government whether it plans to include environmental requirements in the regulations. Seeing as how the bill makes no mention of this and the regulations will not be submitted to the committee, we would like to know what the government plans to do in this regard.

Moreover, we believe that industry self-regulation poses a problem. I refer to an article by Stéphanie Bérubé in La Presse in April 2008, entitled “Is your food safe?” The article said that as of April 1, 2008, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency was inspecting barely 2% to 5% of foods and that this small percentage accounted for nearly 98% of the risks.

The Standing Committee on Public Accounts, on which I sit, receives reports from the Auditor General on other similar issues involving Health Canada. Products come into the country but are not inspected. As well, Health Canada lacks resources, has a heavy bureaucracy and uses some questionable mechanisms when it comes to product safety inspection and analysis.

In today's technological age, Health Canada does not always use electronic means, but often uses fax machines. So I am concerned about the implementation of all this, as well as the debates on regulation and the provisions of the act that give the minister's office considerable powers to exclude certain industries. Earlier my colleague mentioned an industry that is excluded from the legislation at this time. There are also plans to deal with natural products in another bill. As I was saying, some businesses are already having problems because of the legislative framework in place. Those problems have been exacerbated by the economic crisis, Health Canada's operating problems and its inability to rapidly respond to the questions posed by people who export our products. The situation is terrible and the risk is increased as a result.

The people watching us need to know that the existing legislation is outdated. It no longer reflects how trade works or the importance of consumer product safety. This bill is simply an attempt to update the legislation respecting consumer product safety.

The issue of consumer product safety has already been analyzed and the Auditor General has made some recommendations. We saw a glimpse of this in 2006 and as I said earlier, the Auditor General raised certain concerns in 2008. In that regard, there is no doubt that the program managers cannot fulfill their mandate at this time. What will happen when they are given even more responsibilities? The government has the important responsibility of ensuring that budgets are adequate and that the necessary resources are available.

The Auditor General's November 2006 report revealed that the Government of Canada knew that consumers were exposed to risk because of lack of funding for the program. I therefore maintain that, even if the bill makes it through the committee stage, there must be sufficient resources. Health Canada's missteps raise serious doubts about the government's ability and interest when it comes to managing its own files.

Regarding what is done elsewhere, my colleague from Québec mentioned that in March 2008 the United States strengthened its legislation on toy safety. In the United States, according to the latest statistics I have here, out of 413 recalled products, 231 were toys. Thus, they have adopted provisions to regulate the toy industry. Other legislation will also follow.

The European Commission has proposed making toys safer by prohibiting carcinogens in toy manufacturing and strengthening oversight. I was in Europe recently, more specifically in France, and I met some French families.

Those French families informed me that if there had not been such a fuss made on April 1 about the safety of toys and such products as baby bottles, they would not have been aware of the dangers to their health that some products presented. They were therefore very happy that the French-language press talked a lot about it.

As well, I am pleased that this bill tackles the question of consumer product safety. However, listening to the debate in this House, the bill will have to be examined in depth in committee. We will have to be careful when it comes to regulations, and make sure we fund this program adequately.

As I said, this program has already had trouble meeting the requirements as we know them now, and it needs more funding. Once again, on the question of regulations, the industry must not be penalized because Health Canada has not provided a form needed for exports, for example. Appropriate oversight on this, therefore, is essential. Consumer groups are waiting for this legislation. The government had known this for a long time and the Auditor General has talked about it.

The government knew that the current legislation did not protect the public properly. It was not until the incident in the summer of 2007, the recall of toys that contained lead, that it indicated its intention to amend this legislation. That is unacceptable. The Bloc has done considerable work on this. The Bloc therefore called on the Minister on several occasions to tighten safety requirements to deal with dangerous products so the manufacturing, promotion and marketing of any product that might present an unacceptable risk and be harmful to health could be banned.

We are also calling on Ottawa to put the burden on manufacturers of inspecting their products and showing that they do not endanger consumers’ health and safety. And we are asking that the approach taken by the government not put the industry in complete charge of the safety of consumer products and thus leave the public’s health in their hands. This legislative approach reflects what the Bloc has asked for. We will have to wait for the regulations and the budget, however.

The Auditor General’s concerns are well founded and the government must make a commitment to having enough inspectors to do the job properly. The bill puts the burden on retailers to make sure their products are safe. We will have to make sure there are enough inspectors to enforce the law and we will have to make sure the forms needed for putting products on the market are also reviewed and are adequate.

We therefore support the bill in principle and supporting referring it to committee.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question from the chair of our health committee. We think the following amendments are pretty fundamental to the bill and some variation on them needs to be made for our support of the bill.

The first is to get rid of the exclusion of tobacco from the requirements of the bill. Let us not go down that path. Let us cover off tobacco everywhere we can because it is so harmful to health and well-being.

Second, let us ensure we have some way to prohibit categories of toxic substances in the bill. The member for Mississauga South, in answer to my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona, suggested this was not part of Bill C-6, or the general parameters of Bill C-6, and I disagree.

If we are to look at consumer safety, we have to look at not just total products, but categories of toxic substances and ensure that internationally recognized carcinogens, reproductive toxicants and neuro-developmental toxicants are prohibited in products on the shelves today. We should find a way to ensure the legislation triggers restrictions on substances assessed as toxic under CEPA, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. We should require the minister to notify the public of any reported incidents and recall orders.

Members will notice that the difference between Bill C-52 and Bill C-6, at least in one instance, is the duty for the minister to disclose to the public has been removed. I find that quite disturbing. I hope it is put back in, with more teeth, so the minister is obligated to inform Canadians whenever a problem is identified and give them appropriate information.

I remember an incident in the House, when we asked about lead in lipsticks. It was already identified. What was interesting was the government admitted there was a problem, but when we went to the website, we could not find the names of the products, so consumers themselves could not even take charge of the issue and decide to purchase on a discretionary or a careful basis.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, this is a very important piece of legislation and I am happy we are having a thorough debate in the House. While I appreciate the urgency of the situation, I also believe, as my colleagues do, that we have to get it right this time around.

Addressing this debate in the middle of an outbreak of an influenza that is circling the globe gives us reason to pause and consider the impact of legislation like this in all of its ramifications. The swine influenza reminds us just how much we live in a global context and that an incident in one part of this world can never remain isolated and contained completely. Because of travel around this globe and the way in which people are able to move around so quickly, it is clear that what we do in one part of the country, one part of the world, can affect people all around the globe.

The swine influenza incident also reminds us just how interconnected everything is. Human health directly connected to animal health, directly connected to the health of our environment. We cannot separate them. We have to look at them as a package and understand just how much government is responsible for protecting health based on that kind of global situation in the way in which everything is so connected.

I have mentioned the swine influenza and although it is not specifically related to Bill C-6 I think the Government of Canada has learned the lessons that we all experienced following the SARS outbreak and has put in place a proactive, precautionary approach to containing and mitigating in the case of the swine influenza.

I have said so publicly and I want to say so again now. I commend the Minister of Health for being so forthright with Canadian people and for ensuring that all members of Parliament are in the loop. We have had regular briefings on a daily basis. Members of Parliament will have opportunity to be briefly regularly as well. The members of the Public Health Agency of Canada and the virology lab located in Winnipeg have given up some of their valuable time to ensure that we are aware of all the facts.

I just want to give credit where credit is due because it is so important for Canadians to know that we do work together on a non-partisan basis. There are times when we disagree, but when something as serious as the swine influenza starts to circle the globe and the numbers increase daily, we have to acknowledge when government is acting appropriately, and we have to reiterate the fact that all of us are concerned and vigilant. We will continue to monitor the situation and provide the necessary information to our constituents and Canadians everywhere.

The other issue, of course, that has grabbed our attention recently that has connections to this bill is the question of listeriosis and the contamination of our food. Although this bill does not deal with food, the principle we are applying, whether it is in terms of food, drugs, natural health products or consumer products, is the same. The principle is that in fact products should be allowed on the markets, on the shelves in our stores, when they are proven to be safe.

That is a fundamental notion that is entrenched in the old legislation that we are now updating. The old legislation of the Hazardous Products Act and the old Food and Drugs Act are pieces of legislation that over the years have tried to embody the principle of do no harm, to say that it is the job of government and it is a responsibility that is enclosed within the Criminal Code because a dereliction of duty is seen as a criminal abrogation or a criminal offence.

It is that do no harm principle that requires government to ensure that all programs and measures are in place so that the products on the market, whether it is the food we eat, the drugs we have to take because of a particular illness or chronic disease, or the products that we buy for household use or for our enjoyment, are safe beyond a reasonable doubt.

It is true that the bill we are now dealing with updates legislation that is 40 years old. It is time to modernize that legislation. It is time to bring our current laws into the 21st century to ensure that we are prepared for today and for many decades to come.

By all accounts, this legislation would make some significant improvements. There are parts to the bill that are overdue and many Canadians have been clamouring for changes for many years. I commend the government for bringing forward some changes and some important legislative provisions that would help ensure the safety of Canadians.

I want to say very clearly that the bill is far from perfect and I am not even looking for perfect today. I am looking for a bill that would hold us in good stead for many years to come.

It has been acknowledged by Canadians and organizations involved in the area of environmental health and product safety that the bill takes important steps, but it is far from the kind of legislation we think is necessary for this day and age. I want to put that clearly on the record.

We are prepared to see the bill go to committee for further discussion, but we are not happy with the bill as it now exists. We have many concerns and we will be proposing some amendments that we hope the government will look at seriously.

We have been talking this morning about one area that pertains to natural health products. It has been pointed out that the minister has taken the unusual step of sending a letter to our committee indicating that there will be an amendment to Bill C-6 that would separate out natural health products from any aspect of this legislation. That is fine and good, and I know that the member for Mississauga South has raised some concerns about that whole process.

However, I think it is the government's way of trying to catch up to a rather messy situation that it still has not quite sorted through, and that is the whole melding and meshing of natural health products into both the legislation pertaining to consumer products and the legislation pertaining to food and drugs.

The furor that erupted after the introduction of Bill C-51 and Bill C-52 last year was a result of the fact that the government failed to consider the need to clearly differentiate natural health products from current drug legislation, and by implication, from other legislation that actually puts in place recalls, bans and prohibitions.

After many years of debate, it is clear that Canadians have accepted the fact that natural health products are a separate category from food and drugs, but there are some groups that would still prefer natural products to be part of food and to be faced with minimal regulation. Our view is that natural products have to be accessible to Canadians, but they have to be safe as well. We are not prepared to minimize safety requirements in order to speed up accessibility.

However, we believe that the previous Liberal government and the present Conservative government have failed to ensure a proper regulatory system for natural health products that would speed up the licensing of those products and would ensure that any concerns about false advertising or altered products or side effects with foods and drugs are taken into account.

We are anxious to see the government speed up the whole process around natural health products regulatory procedures to take away that concern from Canadians, so that they have faith and confidence that the government is not putting up any unnecessary roadblocks in terms of access to those products. There have been some signs that this is happening.

It is important that the bill be amended to exclude any reference to natural health products just as we anticipated that Bill C-51 would do as well.

Whenever the government brings forward new legislation that deals with food and drugs, we expect that it will have learned the lessons of the past sorry chapter of history, when Canadians had to rally in the thousands, when they had to send hundreds of thousands of signatures in petitions and call and fax members of Parliament on a regular basis. We hope the government has learned from this and will realize that, under no circumstances, should natural health products be lumped in with pharmaceuticals and put through the same kinds of requirements. There has to be a separate category with its own unique set of regulations.

This keeps coming up in debate because we are looking for the government to give us an agenda. How will it deal with natural health products? Will there be a report to Parliament about the licensing process and how it is changing? Will there be legislation that regulates this area so it is not lumped in with either consumer products or drugs? That would be in the best interest of Canadians.

As members know, we all continue to receive mail from people concerned about natural health products and accessibility to them with respect to Bill C-6. The sooner we can clear up this matter, the better. My view is we should have a system in place that deals with the backlog and ensures there is a separate regulatory framework, with provisions for safety and product authenticity built into that process.

It is important to focus on the major parts of the bill that ensure consumer products are safe beyond a reasonable doubt. At least that is my assumption. This is why I am somewhat critical of the bill. I do not believe the precautionary principle is deeply rooted and entrenched in the bill.

My view is that while the bill has very strong recall provisions and all groups have acknowledged this, it begs this question. What happens before a product is recalled? How many people have to get sick? What steps are being taken by the government to ensure consumers are aware of any problems with a product and if there is a serious toxic substance in a product, that the product is taken completely off the market?

The bill may require recalls and prohibit some products being on the market, but there is nothing that requires the minister and the government to inform the public the minute there is a suspicion that a product could be hazardous to one's health. We leave products on the market until someone gets sick, then we act. Is that not backwards?

Should we not try to ensure that products on the market are safe beyond a reasonable doubt? Should we not therefore ensure that the proper analysis, inspection and enforcement of regulations are done to make that happen? Why do we wait for people to get sick or die before we act? I am afraid the bill reinforces that notion. Products are recalled after something horrible happens and that does not give Canadians confidence.

The other problem in terms of recall that is without teeth is the principle of a right to know is not entrenched in this bill. If the government is reluctant to prohibit, or ban or recall on a very stringent basis, then at least it must ensure that the principle of right to know is built into the bill, and I do not see it.

I do not see a requirement for labelling in every instance. I do not see the recommendations by the Cancer Society being taken into account. I do not see the private member's bill proposed by my colleague from Burnaby—New Westminster being included in this legislation. This would ensure, as a bare minimum, that Canadians would know a product may have ingredients that are toxic and dangerous to the health and well-being of humans.

We see examples of this every day. Look at bisphenol A. It is a substance that has been identified as being harmful to human hormones, reproductive capacity and the development of children. There is a clear link between bisphenol A and very serious health concerns. Yet the government has approached it on a hit and miss basis. Baby bottles were banned because it was believed they would be cleaned with scalding water, which would bring out the toxic substance that would cause problems to the health of humans.

However, we allow it in pop and fruit juice cans because the government says that people have to drink 900 cans of pop a year before they will be exposed. This does not take into account that some kids drink a lot of soft drinks. It also does not take into account that it is a cumulative effect. What about the fact that there is a little bisphenol A in this product or that product to which one is exposed? Eventually, it accumulates and causes a serious problem.

In that instance, should we not follow the do no harm principle? Should we not say that we know the links? Why not take the action? Why does the Minister of Health stand in the House and say that the government does not have all the evidence of a direct link between the amount in these pop cans and human health? Canadians want their government to be firm and tough when there is that kind of knowledge and understanding.

This is why so many groups, from the Cancer Society to the Environmental Defence league to the David Suzuki Foundation, have all recommended that the bill do a much better job in not just prohibiting a product because it, as a whole, is dangerous, but also because there are environmental toxins in the product that are on a list under CEPA as being dangerous and could possibly cause human health problems. Why not prohibit those kinds of dangerous toxins? Why not go the extra route of saying that if there is a possibility of danger to human health, we are going to take some actions?

The government does not have to worry so much about industry getting up in arms because industry adapts. When the government banned baby bottles made out of bisphenol A, the industry came up with another product that was safe. If the government would ban pop cans that use bisphenol A, the industry would come up with another option that would be safe. In fact, we would have a double whammy out of this. First, we would be taking extra precaution to ensure human health and safety. Second, we could be spurring a new made in Canada industry that would create jobs, that would be based on the green economy and that would help Canadians from the point of view of both their future health and the future of this planet.

Think about the government having the gumption, guts and courage to do something about the products we know are dangerous and could be prohibited from store shelves. The bill does not do that. However, I hope the government will listen to some very serious amendments as proposed by some of the organizations I have mentioned and that will be proposed by us at committee. I hope they will be taken seriously.

If the government cannot accept that notion, I would hope it would at least agree with the question about labelling and the need to ensure these toxic substances and potentially dangerous ingredients are clearly labelled on all such packages. Surely, we can start to use the skull and crossbones on a regular basis whenever there is scientific evidence of a particular ingredient causing harm to human health and well-being. Surely, we can do that much.

Before my time runs out, let me get to a couple of other issues. One of them is with respect to tobacco. We cannot accept a bill that includes the permanent exclusion for tobacco products. We do not believe tobacco products should be exempted from any of the provisions of the bill. We know there is other legislation dealing with tobacco, but there is nothing wrong with ensuring it is protected at all ends. It must be included in Bill C-6, and we will make that amendment.

Finally, we have come some distance, but we have a long way to go to make this ideal legislation. We do not simply want to get us up to 2009. I do not think the bill even gets us up to that level. We have made some distance from 1969, but we have not put in place the right kind of legislation or the laws that will ensure human health is put first beyond all profit and commercial interests. That is the objective and role of government and that is the work of our health committee in the weeks and months ahead.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would refer the hon. members to subclause 36(1) of the bill, entitled “Regulations”. Much of my speech will relate to my concerns about this item. This subclause says that the cabinet, the government, can exempt, “with or without conditions, a consumer product or class of consumer products from the application of this Act”, and it goes on.

Think about it. The government can, through cabinet decision, exempt or not exempt, with or without conditions, any product or class. That is a concern to me because it is so broad and so fundamental. How would anyone understand the scope or intent of this bill unless they knew what was covered? To me, this is a serious flaw in the bill and I hope the committee is going to look at it.

However, let me put on the record some of my thoughts with regard to the bill overall. First, as we know, Bill C-6 is the latest effort with regard to a bill from the last Parliament: Bill C-52. Bill C-52 had a companion bill, Bill C-51, which had to do with natural health products. I know hon. members learned an awful lot about that from the lobby and their constituents, because there are millions of people who rely on the availability of natural health products. Their argument is not whether there are proven health benefits; the fact is that they want the choice, they are comfortable with it, and as long as those products are safe they should be available.

So I am rising to remind all the nice people who have written to me over the last months and in the last Parliament and asked me to help in doing something about this that I am going to stay involved in this bill. I will support it to go to committee. However, I do want to make it crystal clear to all Canadians that there will be no implications with regard to natural health products in regard to Bill C-6. I expect there is going to be another bill coming to deal with natural health products, to the extent that there were two companion bills in the last Parliament. I certainly do expect that to happen and we will have to be very vigilant at that time.

Bill C-6, respecting the safety of consumer products, is referred to as the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act. Thus, members will often be referring to it as the CCPSA. It is very similar to Bill C-52 from the last Parliament. Bill C-52 did pass at second reading and was referred to committee. However, it died on the order paper because of the dissolution of Parliament and the call of the 40th general election.

To remind members of what Bill C-6 is doing, it is repealing and replacing part I of the current Hazardous Products Act. It is creating a new system to regulate consumer products that pose or might reasonably be expected to pose a danger to human health and safety. I do not think anybody is going to argue about the necessity.

Specifically, the bill has a number of key impacts. First, it prohibits the sale, manufacture, import and advertising of certain listed products and provides for testing and evaluation of consumer products. Second, it makes it mandatory for manufacturers, importers and sellers of consumer products to report dangerous incidents associated with these products to the Minister of Health. It also obliges manufacturers, importers and sellers of consumer products to report product or labelling defects that result, might result, or are reasonably expected to result in death or serious adverse health impacts, including serious injury, and report that to the Minister of Health.

It requires the same group to report recalls of consumer products initiated by governments and government institutions in Canada or elsewhere to the Minister of Health. It provides for the inspection and seizure of consumer products for the purpose of verifying compliance or non-compliance with the bill's provisions.

It empowers the federal government to institute interim and permanent recalls of products that pose or might reasonably be expected to pose a danger to human health and safety, and it establishes both criminal and administrative penalties for those who violate the CCPSA or orders made under it.

Under the current act, the Hazardous Products Act, if a consumer product that is not regulated or prohibited poses a health or safety risk, it is up to the industry to voluntarily issue and manage a product recall. So it is a voluntary system of sorts. It is not as robust, obviously, as Bill C-6 is proposing to be. The federal government is limited to issuing only a public warning in that regard under the current legislation.

Obviously this is a very serious step, given the changes in the way that products move, the technology, and their production and distribution. This is basically a bill to modernize our approach to product safety.

To give members an idea in terms of these voluntary product recalls, in 2006, there were 32 product recalls; and in 2007, there were 90. The number went up to 165 recalls in 2008, and 27 recalls already in 2009.

So the number of product recalls by even the manufacturers or distributors of these has been going up. Clearly it is urgent that the bill be dealt with expeditiously. There are problems out there. There is a risk posed to Canadians, and I know all hon. members will want to work diligently to make sure that Bill C-6 gets urgent attention at the rest of its stages.

This bill and the former bill, Bill C-51, was described as having a three-pronged approach to food, health and consumer safety. I do not have any specific comments to make on the approach. I think the approach is sound.

That said, I do have some concerns with regard to the regulations. For a long time I have been a member of the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations, between the House of Commons and the Senate. By way of background, the committee has a mandate to ensure that regulations made to statutes after they are passed by Parliament have been properly enabled in the legislation.

The reason we want to review that is that there is a history of where governments, and they refer to order in council but that is basically cabinet, where cabinet makes regulations that do much more than was contemplated in the bill or requested or required by the bill. It is referred to often as being backdoor legislation. It is where we do not see it.

In the bill that is before us, members will see in clause 36, the clause that I referred to concerning the regulations, 16 paragraphs listed that require regulations to be made.

When we have a bill to deal with, we know the areas in which regulations may be promulgated by the government, drafted, gazetted and issued. In our case, we operate under the presumption that the full intent of the bill is transparent in the bill itself and that nothing happening after that will change our understanding of what the bill really wanted to do.

We have to rely on that because at the end of second reading, we are going to have a vote to approve this bill in principle, which will pretty well lock in what the bill is intended to do. At committee, members may fix some errors and fine-tune the bill here and there, and perhaps do a few other things. We will be able to move report stage motions later, but at second reading, we are going to approve it in principle. The bill will go to committee and we will do some fine tuning and hear from the experts to see if there is a problem. As long as there is no major fundamental problem in the understanding of the bill or no errors have occurred, the bill is going to pass at committee. It is going to pass at report stage. It is going to pass at third reading. It is going to go to the other place where it will go through a very similar process. Then the bill is going to get royal assent, but it is not going to be proclaimed until the regulations are drafted, gazetted and promulgated. We will not even see the regulations until after the bill gets royal assent and we will not be able to do anything with it.

That is why the Standing Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations exists. There has to be a mechanism in which we can look at the regulations once they come out to ensure they are properly enabled in the legislation and that they are not doing things beyond what would reasonably be contemplated in the bill.

I started off my speech and read clause 36(1)(a), which basically says that the government, the cabinet, may make regulations exempting, with or without conditions, a consumer product or class of consumer products from the application of this act. It gives extraordinary power to the cabinet about what is in and what is not. It poses an extraordinary risk because now it is cabinet members, who may be lobbied not to put an item in there, who can say they are out.

I would much prefer, and I know there are precedents in other legislation, that it state that these are the things that are there and these are the things that are not there. We have seen it, for instance, in the reproductive technologies legislation. There was a royal commission on reproductive technologies I think 15 years ago. We passed a bill at all stages in 2004 I think it was. We were told at the time it was going to take about two years to draft the regulations and for them to be put in place, gazetted and promulgated.

I said earlier that it is extremely important, given the product recalls, that there be some velocity to this bill. I do not see that there is a sense of urgency. I do see there are 16 areas in which regulations have to be drafted. These will not be drafted probably until after the bill goes through all stages. Even then there is no obligation for any scrutiny before those regulations are done and issued. That concerns me because another important act, the reproductive technologies act, also had many regulations to be made. We were told it was going to take two years. On top of that, the health committee got the concession that all of those regulations must be passed by the health committee. It was important to ensure there was not any backdoor legislation being made, that the intent of the bill was not modified substantively through regulations which would not be caught by the scrutiny regulations committee until after there was a complaint or we did a review of them which may be too late.

I am very concerned about the velocity of the bill. I am concerned about the fact that there are so many regulations here. I am concerned that even the first one tells me there maybe is going to be too much discretion by order in council or by the cabinet, i.e. the government, unilaterally to say what is not included. It puts a lot of risk and onus there and I do not know whether or not that can be dealt with.

People have been asking me about the health products aspect and, because there is no companion bill, whether there is something in this bill. In fact, there is.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health responded to a question expressing that concern. I might as well read the response into the record. This was at the beginning of second reading. He said:

In the original writing of the bill and in the past version, Bill C-52, there was some confusion in the language and stakeholders from the natural health products community required some clarification of it. The minister has written--

I want to emphasize this. The parliamentary secretary said:

The minister has written to the chair of the health committee. We will be putting forward an amendment to clarify that exactly so that the stakeholders from the natural health products community know that this bill excludes natural health products and food and drugs under the Food and Drugs Act.

It basically says that the Minister of Health has written to the chair of the health committee to give notice that a little change is going to be made to say that natural health products are excluded from the bill. That is wonderful, but we have a regulation. The regulation says that the governor in council may exempt, and I stress the word “may”.

What kind of amendment is the parliamentary secretary referring to? Are we going to say that now the bill is going to include some sort of a clause providing a specific amendment for natural health products and then everything else is going to be subject to a cabinet decision about exemptions? Some classes are obvious on their face. It should be in the bill. If the case is that they are going to say that regulation 36(1)(a) is where we will give the exemption, but it is not specifically in the bill, we will never know. How long is this going to take? How long is it going to take before those regulations are drafted? How long is it going to take before they are gazetted and promulgated and they become part of the law and the provisions in the bill become law?

If the reproductive technologies legislation is any indication, it could be months or maybe years. We are already four years past the drafting stage of regulations on the reproductive technologies legislation.

This causes me concern. I have seen this time and time again from Health Canada. Health Canada has a track record of patterning these bills in the way it wants to handle them, in a way which allows it a lot of latitude to change things or to move forward with things, or in fact to delay things.

I can say right now that the fact that those 200 regulations on reproductive technologies have not been drafted and presented to the health committee yet, a bill which received royal assent back in 2004, means that all of those provisions, all of the work and all of the things that we were doing in the areas that require regulations are not in force right now. They are not the law. In other words, all of the things that we approved and we accepted in Parliament to be the law of Canada are not the law of Canada today, four or five years later, because the regulations have not been done. What does that mean? It reverts to the law and continues as it was.

In that particular case, it is the Canadian Institutes of Health Research that unilaterally decides what is going to happen on reproductive technologies, about sperm donations, about the buying and selling of gametes and the like. What is even worse is that the Canadian Institutes of Health Research is not even subject to parliamentary review. It is the largest organization of the Government of Canada that provides funding for research. It is the one that decides and it is not even subject to any review by the Parliament of Canada.

I know this because I put forward a report stage motion to put in the bill that created the CIHR that it be subject to a three year review so that parliamentarians knew what the CIHR was doing and could ask its officials questions about how they were doing it and make sure they did not have pet projects, which is the reason the CIHR was created in the first place. The body it was replacing was found to have some problems. There was too much bias within the system. It is going to happen again.

I hope I have raised some questions. I want to encourage members of the committee certainly not to just listen. I do not know why the health minister is writing to the chair of a committee before second reading is over. I am not sure why the government did not anticipate that the health product industry was going to have some problems with the legislation. We have some things to correct but I want those things to be corrected quickly. I want the bill to be dealt with quickly because the health and safety of Canadians is at stake.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I had an opportunity to work with the hon. member on the health committee in a number of areas.

My question has to do with the natural health products issue and former Bill C-51. In the last Parliament there were companion bills, Bill C-51 and Bill C-52. Bill C-6 is the replacement for Bill C-52, but there were companion bills in the last Parliament, and now the natural health products industry and the users of natural health products are expressing some concern.

It would appear there are some implications with regard to natural health products in the current bill or they will be coming forward. I am a little confused. The member may have some insight as to whether another bill will be coming along, which would make it a little difficult to fit into the regime set up under former Bill C-52. I would have thought there would be some clarity with regard to the applicability of Bill C-6 to Bill C-52 on the natural health products issue.

I wonder if the member has some concerns or if her constituents have expressed concerns about the regulatory framework being proposed with regard to health products.

[Christiane Gagnon, Bloc, Québec, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am taking part in this morning's debate as the former health critic and to support my colleague from Verchères—Les Patriotes, who is now the Bloc Québécois' health critic. He is doing an excellent job with the portfolio. I would like to read the bill's summary so that everyone listening will understand what it is about.

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

I would like to start with a little bit of background to explain how this legislation came about. Manufacturers of dangerous products, such as cosmetics, cribs, tents and carpets, fall under federal jurisdiction. The federal government does not currently require manufacturers to test their products or prove that they are not a danger to consumer health and safety. In the summer of 2007, thousands of toys made in China were recalled by the manufacturers because they contained lead. The Bloc Québécois urged the minister to take immediate action by tightening up safety requirements for dangerous products and banning the production of dangerous products and the promotion or marketing of any product posing an unacceptable risk.

Bill C-52 was introduced when I was the health critic. It was never passed in the House of Commons because the Conservatives decided to call an election. The bill was set aside. Now we are being offered a new bill, Bill C-6, whose purpose is to ensure that people have access to safe products. People wanted Ottawa to require manufacturers to inspect their own products and to prove that they were not endangering consumers' health and safety. Other countries do not have the same level of monitoring or the same product safety standards.

In December 2007, after four months of inaction, the government finally said it would introduce a bill, sometime in early 2008, to change its strategy for regulating product safety. The newspapers ran stories about all sorts of products arriving on our store shelves, whether it is foodstuffs or products for children. These products were dangerous to the health and safety of our young children. Many family members, including grandparents, were wondering if a certain products were harmful to young children's health.

The Conservatives' inaction in this federal jurisdiction has caused growing concern among many Quebec parents about health and safety issues when buying toys. Moreover, and this shows the government's inability and inaction, in the fall of 2007, it put a survival guide for parents online, so they could ensure their children's safety. This is yet another example of this government's inaction. It could have acted and solved the issue that was being reported in all the newspapers, and also on radio and television. The bill had already been introduced when I was my party's critic on health issues. Immediately after being re-elected, the government could have proposed a bill to move forward on this issue and to reassure the public.

So we waited and, at the end of November 2007, the government brought out a personal analysis kit for consumers, so consumers themselves could make sure that consumer products are harmless.

Producing a survival guide on products that are available in stores shows how this government is not assuming its responsibilities. Indeed, this meant that it was up to consumers to ensure that a product did not present any risk. What a lack of responsibility on the part of this government!

The government had shifted to consumers the responsibility of ensuring that consumer products were safe. This meant that every parent should have a testing kit to ensure his or her child's safety. That responsibility now lay with the parent. The government also wanted consumers to be product safety watchdogs. It was utterly ridiculous to see the government shirk its responsibilities like that.

The government was off-loading the problem onto the parents and asking parents themselves to ensure that products are safe. However, it did not put any constraints—and this shows how the government shirks its responsibility—on manufacturers of potentially dangerous products, such as toys, cosmetics, cradles, tents, carpets and drugs, among others.

We called on the Minister of Health at the time to set hazardous product safety requirements. It was his duty to prohibit the manufacture, promotion and marketing of any product that could present an unacceptable danger to health. The minister needed to decide how he could enforce Canadian standards so as not to endanger consumer health and safety.

That is what I said in 2007. Now it is 2009, and we are already several months into the year. In 2006, the Auditor General at the time had made the government aware of concerns about hazardous consumer products. Moreover, when the Conservatives came to power, we had been warned about this danger, and even the managers of the program had warned this government.

The Auditor General of Canada had sounded the alarm in November 2006 and had released a particularly interesting report. Chapter 8 of her report was entitled “Allocating Funds to Regulatory Programs—Health Canada.” That chapter clearly indicated that the product safety program managers could not carry out their duties for a number of reasons.

I could list all the deficiencies the Auditor General pointed to in her report. There were consumer products, cosmetics, consumer and clinical products that emit radiation, such as lasers and sun lamps, and new substances such as fabric dyes and fuel additives that were hazardous. Speaking of fabrics, a few weeks ago, some people who purchased chairs had a severe allergic reaction to the fabric, which affected their quality of life.

As well, serious problems came to light recently in connection with products that likely came from China. We know that China and South Africa were involved. Tubes of toothpaste, something we use every day, contained harmful substances. We are very concerned these days about cancers that are often caused by the quality of the environment or products of questionable quality. We also know that some substances could have an effect on cancers.

The government did not act. Now, the government has introduced this bill. The United States also addressed this issue in 2008 and is tightening its toy safety requirements.

Legislation has been passed to provide more resources to the American agency that monitors consumer product safety.

The United States Senate passed legislation to reform the Consumer Product Safety Commission. That was done last year, following a record number of recalls of potentially dangerous products. That legislation is called the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. It increases the commission's budget—the money must be provided—and enlarges its scope.

Out of 413 different products recalled last year in the United States, 231—or a little less than half—were toys. Europe also moved forward on this. It is interesting to see that the government is now introducing a bill. It will be supported by the Bloc Québécois at second reading, so that we can go over every article with a fine tooth comb in committee. A number of witnesses will perhaps suggest certain nuances, not about the objective we wish to achieve, but about how we will achieve it.

I return to the position suggested by the Bloc Québécois. The government has been aware of the situation since 2006. We are happy to see that they are now going ahead with Bill C-6. We hope the other two opposition parties will do their best to improve this bill in committee after hearing what the various witnesses have to say.

The government has definitely been influenced by what has been written in newspapers and by the various pieces of legislation passed in other countries. Earlier I mentioned the United States and Europe. We can draw inspiration from their bills and see how certain countries have invested the necessary money. In order to conduct all the appropriate checks concerning the safety of some of the products on our shelves, we must have the necessary resources. The root of the problem must be addressed.

It is unthinkable that foreign products would not be subject to all the constraints for the manufacture of certain goods that must be met by our own retailers. They have to comply with standards. We have to be strict with products that originate abroad, where the standards are not the same. We have had to recall certain toys and products. We demanded that they be removed from our shelves and no longer be sold.

It is also our hope that, when a government is advised that a product is dangerous, that it be very proactive and that it not wait for newspapers, television or radio to bring the situation to light. The government must be transparent and should, of its own accord, contact the newspapers to tell them that such and such a product poses a health risk, in order to warn citizens against purchasing the product.

Therefore, as I was saying, we support the bill in principle and we will vote to send it to committee. We are pleased to see that the government is bringing forward this legislation. We hope that there will not be another election in the meantime and that this government will be open to the proposals of the various opposition parties. It is in a minority position and it must take that into account. Bill C-6 will not be adopted if there are early elections, in the fall for example. That could happen, for example, if this government continues to ignore the Bloc Québécois' economic recovery plan, a plan that has support across Canada.

Bill C-6, like former Bill C-52, is part of an action plan to ensure the safety of food products. The 2008 budget allocated $113 million over two years for its implementation. It remains to be seen what structure will be put in place and if the number of employees will be increased to ensure the safety of consumer products.

I will discuss a few technical aspects that this bill would implement. Clause 69 of Bill C-6 repeals Part I of the Act. At present, if a consumer good that is neither covered by regulations nor prohibited poses a risk to the safety of the population, it is up to the industry to impose a voluntary recall and manage the situation.

The federal government's powers in this respect are very limited. The new bill, Bill C-6, is aimed at creating more stringent safety requirements for hazardous products. It creates prohibitions with respect to the manufacturing, importing, selling, advertising, packaging and labelling of consumer products, including those that are a danger to human health or safety. It also aims to increase the responsibility of manufacturers and importers and to require them to ensure that their products do not represent any danger to human health or safety.

Although the responsibility of manufacturers, importers and any person selling consumer products seems more strict than before, according to clauses 7 and 8, clause 6 refers to the regulations, stating, “No person shall manufacture, import, advertise or sell a consumer product that does not meet the requirements set out in the regulations.”

Thus the tightening up of certain requirements for consumer products will be stipulated in the regulations, without the committee being able to know the direction they will take.

Very often we find bills filled with great principles, but here we have no debates about the regulations. That is the responsibility of the public servants, whom I respect a great deal. It will not be up to parliamentarians to draft the body of regulations, to monitor what goes into the regulations, and to find solutions to achieve the objective.

There are a number of definitions in the bill, and I quote:

“consumer product” means a product, including its components, parts or accessories, that may reasonably be expected to be obtained by an individual to be used for non-commercial purposes, including for domestic, recreational and sports purposes, and includes its packaging.

This is good, because the product may be safe, but its packaging may not be.

The bill also covers:

(b) anything used in the manufacturing, importation, packaging, storing, advertising, selling, labelling, testing or transportation of a consumer product;

(c) a document that is related to any of those activities or a consumer product.

The bill contains five measures with the intent of reversing the burden of proof with respect to the safety of consumer products. At present, as I said already, there is no constraint whatsoever imposed upon manufacturers or importers. They do not have to demonstrate that their products pose no danger or threat to consumer safety.

Bill C-6 proposes to reverse this burden of proof and to impose it on manufacturers in future. I think this is a step in the right direction. It also suggests that manufacturers and importers of consumer products will be required to test their products for safety on a regular basis and, significantly, to disclose the results of these tests.

That is important because a manufacturer or seller could claim that his product is just fine even if he were aware of problems with the materials in the product or its safety. It would be his responsibility to disclose test results. Currently, the burden of proof is the opposite. This bill would require companies to reveal any issues or illnesses caused by their products, regardless of where they were made. That is good, because right now, the toxic effects of certain products remain undisclosed.

This is a far cry from the survival guide and the government's suggestion that parents should be responsible for product safety. Giving that responsibility to manufacturers and importers is a step in the right direction. It is a good idea, and the Bloc supports this initiative. Once again, this is good news. It remains to be seen how the government goes about giving inspectors greater authority. I introduced a bill today to make people feel safer by requiring a durable life date on food packaging.

These days, whenever people buy food and other products, they often wonder if what they have purchased is safe. Even some pharmaceutical products sold in pharmacies do not have a durable life date. After two years, such products could be dangerous, could contain bacteria or could be toxic to humans. Giving inspectors greater authority is therefore—