Bill C-6 (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. This enactment also makes consequential amendments to the Hazardous Products Act.

Canada Consumer Product Safety Act

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Before question period started, the hon. member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River had just concluded his remarks. So, if there are any questions and comments, we will do those now.

The hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the member for making a very well-informed speech today regarding this bill. He dealt with some of the amendments that were not included in the bill that I personally feel we really should have made an extra effort to get included; one being the area of labelling. I think it is only reasonable for Canadians to expect that products with hazardous materials should be labelled as such. That is certainly one big area that the government has avoided by leaving it out of this bill.

Another big area that is not being dealt with here is counterfeit products. And another big area of course is tobacco. The Canadian Cancer Society made a presentation to the committee on the whole area of tobacco and the issue as to whether or not it should be excluded. It, of course, does not want it excluded from this bill. It seems to me that this is certainly a product that should be included on anybody's list of bad products.

I would like to know what the member thinks of the exclusions and the contribution these amendments could have made to the overall success of the bill had they been accepted by the committee.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it would have been nice to have those amendments in there, absolutely. I think the member is correct in saying that they were not considered perhaps carefully enough, particularly the tobacco-related ones.

He began his question by talking about labelling. I have always found it humorous when I see a label on a children's toy that says “100% unknown fibres”. That does not seem to make a whole lot of sense to me.

However, there are things that we can still fix. Part of our job here in this House is to ensure that we can come forward with the best bill possible. As we strive for that, we will be looking at this again, probably some years down the road, to make improvements once it has been in place for a while.

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

Mr. Speaker, one of the big concerns that we had in the NDP caucus regarding the bill was the enforcement of the bill. We see that as being not really adequate. Because of the immensity and the enormity of the job, we are not going to be able to hire the number of people that we should to enforce this act.

In addition, one of the Liberal members mentioned this morning that we will not see the regulations, which are going to be a very important part of this process, for some time to come.

So, when we look at a combination of the regulation and the regulation development, and the whole issue of enforcement and the fact that we are talking about a government that really has never been very strong on consumer issues, we have to be concerned and very vigilant regarding this legislation and this government, in terms of the future.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely right. Enforcement has always been a problem. I have always thought that there is no sense having a law or a regulation if it is not going to be enforced. This bill, as it comes back, is lacking somewhat in that regard. However, I believe that if there is a government will to ensure that consumer products remain safe for everyone, in particular for children, the government will do the right thing and ensure that there are enough people to police them.

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

Mr. Speaker, on enforcement, the first offence would be a fine of not more than $250,000 or an imprisonment term of no more than six months; the second one could be a fine of more than $5 million or imprisonment of not more than two years. These kinds of fines are good. However, without--

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I am going to stop the hon. member there.

The hon. member for Thunder Bay--Rainy River has 15 seconds to respond.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, more than half of the goods that we import into this country are from offshore, and that certainly is a serious problem in that we need to ensure there are enough people enforcing the rules and the laws of this land.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-6, the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act.

I support this legislation, but I would caution against any description of this as being the definitive approach to consumer product safety. The bill takes a relatively narrow slice of the challenge and addresses that in an acceptable way. For that reason, I see it as a step forward, but certainly a lot of terrain remains to be covered.

I want to comment on the co-operative approach taken by the Standing Committee on Health. Members from all parties essentially had the same objective, which was to increase protection for Canadian consumers in terms of both the design of and the elements in manufactured products.

Bill C-6 would modernize the regulatory framework. One witness at committee commented that this could have been done through an amendment to the Hazardous Products Act, but the government decided to provide new legislation in response to Canadians' concerns about the various recalls and unsafe products that were coming into the country and being sold over the last couple of years.

The bill operates on a premise that is considered to be a general prohibition. It takes more of the responsibility for ensuring product safety off the government's lap and places it on the private sector's lap. There is a general prohibition in terms of the manufacturing, import, advertisement and sale of consumer products that constitute a danger to human health or safety.

That is a different direction from having lists of dangerous compounds or dangers that the government identifies. This legislation primarily puts that responsibility on the private sector. There is a lot of debate about that, and there are some pros and cons to that approach.

While the bill would add more of the ongoing monitoring and safety assurance responsibilities to the private sector and reduce the burden on government, it increases the level of compliance and enforcement and creates a tracing mechanism so that government can ensure that the private sector is doing its job. It would allow the government to monitor that more easily.

The legislation also proposes to increase fines and penalties, which is part of the compliance and enforcement strengthening.

A key function of the legislation would be to enable government to have mandatory recall where there is a problem, rather than that being a voluntary act on the part of the private sector as it was in the past. Having this provision for a mandatory recall was supported by all witnesses at committee and is a strength of the bill.

The bill is not as comprehensive as some committee members, including myself, thought it could be. It addresses only a slice of the problem.

Schedule 2 talks about the kinds of things that have to be taken off the market, but it has only 14 products or product categories listed. For example, spectacle frames that, in whole or in part, are made of or contain cellulose nitrate would be prohibited. That is one of 14 prohibited categories. Under item 9, kite string made of a material that conducts electricity would be prohibited. That is a good thing to prohibit. However, I am giving these examples to show that the schedule is very narrow and specific.

Item 14 concerns law darts with elongated tips. Yes, it is good to ensure that these kinds of products are not in the marketplace where they could hurt people. However, when there are only 14 exclusions and they are that specific, that tells us there is a lot this bill does not address. That is more where I would like to direct my remarks.

It was very ably captured by the member for Etobicoke North earlier in the debate. She and I, as well as some of the other committee members, have grave concerns about the bill's failure to address toxins, carcinogens, the cumulative impacts of compounds that may not be harmful in small doses but build up in the body causing damage to health, chronic exposure, toxins in products affecting the environment when they are flushed down the drain or go into landfills and accumulate in the environment, and very worrisome hormone disrupters. These chemicals are not adequately removed from circulation in consumer products in this bill.

I am particularly concerned about the impact of consumer products containing chemicals and toxins that I have noted, such as pesticides, persistent organic pollutants, arsenic, lead, or mercury in products that children have access to, children's products such as toys and clothing. Other countries have done the job of removing access to these toxic and carcinogenic compounds from consumers. Canada has not done that yet. We still need to do that, and Bill C-6 does not do the job.

My concern about children's health and the environment goes back a number of years. I had the privilege in 2003 of being the president of the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment. During my term, I chose to put two things on the forward agenda of CCME so that they would be part of what the provincial and federal ministers would research, address and develop strategies for.

One of those two items was the issue of children's health and the environment. Children process these toxins differently. It is not just a matter of smaller bodies needing proportionately less of the chemicals to create harm. Children are actually in a developmental stage in their early years, so there can be a disruption of their neurological and metabolic development that is very harmful. Government needs to be addressing this. We need a stronger approach to eliminating these toxins, and Bill C-6 just does not do that.

Liberal members put forward a number of amendments to address this concern. For example, there was an amendment to clause 7 that would identify cumulative impacts, chronic exposure and release into the environment as areas of harm and danger to people that would be covered by this bill.

We crafted an amendment, a new clause 8.1, in which we would have had this bill list up to 700 chemicals, carcinogens, hormone disrupters, and toxins, drawn from the groups of agents provided by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, as well as substances listed in schedule 1 of CEPA, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

We proposed that these compounds be covered under Bill C-6. We proposed that they be removed over time if the minister could not show reason that they were absolutely essential to stay in consumer products aimed at children. So our amendments squarely addressed the issue of access that children have to compounds that are harmful to them and not covered in the set of 14 categories in the schedule included in the bill.

We successfully brought forward an amendment to have an advisory committee, so that as the government goes forward with the regulations there can be proper consultation and a thoughtful approach to the regulations so that any concerns that may come forward based on the rather thin consultation that has happened so far on this bill can be addressed in the crafting of the regulations.

The government's view was that the improvements we were looking for can be covered under CEPA, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, and its chemical management plan, and that those are vehicles for pulling those toxins out of the environment.

I accept that it is a possibility. My knowledge from previously dealing with CEPA when I was a provincial environment minister was that it was very slow to actually act on removing toxins from the environment. It had a huge list that it was not getting to, and it was causing great frustration for Canadians concerned about environmental issues and in provinces across the country.

We have been assured that CEPA has been fixed and is moving forward more quickly and that the chemical management plan is doing the job that we were looking for from Bill C-6. This has yet to be demonstrated to my satisfaction.

We have done a small segment with Bill C-6, but I am going to be calling on the advisory committee legislated by Bill C-6 to take a very thorough look at these issues of chronic toxic effects and cumulative effects of these toxins, carcinogens, hormone-disrupters, and persistent organic pollutants. I am going to challenge that advisory committee to put forward an approach to pulling those out of consumer products.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I declare the motion carried.

(Bill read the third time and passed)