Bill C-36 (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.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the member on her return to the Health committee and I am looking forward to working with her over the next few months.

I am pleased to rise this evening to discuss the government's commitment to consumer safety and specifically to address Bill C-36, An Act respecting the safety of consumer products.

On June 9, as the member said, the Minister of Health introduced Bill C-36 and, as members opposite know, it now awaits second reading. The government has made important improvements to what was previous Bill C-6 and we are looking forward to support from our colleagues when the bill begins its progression through Parliament.

Bill C-36 fulfils a promise made by the government in our 2010 throne speech. Many Canadians believe that the consumer products they purchase every day are safe when used as directed. We know that businesses in Canada want to ensure the products they sell are safe. It has been estimated that up to one-third of Canadians have at least once bought products that were later found to be unsafe.

Each year, millions of Canadian consumers are affected by recalls. In 2009 alone, Health Canada posted over 300 recall notices. One-third of these recalls were for children's products. This statistic alone underlines the importance of the work the department has done to regulate products for vulnerable populations.

However, the regulation of consumer products has been done in the context of the Hazardous Products Act legislation which is now over 40 years old. While that legislation may have served Canadians well in the past, it is now out of step with market globalization and out of step with the legislation of our major trading partners. Clearly, it is time update and modernize our consumer safety regime. Bill C-36, the proposed Canada consumer products safety act, would modernize and strengthen Canada's product safety legislation.

What is our goal with the bill? Bill C-36 is part of the government's comprehensive food and consumer safety action plan and targets three areas for improvement. The first area is active prevention. We want to prevent problems with consumer products before they occur. The second area is targeted oversight. By having better information, such as through mandatory incident reporting, the government will be able to better target products with the highest risk. The third area is rapid response. The legislation would give us the tools we need to act swiftly when we required

Right now our legislation supports only a reactive approach. The vast majority of consumer products are unregulated by the Hazardous Products Act. This essentially means that for the vast majority of consumer products we are very limited in the actions that we can take when a consumer safety issue is identified. Even for regulated products, like toys, children's jewellery and cribs, we are limited in the actions we can take when a safety issue is identified.

Arguably, the most significant gap in our ability to respond to safety issues is the absence of any authority to issue mandatory recalls for consumer products. This means that when a safety issue is identified with a consumer product we have very little options other than to ask the industry to recall its product voluntarily.

We will always favour a voluntary approach with industry and we believe industry will usually respond favourably. However, Canadian consumers should not have a lower standard of protection than consumers in both the United States and Europe. The need for government to have new authorities has grown in concert with the dramatic changes we have seen in the global marketplace.

The marketplace of 40 years ago when the Hazardous Products Act was introduced was very different from that of today. Products sold in Canada now come from all over the world and there are new materials, new substances and new technologies. There are new products and more products from a multiplicity of sources all around the globe.

In Canada, these are found in post-market regulatory regimes. That means that, despite what many Canadians might think, producers, importers, distributors and retailers are not required to certify or otherwise verify the safety of their products with government before they are offered for sale in this country.

Bill C-36 would not change the fundamental nature of a regulatory regime--

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, better product safety legislation is needed in the country. It seems like every few weeks there is a new report about some dangerous or faulty product. Many of these products are products for children. In 2010 we saw children's toys, cribs and medications all being subject to safety concerns.

Unfortunately Health Canada does not have the tools it needs to ensure the safety of the public. For example, it cannot issue mandatory recalls. In 2009 Health Canada posted more than 300 voluntary recall notices, a third of them for children's products. Lots of these products were not made in Canada, but still the government did not have the power to make the recalls mandatory.

The Hazardous Products Act of 1969 has not been effective in identifying or removing dangerous products. This has meant in the majority of cases Canadians have been dependent on the product alerts and recalls issued by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission instead of Health Canada. In 2005 and 2006 more than 40% of product recalls were ordered as a direct result of U.S. initiated action.

Successive Canadian governments, this one included, have been happy to promote and applaud corporate trade over the last few decades but not to police it. This is unacceptable. It is putting people at risk.

We need Health Canada to be taking the lead in these instances, identifying and removing dangerous products in a timely fashion. This is why I have asked this several times in the House since becoming health critic for the NDP, just as my colleague Judy Wasylycia-Leis asked before me. When will the government get serious about product safety legislation?

We have been asking and asking and finally the government did introduce Bill C-36 last spring. What an amazingly drawn out process. Delays have been due in part to the government's habit of proroguing when it suits its needs. It has been repeatedly terminating legislation designed to keep Canadians safe.

Here is a summary of what we have gone through. The first attempt was Bill C-51 in 2008. The NDP opposed Bill C-51 because instead of strengthening safety, it was a continuation of the previous Liberal government's interests and permissive attitudes toward big pharma. Fortunately Bill C-51 did not become law, but this was not due to political courage or insight from the government but because of Conservative prorogation after the federal election of 2008.

The next attempt to respond to the needs and requests of Canadians came when the government introduced Bill C-6, the Canada consumer product safety act in February 2009. Again, Bill C-6 did not survive because of prorogation in December 2009.

We have this current legislation, but we have seen more delays. The House convened on March 3 and Bill C-36 did not have its first reading until June 9, three months later, despite the government's repeated statement that the legislation was as important to it as it was to Canadians. Bill C-36 does not seem to be on the House's legislative agenda for the next few weeks.

My question to the government is this. When will the government continue the legislative process for a bill for which so many Canadians have been asking? Will there be more delays?

[Georges Simard, Mayor, City of Dolbeau-Mistassini]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning everyone. I want to convey special greetings to the workers and the unions.

Appearing today to talk about a community and try and explain to people that there is no logic to what is happening now is quite a responsibility. I will try to discharge it as best I can.

First of all, I would like to give you some background. The Town of Dolbeau-Mistassini is part of the Regional County Municipality of Maria-Chapdelaine. It comprises 12 towns. The population of that RCM is 27,000 and Dolbeau-Mistassini has a population of approximately 15,000. As will already be clear to you, that leaves about 12,000 for the 11 other towns. We constitute the commercial centre and have the hospital and school that serve the entire community. Industry in Dolbeau-Mistassini provides a living to workers from the 11 other municipalities. It is truly a very important community.

Dolbeau-Mistassini covers an area of some 40,000 square kilometers. It's as large as Switzerland. Ninety-five per cent of its surface area is covered with forest. Indeed, more than 70% of the economy in our RCM is based on the forest. We have the largest commercial forest area in Quebec. Some 3 million cubic meters of wood are harvested in our area. Our slogan is: “Maria-Chapdelaine, a generous nature to share the future”. Large quantities of wood, bark and chips are sent all across Quebec. We have always accepted that, except that now, our community which sprang from the forest, which has lived and still lives off the forest, wants to continue to do so. But there is something illogical happening: our plant has been shut down.

From its beginnings in 1927 until its indefinite closure on August 24, the paper mill has always been profitable. Even last year, a profit of $45 million was expected.

As you mentioned a little earlier, the company owners sold their cogeneration plant to Boralex in 1998, which weakened the mill. The company sold it, and yet today, the company is saying that it's unhappy about that. Its managers, who brought the company to the point where it is now, are talking about restructuring. I must admit that scares me.

AbitibiBowater says it is still interested in forest operations in our area and in the Dolbeau-Mistassini sawmill. And yet we are aware of no operational or investment plan. AbitibiBowater is prepared to talk, but only based on a highly restrictive non-competition clause. That kills any possibility of recovery or even of selling the paper mill, because AbitibiBowater owns 80% of the wood in the Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean area. Anybody interested in buying the plant would be facing a non-competition situation. Furthermore, whatever happens, it would be forced to ask AbitibiBowater for chips and bark. To which the company will reply that it is willing to sell, but at the price that it has set. That means that two plants are now endangered—both Boralex and SFK Pâte in Saint-Félicien, which makes pulp. The fact is that AbitibiBowater, or the previous companies, had sold those plants with promises and supply guarantees that they effectively ended with Bill C-36.

We are living amidst the resource and we cannot allow ourselves to be dispossessed without reacting; we cannot accept the idea of a closure as part of a financial restructuring carried out based on highly debatable rules. As I stated a little earlier, the plan closure will have wide ranging effects at the municipal, educational, business and social levels. It is an especially serious catastrophe for a single-industry town and RCM. As I mentioned earlier, 12 towns are affected.

I would like to briefly address the real estate market. Right now, a lot of houses are for sale. Some 300 people to be exact, and that is a very significant number. We are now in a buyer's market, as opposed to a seller's market. There will be very significant repercussions for the municipal budget. Dolbeau-Mistassini is a regional centre for services, business, and so on. Day in, day out, we are concerned about what people will do. They've never had a problem, but they have no other way of making a living. As a result, our health and social services centres have been responding for a number of months now. We don't understand how this kind of legislation could allow a company to jeopardize other companies. It seems that, based on this logic, in order for a bankruptcy to occur, the people who own the sawmills or sawmill equipment, or the workers, have to fail as well. That is totally unacceptable. We cannot accept the idea that a company could file a financial restructuring plan without unveiling its operational and investment plan.

The President of AbitibiBowater told you earlier that other plants will be shutting down four or five years from now. That means that people who think they are secure today will go through what we are going through now, because of people who have made sure that this company would end up this way.

Yet people are rewarded for succeeding in causing so much harm. How can anyone, at the cost of a financial restructuring, allow a company to jeopardize an entire community? The community is worried. We are convinced that September 14 and the subsequent steps are only part of a process for the company which, with the blessing and complicity of an entire system, will trot out its emergence plan, which I call a “resurrection plan”. We are being held hostage by a company that has the benefit of a monopoly. We are also concerned that our sawmill will cease operations because the company has shut down its planing units. So, they will have to dry the wood, load it onto trucks and haul it.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, at the present time, fiber is being left on the forest floor which, barely two years ago, was being processed. The company decided to leave it in the forest, because it doesn't want to process it; it would result in too many chips. One has to wonder about the FSC environmental standard. At the present time, local chips, bark and logs are travelling hundreds of kilometers, whereas in our area, everything is shut down.

Today I am sounding the alarm bell for a single-industry region and appealing to you, Mr. Chairman, and everyone present. The plant back home, which is at the centre of the resource, has no right to shut down. So, we are here today to make you aware of that.

[Leona Aglukkaq, Conservative, Nunavut, NU]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

To the committee members who participated in last night's debate, I want to say thank you for the very important initiative that's now being undertaken in partnership with a number of agencies across the country as it relates to MS.

Going back to the question on Bill C-36, we have reintroduced that legislation, as we stated in the throne speech. In Bill C-36 there were four amendments made to further clarify the legislation and to address some of the questions that had been raised through stakeholders and the Senate. Basically, changing from Bill C-6 to Bill C-36 does not change the intent of the bill.

There are four areas where there were minor amendments made to further clarify a couple of points. The first is the further clarification of what we mean by personal property. That was a concern that had been raised by a number of stakeholders. The definition could be interpreted quite broadly, so we narrowed that. The legislation does not apply to individual personal property.

Another area in the legislation is that it was felt that the inspectors had too much power to initiate recalls. We made changes to that. The minister would be authorized to do recalls for any unsafe products that might be in the market.

Another area of change was related to trespassing and liability issues. Again, that was further clarified.

One more point was related to the timeframe in terms of investigating unsafe products. There was concern there would be prolonged delays that would not be useful to the retailers and manufacturers. So within that legislation, we've now included a timeline when we're doing an investigation to get back to the industry or the retailers within 30 days. Again, that's to further clarify and address the concerns that had been raised by stakeholders in December.

Thank you.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you.

The other thing before I get into some specific questions is that I want to indicate my appreciation for what I think was a very good take note debate. I noted the interest of the Prime Minister. I noted your significant interest last night and certainly a very strong presence from our side of the bench in terms of listening and hearing, in terms of making sure about where we might go next.

In terms of getting into direct questions, I note that in the opening remarks you talked about the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act. It was introduced as Bill C-36 last week. Of course, this committee has a special connection to that prior bill that was introduced, so could you tell us how this will be different from Bill C-6?

Consumer Product Safety

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Mr. Speaker, Canadian industry and environmental groups alike welcome and strongly support our new Bill C-36, the Canada consumer product safety bill.

With an average of 300 products that are subject to recall per year, there are many stakeholders who welcome the opportunity to finally have legislation that will provide the government with the needed tools to do this.

The hon. Minister of Health tabled this legislation yesterday in response to many requests from Canadians.

We have often heard stories from victims' families recounting accidents or deaths that could have been prevented had we had legislation. Our commitment is to them, as well as to all Canadians who deserve to be represented and protected from those who continue to sell unsafe products in our country.

On this side of the House, we look forward to and encourage the support of all members of the House and the Senate in getting this done as soon as possible. Canadian families deserve it.

Canada Consumer Product Safety Act

[Leona Aglukkaq, Conservative, Minister of Health]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-36, An Act respecting the safety of consumer products.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)