Madam Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I rise to speak in favour of Bill S-5, one of the most important pieces of environmental legislation to come before the House of Commons.
The Canadian Environmental Protection Act, or CEPA, is a vital piece of legislation that regulates the products we use every day in Canada. From food packaging to the personal care products we put on our bodies to our children's toys, CEPA has provided the regulations to further protect Canadians from exposure to toxic substances and keep all of us and our collective environment healthy since it came into force in 1999.
We received submissions from all across the country with regard to the modernization of this act. That is why I want to thank so many people for participating in the drafting of the bill that is now before us. In particular, I would like to thank Lisa Gue from the David Suzuki Foundation, Cassie Barker from Environmental Defence Canada, Jennifer Beeman from Breast Cancer Action Quebec, Jane McArthur from the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, Aaron Freeman, the members of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, the hon. member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie and Minister of Environment and Climate Change, the hon. members for Winnipeg South, Lac-Saint-Louis, Repentigny, Victoria and Saanich—Gulf Islands, and the senators who worked so hard to ensure that Bill S-5 came before the House.
Bill S-5 strengthens Canada's environmental protection measures for individuals, families and communities across the country. It helps to better preserve the measures that we all need to live a healthy life. It protects the water we drink and better regulates the products that we use every day as Canadians. Bill S-5 is a necessary and long-awaited update of CEPA that guarantees that the act can continue to do in 2023 what it was implemented to do in 1999, and that is to protect the environment and the health and safety of Canadians.
As the former parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, I consider it an honour to have worked on the modernization of CEPA with the current Minister of Natural Resources and member for North Vancouver when he was minister of environment and climate change. This bill began as Bill C-28. Most of the elements that we worked on at the time, not to mention the amazing work of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, including the right to a healthy environment, the assessment of the combined effects of substances and the improvement of transparency about consumer goods, are still included and even reinforced in Bill S-5.
It has been a quarter of a century since CEPA was last updated. As such, many improvements and modifications were necessary. We need only think of the changes in our society we have experienced over the last 25 years, too many to reference, unfortunately, in the short time allotted to me today, to better understand the need for the many key improvements to CEPA included in Bill S-5. I would like to share a select few in my remarks, beginning with an acknowledgement in the preamble of the bill that all Canadians have a right to live in a healthy environment.
Countries around the world, in fact, are acknowledging the relationship between a healthy environment and our human rights. In fact, on June 28 of last year, the UN General Assembly adopted a historic resolution declaring that access to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is a universal human right. For the first time in our federal law, Bill S-5 would recognize the right to a healthy environment in Canada, and our country will join 156 fellow members of the United Nations who have done the same in some way, shape or form.
While including the right to a healthy environment represents a historic step for Canada, our government will work hard to secure these rights through a robust evaluation framework and regulations, which we have committed to creating with input from Canadians over the next couple of years. Everything that follows in this newly strengthened CEPA flows from this acknowledgement, including the second aspect of the bill that I would like to speak to, that being the better management of chemicals in Canada, aimed at reducing exposure to hazardous chemicals for all Canadians.
Currently, CEPA uses a science-based approach to evaluate over 4,300 chemicals and reduces the number of harmful chemicals that Canadians encounter in their everyday lives. Canadians have benefited from our strong leadership on the risk assessment and risk management for chemicals.
For example, there are chemicals like BPA, which is a known hormone disruptor that used to be found in bottles for infants. High exposure to BPA can adversely affect the liver, the kidneys, fertility and the brain development of newborn infants. A risk assessment through the chemicals management plan led to a change in the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act that made it illegal to manufacture, import, advertise or sell bottles that contained this product in Canada. Canada has worked with industry to successfully phase out the use of BPA-containing packaging for liquid infant formula products available for sale in Canada. Since then, Canadian parents have worried less, knowing that the feeding bottles they are using to nurse their newborn child are free from this dangerous chemical.
Working with Canadians to publish an updated chemicals management priorities plan in Bill S-5 is critical to protecting Canadians against the exponential increase in the volume and concentration of chemicals entering our environment.
In addition to an updated chemicals management priorities plan, proposed subsection 75.1(1) of Bill S-5 requires the Minister of Health and the Minister of Environment to list substances capable of becoming toxic. The inclusion of this clause in CEPA would help address the problem of regrettable substitutions and deter manufacturers from replacing the use of one equally hazardous chemical for another. These updates to this bill, among others, would weed out toxins in our products at the source, so that Canadians do not have to at their local grocery or hardware store.
Another key improvement to CEPA in Bill S-5 is the incorporation of cumulative effects assessments. Why is this important? It is quite simple. The pace and scale at which new chemicals are being produced and added to our products and environment are astounding. Since 1950, chemical production has increased fiftyfold, and today there are approximately 90,000 chemicals used domestically in Canada and the United States. The largest concentrations of toxic substances are often found in the cheapest products. The reality is that with the sheer quantity of chemicals now present in our everyday lives, it has become an ever so daunting task to fully appreciate and identify hazards. Most Canadians do not have the time or expertise to determine which products, combined with other products, could be dangerous and more and more are counting on us, as their federally elected representatives, to ensure that we are doing this imperative work for them and that the laws and regulations in place are strong enough to protect them and their loved ones.
In the current version of CEPA, assessments are conducted on the singular impacts of each chemical individually. The significant change included in Bill S-5 would address the cumulative effects on human health and the environment that may result from exposure to the substance in combination with exposure to other substances and would require cumulative effects to be considered in the risk assessment through CEPA when information is available.
Another important aspect of this bill is the improvements to CEPA that address social justice when it comes to our health and our environment and recognize it is intrinsic to environmental protection. Bill S-5 explicitly requires that the federal government consider vulnerable populations in the assessment of toxic substances. Social challenges in indigenous, low-income and racialized communities are further exacerbated by environmental ones when a landfill, a water treatment facility or a chemical plant is located in their backyards. This change to CEPA would help ensure that the health of vulnerable communities is considered through the implementation of CEPA regulation.
As I mentioned in committee and in the House, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act is the most important piece of legislation that most Canadians know very little about, yet it has been protecting the environment every day for decades. With the changes proposed in Bill S-5, it will continue to protect the environment and all Canadians for decades to come. By passing this bill, we parliamentarians are clearly affirming that their health and safety will always be our priority.
I look forward to joining all members in this House in voting in favour of Bill S-5, moving it to the next level of our parliamentary process and, finally, ushering in a new era of environmental protection in Canada.
