This amendment would have very broad implications for the management of substances under CEPA. We have a number of concerns about the wording of the provision. First of all, the provision starts with “the Minister shall require”, so it's not clear who would be required to do the assessment.
It's also not clear to me whether there would be a requirement for an action plan for substitution for every one of these substances. If that's the intention, then you need to start going down the list. Every substance on schedule 1 has already been subjected to a detailed scientific assessment, so another assessment would be — If the assessment is intended to be of a scientific nature or of the risk posed by the substance, then I would suggest that it would be redundant.
Another concern I would like to raise to the committee is that, yes, each substance on schedule 1 has been assessed and has been determined to pose a risk to Canadians' health or to their environment. But that is not to suggest that it would necessarily be appropriate to eliminate every substance on schedule 1. Some substances on schedule 1 are naturally occurring and cannot be eliminated. Some substances on schedule 1 are used in commercial processes in a manner in which no release is possible. For example, they may be either used or created as transitional products and then taken out of the process.
The risk management analysis the government undertakes typically has to focus on where the risk actually manifests itself, and in some cases the risk is so broad that elimination and substitution is the appropriate solution. In other cases, there may be appropriate uses, or the environment or the human body may be able to tolerate certain loads, and therefore eliminating the substance would be overkill from a risk management perspective.
Another issue is that proposed paragraph 68.1(1)(c) refers to the government challenge, and it lists a new schedule 1.1, which I understand would be created through NDP-38. That amendment would list all the substances that have been identified by the government as substances that were identified as a result of the categorization exercise.
We need to be clear. That categorization exercise identified substances based on their intrinsic characteristics. We have put these substances in a challenge process because we're relatively confident that these substances pose concerns to human health and the environment and therefore require some type of risk management. The challenge exercise has been designed to give industry, users, and producers an opportunity to return to government and the public and explain how they're managing those substances. If they can convince government that the substance is being used or managed in a way that poses no risk, then the premise of the challenge program is that formal risk management would not be necessary. As I read this provision, that would preclude us from making that judgment and would simply require us to address each of these substances.
A final concern I would note is that it's not entirely clear what the phrase “slated for safe substitution” means. Does this refer back to the action plan, or does this refer to a conclusion that would be drawn from the assessment of the substances in proposed paragraphs (a) through (c)? A little bit more clarity may be required in order for us to provide further analysis. Let me stop there.