Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) Committee on Feb. 13th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

It does so.

We do have time for a lightning round. The Liberals do not want to use that?

Okay, Monsieur Bigras. We'll give everybody about three minutes for a quick round, beginning with Monsieur Bigras.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ms. MacKinnon, I want to come back to your document, specifically on page 6, paragraph 1.3.4 on equivalency agreements.

Ultimately, you want equivalency agreements with the provinces to guarantee that the provinces adopt equivalent regulations, rather than ensuring that the measures implemented by each province produce equivalent results. The department seems to be telling us that measures have been implemented in some provinces and are producing comparable results with respect to the objective, but with different regulations.

As long as there are systems in some provinces that effectively fight air pollution, is this amendment essential?

[Dr. Barbara MacKinnon]

I think that if you're talking about federal-provincial relationships, that's outside the purview of where the Lung Association would make recommendations. What we're aiming for is that we have, across Canada, good regulations everywhere to reduce air pollutants and even greenhouse gases.

If individual provinces have other mechanisms, voluntary or social engagement mechanisms, that's great. But if you're talking about large emitters, where you're not just talking about public projects or something like that, the large emitters should at least have a regulatory backstop for their measures. That is what we would like to see.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Mr. Bevington, please.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I did want to touch on the biomass issue, because I represent a rural riding where many people use biomass rather than the alternative, which is fuel oil, which is quite a heavy greenhouse gas emitter. Isn't it really the case that it's more about how you use the biomass than the question of biomass being an inappropriate fuel? If you use it in the pelletized form, the emissions in a properly chambered vessel are very, very low, probably much better than those equivalents of fuel oil or natural gas.

[Kenneth Maybee]

The Lung Association has been working on wood stoves for the past 10 years. We've been trying to get that in the Hazardous Products Act. Under CEPA, all the provinces and territories want regulations in relation to wood stoves, to get an EPA type approved that would have the double chamber that would reduce the amount of pollution coming out of it. We're hopeful that as CEPA goes through, that will be there.

There's another introduction that has come in, called Wood Doctors. These are large wood-burning types of stoves where it's straight pipe and you can get whole logs that will just dump into them. That means that the air pollutants going into the atmosphere are pure, just like burning down a forest. It's just pure pollutants that are going out. So that has to be addressed.

In relation to the pellet stoves, certainly the pellet stoves have an advantage over the others. But it has to be combined with putting the regulation in, and then I always have to reaffirm that one of the things we're not good at as a government is coming out with communications, education, and awareness to make sure that these things are going to tie in the partnerships.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Right now we're burning, in beehive burners, about three million tonnes of wood waste a year in Canada. It's not something that I want to see us ignore in the whole climate change issue. We need to make use of this in terms of our response to Kyoto.

You can have the best wood appliance in the world, but if you damp it down and don't provide it with oxygen—which most people in urban settings do with their stoves when they leave in the morning—you're going to produce a lot of pollution. So it is about how you use it even more than the appliance.

I think we have to be very careful here. It's not about the quality of the appliance; it's the quality of the fuel and how it is being burnt.

[Kenneth Maybee]

It's really both. It's the appliance, definitely, for the amount that goes out of it if it's not EPA approved. But it's also that people have a tendency to burn wet wood. That causes an increase. People will burn garbage. There are complaints on burning garbage. People will be burning leftover parts of decks that have arsenic and things like that in them. So there are a whole bunch of different pollutants going out.

In the whole area of burning, burn smart is what we have to do. With the chimneys that have come into the marketplace, outside, that's just straight pollutants going up.

So it's not an easy solution. There's a part under CEPA that can tackle the regulation, and then it's communication, education, and awareness on doing the rest.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Okay, thank you very much.

Mr. Warawa.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Mr. Chair, just for clarification, Mr. Godfrey was asking about the regulations. It is part of the notice of intent to regulate. Bill C-30, the Clean Air Act, is part of what was announced on October 19. So I encourage him to read the notice of intent. Actually, I'm quite sure he has. He may have forgotten that part of it.

In the summary: Part 1 of this enactment amends the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 to promote the reduction of air pollution and the quality of outdoor and indoor air. It enables the Government of Canada to regulate air pollutants and greenhouse gases, including establishing emission-trading programs, and expands its authority to collect information about substances that contribute or are capable of contributing to air pollution. Part 1 also enacts requirements that the Ministers of the Environment and Health establish air quality objectives and publicly report on the attainment of those objectives and on the effectiveness of the measures taken to achieve them.

So again, hopefully that clarifies issues that were raised by Mr. Godfrey.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Thank you. What a great act, I have to tell you.

I will take up where I left off, Mr. Chair, with the witnesses, if I may.

If you remember, I was talking about the effects and my surprise, after all my research, in finding out what's taking place in Canada. I also found out, for instance, that long-term exposure to ambient levels of sulphate, which actually takes place, I guess, is linked to cancer and reduces life expectancy and may even be connected to sudden infant death syndrome—which I didn't know. It's shocking. Twenty per cent of people are absent from school and work and social engagements because they have asthma. What a cost to our society! I am very shocked. And what shocks me the most is that no government before this government under our Prime Minister has put forward anything to deal with all of the effects of this. Being a lawyer who has dealt with many claims of negligence, I can say it is nothing short of negligence that this wasn't done before. I am wondering why.

Did your groups not lobby the governments? Did you not talk about the effects of these problems with air capacity and lung capacity, and just the long-term effects? I just don't understand, to be quite frank, why nothing has been done before this government.

[Dr. Barbara MacKinnon]

I would debate your point. Several previous governments, not just the most recent one, have done a variety of things to reduce air pollutants. Through the acid rain strategies, we have had great reductions in SOx pollutants—sulphur oxides and nitrogen oxides. Through the U.S.-Canada Air Quality Agreement, we've reduced both of those pollutants drastically over the last 20 years—

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Now, that was the Mulroney government, wasn't it?

[Dr. Barbara MacKinnon]

—and mercury and a number of different chemicals have been put on the CEPA toxic list. Benzene is now out of fuels; lead is out of fuels.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Are you talking about the Montreal Protocol?

[Dr. Barbara MacKinnon]

No, the Montreal Protocol has to do with stratospheric ozone levels and CFCs. That's another example, although CFCs do not impact air pollution so much.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

But indeed, Dr. MacKinnon, nobody has regulated indoor air quality, as far as I'm aware, and that's what I'm talking about.

[Dr. Barbara MacKinnon]

Correct.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Okay, that is what I'm talking about, the effects of that. Why do you think nobody has ever done that before? Has it just been one of those things that nobody noticed or that nobody in fact wanted to intrude on, or what is it?

Can you answer that, Dr. Maybee?

[Kenneth Maybee]

What I would like to suggest is that in all of the discussions we've had in the past, it's opened up a major sinkhole. Indoor air quality is huge; it's not a small issue. And there's no organization to date that has that responsibility. I suggest that Health Canada has that responsibility. They are under-staffed to do the job justice.

What is going to happen, and I hope is going to happen, is that there is clearly going to be a major move on indoor air quality, and it's going to create an organization within Health Canada that has the horses and financial backing to be able to impact the issue. That's why we are very excited about what you're coming out with on indoor air quality, and that's why we applaud you for it. Though it is a major undertaking, it is certainly worth doing.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Are there any other comments from the witnesses?

[Rob Peacock]

I just have one final comment. Just as of last week, we have been engaged with Health Canada on indoor air quality and in helping to implement an air indoor quality program in schools across Canada with Health Canada in a pilot program—number one—and that's a first. In fact, we had discussions just two hours ago at Environment Canada about the indoor air quality program we have, which is the asthma certification program I referred to for different types of products that we have through certification. I think Dr. MacKinnon talked about that. It's at the point of the product actually being manufactured where we have to start to have products that help control air quality and dust mites and all of that stuff, which is a whole other discussion. At least this particular bill helps address that.

I think both our representatives from the Canadian Lung Association have done a great job in terms of just helping to shed some scientific light on it, but this particular bill could go a lot further in helping to address this.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Okay, thank you very much.

Mr. Godfrey, do you have a point of order, a point of privilege or a point of debate?

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

It's a point of my turn, because we passed the three minutes.

It's simply to say that in the passage that was read out by the parliamentary secretary, he actually made my point. The notice of intent to regulate in the bill reads, “...regulate pollutants, they establish objectives for air quality which will then be monitored”, which is not the same thing as making them enforceable by regulation. So I think a simple reading of the text, using Eats, Shoots & Leaves for the grammar, will straighten out the point.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

That's a point of debate, and we were getting along so well.