Environment Committee on June 19th, 2006

[John Moffet]

I may have misspoken. The assessment reports I was speaking about are formal assessments that the departments jointly conducted on each of the substances added to the priority substances lists. There were 71 of those substances, and assessment reports have now been completed for all but four of those substances. Those reports are all publicly available. For four of those substances, there is still ongoing work for various reasons, but primarily because the available evidence is simply inconclusive; the departments are not able to come to a conclusion one way or the other.

I think that's a different issue than what you're speaking about, which is the public availability of information on the quality of the environment and presumably some indication of whether the public ought to be concerned about the state of the environment today or tomorrow.

I think there are a couple of points that should be made. One is that over the past few years there has been an increased emphasis within Environment Canada and Health Canada on providing information about air quality and on making that information useful and available on a regular, more localized basis to Canadians. For example, the smog alert that we all experienced on the weekend—which may have been the first province-wide smog alert, and certainly the first province-wide smog alert of this year—was based on procedures put in place by the two departments.

On the other hand, while we have been working on various indicators, we have not published a comprehensive state of the environment report for many years. That's an area that has received less emphasis over the past few years, based on the allocation of resources to other priorities.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

You also said that 28 recommendations were made. I find it strange that you are not able to tell us today how many of these recommendations were implemented. It is difficult to know where we are at. You must understand that we are trying to help you. If we do not know what the present status is, it is difficult to provide more support to you. I will not go so far as to say that I find this regrettable, but I am surprised that we are unable to identify more precisely where we are at today and what areas require more work. Do we need to add resources or manpower? We have no idea what the priority should be.

[John Moffet]

I think the reason for my hesitation is that we can say that we agreed with the recommendations made by the commissioner in the 1999 and 2002 reports, and we can also say that we have put in place measures to attempt to respond to those recommendations, but I don't think I can come before you and say that we have categorically delivered on all of those recommendations, because I think that's a qualitative judgment. That's not a judgment that I can make; that's a judgment that you may want to make.

The government provided more money to the departments. Did the government provide enough money? That's not for me to say. Did we develop a policy on use of performance agreements? Yes, we did. Is it a good policy? Again, that's not for me to say.

So we've acted on all of the recommendations. I think that's as far as I can go.

[Johanne Gélinas]

Please let me ask a bit more on that, Mr. Chairman.

First, I have to say that it's true that the department has agreed with all of our recommendations; that's point number one. Second, we have had a very good relationship with the department over the years. They know exactly where we're coming from, and we talk to them to make sure that whatever recommendations we make will make sense to them and will be implemented.

It's part of my duties, my mandate, to do regular follow-ups. I think you weren't there when I mentioned this, but to bring some clarification, we were planning to do a follow-up of those recommendations for 2006, and we decided to postpone it by one year.

So we will come back, and the exhibit you have in the chapter will be revisited. Then we'll come back and report to you on how much progress has been made with respect to the 2002 recommendation and also to the one we made in 1999. So we'll come back to you on that, specifically from an edit standpoint in 2007.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

You are unable to provide the follow-up today.

[Johanne Gélinas]

We can only provide the follow-up we did at the time, in 2002. It is always somewhat frustrating for auditors to give testimony on an issue such as the review of the Act, because we do not have necessarily up-to-date information. This is why our approach has been to identify a number of questions that we ourselves, as auditors, would want to ask the department in order to determine what results have been produced in implementing the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

In the end, the substantive question that needs to be asked is whether CEPA meets the objectives and produces the expected results.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Mr. Moffet stated that it was not for him to say whether there is a lack of money or resources. Who can give that answer to me?

[Johanne Gélinas]

Certainly not us. The minister could answer that question. We do not pass judgment on funding priorities. I fully agree that for the officials this is a very sensitive question.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

I will share my time with Mr. Watson.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Is there any time left for questions?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

One and a half minutes.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

I'll wait until the next round.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Silva.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Obviously, all of us have concerns about the fact that the federal government is not meeting its recommendations nor fully understanding the effects of toxic substances. We heard it today, and I think we heard in other meetings in the past that there are divisions within departments. The government is definitely not taking adequate action to manage the lack of risk to the public and the environment.

Because of all these concerns that many of us on this committee have, obviously what's fundamentally needed is leadership. My question to you is, what type of leadership do we need?

[Johanne Gélinas]

We have said in the past with respect to the environment, and I guess I have said this too many times before this committee, that we need leadership at all levels.

In the case of CEPA, it's clearly federal jurisdiction, and we are hoping that some progress will be made. We will be able to report on that next year. I would caution you not to use our 2002 conclusions too much, because things have evolved since then, and we cannot tell you how much progress has been made—and, in some cases, neither can the department.

What Mr. Reed was suggesting, and I will just re-emphasize this, is that the best way to see how CEPA is working is to go substance by substance and to look at what the status was a couple of years ago, before the CEPA review, and what has been accomplished since then. Then you will be able to draw your own conclusions on how much CEPA has been able to achieve.

If I may just expand a little bit, Mr. Chairman, on what we have said in the past and on what CEPA is all about.... Mr. Moffet has talked about the PSL1 and PSL2 substances. We have talked about assessment here; assessment is the first step in moving on and managing.... You still need to have a very good understanding of the status of the management of those substances.

Also, don't forget that collectively, as a country, we have to deal with the 22,000 substances on the domestic list, and some of those substances will get on the PSL2 list, so we will have to manage those too. When you raise questions related to the resourcing, you have to be forward looking and ask yourself if we will be able to manage those substances too. At the time of the 2002 follow-up, we said that if 1% of the substances were to make the CEPA list, it would take decades to deal with those substances. So always keep in mind the forward-looking aspect; there's not only the CEPA toxic list as we know it already, but we have the backlog and the upcoming substances that may end up on that list.

I haven't talked much, and I will stop here, because Mr. Reed can give you all the appropriate answers.

[John Reed]

I just wanted to give a very specific example of where I think the departments need help, but I'm not sure what the latest status is.

In the PSL1 process, a substance is assessed and is declared toxic after five years, and then it gets handed over to a risk manager, who is leading a consultation with an industry group—sometimes a hostile industry group. The major finding, or one of the findings, in 1999 was that the risk manager was not equipped with a science-based risk management objective. The substance has been declared toxic, but the risk manager doesn't know how much reduction needs to be achieved in order to make sure the risks are manageable. He or she is simply asked to engage industry and to get as much action as they can through a negotiated settlement.

I don't know whether the situation has changed for the PSL2 topics; that's one of the recommendations we made. But it was obvious to us that leadership at the commencement of that risk management exercise is needed, so that the risk managers know what they have to negotiate. And if they can't get it voluntarily, then they really have to use a regulatory approach to achieve the reduction.

I don't know what the situation is today, but that was an area of leadership, not in the sense of blue sky but of very practical direction, to help risk managers achieve the risk reduction objections they needed.

A second area where leadership is clearly going to be needed is on the DSL, the domestic substances list, and in the application of the precautionary principle. There are going to be more uncertainties in the future than there were in the past, and somebody has to make the decision on how that principle is going to fall on those substances where there's uncertainty. But you can't expect public servants to be making those kinds of decisions. I don't think it's their role.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Do I have some more time or not?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

No, sorry.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

[A voice]

Could I provide a quick update on those two points?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Could you just follow, Mr. Watson?

Go ahead, please.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate the caution at the conclusion of your 2002 report that they do not apply to the performance of Canada's new government. They certainly are instructive about the poor record of the previous Liberal government.

We've identified a lot of implementation problems with CEPA 1999. They're now ours to clean up, and we're certainly grateful for your help in this process toward that goal.

After identifying a number of problems in implementation, is there anything inherent in CEPA itself, though, that is acting as a barrier to achieving the original goals of CEPA 1999? Are any of its provisions causing some of its own problems?

I'll suggest one later, but I want to hear your thoughts on that, if you can point the way.

[John Reed]

Honestly, the only thing I could say to you would be very anecdotal at the time of 2002.

Because of the timelines associated with the development of risk reduction measures, the fastest and easiest route for the department was to try to get a negotiated voluntary agreement, a non-regulatory measure, in effect, because it takes so long to get regulations through the system that a two-year timetable was a bit of a barrier.

But that's very anecdotal, and we did not do audit-based work that would give us evidence. It's just the things you hear as you're talking to risk managers.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

The virtual elimination you suggested--somebody testified earlier about it being a policy of the previous Liberal government--does that not in some ways weight the focus toward pollution control, rather than applying any amount of precaution? Should CEPA now be weighted toward greater focus on the precautionary principle this time around so that we're getting to pollution prevention rather than control, or some mix? How do you split the line on that one?