Environment Committee on June 19th, 2006

[John Reed]

I agree with you entirely. We made that point in the 1999 audit.

You have a process whereby a substance is determined to be toxic. You go through a process of identifying what you're going to do about it. Most of the time that's in the form of either a regulation or companies agreeing to voluntarily reduce the limit. The only reporting mechanism that existed at the time was the NPRI. We made the point in the chapter that many of the substances that are being declared toxic are not on the NPRI. There was no mechanism for tracking releases. By 2002 the departments had made a number of additions to the NPRI, and more and more of those declared toxics were being tracked.

I think your question remains pertinent today. That's why I said earlier that if we were approaching this topic again, we would probably go substance by substance. We would want to know what risk management measurement was in place, what reductions were you trying to achieve, what do we know about releases, and what do we know about ambient monitoring. It's one thing to know under the NPRI whether it's being released at a point facility; it's an entirely different question to know whether it's in our water, on the land, or if we're breathing it.

Most of the substances were not being monitored in 1999. I think you're onto the right thing, that if you don't have monitoring and tracking, you don't know—unless the instrument itself, like a regulation, has reporting built into it, such as an MOU sometimes. Even in a memorandum of understanding, the companies and the associations involved are often more than willing to try to report their progress. From a reliability standpoint, you have the ability to enforce a regulatory approach, but when you have a voluntary approach, we were asking the question, how do you know? And how can you use that tool to make sure it's working?

I must say, though, that on this count the Department of the Environment did respond to our recommendations. We had suggested they needed some policy guidance on when they would use voluntary instruments, when not, and what they should look like. I think we did report in 2002 that the department had made some good progress there. They actually found it quite helpful; they had some ammunition to use with industry, to say we need to have robust instruments.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

That's appreciated.

I want to go to Mr. Clarkson just for a moment.

How long have we known about the effectiveness of biomonitoring, or this ability to test humans for toxicity levels?

[Steve Clarkson]

I can't give you an exact time, but I would say decades, probably.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Decades.

Do we have industrial partners or other nation states that use this tool, that you're aware of, as a way to manage the release of toxic substances?

[Steve Clarkson]

The program I'm most familiar with is run by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I don't know the numbers of people in their most recent one, but it was large, as they do it in a statistically valid way. They have it set up to satisfy ethical and other criteria and have a considerable budget. I think they targeted 150 compounds in their last go-round.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Why does Canada not use it?

[Steve Clarkson]

Well, there are a number of reasons, resources being one. We have done biomonitoring in targeted populations in the past, and continue to do so. There has been regular monitoring of human milk for contaminants, though I'm not sure of the frequency.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Do those reports get released publicly?

[Steve Clarkson]

Yes.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

The resource barrier isn't so much of an answer, as the federal government has a lot of money—some say too much, some say too little. But in terms of allocating resources....

In terms of the effectiveness of bringing in public discourse as a tool, which has been shown in other regions to be effective, I think the American model is quite the one to point to; it's part of the discourse in the public about toxics and pollutants. Again, if this has been shown to be effective, why have we not allocated the resources?

[Steve Clarkson]

I'm not sure I agree with you that I'd call it effective.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Oh, I see.

[Steve Clarkson]

It is a piece of information that contributes to the knowledge in deciding whether you have a problem in the first place, or whether the problem you're trying to resolve has successful approaches for doing so. But biomonitoring is only a piece of the puzzle. We don't necessarily get from biomonitoring what it was that led to the exposure that put the material into the person you've measured. Is it because of an industrial release? Is it through the food system?

So it's only part of the picture in terms of deciding what you have to fix—if you have something to fix—and how you're fixing it.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

As a tool, then, have we fully utilized it in our policy?

[Steve Clarkson]

We've used it to the extent we've been able to.

I should mention--you may have heard this already--that we have been partnering with Statistics Canada to run, in fiscal year 2007, a Canadian health measure survey. We've been planning this for two or three years now. The survey will involve 5,000 Canadians aged 6 years to 79 years, using the valid and good approaches of Statistics Canada to ensure that we can rely on the data we generate.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Is it a written survey, or are we testing blood and all the rest?

[Steve Clarkson]

We'll be testing blood and urine anyway.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

You have one final question, Mr. Cullen.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

To Mr. Reed, one of the questions I've struggled with is that we in Canada generally trust the companies that are doing business within our borders to do well. In terms of the testing processes used by government, essentially allowing companies to test their own products, I'm trying to tease apart how it's not a conflict of interest, or there isn't a challenge.

First, have we done any analysis of how much in-house capacity we have to do the testing? Second, do we have any analysis of or research on the effectiveness of the external testing that's being done by companies? Is it peer-reviewed? Is there any further backup done? Does Canada replicate the tests that companies offer us in terms of determining that the products are safe for market?

[John Reed]

I'm out of my league on this one, honestly. In the 1999 and 2002 audits, we focused exclusively on existing substances as opposed to new substances. Under CEPA, when it's a new substance, my understanding is that industry carries most of the burden for providing the information on toxicity and so on. Under the existing substances, I think it was mostly government researchers who were doing the assessment work.

To a certain extent, the assessment activity for us was a black box. They are so complicated, these assessments; you have to be a toxicologist just to understand some of the language they're using. We were looking at the process, at the amount of time it took, and the outcome of the assessments. As to inside those assessments, and the extent to which industry tests and government tests, I'd have to turn to either Mr. Moffet or Mr. Clarkson; I'd be out of my league.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Briefly, Mr. Moffet.

[John Moffet]

I will try to respond briefly to a number of the points that were made.

In terms of ARET, I think it's important to say that the primary risk management approach for CEPA toxic substances was never to rely on ARET. Although ARET was an important measure, it was never the measure that was used to address a CEPA toxic substance. Indeed, CEPA 1999 made an important change in that it requires, by law, a regulation, or “instrument”, for each substance added to schedule 1. So we could not rely just on ARET, or an equivalent voluntary challenge, for a substance added to schedule 1, and have not done so.

The reporting mechanisms now extend beyond NPRI and include a number of air reporting mechanisms. Most CEPA regulations require reporting. The challenge that we have, and it's something we could do a better job on, is aggregating NPRI and similar air reporting and individual regulatory reporting to provide information to the public in a useful way.

I do want to emphasize that in 1995 there were about 1,800 facilities and 176 substances on the NPRI. A couple of years ago, in 2004, there were almost 9,000 facilities reporting on about 325 substances. So NPRI is expanding considerably, and continues to provide us with a better and better picture--not a perfect picture; it's important to understand that it's not a static tool.

The policy movement on voluntary measures, which Mr. Reed spoke about, is now documented in the form of a policy framework for environmental performance agreements. This is a formal policy that documents the circumstances in which the department will use non-regulatory performance agreements and specific requirements. Many of those requirements flow from the recommendations made by the commissioner and include such things as credible public reporting and some form of verification as a recognition that some of the voluntary measures that emerged in the 1990s were inadequate in being able to provide the information that the public and the government needed in order to determine efficacy.

In terms of ambient information, I think that is where we're weak. As Dr. Clarkson emphasized, that's not the only piece of information that is needed, but it is a critical piece of information. If releases are up or down, that's important to know, but really what we want to know is whether the environment and human health are better. You have to be able to make that connection.

Finally, in terms of the new substances regime and who does the work, and how credible that work is, the information is generated primarily by industry, but it has to be generated and provided in a form and following procedures that are prescribed in law by the government. Those procedures essentially require following standardized assessment protocols that have been developed throughout the OECD. It's not an unusual scientific thing to say that you must follow this procedure and document it in this way so that another scientist can review it and trust your data. That's the way the scientific world works, and that's essentially the way the new substances notification regime works.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Harvey.

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

I have been a business owner for a long time. In order to manage or make assessments, one needs daily or monthly reports in order to see how things evolve.

You said that you do produce reports and that you delayed one because you wanted to add other substances, such as CO₂.

How come we cannot have more frequent reporting on the status of the environment, on the release of chemicals into the environment?

[Johanne Gélinas]

Mr. Chairman, I will leave to Mr. Moffet the pleasure of answering this question.