Environment Committee on June 21st, 2006

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We are discussing a review of Canada's Environmental Protection Act, which calls to mind something that is happening in my province of New Brunswick. It involves an incinerator.

I would like to know what you think about this. I feel that it will impact the quality of life for the people and the environment. At the outset, there were plans for either New Brunswick or Quebec to burn hydrocarbon products coming from the United States. We are now told that they might also add PCBs. What do you think about that?

This is not happening in my own area, but in a neighbouring riding. Of course, incinerators do pose a risk for the environment, particularly because the material has to be transported. We say that we want to improve the quality of life for our citizens. Therefore, we want to protect the quality of the environment and of our ecosystems.

I would like to know what you think about the impact of incinerators on the environment.

[Jack Weinberg]

Thank you.

First of all, let me say that PCBs were originally identified for phase-out in the 1970s, and I think that it's quite amazing that in the U.S. and Canada large stockpiles still remain untreated. And part of the reason that they remain untreated is the debate over incineration and the fact that communities don't want them incinerated, for very good reasons. At the same time, when they are stored perpetually, they continue to leak to the environment many of the same pollutants that people are worried about from incinerators, such as what we called earlier the toxic equivalency of dioxin. PCBs also express the same toxic equivalency, so you can get the same effect by not incinerating them.

It turns out that quite a while ago Canadian scientists and entrepreneurs developed some very excellent technologies for destroying PCBs. The one I'm most familiar with is gas-phase chemical reduction. It was a former Environment Canada scientist who developed the GPCR technology. The company went out of business, not because it didn't work--every time it was tried it worked brilliantly, it's the one technology that NGOs all over the world really liked—but because the incinerator industry was so strong that they were always able to basically monkey-wrench any effort to move away from incineration.

So GPCR is a very good alternative. There are others. I'm less confident in some of the others. There's something that sometimes is called base-catalyzed dechlorination and sometimes is called base-catalyzed decomposition. They changed their name somewhere along the way. In some of the early applications there were problems, and I'm told that some of the more recent applications have had fewer problems. There may be some others, but those are the two.

If you have purely liquid PCBs and that's all you're dealing with, the BCD might be cheaper, although I don't know. I'm more partial to the GPCR technology, although the Canadian company that was vending it has gone out of business and we don't know if somebody is going to pick up the intellectual property and go forward.

So, yes, things like PCBs need to be addressed. Transportation is a big problem. Storage is a big problem because these are semi-volatile compounds. So if you transport it and then you move it around and you store it and then you put it into the incinerator, you can have as much toxic pollution of the environment coming from the transportation, storage, and handling as you would have come from the incinerator.

All these things have to be taken into account, but I believe incinerators are the wrong technology for this. I believe the right technology is there. But the fact that both Canada and the U.S. have sat on their PCB stockpiles, and therefore the people who develop new technologies could never make a profit out of them, not because they didn't work, but because they didn't get business, is a problem.

I don't know what it has to do with CEPA, but I think that's a very important issue and I believe there are good solutions. I believe they've just been monkey-wrenched over the years because there's a very mature industry that builds and operates incinerators, but also that operates and sells all the flue gas cleaning equipment that goes along with it. They've been very politically effective, and the start-up industries that had better ways of doing this just didn't have a chance.

Thank you.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

If I may, Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask one short question.

I think we have a problem when we import pollutants from another country in order to process them here. As you said, transportation is a concern, as it can represent as great a risk as any other aspect. It is often worse.

From an environmental point of view, do you think that, if we need to process certain substances, that we should process our own products, and not those of our neighbours? Processing our own toxic material already represents a risk for our environment. Taking in other peoples' toxic waste will certainly not help our own environment .

[Jack Weinberg]

I recall--I think it was in the eighties--there was a shipment of PCBs from the U.K. that came to Canada and I think when it arrived at the docks in Montreal there was so much protest they had to send it back. Certainly importing PCBs from the U.S. to Canada makes no sense, because they will just go to the place with the weakest regulatory environment and therefore the cheapest regulatory environment.

What they say in the U.S. is that while Canada can sometimes have very good laws, they're not really enforced, so it's still cheaper to do these things in Canada. I think that if they're being moved to Canada, there is a reason. If they're being moved to a poor community in Canada, then you know what the reason is--it's a cheap way to deal with the problem. They should deal with it at home.

I have a different attitude toward toxic pollutants from Africa, the poor parts of Asia, and the poor parts of Latin America, in that I am more sympathetic to them being returned to the countries that originally produced them, and in that the countries do not have the technical capability or the resources to deal with that. So that's a different question and it's more complicated.

But I would say that if there's a desire to move any type of waste from the U.S. to Canada, it's a money question and it's not the Canadian dollar and it's not the cost of labour. It's a money question, as there is expectation that the environmental controls will be weaker here.

My advice is to strengthen your environmental controls and your enforcement but keep out the wastes from other countries as well.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

We'll move on to Mr. Vellacott. This will be the last question, and then we'll give Mr. Glover and Ms. Taylor the opportunity to finish off.

Mr. Vellacott.

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

Thank you.

My understanding, if my information is correct, is that Health Canada is apparently planning a national study in which about 5,000 people will be monitored for toxic substances over a two-year period starting 2007 to 2009.

When I first became aware of that I was wondering--I've got three questions, and this first one would be along these lines--is that long enough? At first blush I would think it might take a longer-term period of time to gauge the effect, but there are maybe some things I don't understand about the study. Mr. Glover might have to comment in respect to that, but I'd appreciate if Dr. Schwarcz or also Mr. Weinberg would respond on that.

Secondly, if I understood correctly what Mr. Weinberg said regarding these many “fat-loving chemicals”--and I don't know what percentage of chemicals out there are “fat-loving chemicals”-- where then does the dangerous reading come? The “total body burden” I think was the term used. It's the matter of how much there is in the fat of the body, if you will.

With that question, then, are we off the mark when we're doing testing--biomonitoring, if you will--by way of people's blood and urine, when in some of these cases it's more that the detrimental effect is picked up in terms of the fat of the human body? That's where the dangerous readings would be detected. So I have that question. I don't know if it was PBDE that was the one referenced there--possibly--but that is my second question.

And lastly is that it intrigued me a little bit--and it's nothing novel, it's been said by lots of people and it was remarked here a few times--Mr. Weinberg, when you commented about things like a “predisposition” to prostate cancer caused when you were a fetus or pre-born.

Are we really way, way too late in terms of a lot of our testing then, and should we be getting some sense earlier on? The gig is up, so to speak, if most of this effect and the predisposition is already caused by pre-birth, at the fetal time. Are we way behind the eight ball on that? And as I said, in effect the gig is up when most of the damage....

I have a son who is 12 years old and he has Asperger syndrome. This will be an interesting debate, I guess, over the years ahead. There seems to be a rapid increase of these childhood...autism and so on. Are these caused in the pre-birth period of time? Maybe we're way, way too late in terms of any of the biomonitoring and testing. Should we be doing it at the fetal stage?

Those are my three complicated questions that could take some long time in response, I'm sure.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Who wants to start?

Mr. Schwarcz.

[Dr. Joe Schwarcz]

Biomonitoring is a long-term project because what we're really interested in is the direction in which things are going. To me, absolute numbers at this point don't mean very much because we really don't have any reference values.

The reason that blood is monitored is that's the easiest thing to do. Tissue sampling is of course much harder, and people would not line up to have fats taken out of them--some might, yes...large amounts of fat. There's the underlying hypothesis that when you're measuring blood levels it's also indicative of the fat-soluble compounds of what is stored in the fat. Also, you have to remember the same argument, at least, that I've used: just because something is present in the blood doesn't mean that it's doing harm; just because something is present in the fat doesn't mean it's doing harm either.

This business of bioaccumulation I think very often is quite misinterpreted, and it's very difficult to do justice to these issues in a few minutes. What everyone really should be doing is reading a book called The Dose Makes the Poison, by Alice Ottoboni. I would really suggest that, because it will give you a lot more insight than what we can give you here. It's just a superb book on toxicology. It gives you the timeframes that are really relevant and what bioaccumulation means, and whether or not you should worry about the build-up in fat, which is not necessarily the case. Just because it's there doesn't mean that it's doing any harm.

You have to start somewhere. We started the process of biomonitoring. The CDC in the U.S. does this extremely well, and we will see the direction in which things are going. The important thing is to see whether or not you can relate those blood levels to any observable phenomenon in humans, and so far, as far as I can tell, that just hasn't happened. That is really what we're looking at, but in order to see that you have to have the data. So we are in the data-accumulating stage.

The question that you posed about whether or not we're too late is a very good one. Well, you have to start somewhere. We may be too late now, but we may not be too late for the next generation. We have to gather the data and see what we can make of it.

[Jack Weinberg]

Thank you.

I think that whatever you do is good. I think longer term...but you may want to learn from your initial study and then update your methodology. So I don't know whether you're talking about one long study or multiple. But it's true that the body burdens only tell you what's present in the body. They don't tell you very much about what impact it's having. I'll come back to that.

On the question of blood in urine, there's a lipid content in blood; blood carries fat. And because there's a lipid content in blood.... I don't know the formulae. There's a pretty good formula that you can use--blood sampling as a surrogate for estimating the lipid content from the blood content. So yes, I think, for all practical purposes, blood sampling will give you what's available in the fat. You don't just multiply it by how many litres of blood you have in the body. You have to do a more complicated calculation on that.

Urine sampling will tell you things, but the chemicals that bioaccumulate are of special concern. They tend to be fat-soluble and not water-soluble. Most of the toxic purification processes of the body are water-based. The kidneys are very good at removing water-based toxicants from the body and they're very bad at releasing fat-based toxicants from the body. But there is some metabolism going on and I believe information can be gained from urine sampling, both with regard to the stuff that is water-soluble and also in terms of breakdown products as well from some of the other substances. In terms of the chemicals of the kind we're talking about, blood sampling gives you a better picture of what's going on in the body.

Are we too late? We were probably too late in 1930 when we went down some of these chemical pathways, but you're never too late, because there's always going to be another generation. On the information that I reported about the prostate, this was information I learned in the early nineties at a workshop that the IJC sponsored. What's too late is if the information is not acted upon. The hurdles of taking the information that's out there in the scientific community--getting through the noise, the manufacture of doubt, the delays--means what's too late is the action that's taken by legislators, regulators, and so on. So in a way we can refine our knowledge. It's absolutely true. When PCBs were introduced, they were introduced because they were considered to be very stable and very non-toxic. Now everybody in Canada and the U.S. agrees that PCBs are bad.

When the Stockholm Convention was negotiated, I heard the same story from I don't know how many countries: PCBs can't possibly do any harm, because the electrical people wash the grease off their hands with the PCBs after they're done. They take it home, and in some countries they use it as a surrogate for mustard oil in cooking. We haven't seen any problems. So the anecdotal information of no harm will continue to the day that legislative and regulatory action is taken.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Weinberg, I'm sorry to interrupt, but we are rapidly running out of time. I want to give Mr. Glover and Ms. Taylor....

We're over nine minutes now into the five-minute session, Mr. Vellacott.

We will go to Mr. Glover.

[Paul Glover]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Very briefly, in response to the questions posed by the honourable member, this is the brief history of why we are doing this. As the head of this program in Health Canada, I felt that I was running or steering this ship without a rudder. I put a challenge to the staff to figure out how we could do this, how we could get some biomonitoring program up and running, so we would have a baseline that we could use as a starting point.

By no means, in no way, do we consider 5,000 to be sufficient. This is a one-time study. We've got to start somewhere. Let's figure out how we start. I'd like to congratulate Statistics Canada, which was here the last time with us and is partnering with us. Part of the reason it's 5,000 and part of the reason it's a limited number of things is that's what we could put together. We need to look at how we make this a more systemic program that is ongoing that will help us.

That, I think, is a very brief history as to how that came about and the limitations we see. We do recognize it's a needed start and I would just like to underscore that.

The other thing is that with respect to whether we are starting too late, one of the other things we're interested in is looking at maternal core blood samples, and we do have some work under way with a number of hospitals and universities so we can determine for pregnant mothers what's in their unborn child, etc. That will also be a very informative baseline. We are trying to work as early as possible into this.

I would like, Mr. Chair, to come back to some of the other issues raised, but in specific response to those questions, that's my answer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Basically, we are rapidly running out of time.

Shall we hear, as quickly as possible, from Mr. Glover and Ms. Taylor?

Go ahead.

[Paul Glover]

I appreciate the opportunity to participate here and to witness the debate today.

I would like to bring back to the committee members what CEPA does in terms of many of the issues you have heard, because I think that is fundamentally the task before you. So I will remind you of what CEPA does and doesn't do and where we, as departments, stand on that last question with respect to biomonitoring.

As I've reported in previous meetings with you, we do think biomonitoring is a tool to measure progress, to identify trends, to help us set priorities and to interpret the results of the actions we've taken. Are these actions doing enough? Do we need to do more? It is not a silver bullet, but it's an important piece of the equation to help us measure success.

I would also like to point out that not everything can be measured through biomonitoring. Yes, the persistent bioaccumulative substances matter. There are some things that are highly reactive and that change when they get into the body; those make us sick, and there are ways to look for them. Those also matter because of their impact on human health and the illnesses they create, so we need a system that deals with all of those.

In terms of the other question with respect to measuring success, CEPA has three basic goals: pollution prevention, environmental protection, and human health protection. If you summarize CEPA, that's what it does. The key is, what are the measures for measuring success against those three criteria? As administrators of the act, I think the greater the clarity there is on how we will be measured in the future, the easier it will be to make sure we're putting the tools in place to answer that question in the future. So CEPA has three basic goals, and the question is the criteria we use to measure those, and that, obviously, is very challenging.

We have heard about precaution, we have heard about risk-based.... Just to remind members, CEPA is both. As I reported in previous appearances, it is risk-based, which is how we do our work...hazard and exposure in order to understand risk. But it also is precaution, as is inherent in the act, allowing us to act in the absence of certainty. So CEPA does have both of those elements right in the act, which you've heard debated. They are tools within the act for us to use, and we try very hard to do that. You have heard comments about our ability to implement, but I would just point out that both of those elements are there in the act today—risk-based and precaution.

The other thing is that we've heard about the burden of reverse onus, and putting the burden of proof on industry. CEPA does allow us to do that. On the new substances side, that's required; companies have to come forward and provide us that data. It starts off with that burden of proof for new substances. For existing substances, we are allowed through section 71 to demand data from industry; we can put the onus on them. Those tools are also within the act.

Finally, to sum up, we heard about REACH. I'd just like to point out that REACH has not yet passed in Europe; it is and has been subject to significant debate, and has been amended. That's not to say we should not to look at it, but Canada does have, in my opinion, a solid piece of legislation, and the categorization piece that we are going to complete by this September is world-leading. No other jurisdiction has done what we're about to complete, to go through every one of our existing substances and ask, are they persistent, bioaccumulative, and inherently toxic; what is the potential for exposure to humans; and are they hazardous to humans? We will then be able to set priorities that are far ahead of any other jurisdiction's, as we move forward, in terms of what we assess, how we assess it, what we choose to risk-manage, how we choose to risk-manage, and what burdens we want to put on industry in terms of information or action.

With the number of substances that are in use in any country, it will always be important to prioritize, whether it's the Europeans with REACH, or the Americans with their stewardship programs in the high-production, high-volume challenges. CEPA does have within it that categorization, which will help us as a country to set priorities for where we go with the next round of things. I think that's an important element, as we measure success. We are ahead of most of the world in terms of our existing substances.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you.

Ms. Taylor.

[Mary Taylor, Director, Legislative Governance, Department of the Environment]

I think, rather than focusing on measuring success, I'd just like to add a couple of clarifications.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Chair, I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Yes.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

I have no problem with our continuing with this discussion, but we haven't moved a motion whether we want to extend the time or not.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Would you make that motion?

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Yes.

I move that we extend in order to finish hearing Ms. Taylor.

(Motion agreed to)

[Mary Taylor]

I just want to clarify that CEPA does allow us to regulate products. We can regulate the sale, the manufacture, and the import of products.There are aspects of products we cannot regulate, such as the design of a product, but CEPA does provide some mechanisms for us to regulate products, and I think that's important to remember.

With respect to the import and export of hazardous waste, CEPA provides a framework for us to regulate. There's a process in place for regulating the import and export of products such as PCBs. That is something CEPA does provide for and we are very actively involved in.

Interestingly enough--and maybe this does pull us back to measuring success a little bit as well--we heard a lot about dry cleaning regulations, but that's actually one regulation that we have in place. We are regulating the release of dry cleaning fluids. As a matter of fact, that is one regulation where we used one of our new enforcement tools. In the last fiscal year, we issued more than 100 environmental protection compliance orders to effectively make dry cleaning operations stop until they got their products under control and brought them into compliance.

That is one the ways we've been using CEPA. I thought I would raise that with you today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Just to clarify, there was a discussion between two of our guests regarding dry cleaning and the chemical that was being used. There was disagreement over which one was right--

[Dr. Joe Schwarcz]

It wasn't really a disagreement. All of these chlorinated hydrocarbons can be used as dry cleaning agents. Whether it's perchloroethylene or trichlorethelyne just depends on whether we have one hydrogen instead of a chlorine. They're both feasible. Perchloroethylene is more economic, and that's the one more commonly used. Trichlorethelyne, or TCE, is the one that's been in the news a lot because it's more toxic.

[Jack Weinberg]

TCE is used for degreasing metal parts, primarily. It's rarely used for dry cleaning.

But I don't know if that's relevant to this--

[Mary Taylor]

We're actually regulating both of them. We're regulating the perchloroethylene used in dry cleaning and in degreasing. Both are being regulated.