I'm Clyde Graham, vice-president of strategy and alliances for the Canadian Fertilizer Institute.
I'd like to thank the committee for inviting us here today to talk about toxic stigma.
Canada's fertilizer industry contributes about $6 billion annually to the Canadian economy and employs about 12,000 Canadians. Its farm gate sales are valued at about $2.5 billion a year. That's the amount farmers spend on fertilizer each year. In addition, it's a major export industry, with 75% of total production going to supply fertilizer to more than 40 countries.
Our member companies make and supply food for plants. Fertilizer is essential to Canadian agriculture and the production of wholesome food. Fertilizer products are beneficial, life-giving, occur in nature, and are not inherently toxic.
CEPA, Canada's fundamental environmental legislation, includes a list of substances that are considered toxic under the act. Ammonia dissolved in water, and gaseous ammonia—both forms of nitrogen fertilizer—are on the list. Potassium chloride or potash has also been subject to the listing process for road salts, but hasn't yet been listed.
This doesn't make sense. There is no reason to impose a toxic stigma on life-giving products such as ammonia or potash fertilizers, which are plant nutrients used in the production of wholesome foods on Canadian farms. Like many beneficial substances, fertilizers have to be used properly in the environment, but they are not inherently toxic.
The Canadian Fertilizer Institute made this case to this committee last year, when an amendment to take the term “toxic” out of CEPA was included in the budget bill. While the committee rejected that amendment, largely because it was connected to the former government's plan to regulate greenhouse gases, members of Parliament recognized unanimously in the committee report that there is a problem. I'll quote from the report:
The Committee acknowledges that there are problems with using the word “toxic” for every substance that meet the criteria of section 64 of CEPA. Labelling such substances as ammonia in water (which is listed) and road salt (which met the criteria but has not been listed) as “toxic” is confusing to Canadians who use them in very different circumstances and may give an unfair stigma to products produced by Canadian industry.
In March 2005, the president of the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment, the Honourable Kerry Morash of Nova Scotia, wrote to the federal environment minister Stéphane Dion and federal health minister Ujjal Dosanjh to outline the position of the provinces on needed reforms to CEPA arising from the five-year review of CEPA. Among the consensus arrived at by the provinces is an explicit request for CEPA to use a term to replace CEPA's “toxic”, one that would avoid the stigma attached to the term “toxic”.
What the public needs to know is the specific source and location of environmental problems. Pollution is created by human activities that release products or substances. In the case of some substances, there is no safe level that can be released to the environment. In many other cases, pollution is caused when useful substances or products are released to the environment in the wrong place, at the wrong time, or at too high a concentration.
Generating generic lists of toxic substances is a wasteful bureaucratic exercise. Needlessly stigmatizing beneficial substances and products is counterproductive. Canada needs legislation to enable an environment management strategy that focusses on identifying specific challenges and encourages stakeholders to develop and implement economically and environmentally sustainable management plans. The development of environmental farm planning and best management practices under the federal-provincial agricultural policy framework is a good example of how this should work.
It was counterproductive for Environment Canada to undertake a long and expensive review of ammonia to determine whether the substance should be added to the CEPA schedule 1 list of toxic substances. The real targets were very specific environmental problems, such as municipal treatment facilities releasing waste water with high concentrations of aqueous ammonia directly into rivers and killing fish. It would have made more sense to identify the specific point source and focus on working with cities and towns on the actual problem from the start. While the context for the listing of ammonia was contained in the background material for the official notice, the potential for damage to the public reputation of our products is real.
Government and industry need a framework to develop cooperative environmental management plans that are effective, realistic, public, and accountable. A good example of that kind of outcome was the road salt environmental management plan.
CEPA creates an adversarial atmosphere focused on negative labels that actually impede effective national environmental management systems. For example, by placing toxic stigma on products in commercial use, scarce resources are wasted in conflict. The focus should be on implementing cooperative environmental management systems that will benefit the environment for all Canadians.
There is a serious concern about the impact on the ability to sell into the international marketplace if the government needlessly designates substances as toxic. For instance, Canada is the world's number one supplier of potash. This market is highly competitive and many countries closely regulate their agricultural production systems. If potassium chloride were designated toxic, customers would become subjected to the arguments from competitors outside Canada that Canadian potash should not be purchased because the Canadian government considers it toxic. This is a highly sensitive issue in the food industry, which has frequently been subjected to non-scientific accusations, influencing public perception and creating trade barriers.
In the final analysis, our industry has three simple recommendations: first, remove the label of toxic from the list of substances; two, include a clear context to describe the specific circumstances under which a substance needs to be managed; and three, ensure that the use of CEPA is focused on situations where there is a clear need for action. Contingent regulation makes for poor public policy.
The fact that a toxic designation has been pinned on ammonia, a life-giving substance essential to Canadian agriculture in the production of wholesome food, is clear evidence that CEPA needs to change.
I would like to add that while our major concern in CEPA relates to the issue of toxic after it has been listed, our experience has been fairly positive in terms of the management that the government has asked us to engage in, which has been voluntary and through the Department of Agriculture. We've had an excellent working relationship on that file with both Agriculture Canada and with the Department of the Environment. It's the stigma issue that's our problem, and the one that we need this committee to help us fix.