Environment Committee on Oct. 24th, 2006

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mario Silva]

Good morning, everybody. I'd like to call the meeting to order. Just for your information, given the fact that we've changed rooms, the meeting will not be televised.

We are meeting pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and section 343 of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act of 1999, statutory review of the assessment of substances--virtual elimination. We have a series of witnesses.

Could you please limit your presentations to ten minutes and also introduce yourselves.

We'll start off with Mr. Gordon Lloyd.

[Gordon Lloyd, Vice-President, Technical Affairs, Canadian Chemical Producers' Association]

My name is Gordon Lloyd. I'm with the Canadian Chemical Producers' Association. It's good to be here, again. Hopefully we won't get a fire alarm today.

I'd like to thank the committee for the opportunity to participate in this round table to discuss virtual elimination. Last May when CCPA appeared before the committee and tabled our detailed submission on the CEPA review, we did raise this issue, and we specifically suggested amending CEPA to modify the requirements to establish limits of quantification, LOQs, for the virtual elimination of substances that are present as trace contaminants.

Today I'd like to first provide a little background and context on virtual elimination, particularly in relation to the Stockholm Convention, and then address the specific LOQ concern and recommendation we have.

Virtual elimination stems from the government's 1995 toxic substances management policy. That policy is reflected domestically in CEPA, and it was also successfully carried forward by Canada at the Stockholm Convention on POPs, persistent organic pollutants. Virtual elimination in CEPA and in the toxic substances management policy was also developed to address the International Joint Commission philosophy of zero discharge, an approach to virtual elimination for persistent toxic substances.

Under CEPA, substances that are man-made, persistent, bioaccumulative, and found toxic after a risk assessment—and I'd like to emphasize the risk assessment part—are subject to virtual elimination, and this is a mandatory provision in the act. “Toxic” here is used in the sense of doing a risk assessment under section 64 of CEPA. This is quite different from inherent toxicity, which is hazard-based, and which is one of the criteria for DSL categorization, which the committee has been talking about more recently.

What is subject to virtual elimination is risk-based, and this is different from the hazard-based categorization results. Virtual elimination is set out in the act in terms of ultimately reducing releases below the level of quantification, or the LOQ. This is the lowest concentration that can be accurately measured using routine scientific analytical methods.

The purpose of establishing this LOQ was twofold. It was supposed to reflect that it's meaningless to require any further reductions, which couldn't be accurately measured and would not be enforceable. Also, it was put in to reflect the point made in policy discussions leading up to the virtual elimination policy, that it doesn't make sense to be chasing the last molecule, as it was called.

The act also requires that release limits for virtual elimination be set taking into account environmental and health risks; social, economic, and technical factors; and other relevant factors. Virtual elimination requirements apply to releases from plant operations and from products. As such, they apply to a substance occurring as an unintentional trace contaminant in products, even if there is no sense in trying to reduce it further, because the release is so small. This is a waste of resources, in CCPA's view, and is the LOQ issue that CCPA would like to see fixed by amending the legislation.

Before proceeding to discuss that specific concern in the amendment, I think it's worth noting how virtual elimination compares to the approach taken in the Stockholm Convention, and how that convention addresses the specific concern that we would like to see fixed in CEPA.

The Stockholm Convention addresses the same kinds of substances as virtual elimination. The convention first has substances nominated that have persistence and long-range transport and bioaccumulation characteristics and what the convention describes as toxic or adverse effects. However, in translating the last criteria into the CEPA language, what the convention refers to as “toxic” is what CEPA refers to as “inherently toxic”. Here we get into the issue of the confusion between the Canadian approach and the international approach. The convention then takes substances that meet these candidate criteria and, before there is a determination that the substance is a POP, applies the additional steps of doing a risk profile, which is like our risk assessment in CEPA, and considering socio-economic factors.

To summarize, to be a POP, a substance needs to meet the same factors as virtual elimination in CEPA--persistence and bioaccumulation--and has to undergo a risk assessment similar to the section 64 CEPA finding. Also, a long-range transport criterion that applies to POPs doesn't apply to virtual elimination in CEPA.

The persistence and bioaccumulation criteria under the convention and for POPs in CEPA for virtual elimination are almost identical, although there are some minor technical differences.

Under Stockholm, for releases from products, there are two annexes. One annex has the objective of elimination, the other annex has the objective of restriction of production and use. In CEPA, this is dealt with under the regulatory powers in section 93, where production and use can be banned or restricted.

Under the Stockholm Convention, there is a separate annex for releases from plant operations as opposed to products, which are dealt with in the first two annexes. Here, the objective for releases and the approaches are very similar to virtual elimination in CEPA. The convention stipulates measures to reduce or eliminate these releases in terms of establishing a goal of continuing minimization and, where feasible, ultimate elimination. This is very similar to the ultimate reduction to the LOQ language for virtual elimination in CEPA. Also, just as CEPA takes into account environmental and health risks as well as social, economic, and technical factors in setting release limits, the Stockholm Convention requirements for POPs releases are described in terms of “...application of available, feasible, practical measures...”, “...expeditiously achieve a realistic and meaningful level of release reduction...” and “best environmental techniques”. So the objectives and the approaches in the convention for POPs releases are very similar to those in CEPA.

On trace contaminants, given the similarities of the Stockholm Convention for POPs and CEPA for virtual elimination, CCPA would suggest looking at the convention to fix the problem that we see with CEPA for trace contaminant levels of virtual elimination substances and products. As our ability to measure continuously improves, we will find trace contaminant levels for virtual elimination substances in products at levels that may not be of environmental or health concern. But Environment Canada would still be required to establish LOQs for such contaminants, even when they are convinced that there is no sense in doing so.

Establishing LOQs for substances and products will be technically challenging, expensive, and time-consuming for both government and industry, and it should not be done when it doesn't make sense to reduce the contaminant level. It should be reserved for when it does make sense to do so.

This very same issue was addressed in the Stockholm Convention in the annex of POP products that are to be eliminated. There is a note that says “Except as otherwise specified in the Convention, quantities of a chemical occurring as unintentional trace contaminants in products and articles shall not be considered to be listed in this Annex”.

So Canada and other countries in the POPs convention have agreed to not address unintentional trace contaminants as a matter of course, but only to do so when there is a specific decision that this is necessary and is worth doing. Incorporating similar thinking and language into CEPA would mean that, for trace contaminant levels of virtual elimination substances in products, there would no longer be a need to waste resources and establish LOQs as a matter of course. This would only be done when there's a decision in a specific case that there is a need for it. The contaminant levels would still be addressed by the simpler approach of using section 93 powers to establish concentration levels, but without the need to develop the difficult-to-establish LOQ for products.

Since the proposed amendments that we are discussing and the reasoning behind them arise from the Stockholm Convention--and environmental groups, industry and countries around the world supported the convention--we hope that everyone will readily agree to incorporate the type of thinking and provisions that we're proposing in CEPA.

Our proposed amendment is set out in my written notes before you and in our detailed submission that we filed last time. I won't read it here, in terms of technical drafting, but it's modelled after the language in Stockholm.

That addresses trace contaminant levels from products. I would note, though, for plant operations that result in emissions subject to virtual eliminations, we believe that LOQs remain appropriate. They are more easily developed here than for product contaminants, and they would still be required. Here the LOQ, we believe, is an essential part of the virtual elimination equation in CEPA, reflecting our ability to measure and the common sense to not chase the last molecule.

Thank you very much. I look forward to participating in the discussion on this.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mario Silva]

Thank you very much.

We now go to Derek Stack.

[Derek Stack, Executive Director, Great Lakes United]

Good morning. I'd like to step back a little bit further.

The roots of virtual elimination actually trace back to the 1979 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, in which the VE policy states that “The discharge of toxic substances in toxic amounts be prohibited and the discharge of any or all persistent substances be virtually eliminated”.

I respectfully remind the committee members that CEPA is the primary domestic tool through which Canada meets its commitments to the water quality agreement. CEPA 1999 recognizes a sort of virtual elimination, but the statute did not adopt the definition agreed to in its original water quality agreement context, and it departs significantly from the definition proposed by the international joint commission. The IJC recommends a VE policy that, among other things, applies to “all sources, pathways...and media” and “addresses the complete lifecycle of targeted chemicals”.

Unlike the IJC but consistent with a weakness in the water quality agreement, CEPA focuses on anthropocentric releases, ignoring the health impacts of some legacy toxics in sediment. What comes to mind there primarily are the areas of concern—the most toxic hot spots in North America.

CEPA focuses away from naturally occurring elements in its VE definition, so when you look at something like chlorine, which forms the chemical basis of some of the most persistent bioaccumulative toxics known, this further undermines the act's capacity to foster real pollution prevention. A focus on chemical precursors, at least in some instances, could effectively virtually eliminate whole classes of persistent bioaccumulative toxics. The IJC found that “approximately half of the 362 chemicals confirmed to be present in the water, sediment, or biota of the Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem are synthetic chlorinated organic substances, and many of these are expected to be persistent toxics.”

I invite committee members to consider a recent study by the Toxics Use Research Institute of Massachusetts that “considered whether less toxic alternatives were available for lead, formaldehyde, perchloroethylene, hexavalent chromium, and di(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP).” The study found that “in every application studied, at least one alternative was identified that was commercially available, was likely to meet the technical requirements of some users, and was likely to have reduced environmental and occupational health and safety impacts.”

In response to industry cost concerns, which inevitably come up when we're talking about virtual elimination, I draw the committee members' attention to a report commissioned by the VE task force seeking to identify economic instruments for realizing our virtual elimination goals: “To the extent that that innovation leads to the development of new substitutes less expensive than existing substitutes, the estimated costs of virtual elimination are overstated.”

The report recommends the IJC encourage parties to the water quality agreement to adopt pilot programs to test economic instruments. In so doing, the report later points to a guidance offered by the polluter-pays principle recommended by the OECD in 1975. It further suggests that the parties to the water quality agreement consider marketable permits, taxes, subsidies, deposit refund mechanisms, and other tools in pursuit of virtual elimination.

Two additional CEPA clauses undermine the act's capacity to protect human health and the environment. The first is that a level of quantification is needed prior to any action, and second is the pollute-permissive language of the act, which focuses on what levels can be released rather than what cannot be released. Quoting directly from the act, “When the level of quantification for a substance has been specified...the Ministers shall prescribe the quantity or concentration of the substance that may be released”. Recognizing that technical innovation will allow for ever smaller quantifiable concentration, the act's pursuit of levels of quantification is a bit of a red herring.

In 1994, the IJC's VE task force, in identifying gaps and impediments to achieving VE goals, noted that “The governments' “pollution prevention” approach generally pertains to control (rather than prevention), focuses on releases (rather than uses) and attempts to determine acceptable levels (rather than elimination requirements).” The task force recommended that the parties promote development of technologies, products, and processes that will eliminate the creation of persistent toxics and thereby eliminate their input into the Great Lakes Basin ecosystem.

Although the task force recommended domestic measures to address this failure long before 1999, CEPA 1999 entrenched what was already recognized as a problem. CEPA's largest failure, however, is that it not only allows but requires the political repercussions of measures to virtually eliminate the most deleterious chemicals to human health and the environment.

It may seem trite to note the influence of political realities, but I respectfully remind committee members that following years and years of review, analysis, and identification, not a single chemical has been added to the list. Only one toxic pollutant, hexachlorobutadiene, has been recommended for action. This isn't due to a lack of scientific uncertainty regarding the toxicity of some of these chemicals. Many of them, such as DDT, PCBs, dioxin and other candidates for VE, are recognized as the most toxic among toxins and they are regulated globally. It's a reflection of the regulatory opt-out that consistently plagues and undermines the operationalization of CEPA.

I hope that historical context is of a benefit to the committee.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mario Silva]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Weiner.

[Joel Weiner, Senior Adviser, International Joint Commission]

I'm Joel Weiner I'm the senior adviser in the Canadian section of the International Joint Commission. With me is my colleague Mr. Jim Houston, our environmental adviser. We've been asked to come and explain the connection between the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, about which you heard a little bit from Derek, and virtual elimination.

As you have already heard from Derek, the IJC has had something to do with this. We are not involved at all in the implementation of CEPA; we're not in a position to comment on it. Frankly we're limited to making comments about what the commission has pronounced on, over the years that the water quality agreement has been in effect. The current commission has not dealt with either CEPA or virtual elimination. So we have nothing to report to you about what the current commission's views are.

What we can tell you is how the commission contributed over the years to the evolution of the concept of virtual elimination and perhaps shed some light on how it came to be included in the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, and then how it made its appearance into the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

If that satisfies the chair and the members of the committee, I will continue. I had planned to spend a bit of my remarks telling you a little about the IJC, which is on the verge of celebrating its centennial, since it was established by the Boundary Waters Treaty Act of 1909 between Canada and the United States. However, in the interest of time I will not do that.

Mr. Chair, I brought copies of our annual report for 2005 with me.

They are in English and in French, and I can table them before this committee, if you wish.

I think it's important to say that, in a nutshell, article IX, one of the provisions of the Boundary Waters Treaty, gives to the parties, the governments of Canada and the United States, the ability to refer to the commission any matters they choose with respect to transboundary environmental issues. Our primary mandate is to try to resolve disputes where the parties think we would be helpful--to avoid them in the first place, to do research and ongoing investigations, and to bring matters to the attention of the parties.

When the first water quality agreement was put into effect in 1972, it was largely as a result of recommendations that the commission itself had made when earlier it had received a substantial reference from the governments to look into the question of pollution in the Great Lakes. Among the things we recommended was that the parties needed to establish an agreement between themselves that focused exclusively on the question of water quality in the Great Lakes Basin.

The 1972 agreement does talk about toxic substances, but it doesn't talk in a lot of detail about persistent toxic substances. That probably reflects the state of knowledge at that time.

What's interesting to note is that between 1972 and 1978, when the new Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement took effect, the commission was publishing annual reports. The 1978 agreement mandated us to produce biennial progress reports, but up until that point we were obliged to produce annual progress reports.

When you look back at those early reports of ours, you'll find that we did have an awful lot to say about the impact of persistent toxic substances and the need to control them. Many people, and I think maybe Derek to a certain point has alluded to this, go so far as to credit the work of the IJC and its network of advisory boards for giving rise to the concept of virtual elimination. My colleague Jim and I have done a search through our records, and we actually haven't found a case where we used it in one of our documents, although we haven't had a chance to do an exhaustive search. But we are told by government officials who were behind the closed doors during the negotiations between Canada and the United States, leading up to the 1978 agreement, that the work of the commission, and particularly of its advisory boards, was very much on their minds. They were familiar with the work. In fact, many of those government members were members of our various advisory boards.

So I think the case can be made that the advice from earlier commissions between 1972 and 1978--that governments on both sides of the transboundary needed to get on with the job of addressing persistent toxic substances and their discharge into the Great Lakes Basin ecosystem--was something that was increasingly important. The commission was, I guess in those days, pleased to see that when the 1978 agreement came into effect, one of its very specific objectives was to achieve virtual elimination.

Going back to our third annual report, in 1974, we started commenting as early as then on the need for the two governments to start addressing the question of persistent toxic substances. In 1975, for example, we said that toxic substances, including heavy metals and persistent organic contaminants, may well have been the most serious and long-term problem faced by governments in ensuring the future beneficial uses of the Great Lakes.

If you will permit me, I will quote directly from that fourth report. This is what we said about toxic substances then: “They pose threats to water quality, the fishery, human health and ecology in general. Too little is known about these substances....Control and monitoring programs are imperative.” We went on to recommend that effective control laws be enacted and implemented to the fullest extent possible in both countries as quickly as possible. We returned to that theme in each of our ensuing reports.

Suffice it to say that the concept of virtual elimination appears to have taken shape, in the negotiations that led to the 1978 water quality agreement, largely, or at least in part, because of the things we had said over the years.

The 1978 agreement is still in effect today. It was amended by protocol in 1987, which basically means that new provisions were added to it. Very little, if anything, was struck from the 1978 agreement.

I might point out to members that the 1978 agreement is currently undergoing a substantial review by the parties, by the two governments. This review began in April of this year. The 1978 agreement, which as I said was amended by protocol in 1987, has not been revised at all since then. The two governments, together with the provinces and the states and an incredible number of stakeholders through the Great Lakes Basin, have embarked upon a fairly comprehensive review of the agreement.

In fact, today, later this morning, the commission will be transmitting to the two federal governments, to the Secretary of State in the United States and to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Canada, the commission's own independent advice about what the parties, we think, should be doing about the agreement. My understanding is that members of the committee will be receiving copies of our report in the next day or so, and you'll probably be reading about it in the press tomorrow morning.

In fact, this morning, as we're meeting here, there is a large assembly in Toronto. The way the parties have organized the review was that they established a large number of working groups looking at the various annexes and articles of the current agreement, and those working groups are spending the next two days in Toronto. These are binational working groups, Americans and Canadians working side by side, government officials and many of the environmental organizations, and they are presenting in one big assembly the considered output of their work.

These are early stages of the agreement's review, but I think over the next year you'll be hearing a fair bit about that.

Sir, am I using up too much time?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mario Silva]

You have one minute.

[Joel Weiner]

Thank you.

The virtual agreement makes its appearance in the 1978 agreement. It starts off right at the very beginning, at article II, which lays out the purposes of the agreement. As Derek pointed out, the two federal governments declare that it's their policy to prohibit the discharge of toxic substances in toxic amounts and to virtually eliminate the discharge of any or all persistent toxic substances.

The concept is referred to as well in article VI. There's a special annex in the agreement that deals with persistent toxic substances and also sets out the principles by which governments are to establish programs to deal with persistent toxic substances.

The very first principle I'm going to quote is: “The intent of programs specified in this Annex is to virtually eliminate the input of persistent toxic substances in order to protect human health and to ensure the continued health and productivity of living aquatic resources and human use thereof”.

Once virtual elimination came into effect, we looked at it a number of times over the years, and--just basically to cut to the chase--we struck a task force, a task force that spent two years looking at how you could effectively implement the concept of virtual elimination. We produced a report in two volumes, called A Strategy for Virtual Elimination of Persistent Toxic Substances. Once again, it's my pleasure to table before the committee copies of this report in both English and French.

Other witnesses have talked about the economic instruments that could be used to encourage the utilization of the virtual elimination concept. We produced a report on how in fact you could use economic instruments. We produced a report on how bio-indicators could be used to measure the success for virtually eliminating persistent toxic substances. We've had a whole string of reports. We, or at least previous commissions, have been commenting on this.

It is from that perspective that the commission expressed some degree of satisfaction when it saw two developments that basically emanated from all this work. One was the establishment in the late 1990s of the binational toxic strategy, where the two governments basically established programs to aggressively deal with persistent toxic substances. The other one was the manifestation earlier, in CEPA, of the concept of virtual elimination.

Hopefully that overview gives you some appreciation for the historical development of the concept and the role that earlier commissions played in it.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mario Silva]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Benevides.

[Hugh Benevides, Counsel, Canadian Environmental Law Association, PollutionWatch]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good morning. It's a pleasure to appear again on this most fundamental topic as it relates to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

My name is Hugh Benevides, and I'm staff lawyer with the Canadian Environmental Law Association, as most of you know. Together with Environmental Defence, our project, PollutionWatch, has made a substantial submission to the committee on this review.

With me again today is Dr. Kapil Khatter, also with PollutionWatch.

I want to make seven interconnected points, and perhaps I'll begin with what was going to be part of my first point last. As we move from the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, the weakened notion of virtual elimination, as Mr. Stack has mentioned, is one of the reasons PollutionWatch has made the linkage between the Great Lakes and the act. We see here how a strong binational policy has become much weaker law, and the review of CEPA is the opportunity to give effect to the direction of the agreement, which, as Mr. Weiner says, is now under way. It also allows Canada to lead, not follow, the United States in setting the policy direction. It's our hope that this committee can help to provide the necessary leadership that Canada will have in its report on CEPA.

In the context of the review of the agreement, I should add that we have an opinion piece in today's Toronto Star, and it comments on the state and nature of the review of the agreement as it stands at the moment.

What was initially my first point was just to take virtual elimination back to first principles, as some of the other witnesses have done to some degree as well. While there are a great number of technicalities involved with virtual elimination, one thing we can do is take it back to what is intended. It's very similar in nature to pollution prevention and also to what the International Joint Commission has called the philosophy of zero discharge.

All of these notions are very similar and very straightforward, but what we've lost sight of is what we want to do with VE. I would say those things are twofold. First, virtual elimination should be used to provide new processes and new facilities or retooling of existing facilities, toward the objective of pollution prevention. Secondly, for substances that are already in commerce, virtual elimination can be put into effect by substitution, as has been said, by less harmful substances and processes.

I point the committee to the long title of the act, which makes reference to pollution prevention; the declaration; the second and third recitals of the preamble; and paragraphs (a), (a.1), and (j) in the “Administrative Duties” section of the act, section 2, all of which make it clear that pollution prevention is a national goal and the priority approach to environmental protection. What I want to propose here—indeed, what we have proposed—are provisions that make those kinds of exhortations mandatory.

So the second point, then, is that in addition to those declaratory provisions—the preamble, etc.—the law needs to say that virtual elimination is the mandatory approach for the worst substances, and not just the priority approach. The drafting of that is a task we'd be happy to assist with, but it's a necessary one.

The current section 65, which is one of the key sections dealing with virtual elimination, is flawed because it doesn't take that first step of saying this is the mandatory priority approach. It focuses on releases. Indeed, most of the act, as it deals operationally with VE, deals with releases rather than pollution prevention. It is also flawed because substances can only be added by the CEPA ministers as a political decision, not a purely scientific decision. And I can come back to this point in terms of drafting particular provisions.

Also, while I'm on the subject, section 65 expressly waters down the goal of virtual elimination by allowing the consideration of “relevant social, economic or technical matters” to affect the releases that are allowed. I don't say necessarily that those considerations should not be taken into account, but certainly those considerations are mandated elsewhere in the act and elsewhere in fundamental policies of the federal government, so they are routinely taken into account in any case.

The next point is that we have long recommended a definition of virtual elimination that would give the desired direction and indicate that it's the centrepiece of pollution prevention. The focus should first be on that policy goal that I mentioned, so I'm going to read this definition that we've proposed in the past. I apologize that I haven't distributed it to the committee in advance, but I can provide it.

Our definition says that virtual elimination means the mandatory cessation of the intentional production, use, release, export, distribution, or import of a substance or class of substances. Where a substance is produced as a byproduct of the production or use of another substance, virtual elimination means changes to processes, practices, substitution of materials, or products to avoid the creation of the substance. That ties back into what I said at the outset about the two branches of pollution prevention and virtual elimination for which we're advocating.

As a companion to and tied into this is the need for mandatory language in the act that requires substitution of less harmful substances and processes, as well as stronger provisions for pollution prevention plans in section 56 of the act.

The next point is getting into the release section, those provisions that are already in the act and have been spoken to this morning already. We're advocating more mandatory language. For those substances already in circulation, the need for substitution would be expressed through obligations for reduction and elimination of releases.

The current section 65 needs to be linked with mandatory language to get to the ultimate reduction of the release of the substance—that wording that I believe Mr. Lloyd referred to this morning. Currently, there is nothing in the act linking that ultimate reduction to steps to get to that point, to what would amount to zero or close to zero.

Part of the puzzle with virtual elimination is the wording of the decision to list the substance as toxic. If you refer to section 77, which is the point where the ministers make the decision whether to list a substance as toxic, also tied into that is the decision on whether a substance should be targeted for virtual elimination.

This is a difference of opinion, but I believe we're talking about the same provision. Mr. Lloyd contended earlier that it's a mandatory provision. I contend that subsection 77(3) provides that where the ministers are satisfied that a number of conditions are in place, that is actually a quasi-mandatory or quasi-objective standard. It actually is a subjective standard. The ministers have to make a decision, whereas we would prefer that they rely on a scientific decision and that there not be any play in there for the ministers' satisfaction. It's cutting out that stage, and I have wording to eliminate those words. In the interests of time I won't read it, but I will of course provide it.

As a result of that change, existing subsection 77(4) would be deleted under our recommendations, as it becomes unnecessary.

The next point, which is tied to that, is on the issue that “the substance is not a naturally occurring radionuclide or a naturally occurring inorganic substance” is removed from the ambit of virtual elimination in the subsection that I'm suggesting be deleted, subsection 77(4).

I believe the exception of “a naturally occurring radionuclide or a naturally occurring inorganic substance” appears somewhere else in the act as well.

Part of the reason we would suggest the deletion is that it's not included in the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. I would recommend to the committee the excellent paper by your researcher, entitled “Virtual Elimination of Pollution from Toxic Substances”, from July of this year. It correctly identifies the addition of those words as weakening the concept of VE as it appears in the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement.

The last point, Mr. Chair, is on other discrepancies with international agreements. I point out in this context that the persistence and bioaccumulation regulations are regulations made under CEPA that allow the departments to determine whether a substance meets those two criteria and to set the criteria for persistence and bioaccumulation.

Those criteria are three times higher for persistence in water than is recommended in the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants and three times higher than what is in the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. The criteria are two times higher for sediment than what is recommended in the Stockholm Convention.

With those mixed, fairly straightforward, and also fairly technical recommendations, I leave it there and look forward to your questions.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mario Silva]

Thank you very much.

We'll start the round of questions. We'll start with Mr. Godfrey.

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

For a layperson who is not a chemist, one of the questions is on whether, despite or because of CEPA and indeed our increasing awareness of these highly dangerous substances, one can actually say we are progressively reducing those emissions in North America. I take the representative list that Mr. Stack pointed out on DDT, PCBs, dioxins, furans, and so on. Whether we have virtual elimination or not, can one say for the worst of the worst that over a period of time there has been a progressive reduction of these things? Is that in any way connected to CEPA or to other matters? Is it true, and what is the cause of it?

I invite anyone to answer. Mr. Lloyd.

[Gordon Lloyd]

I think the answer to your question is yes. I can provide information to the committee. I didn't bring it with me this time.

For the chemical industry, I provided information when I talked about our reducing emissions report last May, where I discussed in detail what we're doing on climate change. We also track what we've been doing on emissions of substances like dioxins and furans, and those have been substantially reduced.

I know it's also the case in broader studies that have shown it outside the chemical industry. The government folks might want to comment on that.

I don't think it means we need to stop in that process. I think it's a continuing process. The goal in Stockholm and the goal in VE say you keep going and you keep trying to get lower. We would agree with that.

More needs to be done, but it is from a basis of a lot of progress already having been made. These are the worst of the worst substances, and there is no discussion or argument about that. We know we need to do whatever we can to reduce it.

[Hugh Benevides]

Thank you.

I would certainly suggest that the dirty dozen are the worst of the worst by certain measures, which I don't have the background to go into and say why they qualify and others don't. But certainly on the long-range transport, among other characteristics, they exhibit those.

I would simply point out the tonnes of emissions of pollutants that are emitted, which are accessible on pollutionwatch.org, and even more importantly, or in addition to that, the thousands of chemicals in circulation that have been through the categorization process, 23,000 or so. But roughly 50,000 other substances have not been categorized, have not been assessed, and are acting synthetically in the environment and in our bodies.

For those numbers, understandably perhaps, some of them are perhaps coming down, but their effects are still occurring. In fact, in many cases, as we know with dioxins and many other substances, only the very smallest quantities have hazardous effects, until we get to zero on some of those substances.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mario Silva]

Mr. Stack.

[Derek Stack]

I would pick up where Mr. Godfrey left off. For some of the legacy toxics, we can turn to international agreements and other statutes to thank for the reduction. I think that CEPA itself has been quite weak in dealing with some of those.

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

I want to pick up a point that you made in your presentation, which is that it excludes things that have been there for a while and have been building up at the bottom of the lakes and all the rest of it. It's all about releases, right? How do you get to the virtual elimination of something that has been accumulating at the bottom of the lake? It seems to be a much more challenging proposition to be in a position to say, well, we can hardly find any trace of this using conventional equipment, so to speak, when in fact that stuff has been building up.

Are you really asking for the same degree of virtual elimination of things that have been building up? What would you have to do to get to that point so you could measure it?

[Derek Stack]

I'm not sure I'm entirely following your question. If you define virtual elimination as a release, then yes, you're right, you can't go after the sediment because it's not targeted for virtual elimination.

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

Okay. I was trying to understand how you get at something that has been accumulating. What is it you're actually getting at?

[Derek Stack]

I'm suggesting that you can't use CEPA in that instance.

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

So are you saying virtual elimination doesn't make any sense for that? You can't virtually eliminate the sediment in which the stuff is--

[Derek Stack]

You can clean the sediment. Certainly I'm not suggesting that we'd want to go and stir all that up, because there are a lot of problems with that.

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

I'm just trying to understand the....

[Derek Stack]

I'm stumbling because I'm not quite following your question, and that's twice you've tried, so I guess I'm failing.

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

No, I'm probably communicating badly, but maybe Mr. Benevides will be able to interpret me.