Mr. Chairman and the committee, I'm Donald Spady, I'm a pediatrician from the University of Alberta. I want to thank the committee for the opportunity to present some information with respect to children's health legislation and the environment.
I am here because in September 2004 I was given the mandate by Health Canada to do a survey of governance instruments, or laws, regulations, and guidelines that related to children's environmental health legislation in OECD countries, but not including Canada.
Children are often considered only peripherally in the development of legislation; however, for the creation of new legislation in Canada, Health Canada decided to explore what legislation exists in OECD countries relating to environmental health in children. Today I want to address some issues that have arisen out of our research and hope that they will be helpful in the development of the final product.
Now, apart from the fact that children are Canada's future and that events in environment and childhood affect future health and productivity, you might wonder why children are so special in the creation of environmental health legislation. Kathy Cooper eloquently described the vulnerabilities of children, and I'm going to save the committee three minutes and 13 seconds by not saying the same thing.
I will not go into detail of how we did our survey, nor will I present much in the way of specific findings. Details of what we did and what we found are in the submission to this committee that was provided earlier this year. Suffice it to say we found very few governance instruments that specifically considered children in their genesis or implementation.
I want to spend the remaining time on several more general findings and actions that we think should take place. One problem with environmental legislation is that there are a tremendous number of chemicals in the environment, over 100,000, that can potentially affect any of us. I say “potentially” because for the most part these chemicals have not been assessed for safety to any significant degree. Many of these compounds are in our bodies in minuscule amounts, but for the most part we do not know what particular blood level of a compound is dangerous to humans, nor do we know how combinations of these compounds can affect our health--we are in the dark. Yet, the attitude toward society of the manufacturers of these compounds is that they are safe until proven dangerous.
In an ideal world, these compounds should all have been assessed for safety prior to their use in industry or wherever. Practically speaking, this is not the case. Very few of these compounds have been assessed for safety to any suitable degree. This attitude in part is due to the very high cost of assessing the safety of many compounds and in part to the lax regulation regarding their introduction and use.
One of our recommendations is that there should be a change in regulatory philosophy such that any new compounds must be shown to be safe before they are allowed on the market. This is the proposed approach being taken in Europe under the new REACH proposal, which reflects the registration, evaluation, and authorization of chemicals and requires that all compounds must be shown to be safe before they are licensed for use. There is some leeway in this in that initially compounds to be tested are those produced above a certain volume; however, some other compounds sold at even very small volumes that are felt to be particularly at risk of being dangerous must have their safety demonstrated before release.
This proposal is due to come online in 2007 and will apply not only to Europe but to any manufacturers who want to sell their products in Europe. Since this will ultimately include Canadian and American manufacturers, it might be a reasonable proposal that Canadian legislation also take the general attitude of guilty until proven innocent rather than the current attitude of innocent until proven guilty. Such an approach may act to help industry assess the safety of various compounds by spreading the task of assessment over a larger field of partners, thus cutting the costs. This, however, might require an unrealistic level of cooperation between various industry players.
The second general finding is that as a general rule proposed legislation should incorporate the precautionary principle in its regulation. The precautionary principle states that when an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken, even if some cause-and-effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. This principle is often viewed by industry as a way of preventing the introduction of new substances. This is not the case. It is only advocating a cautious approach when dealing with a potentially dangerous situation. In fact, the precautionary principle should promote research into the safety of new compounds rather than being considered a mechanism to unnecessarily slow down the introduction of these compounds.
Very little of the legislation we found specifically incorporated the precautionary principle, and what legislation we found was largely from the European Union.
The third message, and perhaps the most important one I want to make, is basically one of placing the needs of children first. They are the most vulnerable Canadians, and they are our future. We recommend that a mandate be created that all governance initiatives consider the potential impacts on children's environmental health, for all legislative, development, and planning activities where children might be affected.
This could be implemented, in part, by the creation of a national level advisory board to monitor these governance instruments. This is similar to executive order 13045 from 1997 that was signed by President Clinton. It was one of the very few governance instruments we found that specifically addressed the unique characteristics of the child.
As part of this, we recommend that there be an annual or biannual report of the most important environmental indicators of the well-being of Canada's children, with each report highlighting a specific issue. Such a report would give children a higher profile within government and within society. It would act as an impetus to improve children's health.
As well, we recommend the creation of an advisory body at the national level that is modelled after the American President's Task Force on Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks to Children, created by executive order 13045, which would demonstrate the high priority the Government of Canada places on children's well-being. Such a body would also serve as a vehicle for assessing legislative and other governmental impacts on children's environmental health, and it could extend to public education initiatives.
There are several advantages to these recommendations. I think perhaps the most important one is that since children, including the fetus, are often the most vulnerable humans, legislation designed to minimize exposure to potential and actual noxious environmental agents in childhood, for the most part, will meet the safety needs of adults. Another reason is that there would be a need to investigate what various safe levels are for children. There would be a fair bit of research stimulated to address this issue. Also, legislators would become more aware of the importance of children and the factors that can influence their health when creating legislation.
I'll stop now. I have reviewed three important aspects of our research: the need to revise how we assess both old and new compounds for safety, the advocacy of the precautionary principle as a guideline for legislation, and the concept of placing children first when considering legislation.
I want to thank the committee for allowing me to present some of our findings. Thank you.