Environment Committee on May 10th, 2006

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have been made aware of a letter from the Canadian Consumer Specialty Products Association. it is an industry organization that you are probably familiar with, representing companies such as Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, etc. In that letter, they state their disagreement with the definition of "toxic" in the Act, as if that definition was incorrect.

Is the definition of what should be included or not, or of what should be considered as a toxic substance, an important issue for environmentalists, industry or even the department?

[Derek Stack]

I believe that the criteria in the Act are sufficient to establish if a substance is toxic.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

All right.

[Dr. Kapil Khatter]

When we think of something that's toxic, we think of something that's poisonous, that if someone is exposed to it, it can cause a problem. For us, the definition under CEPA is already watered down by the fact that it's only considered toxic if we know people are being exposed to it at a high enough level to cause a problem. We would consider that it's a term that's applicable, and in fact we would think that it needs to be even stronger. We should be dealing with something that is a poison as a toxic substance before we have to find out that people are being exposed to it in high enough levels that it's causing attention.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

CO₂ would be a good example, wouldn't it?

[Derek Stack]

I might personally disagree with Kapil on this. The benefit of the criteria for defining toxic as currently exists in the act is that things we might not normally consider to be toxic, such as CO₂ and other greenhouse gases, can get captured because their concentration levels do impact on the environment. Recently the act was amended to include greenhouse gases. It is my professional and personal opinion that CEPA could have already captured those issues using the existing criteria.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

All right.

Do you think Environment Canada and the other federal departments have enough money to be effective in the promotion and protection of the environment? Has the department received enough attention from the government?

[Derek Stack]

I don't think funding levels in Environment Canada ever came back up to where they were before the late 1990s, whereas other departments enjoyed increases. That said, if the department's approach to CEPA is to continue avoiding regulation and to focus on ineffective programs, then yes, it is going to need a whole lot more money. If it chooses to streamline and just get the job done with a more prescriptive and directive approach to the act, then they could realize their gains with less money.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Since it is a shared responsibility, do you think the cooperation with the provinces relating to CEPA is satisfactory? Are there good federal-provincial relations?

[Derek Stack]

That's a tough one. A lot of the federal-provincial dynamic has taken place with the CCME, the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment. That has not been particularly productive at giving us environmental gains. It has probably led to better provincial-federal cooperation, but not to real environmental improvement. Unfortunately, a lot of the necessary cooperation to realize CEPA between the feds and the provinces has been focused in the CCME and not in CEPA.

[Dr. Kapil Khatter]

We've been clear from the beginning that we thought CCME would be a distraction from getting the job done, my understanding being that anything scheduled under CEPA to be acted upon, whether it's a greenhouse gas or an air pollutant or a chemical, gives the federal government the jurisdiction to do something about it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Del Mastro.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you.

Under the heading of a more prescriptive or directed approach—you actually led me into my question quite well, and I thank you for that—I'm a big believer in setting priorities, and I think we can get weighed down by looking at this in an aggregate nature. If we look at where our standing is right now on various indicators, we could really become overwhelmed with how to approach things.

My question to you is, as a priority, is there a single biggest or most important contributor to air pollution that we could really address? How could CEPA be used to combat or address it? Why haven't we done it in the past?

I guess the first two would be most important. Is there a single biggest contributor, or could we narrow the approach down to a single contaminant or pollutant or a couple of contaminants or pollutants that we could really dig in on to make some real, significant gains on pollution and contamination?

[Dr. Kapil Khatter]

I feel a little lost at sort of being an expert on the regulatory side of things, but one example we can look to is the ambient air quality standards they have in the U.S. They have standards for six air pollutants. We'd be looking at those same air pollutants and having similar or stronger standards in Canada.

You need to bring in some people who know more about how that is done and how that is related to how we do things in Canada.

[Derek Stack]

I'm not sure you'll like my answer.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Is it no?

[Derek Stack]

If you want to tackle climate change, smog--with its asthma--and the host of other pollutants, like mercury, we need cleaner power production, and CEPA doesn't deal with that explicitly.

That doesn't really answer your question in a fair way, but in a practical way, if CEPA did a better job, or if the federal government were able to do something about the way power is produced in this country, we'd have a huge reduction.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

You are speaking of hydro-electricity. Correct?

[Derek Stack]

No, actually I'm speaking of almost everything else.

Are you asking me if I'm speaking in favour of hydro?

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

No, I'm asking if you're indicating that hydro production.... When you say power, are you speaking of all--

[Derek Stack]

I'm thinking more of plants like Nanticoke, which have coal-fired power production.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Okay, that's fair.

[Derek Stack]

To be fair, that's not necessarily CEPA's domain, but anything that could be done in CEPA to encourage a shift away from our dirty energy sources to cleaner sources--

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Such as....

[Derek Stack]

Even natural gas is better than coal. I would much prefer to see--