Thank you, Chair, committee members. Thanks for having me present first at the CEPA review; I take that as a compliment.
My name is Kapil Khatter. I'm a family physician and I'm working with Pollution Watch, which is a joint project of Environmental Defence and the Canadian Environmental Law Association.
CEPA is the backbone of Canadian environmental legislation. The act brings to one place the powers that deal with most of Canada's significant environmental problems: air pollution that causes respiratory illnesses; persistent organic pollutants that are building up in our bodies; greenhouse gases that can lead to climate change; metals like mercury that are contaminating our fish, our wildlife, and ourselves. CEPA gives the federal government the powers to regulate any chemical, air pollutant, or greenhouse gas deemed to be endangering our health or the health of our environment. It offers the government a range of tools to reduce pollution and prevent harm.
I think the main questions before us today are how broken is CEPA and how much work will it take to repair? We would argue that CEPA is broken and in fact that it was never really built to work well. It was a good attempt and it doesn't need to be shelved, but there are some significant changes that need to be made if CEPA is to be protective of our environment and of our health.
For that reason, we believe the committee needs to undertake a comprehensive review, hearing from a diversity of sectors and traveling where needed. The committee should see this review as an inquiry into the state of pollution in Canada, into the state of our health, and an investigation of whether CEPA has done its job promoting clean air, clean water, and clean food.
There is ample evidence to suggest that Canada is failing to meet its environmental challenges, and falling behind internationally. According to a recent study of OECD data, Canada ranked 28th out of 29 OECD countries in emissions, 29th out of 29 in volatile organic compounds, 27th out of 28 in sulphur oxides, 26th out of 28 in nitrogen oxides, etc. According to the Ontario Medical Association, air pollution in Ontario now causes 1,900 premature deaths, 9,800 hospital admissions, and 13,000 emergency room visits, costing that province alone more than $1 billion per year in hospital admissions and worker absenteeism. More than 4 billion kilograms of air pollutant releases were reported by Canadian industrial facilities in 2003, a number that has been on the rise lately. Canada's aggregate greenhouse gas emissions have increased more than any other G-8 country in the past decade, up 19% since 1990, until 2001. A recent comparison of Canadian and U.S. industrial sites in the Great Lakes found that per facility we emit 93% more potentially cancer-causing air pollutants and almost four times the pollutants that can cause reproductive or developmental harm.
The United States has legally enforceable national ambient air quality standards and water quality criteria that are enforceable, whereas Canada does not. They have strong regulations and agreements with companies to phase out some of the most persistent and toxic chemicals, the most problematic chemicals right now, like PFOS flame retardants and stain repellents, while we are still trying to finalize our assessments. The United States has a comprehensive program to test for body chemical levels. We don't even know how much lead our children are being exposed to right now.
We have done a good job under CEPA of some things, of screening the substances in use in Canada to determine which are most persistent and bioaccumulative, in the hopes of doing something about them. But while we've been assessing chemicals, the Europeans have created REACH--the registration, evaluation, and authorization of chemicals--a program that will keep problem chemicals off the market by ensuring that everything in use has adequate safety data. Our present CEPA doesn't even dream of doing that. Since Europe is the largest chemicals market in the world, it is worth asking Canadian companies who are meeting the standard for the European market why they couldn't meet the standard here at home.
CEPA fails to require that problems get fixed once we find them. It lacks mandatory timelines to get the job done, with the result that even once we know that a chemical is a serious risk to the environment or to human health, government processes to regulate the chemical can be slow and ineffective. CEPA doesn't directly apply to the significant number of chemicals in consumer products. Many products, we are now learning, contain unacceptably high levels of toxins, and CEPA puts the burden on the government's shoulders to show that chemicals or products are harmful, rather than on manufacturers to assure us that what they are selling won't harm us.
The act allows us to virtually eliminate the worst actors, to do away with the toxic and persistent chemicals. But virtual elimination as written in the act doesn't work and the process needs to be streamlined. Only one substance has made it onto the virtual elimination list over the life of the act.
We need a CEPA that will eliminate the persistent organic pollutants that are accumulating in our breast milk, a CEPA that will stop air pollution from causing asthma attacks, a CEPA that will prevent metals like mercury from contaminating people and wildlife, and a CEPA that will rescue the Great Lakes and help to rebuild the ecosystems there.
To be fair, what we know about pollution has changed a lot since 1999. We know better now that children are more vulnerable, and have found that lower doses of chemicals are more dangerous than we thought. We know that the economic loss and health care costs due to air pollution are well above the costs of regulating air pollution through CEPA. We know that mercury and persistent chemicals are transporting to the north, contaminating country food and the bodies of our first nations.
It is now time to look at CEPA through these new eyes and to modernize it to meet these challenges. The question is not whether the processes started under CEPA 1999 have been going well, or whether we've done the categorization and assessments we intended to do. The question is has CEPA been successful in keeping us from polluting our country with persistent chemicals, toxic metals, and air particulates? Has CEPA protected large population areas, like the Great Lakes basin, from the risks from environmental contamination? For us, and for our asthmatics, our learning disabled, our cancer victims, the answer is no.
The act can be complex, as the problems are complicated, and we understand you will have many questions. There are many experts out there to help answer these questions—health organizations, industry associations, scientists, first nations groups, medical officers of health, children's advocates, and international experts knowledgeable about other jurisdictions. To do a comprehensive review, as both the legislation and the recent throne speech promises, you will need to hear from these sectors. It is the only way you can learn well what the problems are and what kinds of solutions are needed.
Thank you very much.