Environment Committee on May 10th, 2006

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Nuclear?

[Derek Stack]

I'm not going to support nuclear, no. That would be political suicide for me.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

That's fine. I'm just asking, because you were going there, and I wanted to know if that was what you were heading toward.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you.

Mr. Bigras.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Chairman, I forgot to ask a question about the various models, especially the American and European models.

If I am not mistaken, the US Senate amended the American model in July 2005. In your brief, you say that Democrat senators brought measures which tend to bring the American model closer to the European one. They have not yet completely adopted the European model but they want to make their system more and more similar to the European system. You also stated, Mr. Khatter, that we should study closely the European model and, if possible, amend our legislation according to that model.

Generally speaking, we tend to adopt standards that are closer to what they do in the US. Therefore, if we were to adopt the European model, would that be a constraint or an obstacle to better harmonisation with the US? Would it not be better for us to emulate the amendments passed in July 2005 by the american Senate? Usually, we tend to harmonize our standards and practices with those of the US.

I ask this question because we would not want to be in conflict with the Americans on such an issue since, in Canada, we have always tried to harmonize our standards with those of the US.

[Dr. Kapil Khatter]

I think our goal or our recommendation would be--you know, the term “best practice“ was used--to try to harmonize with the highest common denominator in any of our major trading markets. In terms of chemicals regulation, the European market is the biggest chemicals market and they're ahead of the game in terms of regulating processed chemicals, so it would make sense for us to harmonize with them.

There are other places--like where we're harmonizing with the U.S.--that would still make sense for us and where we're still lagging, like the emission stats that we've talked about where the U.S. facilities are doing a better job of keeping toxic air pollutants out of our environment. Even if we were only harmonizing with where the U.S. is at, we would still see a lot of benefit in Canada.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

In the case of the Great Lakes, since they are at the border between Canada and US, do you think that the European model could create problems?

[Derek Stack]

In dealing with the way American law evolves, it does not make sense to go and talk about Europe. Policy-makers in the U.S. are not interested in hearing what's happening in Europe, for the most part. So what some in the environmental community have done is extract pieces out of each of the principles and presented it to lawmakers in the U.S. as the Louisville Charter.

So that would be the way to deal with it. Find out how it's being contextualized in the U.S., because they're not talking about reach, they're talking about the Louisville Charter, which pulls on some of the basic principles and hasn't been widely adopted, but it has been promoted by the environmental community across the U.S. basin of the Great Lakes as a means of a stronger approach to regulating toxins.

I am sympathetic to the worry that we would be alienating trading partners. That being said, I have no worries that that concern will be adequately addressed in the corridors of power.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Watson.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the guests. It is good to see you again, Mr. Khatter.

I want to return to the Great Lakes a bit here. Being the southernmost MP in Canada from down in the Windsor area, just outside of Windsor, we've had a number of reports down there. The Gilbertson-Brophy report--I don't know if either of you are familiar with that at all, but certainly they're beginning to document a number of the links between our air pollution and our cancer rates, our respiratory problems. We have some of the highest rates down there. Even within our own family we've seen non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a number of those things there.

Windsor happens to have one of the highest miscarriage rates in all of Canada as well. My wife works on the birth side of things. High-end fertility among couples, you name it, it's happening in our region.

You've made the comment that CEPA has not protected the Great Lakes basin sufficiently. I think that was perhaps in your opening comments, or your opening comments, Mr. Stack, but one of you will be able to address that.

I want you to expand on that a little bit more, but before expanding on that I want to ask the flip side of it: have there been any CEPA-related success stories in the Great Lakes area that you can talk about?

[Derek Stack]

I'd be hard-pressed to find them, honestly.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

You'd be hard-pressed to find one.

That's fine. It's a fair question, and I simply wanted to probe the other side of it: has CEPA produced any or been able to help in producing any success stories--

[Derek Stack]

I anticipated the question earlier. I gave it some thought earlier and I wasn't able to come up with anything. Sorry.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Okay, that's fine.

Failures related to gaps in CEPA, what are some of the shortcomings? Why are you making the recommendation? Why is it not protected sufficiently, the Great Lakes basin? Can you expand on that? What's missing? What has to be explored?

[Derek Stack]

In that specific case, I think it's more the implementation side than the text of the act relating to the problems in the Great Lakes. A lot of the problems in the Great Lakes relate to deposition and their indirect pollution channels.

[Dr. Kapil Khatter]

At the same time, when we think about the Great Lakes, we think about it as a basin in an area where there is a large population and where 45% of our air emissions that are toxic air pollutants are happening. We need to think about how CEPA can deal with those, the other parts of dealing with a large population area with lots of urban centres. It isn't just the water quality.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

One of the reports I was reading here, the Partners in Pollution report, provided a lot of discussion about the different impacts, releases to air, water, underground landfill. The majority of those are on the U.S. side. Obviously if we make some improvements with respect to CEPA for the Great Lakes, for our side, we are only making some amount of impact. Is there any possible way to bring in the international component? Obviously we'd do some work on our side of the boundary, but in order to truly strike the blow on this one we have to get some amount of improvement from the U.S. side.

[Derek Stack]

I think it's only fair to start by responding that most of the plants in the U.S. are actually far more efficient than our plants. They have increased net pollution levels simply because there are that many more of them. They are hugely more efficient than most of our plants. Then the rest of the answer is simply that there are lots of things that I think we can do. I'm not sure that CEPA is the place to deal with some of those other ways of dealing with the Great Lakes.

The EPA had overseen, over the course of 2005, the Great Lakes regional collaboration, where they consulted with hundreds of people of all stakeholder kinds to come up with plans for restoring the lakes and priorities, but I don't think that's within the context of today's current discussion.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

What should be added to CEPA with respect to the Great Lakes?

[Derek Stack]

I think commitments to the existing international agreements would suffice. I certainly wasn't trying to suggest that all sorts of mechanisms need to be built into CEPA in order to deal with the Great Lakes differently from the rest of the country. That wasn't my intent.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

But you want those recognized within CEPA?

[Derek Stack]

I want international commitments recognized within CEPA.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you, Mr. Watson.

Mr. Silva.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Doctor Khatter had talked about the REACH program in Europe and the fact that the big deficiency he sees with the present legislation is that the onus is on the government as opposed to the manufacturers. I'm wondering what the REACH program.... I'm not sure, and I think you were going to check into this, but is it already in force? Has there been any type of feedback from the European Union as to how it's being implemented and whether it's been successful thus far, if it is in fact in force?

[Dr. Kapil Khatter]

There is a political agreement. I was going to check on it, and I did put in a couple of e-mails and haven't got a good response in terms of an estimation in terms of what the timeline is in terms of finalizing and implementing REACH. I will continue to search for that information, but they have agreed on REACH as a model.