Environment Committee on Nov. 27th, 2006

[Richard Hanneman]

It was taken into account. In other words, the recommendation was that road salts—all sodium chloride, potassium chloride, magnesium chloride, and calcium chloride—were going to be called toxic. That's not localizing it. Obviously all salts, or any of those salts, are not toxic.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

No, but in the end it was not considered—

[Richard Hanneman]

Correct, but it was a discussion that caused the problem.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

No, I understand that, and this is where the department probably erred. But it seems to me that the framework of the legislation is adequate.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Scarpaleggia, your time is up. You may pick up on that.

Ms. Wright, I know you want in there as well.

Mr. Calkins.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think everybody's kind of pointing in the same direction, with the wind sock maybe teetering a bit left and right, depending on the particular issue. I know that the salt guys have a specific issue here that they want to talk about, and the chemical producers as well. Everybody's got their interests at heart, and I certainly do appreciate some of the difficulties that this legislation poses.

But where I want to go with this is, how often are these things being used for the department? How many complaints do we get? How many voluntary submissions do we get? About people bringing forward information of wrongdoing and so on, is there adequate whistle-blower protection for some of these submissions?

[Cynthia Wright]

There is whistle-blower protection, and we think it's fairly modern and powerful. If your question is how often do we get people whistle-blowing, making a complaint and informing us, it's not often.

However, there are two things. As I said earlier, our observation is that the regulations under CEPA are substances that are somewhat obscure. They're not usually as visible as the kind of substances or regimes under the Fisheries Act. They're a bit more difficult for citizens to understand, and therefore it's more costly to understand what the violation is, etc.

So those are the reasons, which we're coming up with, that citizens don't use these tools more often. But the act has fairly modern tools for allowing citizens to make the environmental protection action, civil law proceedings, and whistle-blower protection. It has a number of these tools in it.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

I have a question for Mr. Wright.

In your discussion, obviously you want to make changes parallel to the Fisheries Act, as far as the penalties are concerned. I have some concerns with that, because when you're talking about the Fisheries Act, you're talking about water. Nobody owns the water. So when you're talking about penalties and so on, it's obvious we're just dealing with fish. But when you're talking about environmental protection, we're talking about whole different levels of property ownership that could be involved. And when you start talking about these penalties, where half goes to the person laying the charge, we're talking about whole different amounts of money and a whole different context, compared to the Fisheries Act.

I have some serious reservations with that. I was wondering if you would like to address this first, and if anybody else on the panel would like to give their input on that as well, please do so. Frankly, I don't think it's an equal or a fair comparison.

[Robert Wright]

Thank you.

I'd respectfully have to disagree with that. We own the water; it's a public resource. The fisheries are a public resource. Regarding the Fisheries Act, there's a case right now in P.E.I. as to whether the fish resource is held in trust for the people in Canada. So we'll wait and see what the court has to say about that.

I'd have to disagree with your starting point. I don't think the difference, even if there was the one you suggested, really holds up under analysis. Here we're dealing with substances that are known to be toxic to human beings. How can you have a lesser regime dealing with substances that are toxic to human beings than the one dealing with fish? We're left in the conundrum of using the Fisheries Act as our premier pollution prevention legislation. It's pitiful.

If anyone stood back in any other country and looked at this.... In the U.S. they have the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and so on. We have the Fisheries Act as our strongest provision. It is the only act that has the provision I'm suggesting. It's a federal act. It has a long history of being used respectfully and responsibly. I suggest we should go for it with CEPA, bring it up to par.

I hope that dealt with the issues. If you have any further questions, I'd be pleased to answer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Go ahead, Mr. Hanneman.

[Richard Hanneman]

Mr. Teeter wants to talk, I think, about part of it, but I want to specifically address the point made earlier, the point that CEPA deals with human health. It does, but it doesn't have to.

In the case of road salt, it specifically was not alleged that salt was toxic to human health. That was part of the public confusion--that under CEPA, it is something that could be called toxic to human health. But no one was alleging that. Health Canada has reviewed salt in the diet for many years and is quite confident, I'm sure, that salt is not toxic to human health in the amounts used. Anything is toxic in the right dosage.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Teeter is next.

[Michael Teeter]

I'm sure that Cynthia or Gordon would know this better than I do, but I think you're completely right. The complexity of the interactions with society is much greater with CEPA than it is with the Fisheries Act, in my opinion. Not the least of those is the constitutionality issue; it is a reality. No one disputes that the federal government has constitutional authority over fish and water; it's much more complex in the case of CEPA-managed substances or CEPA-assessed substances, as we found out in the case of road salt. So I don't think these two statutes are actually easy to compare, when you look at them very carefully.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you, Mr. Calkins.

Mr. Bigras is next.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

To better grasp the enforcement of the Act, it's always a good idea to consider the example of a specific case. Consider the case of tetrachloroethylene, a solvent used by many dry-cleaning companies. I was surprised to hear that Quebec is the province with the highest number of such companies per inhabitant in Canada. This was my first surprise. This is a good example.

This product — please correct me if I am mistaken — has been assessed, pursuant to clause 64 of the Act, as a toxic substance. We have implemented a regulation by virtue of clause 93 of the Act; we gathered around an issue table the industry, the environment community and the government; as early as 1998, we established a training group in the Quebec area, in order to phase in the good codes of practice adopted by the Canadian Council of the Ministers of the Environment; and today, we wonder where we stand.

As for the enforcement of the Act, where do we stand? Have there been any inspections? What actions have been taken pursuant to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act? I think that based on a specific case, it is always interesting to see how the law has been enforced.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Ms. Wright, do you want to tackle that one?

[Cynthia Wright]

We did give the numbers of investigations, inspections, and compliance actions in the summary documents. We can certainly give them for Quebec, and we can give, relative to that particular substance you're talking about, the regulations and the level of inspections in Quebec. In our annual report we do break it down by jurisdiction, so we can give you more detailed information.

It's fair to say that in some cases the Quebec government did get out in front of the regulation and did provide a trading incentive to encourage industry to get into compliance with some of these issues around dry cleaning early on. I don't know for sure if that is one of the reasons we have fewer actions in Quebec, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is. It's an example of two levels of government trying to achieve the same ends and using both their authorities in doing that.

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

I understand that we have tried to encourage the installation of new more recent and more effective equipment and that we have tried to implement a management code, a code of practice for waste collection. I would like to see if these codes of practice have finally yielded conclusive results? An acknowledgement has been granted — I saw this on your Web site — to approximately 10 or 15 dry-cleaning companies, especially in Quebec. In other words, between 15 and 20 dry-cleaners out of 700 have an accreditation, a certification. That's not bad, but there is still work to be done. Have the codes of good practice that we implemented yielded any results?

[Cynthia Wright]

I have no specific information with regard to these codes, but I can have the clerk forward it to you.

Generally speaking, we do a follow-up on a code, such as the one we referred to earlier. There is a code for that. So we do a follow up to see if it is effective enough. There is always the possibility to add a regulation if a code does not yield the desired results. We do the follow up in compliance with the codes, not only according to the regulation.

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

OK. So in the end, this did not bring about any lawsuits.

[Cynthia Wright]

Not so far.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you.

You have 30 seconds--one question.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

I would like to come back to the code of practice of salt spreading vehicle operators. Are there code of practice reports involving the 25,000 trained operators? Have annual reports been provided to the Department?

[Richard Hanneman]

The department has produced two years of annual reports. We've been briefed on them at stakeholders meetings. I don't have the figures in front of me, but they're very impressive in terms of the percentage; I think somewhere around 90% of the municipalities, counties, and provincial governments are participating in the program.