Environment Committee on Nov. 27th, 2006

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

Partly. I'm still a little confused. Some of it might be around the term “regulatory” as opposed to “quasi-regulatory”. I don't know, it's either regulatory or it's not. I'm still not really clear in terms of subtle distinctions here. You either regulate or you don't. I'm a little baffled on that, I would say.

[Gordon Lloyd]

I think there's actually something that's in the middle, where it's quasi-regulatory in the sense that it's reflected in the legislation, like pollution prevention planning is.

I think one of the bases of pollution prevention planning is that there's a recognition that if government, through stakeholder consultations or whatever, sets out some broad objectives to be achieved and then leaves industry to achieve them, with some kind of commitments that they will be achieved, industry is going to be able to achieve the objectives in a more efficient way than if it's done through regulation, because regulation tends to always be very prescriptive.

We talk about performance-based regulations as an ideal, but I don't think we often get that. So I think with an instrument like pollution prevention planning, you can have something that does have the benefits of being enshrined in the legislation, which I think improves public confidence, allows objectives to be set out, but has greater flexibility in terms of how it can be implemented.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Hanneman, I think you wanted in on this.

[Richard Hanneman]

I just wanted to offer a quick comment, which I hope is clarifying.

When you talk about industry, that's not the situation we're facing. We have five salt producers in Canada. That's all. It's easy to enforce against them. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about thousands of agencies and tens of thousands of operators who are actually putting the salt into the environment. That's where the “enforcement” has to be done, and that's where you have thousands, and those occur in different snowstorms, with different approaches.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Ms. Wright, do you have a comment?

[Cynthia Wright]

Yes, if I could comment to help clarify about the process and the tools, the department does have a guidance manual it follows every time it's making a decision to control risks of a substance or prevent risks. It does consider the full range of tools, from regulations to call it voluntary or call it industry-led tools; and it does look at factors like the compliance rate of the industry currently, the nature and severity of the risk, the probability of compliance, a number of different factors, which are often related to the number of facilities and the dispersiveness of them. We'd be happy to share that tool so you can see the way we approach our work.

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

It would be good to have that. I wouldn't mind receiving it.

I don't know, through the chair, if Robert Wright and Derek Stack have responses to that, and maybe also responding to Mr. Lloyd and Mr. Hanneman.

[Robert Wright]

Sure, I would like to.

We would favour more of a regulatory approach. We think that brings certainty, and it levels the playing field. One of the goals of enforcement in all of the policy manuals of Environment Canada is that enforcement is carried out in a fair, consistent, and predictable manner. We believe the regulatory approach will do that.

The one I'm most familiar with is of course the Fisheries Act. We have the pulp and paper effluent regulations, and we have a complaint before the CEC on those now, but at least those regulations are there. You can go in and see whether they're being enforced. There's something measurable that helps the enforcement people. They're not dealing with some airy-fairy ideas about what's voluntary and what is not. So I think it is useful and I think we have gone perhaps a little further the other direction.

Of course, on the ground, one of the problems is that often those responsible for enforcement see the people they're enforcing against as their clients, so they end up getting a little closer than they would otherwise, and so the tendency is to move to voluntary programs.

Again, we've made two suggestions that we think will help bring the laggards up to speed and level the playing field for the good performers.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Do you have a comment?

[Derek Stack]

I would echo what Mr. Wright has just said. I think the question was, are we relying too much on a voluntary versus regulatory approach? Maybe if we spent five years focused on regulatory we could compare a little bit, but as it stands, I think it's a tough comparison to make.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you, Mr. Vellacott.

We'll go on to Mr. Scarpaleggia.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This is a very interesting discussion, but it's hard to really get a handle on it. For example, I think it was Mr. Lloyd, or someone else, who said that we need to look at context, that if we're going to take action on certain chemicals, we need to look at context. Then other witnesses talked to us about risk management. It seems to me that risk management is all about a study of context. So it's very hard to understand that context isn't taken into account. That's one question. Anyone can take a stab at that one.

The second issue that is still unclear to me is the issue of the salt regulations or voluntary management program.

Mr. Hanneman, you seemed to suggest that you were okay with CEPA the way it is, but that the government's actions were not as appropriate or effective as they could have been. Does that mean you are okay with the fact that salt is considered CEPA-toxic?

Ms. Wright, you started with a mea culpa, or it seemed to be anyway, at the beginning. But you weren't specific. What went wrong there?

First of all, are you fine, Mr. Hanneman, with the idea that salt is CEPA-toxic? What really went wrong? If you could name one or two specific things that didn't go well in this case, I'd like to know what they are.

[Richard Hanneman]

If I may start to respond, we are not comfortable with the designation of road salts as CEPA-toxic. That's why we have argued that they should not be added to schedule 1, or they would be CEPA-toxic.

At this point, Environment Canada has made a designation, which is sort of, the way the process works, more of a recommendation to cabinet or whoever is going to make that decision. Therefore, we are not stuck with the CEPA-toxic label at this point, which would dramatically impede the cooperation that thousands of government agencies have been willingly given. I think it would be unnecessary, since you have every indication that without that designation people have been most responsive to environmental improvements.

[Michael Teeter]

Mr. Chair, perhaps I could clarify. The Salt Institute was actually here back in September.

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

You talked about how the CEPA-toxic label was impeding, or almost shut the door to, the Japanese market.

[Michael Teeter]

That was certainly one of the points made, but we also presented some recommendations for changing the statutes. I think you made the comment that we were happy with the statute the way it was. Our interests really in that presentation were to try to make the statute more workable, to try to get to positive actions for the environment faster.

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

I'm a little unclear.

[Michael Teeter]

Just so you know, we do want to make some significant recommendations to change the statute that we have.

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

I understand. But for example, we spent the whole session talking about how the CEPA-toxic label had hurt salt.

[Richard Hanneman]

The discussion, as I testified earlier, put out as a nationwide press conference stating that salt is toxic, and the headlines parroted back “Salt is Poison”--that's what hurt.

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

Okay.

[Richard Hanneman]

And that's what poisoned, if you will, the working relationship and set us back several years.

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

Sure, but then the government reacted to that in some way by not labelling salt as CEPA-toxic—

[Richard Hanneman]

Once the cat is out of the bag.... That was the problem.

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

But the point I'm trying to make is that there seems to be enough flexibility in the legislation that if something is a commonly used product, like road salts, the department can somehow nuance its position and take that into account. Maybe the problem is that they didn't do that right away, and they should have.

It seems to me that, first, as I was saying at the beginning of my intervention, the law does allow context to be taken into account, and second, it really was, at the end of the day, in the case of road salt. I don't understand the problem.