Environment Committee on Dec. 11th, 2006

[Paul Glover]

There is no question that the departments will be staffing up in order to meet these aggressive timeframes and that the resources provided, some of them, will be directed to new staff to speed up the risk assessment and risk management processes.

I'll turn it over to my colleague from Environment Canada to speak to enforcement.

[Cynthia Wright]

I think when you say “enforcement”, you mean the application of all of that: the assessment, the regulation, and on-the-ground enforcement.

[Michael Ignatieff, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Yes.

[Cynthia Wright]

And that's what the $300 million is about. It's for beefing up the capacity in all those areas. But I think it's a fundamentally different way of doing business from what we have done in the past. It's putting a lot more onus on industry. As Paul said, there will be lists of substances that we think we have enough information on to move forward. It would be up to industry to prove otherwise to us in that sense. So it's a different way of doing business.

Other countries are starting to go this way. Europe is starting to talk about it. They've been talking about it since 2000. To the extent that other countries—big chemical producers like Europe and the United States—start to take action, that will lessen the load on Canada, as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Ms. Cooper.

[Kathleen Cooper]

I think the capacity has to increase, and obviously the announcement on Friday will increase it. We have to recognize that we're dealing with 50 years' worth of backlog from the 20th century, and that's going to take some time and some work and some resources.

Look at the way pesticides are regulated, and even just the capacity in the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, where there are over 300 scientists dealing with 500 active ingredients, which translates into thousands of end-use products. Compare that with what we have now, a short list of 500 and a slightly longer short list of 4,000, out of a pool of 23,000. It's understandable that there's a need for increase in capacity to deal with this.

The other thing to remember in what has been suggested with this notion of materials use, and what I would really like to support in what Paul just said about a class approach, is that there are two very important efficiency measures to deal with these large numbers.

The notion of materials use is an efficiency measure. Instead of having to go after each product, it's going from the basis of the toxicity and saying, don't use it in a whole lot of products; just use it where you really need it, or not at all.

And then, in classes of chemicals it's to reduce the volume of assessments you need to do. We can increasingly draw conclusions about whole classes of chemicals from what we know about the toxicity of a few of them, when we know that they are chemically and toxicologically similar, even if we don't have all the information about each and every one of them—and we never will.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you, Mr. Ignatieff.

Mr. Warawa, and then Mr. Lussier.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Thank you.

Ms. Cooper, I'll be able to ask that question of you now.

There are two things. In your brief, you've said CEPA should be amended “to give the Minister of Health and the Environment the power to recall products from retail and wholesale operations where they violate regulations, or are believed to cause an unreasonable risk.” My understanding is that our announcement on Friday includes that. We have bio-monitoring also, which Mr. Glover elaborated on briefly.

My concern is focused on the health of Canadians. I'm one of the many who suffer from allergies, particularly indoor dust. In this job, we spend a lot of time indoors. When you have products breaking down and creating dust indoors, it.... I take shots once a week for allergies, and it's a growing norm, unfortunately. To have good air quality is, I think, an admirable goal.

My question to you is a little bit on PBDEs. You were talking about them and the risk for our health as they break down. Could you comment on that and on our Clean Air Act, which is of course focusing not only on outdoor air quality but also indoor.

[Kathleen Cooper]

When I look at the Clean Air Act and the package of announcements that accompanied it—and I'm going to be responding to the consultation deadline, which I think is December 21—I see a repackaging of a whole lot of things that are already happening. That's my first take on what I saw was there. That is fine; there's some really good stuff happening in Environment Canada and Health Canada specifically dealing with indoor air. But I didn't see it as all that new; I just saw a kind of new packaging of it.

I don't think the Friday announcement included the ability to do product recall, other than the fact that there's a commitment to do it. Is that correct? I can't remember.

[Cynthia Wright]

We have the authority for product recalls.

[Kathleen Cooper]

You mean to create the authority?

[Cynthia Wright]

No, CEPA has the authority, under section 99, to do product recall where a regulation is violated, which would include a regulation that was put in place under an interim order.

[Kathleen Cooper]

Okay. Well, we'll see how that gets used.

[Cynthia Wright]

It enables the minister to require a manufacturer or a retailer to take back a product.

[Kathleen Cooper]

You asked about PBDEs and indoor air quality and dust. I'm not sure what you're asking me, other than to reiterate the concern I had, which is the fact that there's a legacy problem. What we're finding in evidence from bio-monitoring, but also from evaluations of dust, is that many different products with PBDEs are breaking down very slowly, especially if they're exposed foam like this, and they're ending up in house dust. And that's where the exposure is happening. In terms of being a legacy for a long time into the future, part of the risk management of that is not just cutting it off at the source and allowing very toxic substances to be used in that way, but public awareness about the hazards that exist in, for example, house dust. It's a major focus of the work that I do working with prenatal educators and early learning and child care people, etc., so that people know about indoor hazards and therefore how to avoid them, and the small measure of things they can do.

The concern I still have about PBDEs, after all the announcements in the summer that were reiterated on Friday, is that we're going to ban the mixtures that have already been voluntarily withdrawn. We're not going after the deca-PBDEs, which are increasing in use and for which toxicity information is, in my opinion, almost as compelling and increasingly compelling as more evidence is gathered, in comparison to what we know about the ones that have been withdrawn and that we are taking regulatory action on. So it doesn't go far enough. The regulatory action does not go far enough. Again, it says we're taking a class approach, which is a progressive and important way to go, but then it doesn't. It leaves out the most important one, the deca-PBDEs, the use of which is increasing. So I think that needs to be improved.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Monsieur Lussier.

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

Currently, many products with considerable consumer appeal, such as flame retardant, stain resistant or wrinkle free clothing, are manufactured in Asia for large retail chain stores. Manufacturers have told me that orders have already been placed by the large chain stores for brand name clothing items made of flame retardant, stain resistant or wrinkle free fabric.

If the government has the right to order a product recall, all clothing currently being manufactured in Asia will need to be recalled because they contain PFOS or PBDEs which will be banned in Canada.

Are manufacturers being asked to withdraw these products from the market immediately, or will they be given a period of time to comply?

[Kathleen Cooper]

I like to try to be reasonable. I think it's a matter of shutting off the tap before you clean up the floor. Stop producing products with what would appear to be highly toxic substances. Once that regulation is in place, then yes, the recall power kicks in after you've decided that you put in place a regulation.

I'm not suggesting to then recall every product. If you use the example of pesticides, this happens when a regulatory decision is made to restrict the use more so than has been the case in the past. The decision means those products that are still on the shelf can still be sold and can still be used, but only up to a certain date, and that's it. It's a way of dealing with the transitional issues that you've identified, without saying recall it all.

Again, it speaks to the issue of risk management including public awareness about longer-term risk. We have all kinds of literature out there in the United States and also in Canada to warn people about the hazards of lead in old paint. It's a legacy issue and something the public needs to know about. When I use the piece of foam example, I describe this as another legacy issue people need to know about, because this will continue to deteriorate.

When I talk about the notion of adding recall powers, I don't mean that you would recall everything that's out there or even what's on the shelf. The regulation would mean a phase-out by a certain date, and beyond that you wouldn't use those products.

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

Would you care to comment, Ms. Wright? We know that the large chains have orded stain resistant products from factories in Asia. These goods are being manufactured as we speak and will ready to be marketed here in a month or two. Manufacturers have confirmed to me that these items are very popular with consumers and will be very much in demand this spring.

Are these products regulated, in terms of PFOS an PBDEs ?

[Kathleen Cooper]

Can I respond to that? I didn't catch what you were saying initially.

That's a really important point, and overwhelmingly it's an issue of imported products. In the examples I've used, certainly with lead, it's an issue of imports. That's why the concern I've raised is trade trumping health. I think it is a very legitimate concern. I think it's the reason we have not regulated consumer products effectively thus far. It's a significant challenge now, because a regulation on imported products may be construed as an unfair barrier to trade--a non-tariff barrier to trade. We have to come to terms with that. An awful lot of what we're talking about is imported.

In the specific example you give, it depends. If this government actually puts in place something that's going to say these substances are not allowed in products, that issue of a timeline regarding when those imports can happen has to be addressed.

I want to hear their answer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Do you have a quick answer?

[Paul Glover]

Are my answers ever really quick? I'll go as fast as I can.

There are three parts I'll cover very quickly.

First, that's why it's important for us to work internationally with other countries to make sure that what we don't like and what we've chosen to regulate in this country we put on international lists for which there is an international agreement not to use those things. There is leverage that Canada uses internationally, not just domestically, to get everybody to move away to safer alternative substitutes.

Second, many of the things we're talking about have health implications. We've talked a lot about the exposure level. We're talking about time for some of these things, because there is time. We don't want to suddenly remove products from the marketplace. We want to make sure that safer alternatives are found. Those PBDEs are estimated to save 300 lives a year. They are still there to allow industry to move to something that is less harmful to the environment and human health so that we never reach the threshold where those health effects are observed. That's a critical point. It's to allow industry that time for transition.

Third, and finally, is information. The portal that's gone up is to provide information to Canadians. That's why we told industry all 4,000 substances. It puts them on notice today that we're eventually going to get to that substance and ask them questions about it. The public can ask them questions, and industry can start to prepare themselves on how and if they're using those things appropriately. It increases the transparency and the incentive to be transparent as we move forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you.

For our last question, Mr. Steckle.

[Paul Steckle, Liberal, Huron—Bruce, ON]

I hope it will be more than one question, though I know time isn't going to permit that.

Mr. Glover has sort of fed into where I'm going. We have sister acts in the United States, and in the case of CEPA we have the Toxic Substances Control Act, which is the sister act that complements what they want to do in terms of the control of pesticides and these various matters we're talking about today.

Coming from the agricultural side, the PMRA is the agency we've looked to as the body, through Health Canada and Agriculture Canada, and because there is so much overlap, we've found it very inefficient. For nine years, basically, we have gone very little distance. We're now making some progress in terms of what we do.

Speaking as someone who is from the agrarian side, because there is this view in the broader society and given that there are people who want to go the organic route, how do we find a blend of people's thinking in terms of what we can and can't use? We have farmers in the United States who are producing fresh fruits and vegetables, apples in particular, who are able to use certain products that we can't use in Canada, yet we bring the product into Canada. There's an argument that can be made here as to how this can be.

Do we at times take product off the shelf that is no longer permitted to be used in Canada? The Americans can still use it, and until we find a new product to complement that, we simply don't have anything to take care of that. It puts our people in a very precarious situation. I think we have to be considerate of those kinds of things.

How can we better deal with that? You know what's happening at Health Canada in terms of the PMRA, the number of products and the number of use permits that have been requested. We don't have the volume of use here. Obviously it's not possible many times to have the companies interested in putting product into Canada, because there just isn't the volume.