Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll see if I can beat that, but I would like to know what the prize is.
My thanks for the opportunity to appear before the committee in this wrap-up session. There are four points I'll raise, all of which have been raised in testimony before with you.
On the first point, on December 1, CCPA wrote to Minister Ambrose, and we copied the committee with that letter. In that letter we recommended that there are three critical amendments that are in Bill C-30 that we think should be recommended and made to CEPA now, as part of this committee's review, and not get caught up in the debate that we think is going to be long and protracted and political on Bill C-30.
Those specific amendments related to, first, improving the equivalency provisions in CEPA's section 10, to support working more effectively in partnership with the provinces; secondly, improving section 330 to be able to deal with different air sheds differently, for example, depending on whether or not Canada-wide standards requirements are met in an air shed; and thirdly, improving CEPA's section 46 to allow for independent verification of reporting.
In my notes I've attached specific amendments out of Bill C-30 that we recommended that this committee recommend be made in the CEPA review. I think the benefits of these amendments are that they would provide an improved basis in CEPA to support managing greenhouse gases and air pollutants and would be able to do so probably more quickly than doing this through Bill C-30; that they'd be a step forward in the federal government working more effectively in partnership mode with the provinces, and I think that's important in all areas, not just climate change and air pollutants; that they'd also improve federal flexibility in dealing with different situations in different provinces, which I think is important in our federal-provincial jurisdictional system; and that they'd also improve public confidence in reporting.
My second point relates to virtual elimination. I think in the round table discussion on virtual elimination there was actually general consensus by all parties, even the government representatives who got involved in the discussion, on one point--and I hope that's picked up in the report from the committee--that virtual elimination and its associated requirements for establishing limits of quantification don't really make sense for trace contaminant levels of substances in products. There are other sections in CEPA that can be used to deal with that and that would make more sense to deal with them there, not under virtual elimination.
I think that consensus emerged for a number of reasons, but they included the fact that it's technically difficult to establish LOQs for contaminants in products; the fact that there are other powers in CEPA that could be used to deal with this issue more effectively in section 93; and also that we should try to have better consistency with the Stockholm Convention on POPs.
CCPA suggested specific language to fix that problem in what we tabled at that round table. Again, that language is attached in my notes. Although there was agreement I think by all with the problem and our statement, some felt that our language wasn't the best solution, and that's quite probably true. What we would suggest is that this committee recommend that the government use other provisions in the virtual elimination for contaminants and products and figure out what language their lawyers should recommend to incorporate in the act for that. They might want to use CCPA's suggestion as a starting point, but I imagine they'll be able to do better than we did.
My third point concerns looking for a possible compromise solution on the issue of “toxic” stigma. Industry raised a number of concerns--my association did, as did Shannon, who just outlined a few of them--about the reality of this problem. There were others who raised concerns about the constitutional risks involved in changing the legislation. Our recommendation was at the time, and still is, to remove the “toxic” term from the act, particularly in the operational provisions in part 5, and replace “toxic” with “substance that meets the criteria of section 64”, which is language that government lawyers seem to previously have thought was acceptable in the previous government's budget bill. But we do recognize that there were concerns that this could create some risk to the validity of the legislation.
We still support our original recommendation. We think our stigma concerns are real, and we note that those who thought there were risks did agree with us that, in the end, it was their bottom line also that the legislation would remain valid. But if it isn't acceptable to the committee to change the “toxic” language as we've recommended, then I think something else the committee should recommend in its report is something that I believe there was a lot of consensus around from all parties, and that's for the government to have to provide more context when a substance is listed on schedule 1 as toxic.
Sometimes listing might mean not using the substance at all. If that's the case, it should be clear. Other times, when risk management objectives or toxics are narrower, the scheduling process should also make that clear. The scheduling process, the listing process, should provide some context. There's a big difference between putting something on schedule I to mean, do not use the substance, versus, in other cases, to mean, manage the use of the substance to manage the risk that the risk assessment identifies. That's all jumbled into one and should be sorted out by more context being added.
My fourth and final point is to modernize the act so that, like Australia, Canada is better equipped to recognize positive assessments of other jurisdictions. The committee should recommend adding wording to the act to allow Environment Canada and Health Canada to benefit from assessments conducted by other countries to the degree the department believes appropriate, up to and including full acceptance of the assessment.
One point that I won't mention, but I think should be included in your report, is the point I made in the discussion a week or two ago on tools. We recommended the committee ask government to consider adding some specific clauses to the act that promote considering the use of industry responsibility programs such as Responsible Care, but within an overall regulatory framework. From the discussion with the committee, I think it's pretty clear those recommendations aren't likely to be part of your report.
I think the smart regulation report was right. Despite the fact that these kinds of changes are needed, there doesn't seem to be the political will, and I think that was evident in the discussion here, to go forward with them. I think that lack of endorsement for the approach of supporting industry responsibility programs is disappointing. Supporting them would assist industry to be partners with government when companies show leadership and high performance. I would encourage differentiating between companies that do show high performance and those that don't. Hopefully the discussion will revisit that today, and my conclusion that you're not going to have that in your report will be revisited.
Finally, I think most of the testimony, if not all, stressed that the act needed to be fine-tuned, not fundamentally changed and rewritten, as it was in CEPA 1999. We certainly support that approach, and we think it's particularly important to maintain the strong foundation for the categorization architecture and the ongoing assessments that will be the second phase of that project. We are a world leader in this. It would be wrong to change the foundation that this world leadership was built on and would cause an awful lot of confusion.
Thank you for the opportunity of hearing all of these discussions, and I look forward to a discussion today and to your report.
Did I beat Shannon?