Sure.
First of all, thank you to the department officials for arranging some of this and putting it into language that the committee can understand and consider.
As Mr. Warawa said earlier, through the conversations, there's in the range of a 90% agreement on the way to cast this bill forward. The 10% that's off for us remains around the clauses 3 and 4 that were listed. I think this is more just seen as a difference of opinion based upon what we heard from witnesses. Clauses 3 and 4 only deal with one of the three phthalates. As you will see--I believe it's here, and I'm not sure which one it refers to in your package--we have an amendment that would change clauses 3 and 4 a bit, that would include all three of the products.
There are two reasons primarily. One reason is that we still see significant health concerns with BBP and DBP. We also see other jurisdictions having gone that route, and manufacturers have, in effect, taken some of these chemicals out of the products already. I explained this to the parliamentary secretary earlier. One of our main concerns is our inability right now in this country to know for certain, if we walk down to the dollar store in the mall, that products coming from China, particularly, and from some of the other countries.... We have a limited ability to actually understand whether these chemicals are in there without going the route of eliminating them, particularly with children's toys, and ones that we know will be placed in their mouths.
I don't want to overfocus on that piece. What I've said to the government and to other committee members is that we're comfortable with the package. The point of difference we're comfortable with committee members considering and having a vote on, and that difference of opinion will be expressed by the various parties and members of Parliament sitting at the committee. So overall we're glad of the conversations that have been had.
In terms of the medical devices in clause 6, this was in direct response to Mr. Bigras' comment. The only slight difference and change we would make is that when you get all the way down to paragraph 6(e), we want to strengthen the language a bit so that there's specific instruction to government to have a label on medical devices that contain DEHP. This was a concession we intended to make to Mr. Bigras, rather than the outright ban, because they raise concerns, particularly from Quebec. Although other hospitals and provinces are starting to go DEHP-free in their devices, and products are being made, we'll make that concession in order to accommodate Mr. Bigras' concern. We want that language strengthened a bit so we're very clear that the government is seeking, I believe within 24 months or 18 months, that there will be a labelling process going on. We thought that was reasonable.