Evidence of meeting #60 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was impact.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:45 p.m.
Acting Manager, Air Health Effects Division, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
When I said greenhouse gas didn't directly impact, I meant that if you breathe greenhouse gases, you do not have a health effect. If you breath PM and ozone, you do have a health effect.
Climate change and calculating—
12:45 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
PM and ozone, these things that cause human health effects, are affected by climate change.
12:45 p.m.
Acting Manager, Air Health Effects Division, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
The science on that is still in the development stage
. The point is that we do not at this point have the modelling ability to calculate those impacts. You would have to be looking out at 2050; you would have to look at the global impacts, the global climatic changes; and you would have to have better models than we have now.
12:45 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
This government has assumed, as has the previous government, that there is a direct correlation between climate change and smog, between greenhouse gases and smog. This assertion has been made time and time again. The Canadian public has accepted this assertion. We've heard scientific evidence to claim that assertion. To then come back and say that we're going to account for the pollution aspect of things, which is all well and good in terms of those direct pollutants we've named, but not talk about the direct or indirect costs to the Canadian health system and to Canadians individually of climate change seems bordering on irresponsible, because we've all claimed them to be connected.
I'll allow you a moment.
12:45 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
I was just going to say that the difficulty for us is that even the modelling of air pollutants is very complex. It's not a simple model that we have. As you've heard about the complexity of the relationship between greenhouse gases and climate change and air pollutants, it's even more complex and we just don't have the models. I don't think there's anywhere in the world where they do right now.
12:45 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
And heat waves and all of those types of things that cause direct human impact—health impacts, encroachment of malaria, tropical diseases—we can model those things.
12:45 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
We can model them, but those are individual things, and it's hard to take those direct climate change environmental impacts and relate them back up to greenhouse gases.
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I have a quote here from David Suzuki. The David Suzuki Foundation actually wrote a report—I politely listened to Mr. Cullen and the others, and I would ask for the same courtesy—and the article written was “The Air We Breathe”. It says: “There is strong evidence that air pollution is the most harmful environmental problem in Canada in terms of human health effects, causing thousands of deaths, millions of illnesses, billions of dollars in health care expenses, and tens of billions of dollars in lost productivity every year.”
I appreciate the witnesses from Health Canada being here, and that's the message that we heard from you today.
I found it quite interesting. I made a note on page 7 of the presentation. The paragraph in the middle of that page said: “On the basis of this science, applying targets to reduce air pollution emissions across the country make sense, since the health risk can be reduced wherever an air quality improvement can be achieved. The health payback is essentially immediate.”
I want to ask a question of the officials from Health Canada. How important is it to have a national air quality standard? We've heard proposals from the opposition that we provide regional standards. How important is it that we have a national air quality standard?
12:50 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
The point I was trying to make in my opening remarks was that a national one will provide benefits overall, because if you have a target and you allow pollution up to that target, the people within that area will be subject to that level of air pollution. If you push the level of air pollution down as low as you can everywhere in the country, you're going to have immediate impacts.
I'm going to ask Phil to speak to you more directly.
12:50 p.m.
Acting Manager, Air Health Effects Division, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
That's essentially it. You can get benefits from reducing air pollution wherever you reduce air pollution. We have not seen a threshold for the effects even in relatively clean communities. An emission reduction in a less polluted community can have, all other things being equal, the same impact as the same emission reduction in a polluted community. It sounds a little bit odd, but the reality is that the risks are more or less linear, as you reduce the concentrations.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley, BC
The Turning the Corner plan was presented on April 26. We're the first government in Canadian history to deal with both greenhouse gas emissions and pollution, including indoor air quality.
I believe, Ms. Fletcher, you mentioned during your presentation that, on average, 90% of our time is spent indoors. We're indoors right now. We take our bus ride home, hopefully. Some listen to the radio, but we get home, and that is somewhat indoors too. Then we go home and we're indoors. So 90% of our time is indoors.
How important is it that we have national air quality standards to protect the health of Canadians? How important is the indoor quality aspect of this?
12:50 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
Clearly, indoor air is affected by the ambient air outside as well, but there are additional impacts on indoor air, whether it's mould, off-gassing of products and building materials, and so on. From a health perspective, we're very interested in looking at indoor air as well and ensuring that we have appropriate guidelines in place to regulate pollutants and indoor air. For health, to us, it's a very important thing to be doing as well.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley, BC
There was a question earlier about Bill C-30. Bill C-30 included having a national air quality standard, and the opposition took it out, unfortunately.
I have a quote from the Canadian Medical Association. It said “was optimistic that the targets and timelines announced by the federal government will move Canadians further down the road to better health.” They also said that Canadian doctors “are well aware of the effects that poor air quality can have on the health of our patients—That's why we believe any measures taken now to improve air quality will have a positive impact on the health of Canadians now and in the future.”
As I mentioned a moment ago, we're the first Canadian government to provide, by regulations, controls on both greenhouse gas emissions and pollutants, including indoor ones. Is there any other country that's gone to that extent?
12:50 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
Not to my knowledge.
12:50 p.m.
Acting Manager, Air Health Effects Division, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
No, we have not seen regulations of the same sort in terms of indoor air. We're working towards indoor air, so we will be looking internationally as part of that process.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley, BC
So we are world leaders in moving in this direction. Thank you.
12:55 p.m.
An hon. member
Less bluffing.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley, BC
Of course, I have my heckling section working well over there.
Chair, there were comments made about Bill C-288, so I have to make a comment on it too. During the hearing of witnesses on Bill C-288, every one of those I asked whether we can meet the Kyoto targets domestically within the eight months said no, we cannot meet them; Bill C-288 is not achievable. That was every one, except for one person who represented an environmental group.
So, Chair, obviously the members of the opposition—
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley, BC
Now we're even.
The point I wanted to make, Chair, is that unfortunately the members across disregarded all the signs and forged ahead with Bill C-288 regardless of what they heard. But from what we've heard yesterday and today, and actually the day before, on Tuesday, when we had an excellent presentation on carbon sequestration and capture, we see very clearly that we have a plan that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with absolute reductions of 20% by 2020, and that we reduce pollution levels by 50% within the next eight years. Those are targets, and my hope is that we can go even beyond them. Those are targets that are achievable, and the plan is done within a realistic timeframe.
My hope is that we will work together, all parties, to clean up the mess. I'm not going to try to place blame for what's happened in the past, but we need to look forward and work together to provide a cleaner environment for the health of all Canadians and for the health of the globe.
I have a couple of minutes left, and I'd like to provide them to Mr. Harvey, please.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Luc Harvey Conservative Louis-Hébert, QC
My question is to the Department of Finance representatives. We recently received a study on the costs related to Bill C-288; compared to the first study, is this one in any way related to what could have been done for the Government of Canada when the Kyoto Protocol was drafted?
12:55 p.m.
Director, Economic Studies and Policy Analysis Division, Department of Finance
I'm not sure that I understand your question.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Luc Harvey Conservative Louis-Hébert, QC
How many studies did the government undertake to determine the costs of the Kyoto Protocol?
