Environment Committee on June 12th, 2006

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the witnesses.

I want to step away from this. We're trying to understand today if we're measuring properly and if the measurements that we're using are actually giving us the results in this piece of legislation to protect Canadians' health and the environmental health of the country.

I'm looking at the NPRI list right now, and I can't help but be consumed with the notion that in order to manage you must measure. It seems like there's a certain amount of measuring that's going on, but the indicator that has been mentioned by the panel--and this is particularly for Mr. Moffet and Mr. Glover--of there being fewer toxins released into the environment that can potentially harm people is ultimately one of the key measurements.

Under that one measurement, how have we done as a nation since CEPA has come into effect ? Have we done well? Have we done poorly? Or is my premise wrong?

[John Moffet]

I think that's one of the measures. I think the other is the one Mr. Glover responded to earlier, and that's what's getting in the human health. This is an act to protect the environment and human health.

One of the things the department is not very good at, frankly, is we collect a lot of data and we're not very good at disseminating it and explaining it. So we have a lot of data about trends with respect to the emissions of substances under the NPRI, and there are dozens of substances, and in fact for the vast majority of substances tracked under the NPRI the trend is a reduction over time. There are some for which emissions are increasing.

So I think the answer has to be on a case-by-case basis. We've done well on some, on others either we haven't managed them, we haven't managed them adequately, or industrial output or consumption has just increased and offset the reduction measures that we've put in place. I don't think, frankly, it's all that helpful to look at an aggregate number and say overall, on average, NPRI emissions have gone down or up.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

But let's take a specific example. In one of our recent panels we talked about the case of mercury and trying to understand the processes that have been applied under CEPA, and the inability of the government to actually be able to list a single substance in this length of time for virtual elimination.

[John Moffet]

There are two points there. The emissions of mercury have reduced significantly, dramatically, in Canada, as they have in most industrial countries. That's a fact.

Have we done enough? I think you heard last week that there are plenty of opinions out there that we haven't done enough, but the country has reduced emissions of mercury significantly through various initiatives of the government and of industry. That's not a static picture, however, and mercury emissions will increase if we start to place a heavier reliance on coal, for example, to generate electricity.

But let me talk a little here--

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Allow me here for a moment, though.... If the claim is true—and I believe it to be—that mercury has gone down because of the valiant work of the government, and Ontario decides it wishes to produce a lot more energy through coal, and mercury emissions go up, what tools have we made available to ourselves to prevent that, a thing we know to be bad for human health?

[John Moffet]

The federal government could address the use of mercury-emitting fuel under CEPA, if it wanted to. It hasn't yet, but it could.

Can I speak to the issue of virtual elimination for a second? I think there's a little confusion there.

The federal government, under CEPA, has banned a lot of substances. So to say that we haven't virtually eliminated anything is a little misleading; we've banned substances, which goes well beyond virtual elimination. Virtual elimination is a concept that relates to virtually eliminating the release of a substance. That's not as strict as banning a substance. So we've gone beyond virtual elimination in a large number of cases.

The act sets up a very complicated regime for virtual elimination. The main reason the regime hasn't been used, frankly, is that it's very complicated and imposes what I think have been judged in the past to be unnecessary additional steps that add no environmental or health value. If you ban a substance, what's the merit of adding it to the virtual elimination list? So we haven't added DDT to the virtual elimination list. Should we? That would be a process step that has no environmental or health benefit whatsoever, because it's banned.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

That's appreciated.

Mr. Glover, I just have a process question. When a company wants to introduce a new chemical onto the market or to use a chemical in a new way, where does the onus of responsibility sit right now to prove that chemical is safe?

Could I hear Mr. Glover from Health Canada on that?

[Paul Glover]

The onus is on industry to provide data to the federal government, Health Canada, and Environment Canada, in order to allow us to assess that. So they do provide us data, and they make assertations about the safety, and we double-check those.

It's important to know that even with reverse onus for existing substances, that would not be a silver bullet; we would still have to assess and validate all of the claims made by any industry. That's a process we always go through.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

You replicate the tests in Health Canada that the industry has done?

[Paul Glover]

No, we set standards with which they must be done. We look for their quality measures to make sure the data we're provided meets those standards and were done to protocols that are internationally accepted. When we're sure and satisfied that those are done, we accept them. There are test guidelines that are internationally accepted and approved, and there are ways to validate and replicate those, so it's not necessary to repeat all of the tests in order to be confident in the data provided to us.

If I may, Mr. Cullen, I'll answer your first question. You asked about the health side and how we would measure. The short answer is, I can't—for the reason we talked about earlier. The absence of biomonitoring means that we don't know what's in people in order to measure systematically if things are going up or down. That is a gap that we have.

I'd also like to point out to the committee that while that is very important, it is also not a silver bullet. We would need to consider where those exposures are coming from. As Mr. Smith said, sometimes it's an environmental release; sometimes it's a product release; and it could be in indoor air, more than in ambient air. It's important for us to find all of the exposure pathways and to take action in an integrated fashion—and not all of those will always rest with CEPA. In fact, some of them might be international.

We've banned it; it's no longer used here, no longer used by companies here, and it's no longer in products made here, but the products are coming in from other countries. Are they declaring that? It's transboundary...getting into the air and ending up here, etc.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Just as a quick follow-up to that, when we ban the use of a particular chemical in this country, do we also ban its manufacture in total from any export as well? If a chemical or product is deemed banned within Canada, do we also ban it in terms of exportation?

[Paul Glover]

Without a doubt it would be banned, and that would mean for use or production here.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

For anything. Okay.

Mr. Smith, I wonder if I could get your opinion on this.

[Rick Smith]

Thank you. I have just a couple of quick points.

First of all, the federal government has not been doing the proper measurements. Let me use two examples--trends and biomonitoring. We've already talked about biomonitoring. As far as I know, my organization, Environmental Defence, has published the most ambitious biomonitoring studies in the country to date. Frankly, it's bizarre that the government of the United States and governments all over Europe have tested hundreds of their citizens, and it falls to a Canadian charity to do this rather than the federal government.

Second, on trends, for the last few years PollutionWatch, which is a joint project of my organization and the Canadian Environmental Law Association, has published the most complete analyses of pollution trends in the country. It hasn't been the federal government; it's been our organizations.

I want to take issue a little bit with Mr. Moffet. By and large, the trends are negative. That is, pollution is increasing in this country. We don't need to publish any great quantified studies to convince Torontonians, who deal with more and more smog days every year, or Montrealers, who deal with smog now as they haven't in the past, or folks in the Fraser Valley. Canadians see on a daily basis that air quality is deteriorating. But when you look at the numbers, let me just quote a few statistics. Between 1995 and 2003, if you try to compare apples to apples--so that is, if you only take a look at chemicals that have been consistently reported over that time and you only take a look at facilities that have consistently reported over that time, so you try to compare apples to apples--pollution across the country has increased by 12% between 1995 and 2003.

Another way we tried to take a look at this is by again comparing apples to apples, taking a look at similar Canadian facilities on the Canadian side of the Great Lakes versus the U.S. side of the Great Lakes. Dr. Khatter quoted the statistic “per facility we emit 93% more potentially cancer-causing air pollutants...”. So whether you measure in terms of increasing numbers of smog days, whether you measure it in terms of the NPRI reporting every year, whether you measure it in terms of these pollutants in our bloodstreams, pollution is getting worse in this country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Smith, very briefly please.

[Robert Smith]

I don't want to muddy the waters too much, but I'd simply like to point out that statistical analysis of the NPRI data is a particularly challenging undertaking. There are considerable concerns about interpreting the time-series data from the NPRI in a meaningful way. The NPRI, unfortunately, does not provide a comprehensive estimate of any pollutant emission in the country.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

So is it wise to rely on the NPRI?

[Robert Smith]

I'm not going to say whether it's wise or not, but I will say that caution needs to be applied in interpretation of those statistics and in the conclusions one draws from them. They are not comprehensive. They don't cover all industrial sources, they don't cover household sources, they don't cover mobile sources. The methodology that's employed in the NPRI is one that is not driven by really true statistical concepts, but a mixture of statistical and policy-oriented concepts. So I would ask the committee to be careful in its consideration of those particular statistics.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Harvey and Mr. Warawa.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

You indicated that 800 new products were analyzed each year. Are these mostly chemicals, or are they also biomedical products, molecules, etc.?

[Paul Glover]

They are chemicals.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Only?

[Paul Glover]

More or less. The CEPA refers mainly to substances.

[John Moffet]

Well, that number actually includes fewer than ten products of biotechnology a year, so ten out of 800. The rest are chemical products.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

You talked about the time needed to conduct this study and you said that, sometimes, when too much time is required, the product is authorized without having been validated.

What is the time period?