Thank you, Chair, and committee members.
My name is Kapil Khatter. I'm a family physician, and I'm the director of health and environment for PollutionWatch.
I'll be splitting my time with my colleague, Rick Smith, who is the executive director of Environmental Defence.
PollutionWatch is a project of Environmental Defence. The mission of both Environmental Defence and PollutionWatch is to protect the environment and human health nation-wide, through research, education, and legal means when necessary.
CEPA has the same goals of protecting human health and the environment. We are here today because we believe CEPA is not accomplishing this task.
CEPA's goals are set out in the administrative duties. They include preventative and remedial measures to protect, enhance, and restore the environment; implementing an ecosystem approach that considers the unique and fundamental characteristics of ecosystems; establishing consistent standards of environmental and health protection; protecting the environment, including its biological diversity, and human health; and acting expeditiously and diligently to assess the risks that substances pose to the environment and human health. In addition, the preamble specifically talks about the need to virtually eliminate the most persistent and biocumulative substances.
In order the determine the success or failure of CEPA in terms of these goals, we can look at the impact that environmental pollution is having on the health of Canadians, the levels of pollutants being discharged into the environment, the number of toxic chemicals that have been assessed, regulated, and, in particular, eliminated, and the number of harmful substances that are found in our bodies. In our opinion, CEPA fails on all these tests.
In terms of the impact on human health, our colleagues from the medical association will talk about the fact that in Ontario alone two air pollutants, ground-level ozone and fine particulate matter, are responsible for over 5,800 premature deaths and over 16,800 hospital admissions. It's 2005 data. In addition, there are many health problems that we suspect have environmental contributions that are on the rise: autism, attention deficit disorder, certain birth defects, premature puberty, and certain cancers.
In terms of the CEPA goals, if you look at releases to the environment, Canada has fallen behind internationally on emissions. We're ranked 28th out of 29 in emissions among industrialized countries. According to the national pollutant release inventory, Canadian industry emitted over four billion kilograms of air pollutants in 2003. For facilities and pollutants reported throughout 1995 to 2003, it's an increase of 12%.
A recent comparison between Canadian and U.S. industrial sites in the Great Lakes found that per facility we emit 93% more potentially cancer-causing substances and over four times as many pollutants that can cause reproductive or developmental harm.
In terms of looking at the assessments and the elimination of substances under CEPA, we feel the CEPA process has been terribly slow. A really good example of that is virtual elimination. As I said, the preamble calls for the virtual elimination of persistent and biocumulative toxic substances. There is a mechanism for virtual elimination in the act, but only one substance so far has been proposed for virtual elimination and none have so far been eliminated.
Finally, in terms of the measures I pointed out, a fourth measure of CEPA's success or failure at protecting health in particular is the level of chemicals found in our bodies. Environmental Defence recently tested families for chemical contamination. My colleague Rick Smith will speak to those results.