Environment Committee on June 12th, 2006

[Paul Glover]

I don't know the exact number of days. I could provide you with this figure at the end of the meeting in order to give you an exact answer, but the time period is not very long. I think it is less than 100 days. It is very quick. I'm being told that it is 90 days.

If the government thinks that there's a problem, we can take a break and ask for more time. So it is possible to indicate, for a given substance, that more time should be taken.

So we can stop the clock and say we need more time, but we have to consciously do that; otherwise the product is allowed.

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

Sometimes we realize after several years that some products are ultimately not what we thought they would be... In medicine, the second and third phases may take up to 10 years.

How can we then, within a 90-day period, complete the three phases for a chemical product?

[John Moffet]

Can I answer?

There are a few answers to that. First, no legal regime is perfect, so your scenario is plausible. The regulations have been designed to ensure that the proponent of the substance provides the government with information that we believe we need to make that assessment. And it is interesting that these regulations have recently gone through an amendment that was the result of a two-year process that involved stakeholders. This is almost unique in the history of the two departments. That two-year process resulted in a consensus set of recommendations from industry, NGOs, and government about the nature of the information that should be provided. So there's a strong attempt to ensure that we address those issues.

Secondly, if in the assessment we say that we're confident that the use you're putting it to right now is safe, but we haven't been able to think about all the other possible uses to which this substance could be put in the future, the act allows us to do what's called a significant new activity notification. It says you can use it for that use, but if you want to use it for something different, you have to go through the whole process again.

And the third point is that if we do get it wrong, we can still assess it again, but then we have to assess it as an existing substance, not through the reverse onus new substance regime. So it's a substance on the market, it's in use. We can still assess any substance we want and determine whether further action needs to be taken.

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

You said there is too great a workload. Given that the 800 new products being introduced in Canada are probably being introduced at around the same time in European countries or in the United States, why not have a relationship with other governments, for example the American, French or German government, with a view to sharing the workload? There are chemical substances that, on their own, are not harmful to our health but that, combined with other substances, can become dangerous.

Given that information and the fact that there is an infinite number of possible combinations, why not develop more direct relationships with other countries, in terms of these types of studies, in order to speed up the process and be more efficient?

[Paul Glover]

The good news is that we do have relationships with other countries. These are mutual relationships. One type of relationship allows for sharing information from product assessments. We also have agreements with various governments. For example, if a government conducts an assessment and we have an agreement with that government, because for example they conduct their assessments in accordance with standards that we accept, then the Government of Canada can accept that country's decision because that is what we would have decided. Thus, there are truly relationships that allow for decision and information sharing. It depends on the information that is provided by each company.

There are limits based on confidential business information, but there are agreements with other countries.

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

Fine.

Is this done officially or unofficially?

[Paul Glover]

Officially. It is done within the framework of an agreement signed by officials.

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

There is also the issue of chemical products. Would that include the issue of the presence of hormones in the water? For example, the estrogen contained in the urine of women taking ovulation suppression drugs can end up in our water supply system. Given that estrogen is not filtered out, it can end up in the environment and also in the glass of water of someone living downstream.

Have you studied this?

[Robert Smith]

I'm sorry, I don't have any statistics for you.

We know that we are finding estrogens in water. Part of the presence of estrogens in the water is from the synthetic hormones in birth control pills. One of the things Health Canada is working on is an environmental assessment regime for pharmaceuticals to help control that. We're certainly concerned it adds to the load of estrogens in the environment that people are exposed to. Estrogens are both hormone disrupters and potentially cancer-causing.

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

How much time do I have left, Mr. Chairman?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

You have three minutes left. I'm not sure if you're sharing with Mr. Warawa.

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

One of you stated that the arguments that are made for each chemical product can be taken apart or supported depending on your perspective. It doesn't appear that the harmful or beneficial effects of each of those chemical products are mathematical or linear. Why not?

[Rick Smith]

Very quickly, there's very little, if any, human health data on the mixtures of chemicals we're talking about. For instance, we tested for 68 chemicals in our study, and we found 46 on average in everybody. We don't know the human health effects of that mixture of very different chemicals in our bodies.

I should add that it's very different compared to other consumer products in our lives. For instance, manufacturers of automobiles have to give a warranty on the safety of a vehicle before it can be put on the road. If there's a problem with the vehicle, it's recalled pretty quickly. The same sort of safety standard doesn't seem to apply to the chemicals we're talking about.

Mr. Glover has pointed out that there are two different safety standards, one for new substances and one for the 23,000 grandfathered chemicals.

[Robert Smith]

I have a comment in terms of what Mr. Smith is saying.

It's very hard for us to study all the different possibilities of mixtures and combinations that can happen.

From looking at some of the studies, we know there is something called “synergy”. One substance will have a certain effect and another substance will have a certain effect, but when you put the two substances together, it's greater than the sum of its parts and you get an enhanced effect. A simple example of that is when ozone, smog, and pollens affect people with asthma. When you put them together, you get an expanded effect in terms of what those things can do.

It's part of the reason we seek a more precautionary approach to assessments of chemicals and to getting rid of them. It's going to be impossible for us to know all the possible combinations and synergies that can occur among the chemicals we're exposed to.

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

Let's talk about the Kyoto Protocol and our emissions. Even if Canada's population doubled over the next 10 years, we would still be able to meet our CO₂ emissions quota. However, that would not make Canada a less polluted country nor would it necessarily reduce the effects of smog.

Is it more relevant to calculate our emissions based on population rather than on Canada's absorption capacity, water reserves, air volume, and so on?

[John Moffet]

Is there time to respond?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Gentlemen, could you just keep your answer very short? I think you could take a day or so to answer that question, so if you could, just very briefly answer it, please. The time is up.

[John Moffet]

My response would be that the appropriate way to measure emissions and the adequacy or lack thereof of emissions has to vary on a substance-by-substance basis. If we're talking about a chemical substance that is a carcinogen, for example, you have to ask the question: Where does it have an impact? If it has a strictly local impact, then you need to measure the emissions of the substance within that local airshed. If the substance has some transboundary impacts, then we need to look at those impacts as well, because we're putting it up in the atmosphere and we're causing cancer in other countries.

The third example, of course, is greenhouse gas emissions. This is strictly a personal answer, but I think it's completely inappropriate to measure those based on our land mass. Just because we happen to have inherited the largest and least-inhabited land mass in the world doesn't give us the right to emit more than another country when the problem is a global problem.

So if the problem is a local problem, measure it on a local level. If it's a global problem--

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

The real question was that at present, we calculate based on our population. Is this a good way to make a calculation, or is it better to do a calculation based on the size of the country or the volume of the air or something?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Harvey, we're going to have to move on. Maybe our guests could try to answer that in another context or in another round.

Mr. Silva.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

I'm trying to understand better how you do measurements, particularly around the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence basin, given the fact that's where the largest concentration of our air pollution comes from, in terms of both air and water, because it is shared and there are no borders there between Canada and the U.S. when it comes to air pollution.

How do you go about that? Do you work with the American EPA? How do you manage to get the right data so that we are comparing apples to apples and not apples to oranges?

[Paul Glover]

There is the International Joint Commission, and that has a particular focus on that geography. It brings together academia from both sides of the border. It brings together officials and experts, and it's the principal way to stimulate cooperation and develop site-specific work plans so there is cooperation between the U.S. EPA and the governments of Canada--Environment Canada, Health Canada, local, provincial, and state governments, etc. The International Joint Commission is the group that focuses on that area.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

I'm not surprised that there is a group that's looking at that. What I want to know is how you arrive at your numbers. Are you calculating them using the exact same formula, the exact same measurements, or are there really two different formulas at play?

[Paul Glover]

Through the International Joint Commission there are agreements reached between the parties on what to do, what to measure, how to measure. They are specific. There are watershed approaches that are adopted, and joint measures that they attempt to realize.

Some of the problems related to that would be data sources that are different on both sides of the border, how to capture and aggregate that data, but attempts are made to make sure we are comparing apples to apples.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

At the end of the day, do you arrive at the same information?