Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am very pleased to be here today with other members of the round table. I look forward to the discussion.
First and foremost, Mr. Chair, if it pleases the committee, the last time I was before you, there were some questions about Health Canada's evaluation. It was a draft, and it was not available. I'm pleased to report that it is no longer a draft, and it is available. It was provided to the clerk. That is now available to all members.
With respect to measuring success, I'd like to begin, very briefly, by describing what Health Canada is responsible for under CEPA. It is an act that is shared between the Minister of Health and the Minister of the Environment.
The Minister of Health's role and Health Canada's role is really around health assessments of new and existing substances. If you're thinking about the act in particular, that's paragraph 64(c) under existing substances--the impact on human health. We're also required to do research on hormone-disrupting substances; there are a number of things we do there. We're also required to conduct research relating to the role of substances in illness and to publish health studies about the effects of different substances on human health. That's basically what we do. We take a look at these things from a health point of view to determine the impact they are, or are not, having.
The second thing I would like to provide to committee members is a brief outline of how we do that. Health Canada does adopt a risk-based approach, which is something that I'm sure you'll be hearing a fair bit about. Risk is made up of two key components: hazard and exposure. We believe it's very important to consider both of those.
With respect to hazard, we look at the impact a substance has on human health. In putting both the hazard and the exposure together, the way we do that is very conservative. Our process in doing a risk assessment is to take a look at the lowest observable effect that a substance has--not the highest, not the medium, not the average. As soon as we see an impact on human health, whether through research, lab studies, animal studies, etc., that is the lowest level. That's what we use to determine hazard information. Then on the flip side, for exposure, we take the worst case scenario and assume that is the norm.
If you take those two extremes and put them together, you can see how we have a very conservative assessment with respect to human health. That's how we go about it. That's the process for conducting a risk assessment for all existing substances. All our risk assessments are peer reviewed and published.
Because we understand that science can come forward on any one issue with multiple points of view, we take a weight-of-evidence approach. We find it's always possible for somebody to say that this other science is wrong and to present a countering view one way or the other. On the existing substances side, we tend to deal with data-rich..., i.e. there's a lot of information. So we take a weight-of-evidence approach, that is information that is generally available in peer-reviewed, published documents. That's to help us counter the extreme views one way or the other. That's how we go about assessing substances from a health point of view: both hazard and exposure are put together in a very conservative manner to ensure that we are protective of human health.
I want to reiterate that both Health Canada and Environment Canada have a responsibility to deal with all new substances that want to be used in this country. That means some 800 substances, more or less, are brought forward and notified every year. That means they're asked to be used in this country. We go through a fairly similar process.... The timeframes are much shorter, so it's much more rapid, but we do come to a conclusion on those same terms.
We also do work with respect to air quality and water quality. We publish guidelines that the provinces use with respect to substances in water: arsenic, TCE, and other things. Those are made available. And we have been conducting studies on both indoor and outdoor air quality to determine the level of pollutants and the impact those have on human health. We have a number of examples in the report that you might find interesting.
We have also been conducting research, as per the requirements under CEPA, on hormone disrupting substances. That is ongoing work in an attempt to better understand this new and emerging science, and we'll continue that work.
The other point that I would like to make with committee members as I wrap up is that we have been very active in getting ready for categorization. That will be very important for Canada as a country. We will be the first country to have gone through all 23,000 substances in use domestically. Every country has its own inventory of substances already in use. Canada will be one of the first countries to have gone through that full list to determine priorities from both a health and an environment point of view. So Health Canada will have gone through all of those 23,000 substances and taken a look at them from two points of view. What do we believe is the hazard profile of that? Has anybody else declared that substance hazardous? It is on a list? That's a trigger for us to do more work.
The other piece will be ready in September, as per the legislation. It's the potential for exposure. We will be able to put those two things together to come up with the real set of priorities for those things that we think require further work both in terms of assessment, and in terms of management right away. We think this will provide an excellent base of information that few other jurisdictions in the world will have, and will really allow us to set our priorities as we move forward to make sure we're working on and assessing the right substances, and asking to manage the right substances from a human health point of view.
That, in a nutshell, is what we do, and how we do our work. If you're interested in numbers, I believe Environment Canada has reported on some of this in the past. In terms of schedule 1 risk assessments, we did some 69 representing over 550 different chemicals. We're involved in 12 prohibitions, 21 regulations, etc. There is a list of those things that we have been involved in. Again, Environment is the lead department. Our role is to contribute to health perspective on those, something we have attempted to do quite actively as we move forward.
That concludes my remarks about how we do our work and how we would assess and measure it.