Environment Committee on April 21st, 2009

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

And it seems to me the strategy of putting these in place in the large centres is a good, intelligent, first-things-first approach where the largest number of people are and where perhaps the greatest number of pollutants arise. Is that a sound assumption on my part?

[Scott Vaughan]

That would be a sound assumption.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Excellent.

I have one last thing I want to ask you about. As you know, I've been developing an interest in the audit process, and it would be really helpful for me to know, taking this air quality index as an example, how much money it has cost the government to come up with this program. Do you have any way to assess the benefits for us? In other words, can you help me perform a cost-benefit analysis beyond just the obvious political calculation that clean air is good? What is the cost of this program, and how do we assess the benefits?

Thank you.

[Scott Vaughan]

I'll ask Mr. Morse, who's an experienced auditor on this. But in terms of assessing the cost and benefits, I think the report notes that there are 2,400 deaths caused by short-term acute respiratory illness related to exposure to high levels of pollution. How you calculate those in terms of values is difficult, but clearly, any life that is saved or any sickness that is avoided is good public policy.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Do we have data on reductions?

[Scott Vaughan]

Well, I think it's probably too early to go back and look at it, but it's something maybe to follow up. Statistics Canada keeps data in terms of respiratory illnesses, premature deaths, and others. So we'll take note of that, and if we're going to do a follow-up, we'll try to see whether we can tease this information out.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

And the cost?

I'm sorry, I'm out of time. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Just a quick response, Mr. Morse.

[Paul Morse]

I just want to find the paragraph, but I believe that when we looked at it there had been about $13 million spent on it so far from the federal side.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

There was a $30 million budget commitment.

[Paul Morse]

Yes, that's going forward.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Excellent. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Rota, the floor is yours.

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

It will be Mr. Trudeau.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

You're going to share your time. Okay.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Thank you.

Again, going back to bottled water, I'd like to follow up a little bit on the risks associated with bottled water. I know there were a number of studies--and you refer to it in the audit, actually. The food safety science committee looks at industrialized countries and results around bottled water. There have been a number of troubling studies out of the United States that talk about the amount of bottled water that is less safe than comparable municipal drinking water standards.

Does that apply? Have there been similar findings in Canada?

[Scott Vaughan]

Let me turn to Mr. Arseneault on it, please.

[Richard Arseneault]

As we mentioned in the chapter, there is a science committee that looks at all the information that is available, including inspection results from the CFIA, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. They've done risk assessments, and the conclusions are that it's low risk. Obviously it's relative to other food, like meat products and all that. Bottled water, like many things we buy in the grocery store, is low risk; therefore, the level of effort of inspection reflects that. But the results they're obtaining through their studies are confirming that bottled water remains a low risk. They haven't found major problems in bottled water in Canada.

Now, is their sampling sufficient? That's a big question that we did not look at because the CFIA's approach to monitoring safety of food is a big thing. All food is included, and they decide on priorities with the resources they have. But based on the sampling they've done, the results confirm that it is a low-risk food.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Now, on the evaluation and the designation of something as “low risk”, obviously, sliced meat products are a considerably higher risk than bottled water. But does it take into account the amount of bottled water purchased? The commissioner used the word “skyrocketing” for the amount of bottled water intakes. Obviously, something that is low risk and not particularly largely used or distributed is genuinely low risk. In their evaluation, do you know if they took into account the amount of bottled water consumed, and therefore the concerns around toxins and contaminants that may have been identified in the guidelines for Canadian drinking water quality, but are not particularly highlighted in the existing regulations for bottled water?

[Scott Vaughan]

I'll defer to Mr. Arsenault.

If you look at it one way, in terms of potential exposure levels and the reason that the audit team included bottled water in this follow-up, which wasn't in the 2005 report, it's exactly because Canadians are consuming more. In terms of their risk assessment, they'll look at total level of consumption and then total level of potential exposure to different contaminants that could exist. So that part of it is, yes, you would look at whether or not there's increased supply or increased demand for this. Then they would take it into account in how much they're going to be focusing on levels of inspection to provide an assurance on whether the right risk level is indeed correct, because the stakes get higher if the consumption is higher, obviously.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

As we've talked about before, federal agencies aren't responsible for municipal water supplies. But I'd be curious to know, if you can perhaps give me this assessment, the relative safety of your average municipal water supply versus your average bottled water. Or is that something you've looked at?

[Scott Vaughan]

No, we did not compare tap water to bottled water in terms of whether there is some general trend that one way is safer than others. I mean, we do know, as I mentioned when we launched this report, that the Canadian Medical Association has said that at any given time there are between 1,500 and 2,000 boil advisories across Canada for municipal drinking water. There are problems. We know this.

I might just add that in the course of the audit, when we were doing this, CFIA said that they did 78 inspections of bottled water facilities across Canada, including both domestic bottlers and imported bottlers. From that, they didn't find anything that would change their ranking of this being low risk. But as a result of those 78 inspections, they did announce two recalls. We noted in the report that those were not class one--potential or urgent problems for human health--but there were administrative or other paperwork issues that could hide some problems if not done correctly.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you, Mr. Trudeau.

I want to follow up a little bit on this idea of bottled water. In your report, one of the recommendations is that not enough has been done to monitor water quality on air carriers, including regional carriers.

Actually, we had a discussion yesterday that most regional carriers serve bottled water. So if air carriers are not serving potable water but are serving bottled water, then maybe we've already got this covered on the bottled water side.

[Scott Vaughan]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That's a question we had when the team was moving forward on this.

I think you're right, if it's a smaller aircraft, they generally will not have a galley facility, and therefore, when people are getting something to drink, it's from bottled water. The question we posed is whether the government knows the regulated population. They said they've made good progress on the 13 largest carriers in Canada. We have asked them for the total number of carriers and how many of those smaller carriers would be serving water from a galley.

That's what they yet do not know, and that's why we've said there are some gaps.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Watson, the floor is yours.