Hello.
My name is Gwen Goodier. I am the Executive Director of the Chemicals Management Division at Environment and Climate Change Canada.
I have with me Heather McCready, who is a director general with our enforcement branch in the same department, as well as my colleague David Morin, who is a director general with Health Canada. We are going to be speaking about the first audit on toxic substances.
I'm going to make some opening remarks and then turn to Heather, who will speak from an enforcement point of view.
Let me begin by saying thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee today to speak about the toxic substances audit. Environment and Climate Change Canada welcomes the report of the commissioner for the environment and sustainable development, and we will take action to address the recommendations contained in the report.
Toxic substances are identified and managed under the Government of Canada's chemicals management plan, a program jointly managed by Environment and Climate Change Canada and Health Canada. We're actually very proud of what we've accomplished to date under the CMP. Since 2006 we have assessed over 3,500 substances, and that represents about 80% of the 4,300 substances that we identified as priorities for assessment. We're on track to completing that work by 2020.
That work, those assessments, have resulted in our finding over 450 chemicals that are harmful to human health, the environment or both. We've put in place about 90 different risk management instruments to manage the the risks posed by these substances. When I say “risk management instruments”, there are a variety of instruments we use that include regulations, pollution prevention plans, environmental performance agreements with industry, etc.
We also take action to ensure that new substances entering the market are safe for Canadians. Since the beginning of the program, we have received close to 6,000 notifications for new substances. These notifications have been assessed, and they resulted in additional risk management actions where needed.
While we believe that the chemicals management plan is fundamentally a strong program, we agree that there are improvements that should be made in the three areas identified in the audit, which are performance measurement, enforcement, and communications.
In the area of performance measurement, my department will work with Health Canada to develop a long-term approach to systematically assessing the effectiveness of actions to control toxic substances. In the interim, to inform that approach, Environment and Climate Change Canada and Health Canada will complete the assessments that we currently have under way to determine whether we're meeting objectives to protect human health and the environment for the four substances for which we have pilots under way. Those are mercury, BPA, lead, and PBDEs, which are a flame retardant.
The audit report also focused on how we enforce regulations that manage toxic substances and how we communicate to Canadians about the risks posed by these substances.
I'm going to turn to my colleague Heather McCready, from our enforcement branch, to speak about enforcement. In a few minutes, David Morin from Health Canada will provide comments on the audit from a Health Canada perspective.
Thank you.