Evidence of meeting #21 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cepa.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:45 a.m.
National Representative, Health, Safety and Environment, Canadian Labour Congress
We represented the workers, and I can say that we closed our last mine in 2012.
11:45 a.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC
Thank you.
Thanks to the witnesses. I really appreciate your presentations and the effort you made to prepare them.
I'd like to focus on the NPRI issues, so my first question will be to Ms. Laurie-Lean.
I understand your representations around improved informatic systems. The NPRI is a clunky system. In a previous life, I made recommendations that the NPRI follow the lead of the toxic release inventory in the United States, whereby the public can have access at a zip code level. My recommendation at the time was that at a postal code level, individuals be able to understand and be able to access the pollutants that are in their neighbourhood.
Would MAC be supportive of that kind of additional transparency and availability of information?
11:50 a.m.
Vice-President, Environment and Regulatory Affairs, Mining Association of Canada
We'd definitely be very encouraged to have better data search tools incorporated. Probably the secretariat would be in a position to answer where they are now and what they would need to go further.
We're more concerned that at the reporting stage we're repeatedly seeing order of magnitude errors because someone put in tonnes instead of kilograms, for example. There are modern techniques: any kid could probably program an app to flag up front that last year they reported 1,000 times less, so maybe they made an error. We don't have that, and that is undermining the inventory. It has to be manually checked and corrected.
Those are the kinds of improvements we need, but course at the other end there are also a lot of opportunities in improving access and manipulating data.
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC
Ms. Sian, would the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers welcome enhancement of the National Pollutant Release Inventory so that individuals could obtain information about toxic releases at a postal code level?
11:50 a.m.
Manager, Environment, Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers
We're increasingly seeing that interest from the public. I think it's important to be able to respond to a local need to know. There is tremendous opportunity to make enhancements to the data systems to allow for greater transparency in that regard.
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC
Thank you.
Ms. Laurie-Lean, should the information management system, the NPRI, be solely in the hands of government, or should it be achieved collaboratively? Should the system of information accessibility and data collection be managed collaboratively with civil society and with industry so that we don't necessarily have clunky old government systems doing it?
11:50 a.m.
Vice-President, Environment and Regulatory Affairs, Mining Association of Canada
I would like the government not to have clunky old systems, and there's an aspect of public registries that is very valuable to researchers and the country as a whole, so I don't want to argue for “let's just privatize it”. It's very important that it be in government.
I believe the secretariat makes the data available to researchers. There have been attempts by civil organizations to create things with that data. I'm not sure how far they went. I think funding was a problem, but the secretariat itself keeps trying to improve the nature of the data it provides.
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC
Thank you.
Ms. Peart, there have been suggestions by previous witnesses that CEPA 1999 would be improved through the integration of a broader set of legal principles, some of which are established in domestic law and some in international law. Example are principles related to environmental justice, intergenerational equity, the right to a healthy environment, and those kinds of things. Where does your organization stand on those?
11:55 a.m.
National Representative, Health, Safety and Environment, Canadian Labour Congress
Certainly we're supportive of those things, but as a labour organization, we're also somewhat skeptical about principles that aren't also paired with enforcement and on-the-ground practicality.
However, information about toxic pollutants at a postal code level would also help our workers practically.
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
June 7th, 2016 / 11:55 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
Thank you to all three of our witnesses for being here.
I am going to direct a question to Ms. Sian.
You challenged the definition of the word “toxic” in the act, as did Ms. Laurie-Lean. You also felt that the word “substance” was ill-defined in the act. Do you have proposed revised definitions for either one of those two terms?
11:55 a.m.
Manager, Environment, Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers
We don't, but we certainly could put forward our proposal. We would like to give it more thought.
I think the issue is really how to use those definitions to inform the nature of assessment and problem definition attached to substances so that there is an appropriate response. It's whether it helps with categorization of risks and the associated actions that must follow from that. That's really where we were coming from with that comment. It's in terms of how to get to good problem definition in relation to the substances for the purpose of managing issues around them.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
Given the fact that both you and Ms. Laurie-Lean have raised that as a concern—and my understanding is that it's a lingering concern—could I ask that either one of you or both of you provide us with proposed redefinitions of either one of those two definitions?
The second question has to do with your suggestion that a better balance is needed in the resources available for the management and assessment of risk under CEPA. Can you be more explicit? Has there been an imbalance of resources presently, and where has that imbalance lain?
11:55 a.m.
Manager, Environment, Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers
I think this speaks a bit to the comment we had regarding data and information systems, in that our members experience, or are subject to, multiple reporting obligations through various systems. I think the question is whether or not there are opportunities to achieve greater clarity around the questions we're trying to answer with that data and to have more focused one-window opportunities or some form of streamlining to deal with both the provincial and federal data. In many respects, that is consistent with what Justyna has raised.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
All right. Thank you.
Justyna, do you have any further comments on those two questions?
