Evidence of meeting #22 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.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
I have to go to another meeting, so I'll take 15 minutes. If we do three minutes each, we'll get to that time, so let's do three minutes each. I don't mind if you would like to continue that thought there, and then we'll go back around to everybody.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Ms. Morin, we touched a little bit earlier on UNDRIP. This notion of free prior and informed consent has often been used on the environmental assessment side of things, but I'm wondering if there's an application on the way CEPA is applied. There's a bill sitting in Parliament under Mr. Saganash's name to not just sign UNDRIP in New York but to actually bake it into Canadian law as a screen through which we make these decisions.
Would something like the FPIC, the free prior and informed consent, help with some of the challenges we have found in CEPA? This has been a first nations rights and title question to this point under international law now coming home domestically, but that free prior and informed consent seems to me to speak to a much broader question about how we expose Canadians to toxins, for an example. From your perspective in AFN as well—I know you have some connection—do you believe that the actual implementation of UNDRIP into law, not just as a signature, could be helpful in this conversation?
Principal, ArrowBlade Consulting Services
Yes, I believe so. It provides some certainty in some of the tools that are being used to apply CEPA, for things like determining toxic substances and gathering information with regard to these substances. There is a number of things where there are opportunities to apply tools, especially in first nations areas, that UNDRIP would help to further define.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Ms. Scott, I want to get to this mandatory substitution piece. The reason I'm curious is that, through my small experience on the phthalates issue, when trying to get a certain chemical out of products—it was a softener—I found that industries stood at the table and said that doing so would kill Canadians because there would be no surgical tubing available in Canada. They said it would ruin the industry because the substitutions were so outrageously expensive that it would kill the chemicals industry. I'm paraphrasing. Thankfully we also had a nurse in from California where they had banned phthalates 10 years prior, and apparently you can still get surgery in California—quite a bit.
On the mandatory substitution side, we've heard from industry. We're going to hear it say again that it's too onerous. Industry would say that what we've just suggested is very anti-competitive and bad for the economy, if we're running around looking for substitutes, some of which may be worse than the thing we're trying to ban. How do we fix that and address that cry?
Associate Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School and the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, As an Individual
Again, what I am proposing is that we have a mandatory precautionary regulatory control in place for toxic substances, a requirement to consider the safe alternative. The requirement is that they come forward with evidence that they've looked into what the alternatives are, and we know something about the safety of them.
Government can't choose safer alternatives unless we know what those are.
I'm getting the red card, I'm sorry.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
I'm bad. I'm sorry. I'm just watching the clock. We could spend a day on this, with great ease, so let's move on.
Mr. Fast, you guys fight it out. You have three minutes.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
I have another question for Ms. Scott. I certainly took note of your comments on vulnerable populations, and I just want to continue on that for a second.
I don't think you'll find any disagreement here at the table on the need to fully take into account the special circumstances of the vulnerable populations to make sure that the act allows us to address that.
You mentioned, though, that even today government already, to a certain degree, takes into account the vulnerable populations. In fact you said it's actually the operative provisions of the act that will specifically allow government to have the clear direction it needs to make sure a much broader range of vulnerable populations actually benefit from the act.
Can you highlight one or two of those operative provisions that would feed into this study and hopefully allow us to come up with well-informed recommendations?
Associate Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School and the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, As an Individual
One example would be the basic recommendation I make to take the exposure assessments out of section 64. That would have the result of going across the board and allow us not to have these assumptions about safe levels of exposure built into our decision-making.
Another option to consider, if the committee didn't like that one, would be to include explicit reference to cumulative exposures, to do aggregate exposure assessments for substances that have what they call a similar “mode of action”. So for phthalates, for example, instead of taking the phthalates one by one, and for each risk assessment only including those exposures to that particular one, we would do what they call an aggregate exposure assessment because we know they're all acting together on our bodies.
You could try to parse all of that out for how to do better exposure assessments, but again my recommendation is not to do that, but to take the requirement for exposure out of section 64.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
I have one more question. I'm going to put on my economic hat and follow up on what Mr. Cullen was raising about business. In order to have a vibrant economy, we need to have a competitive playing field with our American neighbours and the EU. I hate to mention the Chinese. I don't think we see them necessarily as part of the playing field.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
But the reality is that we want to make sure that industries remain healthy in Canada, continue to create jobs, provide employment, and drive prosperity.
What strategy would you employ to get buy-in from industry for the changes you're suggesting to CEPA?
Associate Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School and the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, As an Individual
The strategy I would employ would be to make the requirements mandatory under the act. REACH, the EU chemicals law, is much more precautionary than what we have here in Canada. The EU is a huge market that many these same companies produce products for.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
Let me just jump in.
It's not just the market that I'm talking about. We have manufacturers in Canada, and their biggest competitor is actually the United States, by far.
Associate Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School and the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, As an Individual
Right.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
So we want to make sure that to the greatest degree possible we provide the kind of environment where companies can still be successful, but still move forward in protecting Canadians against toxins.
Associate Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School and the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, As an Individual
I guess I don't have a perfect answer for that. I think it's this committee's job to put the priority on protecting public health and the environment.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
But as parliamentarians, our job is to provide a balance, right? So you understand the challenge we have—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
Mr. Fast, I hate to do this, but I have to cut you off.
Over on this side, who is up?
Mr. Amos.
Liberal
William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC
You mentioned that the act should advance environmental justice. Can you be more specific on how it should or should not integrate a principle of environmental justice or, as Ms. Duncan would potentially refer to it, “environmental rights”? Other witnesses in other contexts have talked about principles of environmental rights or environmental justice. Where do you sit on that specifically in relation to CEPA and the legislative amendments?
Associate Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School and the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, As an Individual
I don't have any particular expertise on environmental rights, so I will let Linda Duncan speak to that.
The kinds of recommendations I've made for reforming CEPA would take out the possibility of there being disparate impacts on particular vulnerable communities. This means, as I said before, changing the operative provisions of the act to eliminate those disparate burdens or disproportionate burdens on marginalized communities.
Also, I take Linda's point that in trying to push for some focus on consumer products, we can't forget about the fact that there are industrial emissions that are very important. They are the ones that create what they call “pollution hot spots” that really create environmental justice problems in Canada.
In particular, I believe my recommendation 8, dealing with virtual elimination, is one in which we could try to start to address some substances like dioxins and furans that Canada has made commitments on with respect to the Stockholm Convention, yet still does not take action on to prevent the unintentional release of those substances during industrial processes. That would be another place in implementing those changes to virtual elimination where we could advance environmental justice.
Liberal
William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC
Okay, so we need to be much more practical in the implementation in the operative procedures.
