Evidence of meeting #24 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 chemical.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
Thank you. Mr. Bossio.
I'm sorry, Ms. Diamond. The problem is that we ran out of time. I'm hoping that someone else might pick up on that in our questioning. Sorry, we only have so much time for each question, and it's a very scripted time set.
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
That's all right.
Professor Diamond, I would be happy to provide you with some of my time to answer that, if you'd like to. If you had a comment you wanted to make, please go ahead.
11:55 a.m.
Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Toronto, As an Individual
Thank you very much.
I would like to say that the way CEPA can be refined is to talk about considerations over the life cycle of an organism; that is, from fetal development to old age, and over the life cycle of a chemical.
However, let me give you one other example. Flame retardant levels are really high in gymnasiums, where kids do gymnastics, because of all the foam that's used. It turns out that one of the most highly exposed populations to flame retardants are little kids who spend 20 hours a week in gymnasiums. I know because my son did competitive gymnastics. I discussed this situation with some risk assessors and they said they don't have a method of looking at this type of population, which is a vulnerable population. To me, that's really remiss because you don't want to look at the average individual, but at little girls with their small body weight who are spending hours in an environment containing flame retardant.
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
Thank you very much. That was exactly where I was going to lead with the question anyway.
We've talked about life cycle. Dayna's talked about it. I don't know if you know who Philip Jessop is. He's a professor at Queen's who also talks about it. If we look at the life cycle of a chemical or an organism, we almost need to take a hybrid approach between risk assessment and hazards-based assessment in order to be both backward and forward looking. Could you expand on that. What are your thoughts on that?
11:55 a.m.
Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Toronto, As an Individual
This illustrates why we do need to take a precautionary approach. With respect to the life cycle of an organism, we need to be cognizant of the fact, for example, that endocrine modulation effects occur during fetal development, so what we have to do is to be protective of the mom. We can't actually put in provisions to be protective of the fetus; no, we're protective of mom. Was it enough to take bisphenol A out of baby bottles? That provision was not directed at protecting the mom, who could have elevated levels, and result in fetal exposure.
Many of our risk management measures don't actually tackle the most vulnerable windows for toxicity. That's where we need to take a more precautionary approach. I could go on in greater and obnoxious detail, but I'll keep it simple.
Noon
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
To that as well I would add the precautionary principle. Indeed, you spoke earlier about REACH and how new data is becoming available on an ongoing basis, and about the no data, no market type of direction they've taken with REACH, and about other OECD countries.
Would you agree that if we want to really take the precautionary principle when this new data becomes available, we shouldn't necessarily be as prescriptive as to say that we're going to follow that data fully and virtually eliminate or add that chemical to the toxic list, but that there should be a mandatory assessment based on that new data?
Noon
Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Toronto, As an Individual
Yes, I agree that there should be a mandatory assessment. It's not even just new data; it's also new interpretations of old data as we understand, for example, more subtle adverse health effects.
Who had previously thought that neurobehavioural effects and cognitive deficits could be related to fetal exposure to certain chemicals? That's new knowledge. We can go back to older data with that new knowledge to reinterpret the data.
Noon
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
Mr. Khosla spoke about the success of the CMP as it exists today, and he referred to some numbers: 4,300 chemicals to be assessed, 2,700 assessments completed, 263 substances listed as toxic. How many chemicals have been added to the toxic list for virtual elimination? I believe it's two.
Noon
Executive Director, Industry Coordinating Group for CEPA
For virtual elimination, I think you're actually getting at one of the difficulties that the government points to in its paper to you about the concept of virtual elimination and how—
Noon
Liberal
Noon
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
Miriam, would you think that's a great indication of success, that of the 20,000 chemicals that we're being exposed to on a daily basis, only two of those are declared toxic and need to be virtually eliminated?
Noon
Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Toronto, As an Individual
Noon
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
I'm going to have an opportunity to ask more questions in another round. One that I want you to think about is this. You spoke about alternative assessments to find alternatives and the difficulty in doing that. I'm going to come back in the next round and ask how you think that would work. If we're not going to take that replacement assessment, then how should we handle that?
Noon
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
Again, it's fascinating testimony from all of our witnesses.
I'm going to ask one initial question of Professor Diamond. I'm going to touch on a number of areas you have suggested for improvement and put those questions to Mr. Khosla.
I noted that in your testimony, when you were discussing the review and assessment process, you suggested that there are two questions that need to be asked. One is, do we need the function provided for by that chemical, and two, do we need that product?
Who are you suggesting would actually make that assessment of whether a product or chemical is needed?
Noon
Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Toronto, As an Individual
I suggest that we have to open the conversation to consider whether we need things. We're coming up against resource constraints, and I'm talking globally. We're coming up against constraints—
Noon
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
Because my time is short, I just wanted to hear who should do that.
Noon
Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Toronto, As an Individual
Who should do that? Okay. We need to open that conversation, and it can opened within CEPA because I believe that we have to move CEPA beyond a chemical-by-chemical approach, to consider if the chemical-by-chemical approach is working in totality. Because the total number of chemicals is increasing, total emissions and production are increasing, thus total exposures are increasing.
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
My concern is this— and I'm simply editorializing here. If the choice of which products will be available for production and use and sale in Canada is made by government, we're now talking Big Brother. We're talking about an Orwellian approach. That's something you won't see our side of the table favouring at all.
If you can provide me with greater detail on exactly what you meant by those suggestions, I'd be glad to consider them.
My questions for Mr. Khosla, though, are focused on Ms. Diamond's testimony. She recommended a number of areas of improvement for CEPA. One was that we should be adopting a more rigorous precautionary approach—you may want to make a note of that—and second, that environmental justice principles should be incorporated that address a broader array of vulnerable populations. Third, the NPRI needs to be updated for thresholds in substances, and that there's a responsibility on industry to provide better and more data.
Do you disagree with any of those in principle? If so, why? If not, could you expand a little bit?
12:05 p.m.
Executive Director, Industry Coordinating Group for CEPA
On the precautionary approach, I think it's a question of interpretation, and the interpretation that is most broadly held in the world is one that was developed during the Rio environment meetings in 1992. That is the interpretation that, I think, underlies much of the government's application or precaution. It's been the subject of a very wide department-wide consultation in the 1990s, and we think it's the right approach. So, yes, precaution is built into CEPA. It should be based on a commonly held view of what precaution should be.
On vulnerable populations, as I've said, I think they are already being taken into account. We would certainly be willing to consider the extent to which they should be further built into CEPA. We note that the government's paper recommends the preamble. That's something we will take a look at and can certainly provide you with a written comment on, if you wish.
On the NPRI, I said earlier that the act is static until reviewed. Things should be reviewed. So when it's ready in its cycle to be reviewed, I would certainly hope that we will have an intelligent conversation about how it needs to be changed. If that means some substances need to be added, some need to be dropped, thresholds need to be changed, we should have that conversation. I think CEPA already enables that. I'm not sure it's an amendment to CEPA that's required. It's common sense.
On industry data, ask my colleagues; we provide lots of it. I come back to this point about our being about 2% of the market. With regard to the Europeans' REACH approach, which is very data intensive and very expensive, I would think that every time that is raised in front of this committee, you should be asking the question, “Show me the evidence that it works”.
I have given you some evidence that CEPA works. If you judge it by whether we ban something, which is what virtual elimination essentially means, then I guess you would be more critical of its success. If you judge it by whether we've taken the actions that are needed to reduce environment and human health risks to the levels where they are acceptable, then I think it's a resounding success. Focusing on the extremes doesn't help anybody. I think we should be looking at the broad impact of the act and whether it's doing what it needs to do.
If I may editorialize just a little, I very much like Dr. Diamond's example of the gym. It's a perfect illustration of why a risk-based approach is needed. If you took a hazard-based approach to flame retardants, you might go down one path. If you take a risk-based approach, in your risk management discussion, you are able to consider what to do about the gym, if somebody raises it.
12:05 p.m.
Liberal