Evidence of meeting #28 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.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Who is assessing the risk?
It's not so much the jurisdiction of who has the responsibility to do it. Who is physically doing it?
4:40 p.m.
Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
The new substances program covers new chemicals. We do have an MOU in place, for example, with DFO.
4:40 p.m.
Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
When we received notifications for certain aquatic organisms we relied on DFO's fish science expertise to do that assessment. I was in Environment Canada when this was done. Environment Canada administers the reception of the notification; we take a look at its completeness; we have an MOU with DFO that establishes roles and responsibilities. We take care of their science knowledge, their expertise in that area, and from that they do the assessment. We work with them, we explain how the regulations work so the assessment is framed within the context of the regulations, and then we implement the next steps as we move forward. But in that case we rely on other government expertise.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for appearing today.
A number of witnesses have talked about the need for greater public participation. Can you explain again what opportunities exist now for the public to have meaningful interaction with you, and do you think there is need for more than what we're seeing currently?
4:40 p.m.
Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
In terms of public participation under the act, we have mandatory public comment periods at critical points, both on the risk assessment side, as well as on the risk management side. Typically, those are implemented or operationalized as 60-day public comment periods.
We get the comments in, consider them, adjust our products as necessary, and provide a summary of the public comment as well as a response. That is made available on the website.
Beyond those official public comment periods, we actually have much more on the go. Whenever we're undertaking assessments or thinking about undertaking a certain tranche of assessments, we have stakeholder information sessions in terms of here's what we're thinking, these are the substances, these are the approaches, this is how we plan on grouping these substances, and these are some of the assessment methodologies that we're considering. We get some input from the stakeholders, consider it, and come back to them. There is a lot of back and forth.
Once we've identified what our framework is, we will move forward at that point in time, saying, “Okay, here's what we're doing. These are the substances.” We then officially engage stakeholders with those substances. Stakeholders could be either from an NGO side, or from an industry side, so there's a lot of early engagement even before we generally start official information gathering. So before we issue a section 71 notice under the act, we will have that very early engagement.
From that point on, there is an incredible amount of back and forth on some of these substances. Some have more, some have less, but there is a lot of stakeholder engagement.
As I mentioned in the presentation, we have the CMP stakeholder advisory council that consists right now of 23 members—a broad mix of stakeholders who provide us with a range of advice on the implementation of the CMP.
Also associated with this is a biannual publication. By biannual, I mean every six months. A lot of stakeholders have said, “You're doing an incredible amount of work, but it's buried somewhere on this chemical substances website. Is there some way that you could quickly pull together a 10-page document that describes what you've done in the last six months and what you plan on doing in the coming six months?” So we've pulled that together. It goes out generally in June and December, plus or minus a month. It really provides stakeholders with that update.
We generally receive positive feedback from them. As I said, that publication is something that was implemented as a result of stakeholder requests, so we definitely work with stakeholders on a lot of this.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB
If you determine that a certain chemical or air pollutant is non-toxic, for example, can a group of people or individuals have an automatic review of that if they do not believe that the information you are presenting is right?
4:45 p.m.
Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
Essentially, our first step is to publish a draft that's open for a 60-day public comment period. People provide us with data, and sometimes just their opinions. Ultimately, what we need is science data, some piece of evidence, so we can say, “Oh yes, you know what, we didn't consider this. This is new science or something we just weren't aware of.” We factor that in.
In some cases, as we have gone from draft to final, we've adjusted our conclusion based on data that was provided. Sometimes even after we've published the final, new data becomes available. We make our conclusions at a snapshot in time based on the information that we have. Science continues to evolve. Monitoring continues to evolve. So as that data becomes available, we factor it in, and sometimes we've been known to revise our conclusions.
4:45 p.m.
Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
There's also the option for a board of review, if people want.
4:45 p.m.
Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
The board of review is...
4:45 p.m.
Director General, Legislative and Regulatory Affairs Directorate, Department of the Environment
The answer is that it depends. The act provides that the minister may establish a board of review in response to a request. There are two or three types of decisions where if there's a request made for a board of review the minister shall establish the board. In most cases, however, it's discretionary on the part of the minister.
4:45 p.m.
Director General, Legislative and Regulatory Affairs Directorate, Department of the Environment
Under the current act it's happened once. A few years ago a former minister of the environment convened a board of review to look into an assessment decision, or to review an assessment decision regarding a certain chemical substance.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
My first question is with respect to identifying potential toxins. Under CEPA you use a risk-based approach. We've heard other testimony before this committee about a hazard-based approach, and I'm curious if you can define what you see as the difference between the two, and the pros and cons. I'll start with that.
4:45 p.m.
Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
Essentially, our risk-based approach takes a look at the hazards of a certain substance. Is it a carcinogen, a genotoxin? Is there lethality or impacts to, say, fish or other forms of ecological organisms of interest, or trees, or something like that? So we take a look at that and we characterize what the hazards of a certain substance are. We then take a look at the exposure side of it. The first question we will often ask is, is the chemical even in commerce in Canada? In some cases the answer is no, it's not in commerce, in which case it would be subject to the new substance notification regulations. If it is on the DSL, though, just not in commerce, it means that there is potentially no exposure to Canadians at this point in time, but it can come into commerce.
What we do then from an exposure side is take a look at what the sources of release are, assuming it is in commerce in the country, how ecological organisms as well as humans could be exposed to the chemical, and what the exposure levels or the doses are in terms of people being exposed to the substance. From there, we will draw upon a margin of exposure from the human health side and say, are we safe or are we not? From the ecological side we look at a risk quotient, but ultimately we compare exposure concentrations to concentrations that are known to cause effects. When we talk about concentrations known to cause effects, we also build in there application factors to get it down to a level that would probably be safe, to a level that we feel would provide a certain buffer. We call them safety factors.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
You're explaining the risk assessment portion of it.
4:50 p.m.
Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
Yes.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
4:50 p.m.
Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
There are multiple ways out there. There are some jurisdictions that do hazard-based approaches— Canada, the U.S.
