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.
Liberal
William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC
Is it valuable, in your estimation, to have public participation through this mechanism? Is this potentially a very useful check on the executive authority, which CEPA provides?
Director General, Legislative and Regulatory Affairs Directorate, Department of the Environment
Again, I think we're straying into questions that are not appropriate for us to answer. Our job is to tell you how the act is structured, how it works, and how it has been used. It's for you to decide whether it's appropriately structured or whether it applies appropriate checks on the executive. I think you're asking us to answer questions that we may have personal views on, but not in our professional capacity.
Liberal
William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC
Sure, I appreciate that, Mr. Moffet, and I'm not trying to put you in an inappropriate position. The answer you provided already on the usage is perfectly adequate.
Shifting now to the National Pollutant Release Inventory, it's accessible to Canadians online. For instance, if an individual is looking to purchase a property, are Canadians able to search online through the NPRI and determine what pollutant releases are ongoing in that general vicinity; for example, through the use of postal codes?
Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
Absolutely, you have a full option. You could go in there. You could search. I can't remember offhand the different search mechanisms, but you could do it via mapping. It has query functions you could enter online. I can't remember if you can enter a postal code or not to search it, but there is a full range of options. If you're interested in a property in a certain area, you could enter that and see what's around there.
Liberal
William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC
Thank you.
Mr. Moffet seems to be shaking his head in the negative.
Director General, Legislative and Regulatory Affairs Directorate, Department of the Environment
Specifically, at the moment, there's no postal code search function.
Director General, Legislative and Regulatory Affairs Directorate, Department of the Environment
There is one now? Okay, I guess we're constantly updating the search function, so there's a postal code search function as well as a basic GIS overlay, which allows you to target any area of Canada, as Mr. Morin explained, and then expand as far as you want. So my apologies for misleading you.
Liberal
William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC
Thank you for that. Actually I would commend the government on that change. It's very helpful. The United States has had that for some time, and it enables all sorts of private actors to make good decisions around whether they want to purchase properties, for example.
Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
If I could just add to that, we have a Google Earth application, which is pretty neat, if you want to take a look at it.
Liberal
William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC
I'll let my kids know. Thank you.
In relation to animate biotechnology, which is actually discussed at section 2.14 of the May 2016 discussion paper, is it the case that the federal government previously considered a stand-alone regime for the assessment of the risks related to animate biotechnology, and if that's the case, could the departments involved please provide the written materials on what was previously considered? I know we can do an access to information request, but I'd rather not go through that process.
Director General, Legislative and Regulatory Affairs Directorate, Department of the Environment
You are delving into history. I know that there were—
Director General, Legislative and Regulatory Affairs Directorate, Department of the Environment
No, not to our knowledge, but we can check and get back to you.
Liberal
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
Thank you to our witnesses.
And by the way, Madam Chair, I think we should have these witnesses back closer to the end of our study, because their information has given me new perspectives on some of the challenges we face.
On the NPRI, we've had some witnesses, one in particular I recall, who raised the issue of toxic pollution in Ontario compared to some of the U.S. states, and that has been used as a pretext to support toughening up CEPA.
This is my question for you. Is it appropriate to compare the two? If not, why not? If so, why?
I have just one follow-up question to that, so you have them both. Does CEPA already contain the power to regulate air emissions? That's just so we have it on the record.
Director General, Legislative and Regulatory Affairs Directorate, Department of the Environment
I'll try to address those issues. My colleague may want to supplement the answer.
I think inter-jurisdictional comparisons are always useful to determine how a jurisdiction is doing and whether or not there are lessons to be learned. Specifically your question is, can we compare performance as reflected under the NPRI with performance as reported under statutes administered by certain U.S. states? There I would suggest that what would be appropriate to do, as in any comparison, is to ensure that you're comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges. The particular comparison that was provided to the committee—and we'd be happy to follow up with an objective assessment of the numbers—compared the full set of releases that are reported under the NPRI, which includes emissions to the atmosphere, direct emissions to water, and off-site releases, which are basically taking something and putting it in a waste disposal facility, which counts as a release in the NPRI. That's different from a reported emission to the environment under, for example, the New Jersey toxics reduction initiative.
While I think the main point of comparison in the presentation was to New Jersey—indeed, we have long tried to benchmark ourselves against New Jersey, which has an extremely effective toxics initiative—I would suggest that the data that you were presented with didn't compare apples to apples and therefore provided a rather large number on the Canadian side compared to a lower number on the U.S. side.
Again, what we'd be happy to do is give the committee the data, and not in a kind of defensive manner or explanatory manner, but just breaking down the data so that you can see emissions to air and emissions to landfill sites compared to....
Director General, Legislative and Regulatory Affairs Directorate, Department of the Environment
And your last question was...?
Conservative
Director General, Legislative and Regulatory Affairs Directorate, Department of the Environment
We have a number of authorities to regulate air emissions. First of all, many air pollutants are on the list of toxic substances, so we have authority under part 5 of CEPA to use the full set of CEPA tools—regulations, P2 planning notices, guidelines, codes of practice, and tradeable instruments—to regulate or otherwise control emissions of air pollutants that are considered to be toxic substances. In addition, we have authority under part 7 to regulate emissions to the air from vehicles, engines, and fuels. We have exercised authorities under all of those parts.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
Thank you.
I'd like talk about vulnerable populations.
In the minister's letter to the committee, I believe it was dated sometime in May, there's a passage referring to vulnerable populations. The letter discusses why the term could be incorporated in the preamble of a new act or a revised act, but there are some suggesting it should be incorporated in the body of the act.
Can you tell me whether you have a preference, and then, if so, why?
Director General, Legislative and Regulatory Affairs Directorate, Department of the Environment
Again, I'll just speak briefly about that. I'm not going to give you a preference; I'll give you some considerations.
