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
Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
Ultimately, you have certain hazard end points, or certain values that are used. Once you trigger those values, a certain hazard—
Liberal
Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
—flag is associated with that, whether or not there is any exposure to that substance or not.
Liberal
Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
As I said, other individuals have come forward to suggest that we should be using a hazard-based approach instead. Are you confident that the risk-based approach is the more prudent manner to do it, that it would provide, at least in your expert opinion, the most benefit to Canadians?
Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
I'm not going to directly answer your question. However, I will say—
Liberal
Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
I was learning from my colleague here, Mr. Moffett. I will say, though, that we have assessed certain chemicals that are in commerce...highly hazardous, relatively well managed, with good stewardship practices in place. Hence there is not that exposure. You'll notice on certain outcomes of our risk assessments we've identified that, and we've said, “Okay, we're good with the way this use is, or this activity is. We will apply the significant new activity provisions of the act to that substance so if it is used for anything else, you have to notify us and we will evaluate that use.”
Another mechanism that's used is our DSL, so an inventory update for substances on the DSL. Under the CMP, we've operationalized that now; every four years we go about doing it. In the past two rounds, with any substance that we've assessed that we want to see how the use pattern of that substance, or the commercial status of that substance evolves over time, we subject it to that, and that way we're able to monitor it.
Liberal
Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
Okay.
On page 21 of the slides, you talked about how the multiple pathways can be assessed or reassessed, and you have eight of them there. Is any one of those dominant or any couple of those dominant?
Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
It's a good question. I think it largely depends on the year. We have a continuous inflow of data under section 70 of the act. There's science that's emerging at various times. We rely on the new chemicals program.
Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
Very true. With experience over time we've definitely seen that when you hit one of these triggers, you hit more than one. Imagine that internationally something's happened and at the same time scientists, whether academics or government scientists, are monitoring the substance in the environment. Then we have a call with our colleagues internationally, and they ask, “We have this issue, are you guys facing it?” Usually, we will trigger a lot of these.
Liberal
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses today.
I remember the time with measurement REACH. We heard a little bit about REACH and how good they were. That's directed by one set of industries in Europe. Do you have any comments about REACH and what it does, compared to what we do here in Canada?
Director General, Legislative and Regulatory Affairs Directorate, Department of the Environment
I'll make a couple of observations. First of all, both the REACH program and the obligation in CEPA to categorize and then assess categorized substances were designed to address the same issue. The issue is that, since the 1990s, most developed jurisdictions in the world have had a fairly similar new substances program. Starting 25 years ago, all countries said, if it's new, you can't use it until you show that it's safe, essentially. However, everybody started in 1990 with a legacy of thousands of substances that were in commerce, some of which had been assessed primarily for health or safety reasons—food, drugs, and so on—virtually none of which had been assessed fully, for a full set of health and environmental risks.
The challenge for everybody was where to start. In Canada, we knew that our list was at least 23,000 substances. In the U.S., I've seen estimates of a typical factor of 10 times. Canada was actually the first country in the world to establish an approach, to codify an approach. I'm not making a comment as to whether it's the best approach or not, but we were the first. We took a hazard approach and categorized the substances strictly based on certain hazard characteristics. Are they persistent? Are they biocumulative? Are they inherently toxic? Another factor looks at potential for exposure. If they met those hazard characteristics, then we'd have an obligation to assess them. It is a risk-based assessment. We moved from 23,000 substances to 4,300; and we've committed to finishing the 4,300 by 2020.
Mr. Morin has described the kinds of assessments we do. To manage, in some cases we actually get into an approach that is very much like REACH. REACH is an acronym for the registration, evaluation, authorization, and restriction of chemicals. Under REACH, first, there is a broad set of obligations to register. That took 10 or more years to put in place. Then government officials have an obligation to evaluate. If they evaluate and certain substances meet certain hazard criteria, they go on different authorization tracks. If they meet certain hazard criteria, the authorization test is much harder. It doesn't mean it's prohibited, but the test becomes, basically, that you can't use it unless you can show that there is no good alternative.
We have a similar approach. We assess, and then we have the prohibited substances regulation. If substances meet criteria that basically suggest they shouldn't be used in Canada, we put them on that regulation. What that regulation then says is, essentially, we know you've been using these substances and this could cause a lot of trouble, so you can apply for a permit to continue to use the substance for three years but only if you can show us that there's no technical or economically feasible alternative. If there's an alternative, you have to stop now. If there isn't and you can prove that to us, you can get a permit to continue to use it for three years, and we apply that to those substances that we add to the prohibition regulations. There are differences, but there are also broad similarities in the overall approach to management.
The one final point I'd make is that our regime was implemented at least a decade before REACH came fully into place, and we're much farther down the track of working our way through that full legacy of thousands of existing substances that had not been assessed.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
Who carries out the assessment under REACH and under CEPA?
Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
Under REACH, the European Chemicals Agency or member states could do it. Under CEPA, it's essentially done within the safe environments directorate at Health Canada, or the science and risk assessment directorate at Environment Canada.
The other point to add to this is that when REACH identifies a substance of very high concern, we do mandatory surveys to see if we need to look at that substance in Canada also. We look at whether we have already surveyed it or do we have to.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
On pages 5, 7, and 26, you described many different people who are involved, advisory and whatever else. The one I missed—and some people say I play this tune all the time—is FCM and the municipalities. Where are they? I remember in municipalities we were always digging out this piece of legislation, but I don't remember any mention in any committee of any process that involved FCM and the municipalities. It gets downloaded to them at some point. Are they in the process?
Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
They're not on the CMP stakeholder advisory council. Years ago, we did stuff with FCM. Offhand I cannot remember on what. I do recall there was stuff that was done, but my apologies that I can't remember.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
Unfortunately, we've run out of the time we allocated to this, and we do need the half hour after this to do some discussion. I do know that there are other questions that your excellent presentation has spurred. I think if members have extra questions, they could send them to the clerk, and then she'll send them to you. If you could respond that way, we'd really appreciate it.
Mr. Morin, go ahead.
Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
I just got a note here just to add to the comment there. Apparently they give us mandatory drinking water concentration data. Thank you.
Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
Yes.