Environment Committee on Oct. 27th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Yes, actually, it is. Sorry. I was so focused on writing down the details that I missed the time. My apologies.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you very much

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Mr. Bossio.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Welcome back, Dr. Boyd. It's always a real pleasure to have you here on a panel. My questions will be directed toward you.

Yes, I would like a copy of your book, first off.

Second, I would invite you to send in further testimony on the hazards versus risk-based approach.

Most important, I'm really interested in this right to a healthy environment. I'd like to give you the rest of my time, which is about five and a half minutes, to talk about this right to a healthy environment. Once again, I invite you to send in further testimony on this area, because it is something that I think is very important.

Thank you.

[Dr. David Boyd]

Thank you very much.

I've been studying and working on the right to a healthy environment for about a decade now. I've helped other countries draft constitutions, draft legislation, and I've also studied the impact on countries when they do recognize the right to a healthy environment, and the corresponding responsibility to protect the environment.

This right is now protected in the constitutions of over 100 countries worldwide. As I mentioned, it's in 100 environmental laws worldwide. Together with other researchers, I've now done quantitative statistical analysis that demonstrates a cause-and-effect relationship between the recognition of the right to live in a healthy environment and a number of things we're all striving for: stronger environmental laws, increased public participation in environmental decision-making, more rigorous enforcement of those environmental laws, and most importantly, superior environmental outcomes.

Countries where the right to a healthy environment is recognized in law or in their constitutions have been able to reduce air pollution faster, produce greenhouse gas emissions faster, and more generally perform better than countries without the recognition of that right on environmental performance indices from the famous Yale-Columbia one to the comparisons that are done by the Conference Board of Canada.

The right to a healthy environment is quite a powerful tool and it is a human right. It is something that we need to recognize in the pantheon of human rights and it does come with important responsibilities, as well, so I think it's important to have both of those elements added to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

I also find from talking to indigenous colleagues that this notion of environmental rights and responsibilities is a really important part of indigenous law and culture. It offers us the opportunity to make another step toward reconciliation by incorporating that indigenous concept into Canadian law.

To reiterate, if I may, the really important thing is that recognition of the right to a healthy environment hasn't created any kinds of economic collapse. Look at countries like Norway. Norway is doing very well economically, but has much stronger environmental rules than Canada. France is another country. France added the right to a healthy environment to its constitution in 2005, and since that time, France's rating in the Conference Board of Canada's environmental performance standings has gone from the middle of the pack to the top of the pack, so it really does have that impetus.

I think it's also interesting to note, in relation to what Mr. Bacon was saying, I agree that we should have harmonization of these systems internationally, on the condition that it is upward harmonization, so we go to the higher standard and not the lower standard.

When you're talking about pest control products, I know we're not reviewing the Pest Control Products Act here, but again, a comparison of Canadian regulation of pesticides with the European Union does not make us look very good.

There are more than 40 different active ingredients that are no longer eligible for use in the European Union because of health and environmental concerns, but they continue to be registered in Canada as pesticide active ingredients. Those 40-plus active ingredients are used in more than 1,000 different pesticide products in Canada, but you'll find none of them on a shelf in any country in the European Union, because they are applying the precautionary principle in a way that we're not.

The right to a healthy environment is part of the underlying legal infrastructure of the European Union. We need to bring that concept to Canada.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Do I have any more time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

You have time.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Butler, I know you've wanted to provide some feedback on that in your testimony, so please go ahead.

[Mark Butler]

I would endorse what Dr. Boyd is saying. We work with communities that are disproportionately affected by landfills and other toxic industries. There was a study done here in Nova Scotia which showed that a disproportionate number of African Nova Scotian and indigenous communities are adjacent to landfills.

It's a question, I guess, of who has the political power in our society, and those who have less power are less able to reject them, when these things are decided, and have to deal with the consequences. So if there are ways...and David made a number of good recommendations in that regard.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

David, I know we have an Environmental Bill of Rights in Ontario. I'm actually someone who has benefited from that in a fight against a landfill, finally proving that there was massive off-site contamination from this landfill, and we were able to utilize that process to do so.

I also know that there are flaws. I know you can't deal with those now, but I would invite you once again to try to address where this legislation exists now and how we can improve upon it nationally.

Thank you very much for your testimony.

[Dr. David Boyd]

As you know, Mr. Bossio, the Ontario Environmental Bill of Rights is currently undergoing a process of legislative review by the province, so there's a fortuitous opportunity. We can learn from both the successes and the failures of that law as we design environmental rights provisions for the federal law.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you very much.

We are a co-operative committee, and I know Ms. Duncan has to leave early, so we're going to move up her time so she can get her questions in. It's three minutes.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

I have some pragmatic suggestions to follow up on with either Mr. Butler or Dr. Boyd, on those areas where the health minister, the environment minister, have mandatory duties to undertake monitoring and environmental impacts on health, but it's discretionary whether they have to talk to aboriginals or to affected communities.

It might be simple for us to switch and say there's a mandatory duty to provide an opportunity to have input. We've given those kinds of rights under environmental assessment but somehow we haven't continued them into other statutes. I'd appreciate any way that you could look at the statute so it might be easy to slip some of these in.

You know I'm a big defender of an environmental bill of rights. The reason I'm proposing a separate bill is this: CEPA has been one of the leaders and it led a lot of provinces to include those kinds of rights. The problem is we don't have the same rights in the endangered species act; we don't have it in fisheries; we don't have it in migratory birds, and so forth. I would welcome any suggestions on how to specifically include those kinds of rights in this bill, even any recommendations you might have to have an overriding right across the board when the government's going to make any kind of decisions that would impact the environment or health.

I'd be happy to hear from either of you.

[Dr. David Boyd]

I think that in coming up with solutions, part of what I've tried to do—and as the committee goes on with its work, you'll start to think I sound like a broken record—if we embed a certain number of key principles across the whole body of Canadian environmental law, then we'll achieve a degree of consistency. That is what I think you're striving for, and I think we should look at the question of how we can achieve the right to a healthy environment in a way that crosses all those boundaries without having to necessarily amend every one of those laws. That's something I'm certainly happy to have conversations about and look into.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thanks.

Mr. Butler, would you like to add anything?

[Mark Butler]

I think your suggestion of making it mandatory is a good one. I think CEPA is a good place to start with an environmental bill of rights and also environmental justice. If I could just move the conversation a little, something that really struck us when we were dealing with this GM salmon is that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans had all the scientific expertise, yet they were not a decision-maker, and essentially their advice was spectactularly ignored when it came to the approval process.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I'm sure my time is up.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

It is. You're very welcome.

Mr. Shields, you're up.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Mr. Bacon, you talked about co-operation internationally with a number of agencies and working with different countries. Internally in the food business, and maybe this is something you know about, the regulatory gaps that may occur or not occur between different health...to do with foods, different productions. Is there coordination or is it siloed, or is there a lot to do with health in food production?

[Gordon Bacon]

Mr. Shields, I'm not sure I understood the question or am capable of answering it.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Yes, you may not be able to, but you talked about health, and you talked about food production. In a sense, you're very familiar with the regulations to do with that in your particular crops, in pulses. Do you have any connection to other food production to understand how they do it? Is there any overlap? Is there anything that works, doesn't work, in the regulation piece for health, what you do?

[Gordon Bacon]

My background doesn't qualify me to respond to the question.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Okay, I'll go in a different direction.

You talked about environmental health and high-risk populations. Can you talk a little more about that?

[Gordon Bacon]

In the risk-based assessment, and I think this is a key part and a strength of our approach and the regulatory approach in Canada, and this is specifically referring to the Pest Control Products Act, but I think there's a very good lesson in it, in that there is pre-market consideration of the elderly, young children, many at-risk populations, in understanding what a lifetime of exposure would be. It's part of a risk-based assessment before approval is given.

I think everyone supports that. As I said, sustainability in the food industry hinges upon ensuring an understanding that this is a safe food product. I think to have that consideration in place and have the science to support a recommendation for something being commercialized is part of a risk-based assessment.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

I think you're answering my first question, which you're getting to. I think you understand more, but you may not be able to say it.

The regulations, as you see them, do they work? What would you suggest about the regulations specific to you?