Environment Committee on Nov. 17th, 2016

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

Phil, you talked about the PAH levels in the Athabasca River and the Peace-Athabasca Delta and the monitoring you are doing. Are you doing monitoring around the country in a lot of different areas, and are PAH numbers drastically higher than in other areas that may have some industrial development in them?

[Phil Thomas]

Certainly we've been looking at the impacts of PAHs, not only in northern Alberta but also in the Slave River delta and the Northwest Territories, up the Mackenzie River to the Mackenzie River delta and the Mackenzie communities, so we are looking. Also, I have done a lot of work in Hamilton Harbour on the double-crested cormorants. With the coal in the water there, there are some issues.

How does it compare? We find that PAHs follow often latitudinal gradients similar to mercury, so because it binds to particulate matter coming out of smokestacks, there's a capacity for long-range transport that gets deposited mostly on those northern communities.

Over the last 25 years, PAHs dominate the sum of all contaminants found in Arctic biota. We're finding that in animals and plants in the Arctic, PAHs make up the majority of those compounds found in those wildlife species.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

It's good to hear that you're monitoring right across the country.

That's good, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

You have one minute, if you need it.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

One minute....

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

You don't have to take it.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

I'll pass it on. We have a good panel here, and maybe there will be questions asked.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Are you guys all—

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Madam Chair, it's yours.

As the chair, I don't normally get to ask questions, so it is really nice to have an opportunity.

When I was listening—

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

That's time.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

All right, stop that.

When I was listening to the testimony about trying to put a timeline for the end of asbestos use and how it was going to take quite some time to deal with what's already out there, I was thinking of urea formaldehyde. If somebody found it in their house, before they could sell the house, they had to identify it and it would be illegal if you sold your home without identifying it. I don't exactly know what the penalties were, but people generally understood that was going to be a marker on the home and it stayed on the home.

Is that something that you're considering or you're proposing? I'm trying to figure it out. This is a big challenge.

[Sara Trotta]

I absolutely think that's something the Cancer Society would give consideration to as a possible policy to address this issue.

As we look towards creating this final ban on asbestos, I think we really need to look at moving the legislation that pertains to it from a controlled use approach to an outright ban. While we know that there are CAR regulations in place, those regulations don't always have the teeth to really hold in the way that we need them to.

We know that with asbestos there is no safe exposure limit, so we need to start looking at some of those policy pieces, such as what you're referring to with urea formaldehyde, to see how we can use them in a very similar fashion to address some of these issues around the registry aspect of, for example, privately owned buildings and homes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

I was just sitting here trying to think about how we would do that and what mechanisms we might have to do it. I was thinking that we have done something like that before, right? That's the first one that popped to mind. There may be others. I was just curious. If you do have some of those suggestions, we'd love to hear them.

[Gabriel Miller]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

It looks like Mark wants to get right in on my questioning, so go right ahead.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

I want a follow-up to that. The formaldehyde product was quite different. It had a half-life. As it decomposed, it turned into a gas, and actually entered.... There was a real hazard to it—

[Gabriel Miller]

That's right.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

—whereas asbestos is only hazardous when it's disturbed, especially when it's used in insulation. From a risk-based approach, when dealing with asbestos, quite often the answer is “don't touch it”.

Do you at least acknowledge that what I'm saying is the case? Do you agree with me?

[Sara Trotta]

Yes, I think we want to move beyond that risk-based approach to a more hazard-based approach. We know that there's no safe exposure and we know that over time it does start to break down just through the wear and tear in a building and that people will eventually be exposed, so we need to address that issue of exposure.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Yes. I guess what I'm getting at is whether the approach should be exactly the same, given that the substance is significantly different. As a matter of fact, urea formaldehyde no longer poses a risk, because it's beyond the half-life of the substance. It's not a threat anymore. It's not even required to be.... Well, it might still be required, but the last time it was used was in 1988, so long ago that the gas is all released and it's no longer a threat. That's at least my understanding of it.

I'm concerned about going down the road of using the same approach to two fundamentally different substances.

[Gabriel Miller]

I have to admit that I'm not terribly familiar with the other example. I think part of what you touched on, though, or what I heard, is that we shouldn't be rushing to the conclusion that there should be a national project to go out and get this out of everywhere it exists.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Right.

[Gabriel Miller]

That's absolutely true—

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

That's what I was getting at.