Environment Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2016

[Prof. Lynda Collins]

I was speaking recently to a health law group and what I said is the health law people and the environmental law people need to talk, because in every other form of health promotion you actually require individual co-operation. You tell people to stop smoking, but then they have to stop. You tell them to exercise, to go in for cancer screening, whatever, and you require their co-operation. This is that sweet spot where as government you can actually give the gift of health. This is just such a profound and powerful opportunity that you have.

When you improve ambient air quality, you save thousands of lives. No one disputes that.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

We're going to legalize marijuana, so that there are more choices to it. Now, come on.

[Prof. Lynda Collins]

Yes, you're absolutely right. There are going to be areas where people continue to compromise their health. But this is an area in which you as government can give people health. That's a pretty incredible opportunity, in my view.

The thing is, you're right. There are always going to be people who throw themselves off cliffs, who climb Mount Everest, who smoke and risk their health. Sometimes their health is put at risk by someone else, and those are injustices, and we work on them. But in environmental cases, there is a certain poignant injustice.

I'm going to speak now as a mother, because I have a child who is one of these vulnerable populations. I have a child with severe disabilities. We live downtown, because he uses a wheelchair, and downtown, things are accessible. Two years ago he started developing acute respiratory crises, and I have seen him fight for his life in the emergency room, all the while knowing that traffic-related air pollution could well be part of the cause.

That's not right. We can do better than that in Canada.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

And 10,000 deaths are caused year by year in accidents in hospitals. Should we quit going to hospitals?

[Dr. Mark Winfield]

I think part of the distinction around environmental risks in particular is this question of voluntary versus involuntary risk.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Yes.

[Dr. Mark Winfield]

The question in particular is that the contaminants we're talking about here under CEPA are things to which we are involuntarily exposed. We have no choice at all about the exposure pathway, precisely because they're in the ambient environment. Indeed, with certain vulnerable populations we even find that exposure pathways are different for children, for example.

That's something quite different from a situation in which you have a voluntary consent. However poorly informed your former students may have been, they were still giving their consent, and that I think is a fundamental difference here. It is here that the role of the state becomes important, because as government you're acting as a proxy to try to deal with those situations of involuntary risk and exposure.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Yes, and I agree.

[Prof. Daniel Krewski]

I like the question. I want to make a couple of quick points. One is what the scope of CEPA is whether we're talking about environmental tobacco smoke or active smoking.

Certainly, active smoking is the predominant cause of lung cancer, responsible for some 90% of all lung cancers in this country, but among the other causes, and this is my second point, close on the list would be radon in your homes, which is responsible for about 10%. The vast majority of the radon-related lung cancer cases, however, occur in smokers because of the synergism between the two agents. If you got rid of smoking, you'd also solve the radon problem.

This point came up in the “next generation of risk” science project we did, in which you might have a particular statute that focuses on an environmental agent such as radon, while a lifestyle factor such as smoking is outside the scope, but because those two interact, maybe at a cross-agency or cross-statute nexus there might be some public health interventions you could design that would serve multiple purposes. That's what we call the population health approach to risk assessment.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Yes, that's a good response. I appreciate it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

You have one more minute, sir.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Let's explore that a little further. You talk about the fast way you can deal with.... I'm really interested in the technology of using it.

How fast do you think it will be available and how widespread?

[Prof. Daniel Krewski]

It's available now. We had some discussions with colleagues at Health Canada about the possibility of applying on a large scale some of these new technologies to the domestic substances list.

The technology is there now. It would cost something to run a large number of environmental agents through those new testing procedures, but the price that would be paid would be small compared with the benefit of new data. You couldn't get that kind of data 10 years ago. If you wanted to make an investment in applying the new technologies to as yet untested chemicals, it would be highly cost-effective, in my opinion, and could be done now.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Individually and in compounds—

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

I have to cut you off.

We have quite a bit of time, and if our guests are willing, I'm willing to continue the exercise of questioning. I could give everybody another six minutes.

What do you think? Is everybody up for that?

Is that a yes?

[An hon. member]

[Inaudible--Editor]

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Do you know what? I jumped you, Will. I am so sorry.

I missed Will because I was going to add the time to Linda's, so that you didn't get the chopping. It's my fault.

We will do five minutes, if everybody's okay, after we allow Will six.

I'll add five to you, Linda, and then we'll do five and five.

I'm sorry about that, Will; my apologies.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thanks to our witnesses.

It is very edifying to be hearing your submissions. I look forward to studying the written ones in greater detail.

I first want to ask Professor Doelle to expand on the idea of the use of environmental assessment-type procedures and applying those to toxicity assessments as currently undertaken in CEPA.

Could you speak to the issue of animate substances, new genetically modified species? Do you think that kind of environmental assessment-type approach involving greater public participation would be helpful or useful, and how might that be operationalized in the context of a CEPA review?

[Dr. Meinhard Doelle]

To start with your last question, the way you operationalize it potentially would be for a CEPA provision to be the trigger for the environmental assessment, but that also depends on how the CEAA review goes. I think that has to be coordinated.

If CEAA goes with a list approach to triggering as opposed to the kind of a lawless trigger we used to have, then you would find different ways of ensuring there is an opportunity to do an environmental assessment.

To go to your specific example, I think the AquaBounty decision provides exactly that example where you had genetically modified salmon introduced or proposed for Canada for the first time, and so it raises two possibilities.

One possibility is the facility that proposes to introduce this new substance goes through a project assessment. But if there's a sense that this is a broader new type of activity, I think the real opportunity is to do a strategic environmental assessment, something many of us are advocating for in the context of the review of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act where you then would go proactively out and ask some basic questions.

These questions would be whether this type of activity should be allowed, and under what conditions, where you look at alternatives, you look at what the utility is. All the kinds of questions and issues that have been raised in the context of our discussion about toxic substances, and their use, and how you minimize or eliminate risk, are amplified I think to some extent when you're talking about a new substance.

That would be my suggestion, that you utilize a process that is working elsewhere, certainly at the project level, to engage the public in a discussion about particularly the utility side of this, and the alternative side of this.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you for that.

[Dr. Meinhard Doelle]

Is the risk warranted in light of the benefits?

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

The challenge would lie in identifying what types of substances would be appropriately subjected to more of a project-style environmental assessment.

If any of the witnesses have any particular comments on that, I would welcome those.

Dr. Winfield.

[Dr. Mark Winfield]

As much as I agree it would be very useful for some of the new substance assessment processes to be much more in the character of an environmental assessment and to take a broader perspective on things, the challenge, of course, becomes what the basis is for that on the part of the federal government.

At the moment, the new substance assessment process within CEPA is grounded very much in the finding of toxicity. That's the basis on which the federal government can do something, and that's what defines the boundaries of the assessment.

If we were to take a broader perspective—and I don't disagree with the notion it would be very useful—we would then need some other constitutional basis on which there would need to be another federal hook, be it under the Fisheries Act in the case of AquaBounty, or somewhere else, in order to provide a foundation for that type of assessment and then to be able to operationalize the outcomes. That's the dilemma with that approach.

Within CEPA we're tied to a toxicity assessment for a complex series of legal reasons, and we have to broaden the basis of the assessment out from a federal perspective, or at least the grounding of the assessment from a federal perspective, in order to be able to incorporate some of these wider questions. I agree very strongly, particularly around things like products of biotechnology, but also other new substances, that we would very much want on the table these questions of what is the rationale, what are the downstream effects, what are the alternatives? They are very desirable questions to have new substance assessments, but trying to do it within the existing structure of CEPA would be challenging.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you for that.

I'd like to invite Dr. Collins to expand on her response to Mr. Fast's question.

It seems that some are of the view that the sky might fall if environmental rights are incorporated and that liabilities would be over-broad. Is there a way to bring comfort to the opposition? I think this is an important piece.

[Prof. Lynda Collins]

I think it's an important piece too. I would just say, look to international experience. We're actually only one of 12 countries in the entire world that doesn't codify environmental rights. In fact, the sky has not fallen.

The thing about Canada, of course, is that we pay for health care, so it doesn't make any economic sense in Canada to allow serious public health problems to continue. You're not externalizing those costs. The government is on the hook for those costs. It's way cheaper to prevent the health damage in the first place.