Evidence of meeting #39 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 you're.
A recording is available from Parliament.
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Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
Okay. That would be a separate regime, which presumably doesn't have absolute liability offences.
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Senior Counsel, Environment Legal Services, Department of the Environment
I'm sorry, but I am not knowledgeable about that.
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Conservative
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Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
You're out of time. That was perfect timing.
Mr. Badawey, you're going to share your time with Mr. Bossio.
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Liberal
Vance Badawey Liberal Niagara Centre, ON
I'm going to try to. Thank you, Madam Chair.
I have a quick question.
Ms. Meroni, you made the comment earlier about how proactive work is essentially planned inspection activity, predicated on risk-based planning, as well as informed through intelligence, which establishes national and regional priorities and projects.
My question is twofold. One, how do you establish that? Do you establish that through phytotoxicity reports, human health risk assessments, site-specific risk assessments, environmental assessments, one and two? That said, my second question would be how you then deal with that. Are you then into a remediation stage? Are you then into a stage of responding accordingly if in fact those health risk assessments show something?
I'm going to try to get all my questions in here, because I have only so much time.
My third question is, with respect to that, for the contaminants of concern that may not have science attached to them, science has to be established, and there's a certain parts per million level already established. Let's say it's 200 ppm; if in fact there's no science for that contaminant, that's the usual amount. When the science is then created, and I'm assuming you would do that, the ppm level is changed. Thus I go back to my second question: what's then done about it?
My last question is what happens when all that is contained within federal lands?
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Chief Enforcement Officer, Enforcement Branch, Department of the Environment
We will tag-team on that. That was a lot. Wow!
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Director General, Environmental Enforcement Directorate, Enforcement Branch, Department of the Environment
We'll do our best.
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Chief Enforcement Officer, Enforcement Branch, Department of the Environment
Okay, we'll do our best.
In terms of identifying what the priorities will be for establishing the national enforcement projects for any given year, we do an annual call-out, and we speak to our regional staff. That's done through Heather's regional directors. We also speak to our science and technology branch colleagues. We speak to the program managers who are in the protection branch who actually developed the regulations. We collect various perspectives in terms of where we should actually focus our efforts.
Part of that will also be based on the intelligence that we generate within our own organization. We collect a lot of that information, and then there's a bit of a filtering process. We can't do everything that may conceivably come forward, and that's why, as I stated in the opening, there's a certain level of risk-based decision-making that is done in terms of what we can physically undertake. Then we deem where the most important areas of concern are, where the highest degree of non-compliance that we're aware of is, as well as where the largest environmental harm is.
To that effect, basically in terms of any science that informs, that's where we will be looking to our science and technology branch colleagues, who also work with the program in terms of where they develop the regulations. Then, where do we see those regulations requiring some enforcement action?
If it is a newer regulation, or even if it is one that's been on the books for a while, we also work very closely with our colleagues who are separate from us, those responsible for compliance promotion. They work with the risk managers, the developers of the regulations, to do a certain amount of exactly that, compliance promotion. They work with the people who are regulated so they're aware of what their requirements are in order to be in compliance with the regulations as they're developed.
It's always an evergreen process. You see that regulations do get amended based on new information that comes forward and evolves. We work with all of those colleagues to establish what the priorities will be, and then develop the inspection plans. Not all inspection plans have to be delivered equally across the country, depending on the representation of the industrial sectors and the regulated communities.
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Director General, Environmental Enforcement Directorate, Enforcement Branch, Department of the Environment
You also asked what is done about it. It really depends on the problem.
One of the things we're doing currently with our annual planning process is to come up with new and innovative ways to deal with problems. Primarily regional staff work on that. We have a manager at headquarters who leads it, but she works with a manager from each region. They roll up a lot of the input from their region to look at the problem and figure out the best enforcement intervention to solve that problem. Then we bring in people at the officer level, and they sit on working groups for the various regulations, and they're really the experts on that regulation in that regulated community. They come in as well to talk about how to make it really practical and tangible on the ground.
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Director General, Environmental Enforcement Directorate, Enforcement Branch, Department of the Environment
There are more CEPA laws and regulations that apply to federal lands, but we don't treat federal departments differently than companies, so we do charge them.
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Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
Are there any regulatory restrictions to stop you from making data open to the public, to follow up on Will's line of questioning on opening up? Are there any regulatory restrictions on your opening that up to the public? Is it really just policy direction and dollars?
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Director General, Environmental Enforcement Directorate, Enforcement Branch, Department of the Environment
It's the Privacy Act.
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Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
Thank you very much. It's been an excellent session. I really appreciate all that you've shared with us. We've have very good questions all around the table, with very succinct and very informative answers. We really appreciate the time you've spent with us today, and what you've shared with us. We're going to go into a closed session shortly, so we will ask people to clear the room.
The meeting is adjourned.