Environment Committee on March 8th, 2016

[John Moffet]

At this point my advice would be that this request should be made of the minister. The minister may authorize officials to provide advice to the committee. The request for this meeting occurred fairly recently, so the discussion with both our ministers has simply been one of let's appear and share how the act is used. The ministers can decide whether they want to appear, whether they want to provide input, whether they want to make officials available. The challenge we have is decisions about legislation are made by the government. We provide advice to the government. I think we're restricted to telling you how the act works. Again, we can go so far as to say what it does and doesn't do, and then leave it to you to draw your conclusions, unless the minister directs us otherwise.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

You've just said what I was going to say, that we have to be careful, because they aren't the legislators. We will ask the minister if we want to have that information. That would be good, thank you.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

In terms of specific challenges in the implementation of this legislation, the members of the opposition have pointed to changes that have been made to enforcement. I wonder if you could point to any specific aspects of CEPA 1999's implementation that have proven to be problematic from the perspective not of administrative efficiency but in pursuing the public interest. Are there aspects of this legislation where, in the department's estimation, they are limited in terms of where they can go to prevent toxic substances from entering the environment? I might add to that, perhaps you can comment on the discretion that is built into this statute that really provides a fair degree of latitude for the minister to determine the toxicity of a substance. I wonder if that latitude has in any circumstance created an impediment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

I may be wrong, but the way I'm interpreting your question is that you're asking the public servants to determine and let us know what they suggest we might want to make as changes. Is that what I'm hearing?

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

No, what I'm asking is what challenges have they faced in the implementation of the act.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

I think that's fair.

[John Moffet]

I'll make a couple of points, if I might. The act does provide broad discretion to take action and to decide how to act. Consideration of how the act has been implemented and whether the use of the act has been effective is, of course, a completely appropriate focus for the committee. That's not one that government officials can comment on, I'm afraid. Of course, you have access to the Canadian public. You can canvass a wide range of views about the efficacy or lack thereof of interventions or of decisions not to intervene on a range of issues.

You made a distinction between administrative efficiencies. I've tried to identify some administrative challenges we have, including how in some cases where it's obvious that action should be taken but the action is actually better taken under another statute. That's an issue we confront. An example is the wood stoves issue. Wood stoves are a source of air pollution, which affects people's health. We could address it under CEPA right now, but it would be completely inefficient to do so. I don't think I'm making any kind of political statement about the obvious inefficiency of regulating millions of individual wood stove users.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

I appreciate that. Thank you very much.

Mr. Cullen.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Welcome, John and John.

I have a couple of quick questions to start. The last time we did this there were 31 recommendations from the committee. How many of those have been implemented?

[John Moffet]

That's a great question. I have an answer here.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

How about a specific question while you search for the answer?

The first recommendation was that the government should prepare a biennial report, a comprehensive report on the state of the environment. Does that happen?

[John Moffet]

It doesn't under CEPA. The report that the government has developed over the last number of years, which provides state-of-the-environment information, is promulgated under the Federal Sustainable Development Act. That provides information about environmental quality.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

The committee recommended that come out of CEPA. Again, back to the last time we did this exercise, there were 31 recommendations. Can you tell us how many have been implemented?

[John Moffet]

I can follow up with specifics. The ballpark number is about two-thirds. Some of the recommendations were for changes to the law. Obviously, we haven't implemented any of those. Some of them, such as to engage stakeholders earlier, we've done.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

What might be helpful for the committee, Mr. Moffet, as we prepare our study of CEPA would be a comprehensive list of what's been done and what didn't get done the last time we went through this. Does that seem like an acceptable process?

[John Moffet]

We can absolutely provide that to you.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

That's great.

I'm looking through a previous environment commissioner's report. Mr. Vaughan concluded that the enforcement program was not well managed to adequately enforce compliance within CEPA. I'm looking at an Ecojustice report from that time, authored by Mr. Amos, I think, which showed that over 20 years you had collected a grand total of $2.4 million in fines. To put that into context, the Toronto library board sent out fines for $2.6 million in just one year. It doesn't seem scalable, just in terms of some of the impacts that some of the environmental accidents and disasters—call them what you will—have had.

The number of your enforcement officers and inspectors has increased, but the number of inspections and warnings has gone down. Why is that?

[John Moffet]

I'm not sure that inspections have gone down.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

That was according to the environment commissioner, Mr. Vaughan. Is he wrong?

[John Moffet]

I don't know. I'll again commit to follow up and give you information.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Okay.

I want to bring this down to real terms that people can understand. I want to turn to pesticide management. For some context, between 2001 and 2011, pesticide use in Canada went up 3%; insecticides use went up 42%, and the use of fungicides went up 114%. Conditional permitting went up 80% just in the last five years. Why are we doing so many conditional releases? Why are we allowing chemicals to be on the shelves for consumers, for farmers, when information is still missing, which is why release was conditional in the first place?

[John Cooper]

I have to apologize; I cannot answer for the pest management regulatory agency in terms of pesticide use.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

You're with Health Canada, correct?

[John Cooper]

That's correct.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Does this have nothing to do with you?