Environment Committee on March 10th, 2016

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

I think this is a top-notch discussion. I appreciate what you've contributed to this, and I appreciate the fact that there are multiple sides to every story.

In the time remaining, I'd like to just pick up, Maggie, on what you talked about as “windows of vulnerability”. I'm interested in knowing how you go about regulating that. For example, you have a welder who becomes pregnant and whose physician says she cannot continue to breathe in the toxic chemicals associated with welding. How do you practically regulate that, other than just removing the individual who is in that window from the environment? Or is that what you're talking about?

[Maggie MacDonald]

It's a complex answer because it's a workplace example. Occupational exposures are not part of what we look at under—

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

That's fair enough, but I'm just trying to draw an example.

[Maggie MacDonald]

I think that comes back to looking at the inherent hazard approach. That means looking at the substance's inherent hazards rather than taking the approach of what the average exposure is or what the likelihood is of a person being exposed.

If a substance is inherently hazardous, such as mercury, for example, then we need to look at the inherent risks. It's so toxic that there's no debate about whether or not it is, right? But the question is, this welder might be exposed much more than somebody, say, who is living somewhere along the St. Lawrence River. That's a bad example, because the St. Lawrence does have many mercury hot spots, but....

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

Right. I can understand that.

[Elaine MacDonald]

Can I make a suggestion?

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

Yes, please.

[Elaine MacDonald]

The Pest Control Products Act actually tries to do it. Now, I'm not a fan.... The act is fairly new. It's newer than CEPA. The problems with the act are mostly about lack of implementation, but if you look at section 19 of the Pest Control Products Act, you'll see that in subsection 19(2) there's actually some wording where they try to turn the assessment of pesticides towards looking at windows of vulnerability. They do it by adding in external factors of safety, so they talk about infants and children, and they talk about “threshold” effects.

I would encourage the agency to maybe look at that act a bit and see what it has done. It was redrafted in 2002.

[Bob Masterson]

I would just say that what you've talked about is the inherent difference between a hazard approach and a risk approach.

On the example of saying that someone's exposed to something because of the nature of their job and what's the right thing—to remove the person from that position—that's managing the risk. That's not saying that nobody should ever perform that task. This concept of risk versus hazard is at the core of the decision we made on CEPA. It is a risk management approach, and that's what makes it so efficient and so effective, and that's why it's going to be very soundly copied in the new legislation that you see coming out of the United States.

We talk also about the precautionary principle. I would point out that we've already heard about the question of BPA, and we were—and still are—one of the few jurisdictions to manage that. Where do we place the risk management actions? On those parts of the population that are most vulnerable through the products that they come in contact with.

We have the precautionary principle and we have a risk-based approach, and your examples are exactly why—

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

I have to cut it off, sorry.

Mr. Gerretsen, you have more time later, so we'll go back to you.

Mr. Fast.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Listening to all of you, it really is fascinating. You have such a wealth of information.

I hear the chemistry association suggest that things are actually going well, at least as far as the chemicals management plan is concerned. I see references to the stunning success of public policy and its impressive results. I hear Ecojustice essentially suggesting that CEPA does little if anything to address the impacts of toxins and chemicals on human health and on the environment. You described it as a toxic treadmill. I sense there's still quite a divide there.

There was a suggestion made, Mr. Masterson, that the industry-initiated triggers aren't working at all. I believe that implies that essentially your industry writ large only responds reactively and that you don't proactively try to address many of these concerns. How would you respond to that?

[Bob Masterson]

I don't think that's true at all.

We're talking here about the role of the federal government. The marketplace plays a very strong role. Someone mentioned phthalates earlier. The companies that are the largest producers of phthalates are the world's largest producers of phthalate-free plasticizers. There are changes going on. There is evolution taking place. There's no sector that has as many patents and as much research development innovation taking place as the chemistry sector. The drive to eliminate risk is increasing across our western society. There's no question.

The question is how you go about managing risks appropriately while innovation takes place. The idea of banning substances simply because they might pose a hazard is one that we've specifically chosen not to take in Canada.

I'd be happy to talk more about endocrine disruptors and hazard versus risk approach, if someone wants to. I'd be very happy to share the opinions that were provided by Health Canada, which are very sound in our view.

[Elaine MacDonald]

Let me explain my comments, since you refer to them, on section 70.

There is a provision that requires industry to submit data to the government, if they discover an environmental health harm. When I asked civil servants working on CEPA if that section had ever been acted on, they could not give me an example. That was my concern, that that may not be working.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

I'm hearing industry say something different, that there is a great deal of proactive work done to identify—

[Bob Masterson]

There are also examples of substances that were found through assessment to not be toxic, but that companies themselves have voluntarily removed from the marketplace because of the precautionary principle.

It isn't all about rules and decisions that the government makes. It's a very innovative marketplace for the world of chemicals.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Thank you.

Maggie MacDonald, given that there is still quite a divide here, I appreciated the measured approach you brought to it, the fact that you're working with industry, not necessarily collaborating, but working with industry to achieve outcomes that serve Canada's national interests, our health interests, environmental interests.

Going back to BPA, when was BPA banned?

[Maggie MacDonald]

I think it was taken out of baby bottles in 2010.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Now it's been taken out baby bottles, but it's still present in our economy.

[Maggie MacDonald]

Yes, and hence in our bodies.

As I mentioned, the Canadian health measures survey from Statistics Canada found that it's in I think 90% or 94% of Canadians aged 3 to 79, which is too much. Last year, researchers in France found that the levels we thought might be safe thresholds for BPA exposure are actually many times too high, particularly because it is an endocrine-disrupting chemical. BPA mimics estrogen. Lifetime exposure to estrogen is linked to breast cancer risk. They've also recently found prostate cancer risk from this chemical.

Though it's out of baby bottles, which is great, if you're a breastfeeding mother and you have tons of BPA in your body, your baby is still going to be exposed to it. This is also the case for other populations, like cashiers, or accountants even, handling those receipts all day. It goes through your skin and enters the bloodstream.

We haven't dealt with all those other risks. It's on schedule 1. We have risk management, which is great. I'm glad there's risk management, but it's inadequate.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

I have a question on the precautionary principle within the preamble of the act.

Is it your position that the precautionary principle is not being followed at all, or that's it not being followed consistently?

[Maggie MacDonald]

It's not being followed consistently. It's not being followed adequately.

There are great examples of where it is being upheld, but with what's written down and what's practised, there's a gap there that we need to close so that it can be more consistent.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

What would plugging that hole look like?

[Maggie MacDonald]

I think that when risk assessments are done on substances sometimes...triclosan is a good example, because it's one I know well. It was declared toxic to the environment in a draft decision, but it wasn't declared toxic to human health. We have seen a great deal of evidence that it mimics the human thyroid hormone and affects other organs of the body as well.

The Canadian Medical Association has been calling for a ban on it since 2009 because of concerns that it contributes to antibiotic-resistant bacteria. There is a great deal of evidence that it's a human health hazard. I won't go further down that path at the moment, but if we were to apply the precautionary principle in its holistic sense, I think we would see that being declared toxic to human health as well, in light of mounting evidence.

Another shout-out is IARC, the International Agency for Research on Cancer. A cancer researcher recently said that a substance has never gone down when it has its IARC designation of 2B or above, meaning that there's more and more evidence that it causes cancer. There aren't examples of substances that then get reviewed and taken off that list, that we found don't cause cancer, even though we were moving up that chain. Things don't go in reverse that way.

That's evidence that the precautionary principle when applied in risk assessment is quite up to international standards to be very cautious.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

It's been very helpful.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

That is great.

Mr. Gerretsen.