Environment Committee on March 10th, 2016

[Elaine MacDonald]

One thing to be clear about is that just because a chemical is added to schedule 1 doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be eliminated; in fact, the vast majority are not eliminated.

I wish I had it in front of me, but I don't. The number of chemicals that have actually been eliminated under CEPA are, I'm sure, under 10, and probably under five—very few. There is a very short list when you look at that.

We have to understand that schedule 1 and toxic assessment is really meant, as described, to deal with the issues that have been identified as the toxic issues, such as with microbeads. It was identified that the toxicity is occurring when microbeads get into the water and into fish and so on. That's how they're managing those products that have microbeads in them that wash down the drain, such as exfoliants and creams. They're not trying to manage microbeads in other uses that are not necessarily presenting that particular toxic risk. That's how CEPA works.

There seems to be this assumption that getting on schedule 1 mean you're never going to be able to use that chemical again, and that is not the case. That's not what CEPA is doing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Mr. Cullen.

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

Thank you, Chair, for the flexibility around the question rounds that we're doing today.

On the national inventory of pollution releases, this piece that was raised earlier, it may have been covered, and I think Maggie or Elaine talked about the exemptions. We exempt oil and gas releases, drilling, wells, and fracking. Are all those exempted?

[Elaine MacDonald]

Yes.

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

How come?

[Elaine MacDonald]

That's a good question. I don't know. There has been a request that I think was submitted in 2012 to have institutes [Technical difficulty--Editor] well, is fracking being added to the NPRI, and it has not been answered yet. There is an ongoing study happening within Environment Canada. They're doing something called the oil and gas review, but I could not answer as to why that hasn't happened. It's obviously a high-level public concern, so I would advocate for those loopholes to be closed, as I said in my submission.

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

Mr. Masterson, do you know why?

[Bob Masterson]

I don't know why. I know there are other thresholds as well and they include the size of the company in terms of—

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Turn on your mike, please. Our mikes seem to be freezing.

[Bob Masterson]

There are other exemptions from NPRI reporting, and they often focus around the number of employees. I believe the threshold is 10 full-time equivalents. I think you'd need to ask experts, but what you might see in that industry is, yes, cumulatively there are emissions that reach the threshold, but in individual activities where those might be sourced from, you have fewer than 10 employees. You need to speak to the experts in that area.

[Elaine MacDonald]

This exemption is actually not related to the employee threshold. It's explicitly defined.

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

Right, because I'm assuming TransCanada has more than 10 employees.

[Bob Masterson]

I'm saying it could be related to the nature of that business, and how many employees are at an individual wellhead. You're not going to find more than 10 employees at an individual wellhead on a full-time equivalent basis.

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

Right, but in terms of the consumer's side or the public's side of things...discharging sewage, discharging from oil and gas wells, from fracking wells...if you are a neighbour to one of these wells, you probably want to know. If that's not being done properly, I think the committee might want....

Is there anything we haven't asked you yet, Maggie or Elaine? Is there anything important that we haven't asked you yet that the committee could use?

[Maggie MacDonald]

It's a topic I'm so passionate about.

Members of the committee, I think, would benefit from looking at REACH. It's been mentioned once in Bob's comments, but there are few principles in REACH that are—

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

It was dismissed harshly by Environment Canada on Tuesday.

[Maggie MacDonald]

It's a funny thing. Environmental Defence Canada never dismissed it harshly. I think there are a few key principles in REACH that are really great, such as no data, no market. You provide the data before the substance is in wide use. There is also a system that allows industry to work with substances that are inherently hazardous and toxic, but if there's not an alternative, the company can still use it, and there's a way to manage that.

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

Environment Canada had an interesting reaction, that REACH was absolutely not to be considered. It was onerous, it was burdensome, it was not effective, our system is much better, Mr. Masterson, and under—

[Bob Masterson]

I would say our system is better and it's a better use of public resources. I'm not here to trash REACH. It is one of the few other programs, like the chemicals management plan, that have done the job. I think our chemicals management plan was designed for Canadian circumstances, and it is more appropriate and it is a better use of public resources. On the question of what we have, we've heard a lot of comments today about risk management. Look at the actual risk management measures that have been delivered, and I think Canada's program compares much more favourably for the resources provided than does REACH.

They're both good programs. They both meet their individual circumstances.

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

Maybe there are a few principles we can draw from REACH. That would be helpful to the committee, if you wanted to submit those to us.

[Elaine MacDonald]

REACH takes a bit more of a hazard approach, which is one thing you may want to look at.

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

Thank you, Chair.

[Bob Masterson]

And we would say, stay with the risk-based approach.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

I want to thank our guests very much for sharing so much wisdom with us. I also wanted to suggest that you've heard some of our questions and you've heard where we may be going. If you have more to share with us than what you were able to bring forward in terms of what you've presented, and you'd like to send that through to us for consideration, we would welcome it. We would also welcome suggestions.

I wrote a couple of things down. Different people had recommendations on who we might want to have come forward in the panel. We are open to those suggestions. Please send us your thoughts fairly quickly if you could, because we're trying to figure out who we should have come forward on this. Your suggestions would be welcome.

I will suspend for just a few minutes to give you a chance to leave the room before we move on to committee business.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

I'm going to bring the committee back to order.

We do want to get through a few items. I think you all have a package of some things we want to present. The clerk has asked whether we can just do the budget, because we have to pay some bills and we want to make sure that gets done.

I did not know, but I have been educated that every study needs to bring forward a budget to be able to accommodate that study. We have had one brought forward for this review of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. We don't know because we don't have our witnesses. If we had all of our witnesses we would know for sure.

What we have to do is put forward a potential...and we've picked some from Vancouver, some from Halifax. We've tried to cover coast to coast if people are coming from the two extremes, and a few in the middle, and we've come up with travel expense, a video conference for those who we can video conference, and then working meals. You're only allowed three for each study. We're going to have a few studies, so we've already done two. We have one left.

Go ahead, Mr. Fisher.