There's a lot in that question, and I thank you very much for it.
Mr. Chair, I implore you not to give me homework the way that the chair of the Senate committee did. In the homework assignment he gave me, he asked for us to research every other jurisdiction in the world to find a watch-list, and we couldn't. This asks the question about why we need this watch-list.
Now, as it has been explained to us, the watch-list is a signal to industry to avoid the use of certain chemicals after a risk assessment has been completed and they have been found not eligible to be added to schedule 1. It is a tool to send a signal to industry to avoid the use of these substances.
As I said in my opening remarks, if government wants to do that, a “significant new activity” notice does that job admirably. If you want to send a signal to industry to tell them to stop using something, a stop sign works, and that's what a SNAc is. We need to have permission after a SNAc is put in place to increase our use of a substance or to change the use of that substance.
Now, I'm not going to say that we have to delete the watch-list, although I would like you to delete that list. At the very least, could we have an off-ramp, so that if the hazard profile of a substance changes because of new scientific evidence, a petitioner, a citizen or a company can go to the minister and say that they have this new information and to please remove the substance from the watch-list.
That's part of the answer to your question.
Now, what the Senate did to the watch-list was that it said, well, we'll take a substance off the watch-list if we add it to schedule 1. Well, that's a little bit of a coy move, because they've then decided that the substance has to be managed so there's no point in it being on the watch-list anymore. It's no longer sending that signal to industry.
An amendment on the other side of the ledger that allows a substance to get out of this proverbial parking lot—or as I call it, the defamation list—where it is proven in the future that the hazard profile that would end up on the watch-list is reduced, would be very much appreciated.