The regime established under Bill S-5 would require the ministers to take particular actions to risk-manage substances that meet certain criteria. The act provides authority to articulate those criteria and put them in regulation. The bill provides direction about what those criteria need to include at a minimum. It explicitly references the concepts of carcinogenicity, mutagenicity and risks to reproductive processes.
In addition to the initial approach—which, as I described, focused exclusively on persistence and bioaccumulation—we would now be obliged to develop a regulation that also develops criteria associated with those three other concepts. It would then provide the authority to identify additional criteria that may be identified and that may emerge from domestic or international science over time as being relevant to define a subset of substances that are of particular concern and that merit particular significant risk management actions.