Health Committee on May 28th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

—have some other witnesses. That I think was addressed earlier.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

All right, thank you.

It seems to me that there are several overarching issues that occur to me as I read through this. One of them is that these are discussions that are going on, and there's no particular agreement with anybody. There certainly is no signed agreement around SPP. This is a much broader discussion with a number of countries around harmonizing the chemicals, what are potentially dangerous chemicals.

I don't mean this to be a simple question, and I'd like just a yes or a no. Will raising pesticide residue limits make Canadians safer and healthier?

[Richard Aucoin]

As I indicated before, there's no decision to raise pesticide residue limits. There is discussion about the current implications of different residue limits around the world and what the implications would be if there were changes to those limits.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

I guess we can ask the SPP people, but the story that emerged in the paper was a fairly extensive one, I would suggest. I don't know whether somebody has developed an urban myth or if this has come from somewhere else, but I will ask about it when the SPP people come.

I think I heard you say you've done consultations within other federal government departments.

[Richard Aucoin]

It depends in which context. In the context of our proposal to revoke the 0.1 ppm general maximum residue limit, we obviously had discussions within our department and with CFIA to make a number of departments aware of what we were proposing before going out for fuller consultation with the Canadian public.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Can you define Canadian public for me, please? Maybe this is where Ms. Kadis was going. Is it really the public or is it stakeholders? Secondly, is that consultation available for us to see?

[Richard Aucoin]

We consult the Canadian public by using as many means as we can. We publish these proposals. Certainly regulatory proposals have to go through the normal Canadian gazetting process to reach as many people as possible. We also have our own website, where we make it clear what these proposals are.

We have specific stakeholder groups that we know will be affected by these proposals, and we make extra-special efforts to reach various stakeholder groups. We've also presented this to a number of multi-stakeholder advisory committees and kept them informed--for example, the Pest Management Advisory Committee.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

So for the Canadian “public” to comment on this, they would have to either be aware of Canadian gazetting or look at your website. They'd have to be informed enough to do that. In order for my next-door neighbours to be able to comment, they'd have to be aware of those processes.

Is that information in writing?

[Richard Aucoin]

Yes, it is.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

May we have it?

[Richard Aucoin]

Certainly all the information we have published on our proposal to revoke the 0.1 ppm general MRL is available on our website and in other ways. We'll certainly be happy to provide that information.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

In the way the information is designed, does it say what's come from the general public, what's come from stakeholders, what's come from wherever?

[Richard Aucoin]

When we put these proposals forward we summarize all the responses we get, where they came from, and the nature of them. We publish that so people can see the nature of the responses.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Okay. Thank you.

Did I just run out of time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Yes. You have five seconds, and that's not enough time to ask a question.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

It's always enough for me, but I'll save it and add it to the next one.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

You did very well and got a lot of questions in there, so congratulations.

Now we'll move on to Mr. Patrick Brown.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have two questions on the hazardous materials area, Ms. Watts.

Realizing that the goal is to balance the need for proprietary rights for trade secrets with health and safety, could you delve into that a bit more and share with the committee some international examples? We've heard the reference to the United States, but how does the balance we have right now in Canada compare with other industrialized countries?

[Sharon Watts]

Thank you for the question.

Right now, interestingly, there is an initiative called GHS, globally harmonized system, which is an initiative to look at harmonizing chemical classification and labelling. In that respect, the United Nations has sponsored this event and this initiative. The country that is participating in that would be the United States.

If we look at the United States' system in comparison to ours, in terms of trade secret protection and disclosure of ingredients on products, they have a system that is not comparable at all in the sense that their system for trade secret protection relies on a challenge basis. In other words, if you're a supplier in the U.S. market and you believe you have a trade secret, you claim that you do, and you only have to prove it upon a challenge by an affected party, usually in the courts.

In Australia, another country that has an ingredient disclosure system, you cannot claim trade secrecy for certain types of hazards, like carcinogenicity, but there is no systemic review of safety documentation as there is in the Canadian system.

In the EC countries right now there's a new initiative called REACH, which is also looking at some sort of a trade secret mechanism. Again, it's not quite as stringent as the Canadian model. It's looking at certain kinds of hazards that one cannot claim exemption from, but, again, there's no systemic review of all of the safety documentation that goes with a claim for exemption, such as in our case.

What has happened under GHS is that they've looked at the trade secret mechanisms around the world. The Canadian contingent very strongly supports the Canadian model. In fact, the labour representatives on our council who we met with last week were at those meetings in Geneva and spoke to the Canadian system as being an international model.

They have very clearly established broad principles to which all countries must conform, but which allow the Canadian system to remain as stringent as it is, and in fact unique.

So in terms of harmonization, there is actually no effort to harmonize the trade secret mechanisms.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

In terms of the loosening of the disclosure requirements, where's that routed from? How was that initiated, and what groups were pushing that? Are we seeing that in other jurisdictions as well?

[Sharon Watts]

That was initiated probably back in the late nineties, when we were doing our consultations on renewing the commission. It was a proposal that was supported by, interestingly, both industry and labour, in the sense that we had come forward with reports on the progress with which industry has complied with our regulations, on the economic side, and our data was quite surprising. Only four claims out of almost 3,000 to date for which we have rendered decisions were actually deemed to be invalid. In other words, industry's track record, in terms of substantiating their claim for trade secrecy, has been excellent, while not so good on the health and safety side. But that's where we remain quite vigilant.

So in this case the suggestion to go to a declaration approach as opposed to requiring substantiation in every instance was put forward jointly by labour and industry. Labour was interested in it because, from their perspective, any sort of efficiency gains that can be gleaned on the economic side should be reinvested into the health and safety evaluation side of our operations, and that's a commitment we made.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you for that. Thank you very much.

We'll now move onto Dr. Carolyn Bennett.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

I'm concerned, as lots of people are, about where this fits with the precautionary principle. Showing something is not dangerous yet doesn't necessarily mean it's safe. Canadians are worried about this, and I'd like to know a little more about the science with which you determine 0.1 or 0.01--how you actually sort this out. Maybe you should just start with that.

I've always had concerns with experiments done on rats, because rats live their lives in sewers and spend their lives detoxifying themselves, and maybe their livers are a bit better than human livers. How do we assume that something that's okay for a rat is okay for a human?

[Richard Aucoin]

I think I'll ask my colleague, Dr. Chan, to respond to your question.