Health Committee on May 7th, 2009

[Cynthia Callard]

About the same number of kids are smoking dope as are smoking cigarettes, and it's a terrible thing to put smoke in your lungs. It does enormous amounts of damage, even forgetting the psychological effects.

The danger with this, of course, is that you get cross-addiction, so that people are playing around with joints and then they become addicted to nicotine. It's transferred. But it's also an example of the inventiveness. Who would have thought? Why would someone bother? But they do.

So I hope, I hope, and I hope that these laws will be captured in a new law to be passed that's specifically designed for this purpose. But there'll be something next week.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you, Ms. Callard. We're all recovering from your sample right now.

Now we'll go to Ms. Murray.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Thank you for your concern on these issues. There are very different approaches to this bill by each of the groups. It's a different lens they are seeing through, but all are important lenses.

The one I want to find out a bit more about is yours, Aaron. Is it the chemicals management plan where the federal government decides which chemicals should be taken out of use?

[Aaron Freeman]

Yes. Without going into too much of the history, I'll say that after we categorized the 24,000 substances in circulation back in the eighties, the question was, what do we do with this now? We've got a list of priority substances. So the government chose about 200 to challenge industry with and basically said to industry, give us the data showing these products are safe, and if you can't, we're going to regulate those products.

So that's the idea behind that program.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Okay, but my understanding is that there is a great deal of frustration in the provincial environment ministries about the glacially slow pace of federal government in assessing the danger of chemicals in general use, and in taking them out of the market, and at the same time, in doing the regulatory hurdles that allow the chemicals known to be less dangerous and less toxic to be used to replace them. Is this the term for that process: the chemical management plan?

[Aaron Freeman]

I'm not sure of the example you're thinking of. I know Ontario is moving forward with a toxic reduction act, placing a priority on substitution and getting cleaner production processes.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

I don't want to get hung up on the title, but the function of the federal government to regulate which chemicals can and cannot be used appears to be a big barrier to what the provinces want to do in reducing toxins in the environment.

I am curious that you would want to put your energy into Bill C-6 to accomplish some of that, as opposed to.... In getting to the goal of having fewer toxic compounds in the environment, do you see that being as effective as making the regulations more effective, whether it means more resources or assessment and amendments to the legislation CEPA is dealing with? I ask because we just aren't moving fast enough to identify and get rid of them.

[Aaron Freeman]

Well, CEPA has the authority to deal with consumer products, but it generally deals with environmental emissions. With the chemicals management plan, they've inched a little bit more toward consumer products, and we saw that a little with bisphenol A.

Certainly some provinces—and Ontario is certainly one of them, and B.C. is another—want to move further ahead, but they tend to look to the feds to take action first, because you don't want to have all of these different jurisdictions with different regulatory systems functioning in the same economic market.

This bill, though, deals with consumer products. From an environmental perspective and from a health perspective, that's a very important aspect of the regulatory system we've been neglecting. In a lot of cases, these are the new “PCBs”. When you look at things like perfluorinated compounds, flame retardants, bisphenol A, and lead, it's from consumer products that we are getting a lot of human exposure.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

So you're saying yes, this is a way into this that will be equally effective; or since we're working on it now, why not?

[Aaron Freeman]

It's a critical piece of the pie.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Some of the things you're advocating here, I think, are really important—and also very difficult. So when you talk about cumulative impacts or impacts via exposure to the environment, I would be quite interested in whether you or your organization have thought through amendments that would address exactly how we would do that. How do you assess the chronic exposure or potential harm, and how do you write that into legislation? Or how do you assess the cumulative impact in a way that you can actually regulate it?

I am interested in your ideas as to what the text would look like.

[Aaron Freeman]

We can certainly provide you with that text.

To give you one quick example, in the general prohibition in the bill, when you state that no consumer product can be imported or marketed if it's a danger to human health or safety, you could add the words, “either through direct exposure or exposure via the environment”.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you, Mr. Freeman.

We'll now go to Ms. Wasylycia-Leis.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thanks, Madam Chairperson.

Let me follow up with Aaron in terms of what that would mean from my vantage point. There seems to be nothing in this bill, after all these years, that would allow us to get off the market and off the shelves kids' toys that have lead, cadmium, and phthalates. Let's start with those three.

It was ten years ago that I had a private member's bill to try to get rid of such toys. I would have thought that at least, at a bare minimum, a bill like this, which is focused on safe toys, would do something along those lines. Is your amendment to the general prohibition going to make that happen?

[Aaron Freeman]

It would, and it would take those products out of the market.

Lead is an interesting example. Under the Hazardous Products Act, which this bill amends, we ban lead, but we ban it in children's jewellery, not in other products--not in keychains, for example. We tested keychains and found very high, more than 50%, lead content in some of them. Think about parents who give their keys to their kids to play with. Your kid is crying, your infant is crying, and you hand it to them, and of course it goes straight into the mouth. These amendments would focus on getting those kinds of products off the market, starting with the ones that don't belong in consumer products. Lead doesn't belong in a consumer product. It doesn't belong in the paint on a consumer product. Bisphenol A is another example.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

What about baby bottles?

[Aaron Freeman]

We're working on getting those out of baby bottles. The government has moved on that front. But probably half of our exposure is through food cans. This bill doesn't deal with food either.

It goes to the labelling issue. Never mind getting it off the shelves. There are safe and viable alternatives to bisphenol A. But we can't even provide consumers with the information to know which products contain bisphenol A, whether that's a CD case or a water bottle. There's no way of knowing. There's no label on that whatsoever.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

What about with respect to phthalates? Have we ever banned these plastic toys with phthalates?

[Aaron Freeman]

No, we haven't.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Kids are still being exposed to the rubber duckies, vinyl shower curtains, and things you put in your mouth all the time that are full of hormone-disrupting things.

[Marie Adèle Davis]

There are voluntary measures in some parts of the industry to get phthalates out of children's toys, for example. But our overall approach--and this bill doesn't change this approach--is discretionary. We give the authority to the minister to act, but there's almost nothing to require the minister to act in those situations.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

It seems to make sense to me.

Marie Adèle and Pamela, would you support such an amendment?

[Marie Adèle Davis]

Could I ask for clarification on exactly which amendment you would be proposing?

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

It would add to the general prohibition. In fact, children's toys and products that contain already identified carcinogens and endocrine disrupters, such as lead, cadmium, and phthalates, would be prohibited from being on the shelves.

[Marie Adèle Davis]

Yes, I think we should do everything we can to protect our youngest Canadians.