Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee, for the opportunity to appear as part of this panel today.
I will focus my comments on the potential for Bill C-6 to address the problem of chronic exposure to toxic substances found in consumer products.
The David Suzuki Foundation examined the need to update Canada's Hazardous Products Act in our 2007 report, Prescription for a Healthy Canada. This report recommended amending the act to authorize mandatory recalls of consumer products containing toxic substances that pose chronic health hazards. We also recommended, as an interim step towards phase-out, product labelling to identify synthetic chemicals and heavy metals remaining in products, which are known to cause or suspected of causing cancer, abnormal development, endocrine disruption, or damage to the nervous, immune, or reproductive systems.
On this basis, we are pleased to see Bill C-6 come before Parliament with the stated aim of modernizing Canada's product safety regime. However, in order to truly deliver on this objective, we feel the bill needs to include specific and enforceable measures that will protect against chronic health hazards in consumer products.
The interpretation section of the bill defines a danger to human health and safety to include chronic adverse effects on human health in addition to acute or immediate harm. This is a very important indication of the intended scope of this bill. Unfortunately, Bill C-6 lacks specific provisions to proactively protect against chronic health hazards in consumer goods. As drafted, the main features of the bill are reactive: enhanced inspection powers, product recall authority, increased penalties for non-compliance. While there is a general prohibition on consumer products that pose an unreasonable danger to human health or safety, this very general provision on its own cannot be relied on to meaningfully address chronic hazards to human health in consumer products. We feel the legislation should include explicit provisions to prohibit priority categories of toxic substances in consumer products and require product labelling to provide consumers with usable information about chronic health effects to the extent that these substances remain in products.
We therefore encourage the committee to entertain two amendments to Bill C-6.
First, include a legislative mandate for the Minister of Health to phase out the use in consumer products of substances that are carcinogenic, toxic to reproduction, and assessed as toxic to human health under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, or CEPA. Such an amendment should direct the minister to establish a schedule of priority chronic health hazards, drawing from International Agency for Research on Cancer classifications, California's Proposition 65 list of chemicals that are toxic to reproduction, schedule 1 of CEPA, and other authoritative assessments. This provision should include a clear timeline—we recommend implementation within two years—and allow reasonable exemptions for essential uses where safer substitutes are not available.
I would like to address the issue of detection thresholds, which was raised in earlier sessions of your study of Bill C-6. This type of amendment should aim to prohibit the intentional addition of substances that are carcinogenic or toxic to reproduction, and the compliance threshold should be established accordingly. This acknowledges that some background levels of contamination may nevertheless be present, but also takes into account that there is no safe level of many of these substances.
The second amendment we suggest complements the first, and it would require labelling to identify substances that are carcinogenic, toxic to reproduction, or health toxic under CEPA, to the extent that these substances do remain in consumer products. Again, this provision should include a clear legislative timeline and should apply to all products within the scope of this bill.
Labelling will allow consumers to make their own choices about what hazards to accept or avoid in consumer products. It will also help policy makers gather better information about chronic health risks in consumer products. We believe, as well, it will promote market innovation to substitute inherently safer alternatives in response to consumer demand.
I think most of us would agree that internationally recognized carcinogens and substances that are toxic to reproduction should not be used in consumer products if safer substitutes are available.
This is what the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act should be about, and it would be quite straightforward to add to the bill explicit provisions to this end, as I have suggested.
Strengthening the bill in this way would also help to bring Canada's product safety regime up to date with initiatives in leading jurisdictions to protect against chronic health hazards. In California, for instance, legislation dating back to 1986 requires businesses to notify the public when chemicals known to cause cancer or reproductive problems are included in consumer products, and you've already seen an example of that being implemented. Last year the European Union legislated implementation timelines for hazard labelling as well, and the EU is also phasing in notification requirements and restrictions on substances of very high concern beginning this year. These measures are designed not only to protect public health and safety but also to stimulate innovation in the development and production of safer alternatives in consumer products. This is the approach that Canada should adopt in Bill C-6 as well.
Before I conclude, I'd like to touch briefly upon two other issues.
First of all, the incident reporting and product recall provisions in the bill make no requirement for public disclosure. We recommend that the legislation be amended to require the minister to notify the public of reported incidents and recall orders, including information about health hazards.
Second, we also recommend that the authority to exempt exports in paragraph 36(1)(a) be removed from the legislation. It is not morally defensible for Canada to export health and safety hazards that we prohibit or restrict domestically.
Thank you again for this opportunity to present our views. I'll be happy to respond to your questions.