Thank you, Madam Chair.
The idea here is that there is a particular subset of goods that creates greater vulnerability than general consumer products, and that's children's toys and children's products. We know that the impact of toxins on children is not in a ratio to weight. If the child has one-tenth the weight of an adult, that doesn't mean that one-tenth of the dose would have the same impact on the child. In fact, especially with babies, when their systems are still developing and their neurological development is still under way, products can have a much greater impact than the ratio to weight would suggest. We have to be more precautionary with babies.
We also know that there are conditions we don't yet have an explanation for, such as the explosion of incidents of childhood autism. I'm not suggesting that I know what the cause of that is, but this kind of situation causes us, the Liberal caucus members, to want to be more precautionary in how we approach Bill C-6.
So that's what the rewrite of the amendment is intended to do.
If you look at the schedules that cover which chemicals would no longer be allowed under Bill C-6, it's a pretty short list. If you go to the lists of chemicals that have been identified through cancer research and are listed as in new paragraph 8.1(1)(a), there's a larger list. What we're talking about is coming up with a broader list of chemicals that would place onus differently.
The onus in the general bill is that, other than for a very short list, the onus is on industry to figure out whether something is harmful in a toy or child's product, and they may not find that out. It may be affecting children for years, as some of the flame retardants and so on were. This is a more precautionary approach whereby we take the chemicals that have been identified as a problem for children and the onus changes. We say of them that unless it can be shown that it is necessary to use one or that it is not actually harmful, we consider these as being harmful, and they should be phased out over a defined time period. That's essentially what this amendment is about.
We have a printing or editing error in new subclause 8.1(4). I don't know whether this is the time to read the correction into the—