Good morning and thank you for your invitation. I hope that I will manage to speak slowly because one does have to move quickly when one only has five minutes.
I'll start by introducing myself. Currently I am working under the direction of Louise Vandelac, at UQAM, in a team that is conducting research under a much broader, international project on nanotechnologies. I am collaborating on this with Claude Emond and Simon Beaudoin.
For 15 years I was a consultant for the European Commission examining issues of consumer and environmental health. I collaborated on, among other things, the development of guidelines for consumer product safety. I am currently a research assistant at UQAM, for both the Department of Legal Sciences and for CINBIOSE with Louise Vandelac.
I am finishing a master's in environmental sciences at UQAM and within my master's program I undertook a comparative analysis between the legal framework for nanotechnologies in the European Union and that of Canada. Today I'm going to share some thoughts, ideas and issues that struck me when I was conducting that comparative analysis.
It appears that in the area of nanotechnology the European Union is quite different from Canada and much further ahead. The European Union seems to have a legal framework that focuses more on the protection of the environment and health.
However, if one goes beyond political pronouncements and good intentions and one looks at measures currently actually being applied, the European Union and Canada seem to overlap in many respects.
My opening remarks will be divided into two parts. I'm first going to try to show you where the European Union and Canada differ in how they regulate nanotechnologies. Then I will talk about where they overlap.
Where they first differ is in their definition of an overall consistent policy that applies to nanotechnology. Second, the societal debates on nanotechnologies are at different stages. Third, there is a difference in how ethical principles are respected or affirmed. The fourth point of difference, and the one I will spend a little more time on, relates to the general mechanisms that are used to prevent harm caused to health and the environment by chemical substances and consumer products.
When one analyzes European legislation that applies to chemical substances, consumer products and cosmetics, one sees several major differences between Canada and the European Union. Generally speaking, I would say that the requirements that are imposed on economic operators, producers, distributors, and importers, are clearly more restrictive in the European Union than they are in Canada.
I'll give you a few examples that I looked into in somewhat more depth: regulations on chemical substances along with, in the European Union, the adoption of a system in 2007, the REACH system, that I'm sure you have heard about and that imposes much more restrictive requirements for marketing chemical substances.
Furthermore, in December 2009 a regulation was implemented for cosmetics in the European Union which strengthens those requirements for economic stakeholders, and that—and this is what is new—contains a clause specifically for nanotechnologies. Four points are included in this regulation: a common definition of nanomaterials, the requirement for labelling so that consumers can easily identify nano-ingredients, a requirement for a European catalogue of cosmetics that contain nanoparticles and the requirement for a risk assessment prior to marketing products that contain nanomaterials and have specific uses. I think that this is rather innovative.
The third type of legislation that strikes me as being more protective, is the legislation on the general safety of consumer products, that has been in effect in the European Union since 1992 and that not only includes general safety requirements for all producers, importers and distributors of consumer products but also includes another series of major requirements such as the follow-up of a product once it has been marketed, the obligation to inform the administration of any risks that that product may present and the obligation to withdraw or recall dangerous products.
Furthermore, government officials also have a range of powers allowing them to deal with potentially hazardous products. In Canada—