National Defence Committee on Dec. 10th, 2024

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

That's something that we want to know, especially when we have soldiers out there training. They're still digging trenches and still getting exposed to the dioxins that are captured in that environment.

Colonel Salisbury, I know of your former postings in places like Moose Jaw and the work that you did in Canadian Armed Forces. What can we be doing right now to ensure that our current serving members who are out on the bases across this country aren't being exposed to these toxins?

[Col (Ret'd) David Salisbury]

We have to work with industrial hygiene best practices to try to prevent exposure to everything, because we can't be knowledgeable of all of the effects of the newest things that have come down the pipe. For example, there's stuff that is being built into aircraft today. The aircraft are being built out of what's called composite materials. What's in those composite materials? To be honest, I don't know that anybody really knows what happens, because they're an amalgam of carbon fibres and binding agents. When you burn that, what happens? No one can conduct that experiment. I mean, we don't, we can't.

The other point that needs to come out of that is that toxicology is based on the root. For example, everything is toxic in one sense or another. Wood is toxic if I aerosolize it and put it into a dust that I can then inhale, but sitting here at this table isn't toxic or dangerous to me, other than if I bang my head against it.

The problem is one of best practice and protection but also tracking people through time. Again, I come back to presumptive diagnosis.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Bezan.

Dr. Salisbury, you wouldn't be the first person who banged his head on a wall or a desk around here.

Ms. Lapointe, you have four minutes, please.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Mr. Goode, your organization has done tremendous work to raise awareness about contaminated sites and their impact on the families and communities connected with the Canadian Armed Forces.

Can you tell us what challenges you have encountered in trying to advocate for solutions?

[Gary Goode]

It's tedious.

As an example, I recently applied through freedom of information to Veterans Affairs to ask them how many military personnel have applied for disability pensions associated with exposure to Agent Orange and other herbicides at CFB Gagetown. They got back to me relatively quickly and said that they couldn't find anything. They said that they don't have a code for Agent Orange exposure at Gagetown. They didn't even acknowledge the other herbicides that I mentioned.

The issue right there is, what are we talking about anyway? What are we trying to find out? We can't find out if they're not going to admit that these are what the concerns are. It's not going to happen.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Based on your organization's research and the outreach efforts that you've done, what recommendations would you propose to the Department of National Defence to effectively address and remediate contaminated sites that impact the health and well-being of military members and their families?

[Gary Goode]

First, I would think there would need to be a fully independent public inquiry into CFB Gagetown's harmful chemical use and the Base Gagetown area fact-finding project. Also, I strongly believe and recommend that the base be thoroughly investigated again and tested.

During that testing time at Gagetown, when they were sampling soils, they went down only four centimetres. Dr. Dwernychuk said that you start finding more of it at a foot and beyond.

They hauled truckloads of treated soil out of Moncton, New Brunswick and sprayed it all over parts of the training area. How deep was that? Was that during the testing period? I'm not sure of that. I've been looking for that information and I can't find it, but we will find it eventually.

We need honesty. We need accountability. We need justice. We're not here to condemn anybody. We're here to try to help come up with solutions for how we can best move forward for the betterment of everyone.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you.

Dr. Salisbury, what role do you think medical professionals should play in monitoring and addressing the health risk associated with contaminated sites?

How can the Canadian Armed Forces better integrate these insights into their remediation efforts?

[Col (Ret'd) David Salisbury]

On the whole, I guess I should say that our profession is not particularly well trained in occupational health. It's not a core interest of the majority of doctors. The majority of doctors are interested in sickness care, treating people, doing surgery on them or giving them prescriptions and moving them out the door. In this day and age, unfortunately, that's become even more of a problem.

If you actually look at how much the armed forces have devoted to prevention in health care, it's actually quite substantial. Force health protection is an organization with.... When I set it up, we had six serving medical officers and an additional four DND doctors. That's 10 doctors for a population of 90,000. That's huge.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Lapointe.

We now go to Mr. Simard for four minutes.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Salisbury, I understood your logic when you said earlier that we spend too much time fighting about compensation and that we may be stuck in an adversarial system. I completely understand that. Although I don't know a lot about medicine, I do know there's such a thing as the precautionary principle. As you know, the use of asbestos was banned because it was well known that the product had adverse health effects.

I don't want to get into a futile debate about compensation. Still, it is important to acknowledge that DND needs to identify the sites that are problematic and can affect people's health. I think that work is essential in order to protect the health of those currently serving in the armed forces. How is that possible, though, without recognizing the illnesses of armed forces members who worked at those sites?

As far as you know, do health specialists in the Canadian Armed Forces take the precautionary principle into account?

[Col (Ret'd) David Salisbury]

The application of the precautionary principle is essentially one whereby you assume harm or danger when you are absent absolute proof. I think that is taken seriously by health care professionals. I believe it forms the basis of all our regulatory frameworks for a vast majority of chemicals.

We also must recognize that we don't know what's coming down the pipe towards us. We also don't take into account in most of those regulatory frameworks the concept that some people are more susceptible than other people. Most of our occupational standards and most of our drinking water standards are designed around protecting the majority of the population, not around protecting everyone. To protect everyone would be...to basically not be exposed at all.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Salisbury.

Lastly, I have a quick question for Ms. Beauchamp and perhaps Mr. Goode as well.

In your comments, both of you mentioned problems with transparency and denial. I'd like to hear your thoughts on ways to achieve more transparency and to stop the denial around the exposure of armed forces members to certain chemicals.

I would like Ms. Beauchamp to go first.

[Eileen Beauchamp]

I think data is so critical when making decisions. Having an IT background, I firmly believe that there are databases that can help the government. Providing they integrate between Veterans Affairs and National Defence, I think there are data elements that they could start recording that would help them make decisions, identify outcomes for health exposure and inform them on how to move forward and identify what's contaminated.

I don't believe they're doing that today, and—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Unfortunately, we'll have to leave the answer there. Again, I apologize.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I think I'll just mail in all my apologies.

Ms. Mathyssen, you have the final four minutes before the bells start ringing.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Goode, this will be a follow-up in terms of the question about transparency and accountability. In the briefing note you provided us before the meeting, you talked about problems with Cantox Environmental, a company hired to conduct the health risk assessment of Gagetown. Could you elaborate on the company's relationship with the chemical industry?

As well, could you potentially talk to this committee about the guardrails needed to have a transparency and accountability check on companies like that, and why?

[Gary Goode]

I'd be happy to try to answer that question.

At the time of the Base Gagetown and area fact-finding project, Cantox Environmental was owned by Ciba Specialty Chemicals. They're a very large chemical company. The company was founded by ex-Health Canada employees who left Health Canada and formed for-profit companies to work for the government, DND and large industry.

If you want to know a bit more about their work, you can ask Elizabeth May. They tried to sue her for her honesty, but they didn't get too far with that.

I can't fathom the reality that our government of the day hired the chemical industry to conduct a health risk assessment of the chemicals sprayed at CFB Gagetown, and that one of the founders of that company was the head of the peer review of the CFB Gagetown fact-finding project. I can't fathom that. How are we supposed to believe what they are saying?

If they don't recognize the 6,504 barrels that they themselves sprayed—the exact same stuff they sprayed all over Vietnam—what are we supposed to recognize from that fact-finding project?

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

If I may, you've repeatedly, throughout this meeting, talked about the need to carry forward that public inquiry, particularly in the context of the main commission. This is something that's been asked for, for decades. It's been promised by previous governments but never fulfilled.

Can you talk about why it's so important to have that public inquiry even now?

[Gary Goode]

It's important to have that now to get to the bottom of it and hear the facts and the truth. Personally, I believe the truth has been withheld.

The Maine study.... Senator Jackson himself and House representatives said the fix was in. That's what he said: The fix was in. Senator Jackson himself has asked whether they should be sending their Maine National Guard to Gagetown until they actually know what's in the soil today. We won't know what's in the soil today until we actually test it.

Dr. Furlong stated to me that it's 170 times, and then he came out in a statement saying that it's only 143 times above CCME guidelines. Which is it?

There are just so many unanswered questions and flaws in that fact-finding project that we don't know the full answer to it.

The only way to prevent sickness and disease is to get at the root cause of it in the first place. That is a treatment in itself. We have to approach it that way.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Mathyssen.

Unfortunately, that brings our time here to a close.

I apologize for starting late, but we are subject to the votes that are going on this evening.

On behalf of the committee, I want to thank you, Mr. Goode, Ms. Beauchamp and Dr. Salisbury, for your contributions to this study. We'll look forward to carrying it on in the reasonably near future.

With that, the meeting is adjourned.