Madam Speaker, I am proud to report that Canada is actively pursuing initiatives and making great progress in the management and control of persistent organic pollutants or POPs, particularly with respect to foreign sources of substances that are impacting on the health and environment of Canada.
In speaking to this item I wish to begin by thanking the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Health, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, and the Minister of Natural Resources for the effective way in which we have all worked together to make the POPs protocol a success story for Canada. I also thank the member for Davenport for raising this very important issue.
Our tracking of the POPs issue indicates that we are also making progress in aspects of great importance for the federal government, such as health, children and aboriginal peoples.
Although Canada has banned or greatly cut back on the use of POPs in the Canadian North, other countries continue to use them.
POPs continue to be a problem for Canadians since they are carried by air currents from sources outside Canada and are deposited in Canadian ecosystems, particularly in northern Canada.
Canada has contributed significantly to the science that has enabled us to substantiate the need for international action and agreements on persistent organic pollutants and heavy metals. We have stopped releases from most Canadian sources of POPs and reduced domestic emissions of heavy metals. Unfortunately domestic efforts are not enough to protect the peoples of the Arctic.
Reducing POPs in Canada's Arctic requires concerted international efforts. Canada has played a leading role in using the scientific information contained in the Canadian Arctic contaminants assessment report and AMAP reports to achieve international action on contaminants reaching the Arctic.
Regional protocols on the reduction of POPs and heavy metals have been drawn up under the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe.
These protocols, signed in June 1998 by 34 countries, including Canada, the United States, and the countries of Eastern and Western Europe, as well as the former Soviet Union, are the first enforceable major multinational agreements aimed at protecting the environment and human health by imposing limits on the release of POPs and heavy metals.
These protocols will serve as a model for even broader world-wide participation.
In June, under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Program, Canada hosted the initial session to negotiate a global POPs agreement, which is expected to be signed around the year 2000.
Canada strongly supports this effort and is committed to playing a vigorous leadership role. The government is committed to a continuing leadership role in moving the UNEP global initiative to a successful conclusion, for it is only through the concerted and vigorous action of all countries to eliminate or reduce their emissions of hazardous substances that Canada can achieve the protection it requires from these chemicals that know no borders.
By signing and ratifying the protocols, Canada demonstrates its ongoing and serious commitment to actively looking for ways to lead an international campaign on health and environmental issues of concern to Canadians.
We must play a leadership role in these initiatives in order to ensure that the serious risks POPs represent for the environment and for the health of Canadians, particularly aboriginal peoples in the north, are taken into account. This approach is consistent with the priority our government accords to native issues.
Canada's signature of the protocols will be an important step towards signature of the UNEP global agreement on POPs.
At the recent joint meeting of ministers of energy and environment in Halifax, all provinces and territories supported the expeditious ratification of the POPs protocol.
It is the government's intent to conclude the ratification of the POPs protocol, as well as the companion heavy metals protocol, before the end of this year. Indeed, Canada will be one of the first, if not the first country to formally accept the controls on POPs specified in this agreement.
I want to thank the hon. member for Davenport for bringing this matter to the attention of the House.