Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak this afternoon to Motion No. 37 as presented by the hon. member for Davenport that in the opinion of the House, the government should act decisively in response to the evidence in the Canada Arctic contaminants assessment report to eliminate persistent organic pollutants by working to advance the POPs protocol.
The member for Yukon had the opportunity to speak to this motion. She represents a riding obviously of a northern nature that is more susceptible to the effects of persistent organic pollutants than any other region of our country.
I also want to point out that pollutants that are created from afar affect us no matter where we reside in this country. Also, pollutants with respect to POPs produced where we live actually have an effect on individuals who live very far from us.
The motion refers to the Canadian Arctic contaminants assessment report. I would like to read a few words of that report:
The Arctic was once considered pristine because of its remoteness and sparse population. However, over the last 50 years the north has been exposed to contaminants originating from local sources such as mining and from distant industrial and agricultural regions of the world. These persistent contaminants have been detected throughout Arctic ecosystems including air, surface seawater, suspended sediments and snow.
I would also like to highlight another comment with respect to POPs:
Contaminants such as persistent organic pollutants, known as POPs, heavy metals and radionuclides enter the Arctic through long range transport on air and water currents, with the atmosphere being the primary pathway.
The point is individuals who may not be responsible for manufacturing or creating these pollutants are actually victims of these pollutants.
The report goes on to say that from 1985 to 87 PCBs were measured in the blood of Inuit in the community of Broughton Island, NWT, known to have a relatively high per capita intake of traditionally harvested foods. Results showed that blood PCBs exceeded tolerable levels set by Health Canada in 63% of the females and males under 15 and in 39% of females 15 to 44. In 6% of males 15 years and older, they also had a higher proportion of PCBs in their bodies than the acceptable level as set out by Health Canada.
The point is the evidence of this report is actually calling on society and the world community to take actions. POPs are carbon based chemical compounds that are products and byproducts of human industry. They are highly toxic substances that cause a wide array of adverse health effects.
This motion is about human health, that the pollutants we create affect others. The member for Davenport encouraged all members of the House to speak aggressively about pollution prevention, the reduction of pollution and ultimately eliminating all persistent organic pollutants.
POPs have what we refer to as a grasshopper effect. They are released in the environment through evaporation and deposit and are transported through the atmosphere to regions far from the original source. The colder the climate, the less these substances tend to evaporate. As a result the north is a cold trap for them. POPs can be found in people and animals living in regions such as the Arctic, thousands of kilometres from where POPs are produced.
This phenomenon is especially prominent in the north. As a result Inuit women have up to eight times higher levels of PCBs in their breast milk than women in southern Canada. These are well over the limits permissible by Health Canada. Some POPs are known to affect the liver, the nervous system, the kidneys, the reproductive system and the immune system. They are endocrine disrupters or hormone disrupting substances as we aggressively discussed as we went through clause by clause consideration of the Environmental Protection Act.
No man is an island. POPs is a global problem that requires global solutions. I point to the DDT pesticide which has been used to combat malaria in a number of developing nations. Even though DDT has been banned for a number of years in this country it ends up in our food chains. As a wealthy industrialized country it is incumbent upon us to ensure that we develop replacements for pesticides such as DDT so that we can change practices for combating diseases such as malaria. It is our responsibility to help the developing world, which has real concerns with respect to malaria, to do that.
What has been done so far? At the Rio earth summit in 1992 we began to discuss the issue. Agenda 21, including chapter 19 which called for an intergovernmental forum on chemical safety to promote and co-ordinate international work on chemicals, was adopted. Countries were committed to formulating a joint plan of action.
In June 1998 the intergovernmental negotiating committee met in Montreal to begin laying the framework for a global plan. Negotiators were asked to target a short list of the 12 most dangerous POPs known as the dirty dozen. They were also assigned the task of defining a procedure for identifying new substances as candidates for future global action.
What needs to be done? The government needs to act quickly. The persistence of these substances and their accumulation in living tissue means that each year that passes without a solution will result in decades of additional exposure.
A second round of international treaty negotiation talks will take place in February 1999. A deal must be reached by the year 2000. The only effective solution is to phase out and eliminate POPS as the source and to begin now. CEPA, as is currently written, does not accomplish this fact and thereby continues to fail to protect the most exposed and vulnerable in the north.
We need to phase them out. We need to find replacements. We need to change practices. We need a stronger CEPA, one that assesses and classifies new substances quickly before they further contaminate the north. The proposed system for assessing substances is weak. Attempts to improve the new CEPA bill have been voted down by the government on a number of occasions.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment spoke in committee. She said it was perhaps too premature to include any kind of mechanism to address endocrine disrupters or hormone disrupting substances, many of which are POPs. I remind the hon. parliamentary secretary that in defeating amendments tabled by my colleague from the NDP, the member for York North, and the member for Lac-Saint-Louis, supported by the member for Barrie—Simcoe—Bradford, and me, she had to build a coalition with Reform. The parliamentary secretary is now building an environmental coalition with a party that is still challenging the science on climate change.
The government is now in the sixth year of its mandate and has still yet to pass a piece of environmental legislation other than the MMT bill which cost Canadian taxpayers $16.5 million. The government needs to develop an environmental agenda.
Often the government likes to criticize the Conservative government's record between the years 1983 and 1993. Our record on the environment is the establishment of the green plan, our leadership on the Montreal protocol which banned ozone depleting substances, and our leadership in bringing forth the Canadian Environmental Protection Act for the control and use of toxins. Our crowning achievement with respect to the environment was in the area of acid rain.