Madam Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this important debate this morning and to endorse the motion advanced by my colleague the member for Acadie—Bathurst on the toy labelling question.
Just to put this motion in perspective, members will recall that the motion was debated before Christmas. The member was endeavouring to have the toys removed from the shelves during the Christmas rush. We are on the second hour of debate and we are now endeavouring to see if we cannot get some action taken before next Christmas rolls around.
It is also noteworthy that it seemed in the initial hour of debate last December two of the other opposition parties in this place were supportive of the motion. However, they seem to have changed their minds, listening carefully to the debate this morning.
I want to make note of what this motion attempts to do. It recommends that the government introduce legislation requiring manufacturers to indicate on the label when a toy contains phthalates so that parents can make an informed decision before buying products for their children. As has been noted several times, we are particularly concerned about young children at the teething stage who want to put soft malleable toys in their mouths. We are concerned about it because phthalates have been proven to cause cancer, infertility and liver damage.
As I speak on this motion for the first time it alarms me to hear people say that the evidence is not in yet, that more studies must be done, and that Health Canada is doing more studies. Note that Health Canada has been busy laying off scientists right, left and centre. One wonders when and where we will get the scientific evidence referred to by the previous speaker. One hopes it will be this spring. We will wait to see.
A number of other countries have taken varying degrees of action on the issue of phthalates. Some of those countries are Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Belgium and the Philippines. We are studying the matter.
I suggest to members opposite that we should not be throwing the baby out with the bath water on this issue. We should be heeding what other countries are concluding in this area. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It is better to err on the side of safety and wait until the studies are completed. It is better to take the necessary preventive action, put labels on the toys and children's clothing such as raincoats. Put the labels on now. If when Health Canada completes its tests it concludes there is no reason for alarm, then we would proceed accordingly. It is better to be safe than sorry, especially with the youngest and most vulnerable in our society.
In the Health Canada study, of the 17 products tested, 12 contained lead at levels higher than Health Canada's guideline. All of these products were in the range of between 295 parts per million to 17,714 parts per million. High levels of cadmium were also present in the products that were tested and two products exceeded the guideline for Health Canada's extractability which is 90 parts per million. Despite that evidence Health Canada has concluded to date that there is not a problem.
We believe some bona fide criticisms can be made in this area. Testing 17 of the many thousands of vinyl products on sale in Canada every year is not the comprehensive testing program others have done. Certainly there is the Greenpeace report.
Only one type of extractability test was done for the Health Canada report. Health Canada did not do a surface lead test on brand new products, nor did it do an ultraviolet light degradation study. This is particularly problematic since a lot of products are sold for use outdoors. The majority of products tested by Health Canada exceeded its guidelines for total lead content. We fail to understand why this is not deemed to be a problem.
The motion before us today is very important. I urge all members of the House to support this motion when it comes to a vote.