Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-53. Before I get into the meat of the legislation, Mr. Speaker, I want to point out that you were not in the chair when it was mentioned that the members for Winnipeg Centre and Winnipeg South used to chase DDT fogging wagons. I am sure this must be a form of entertainment in the city of Winnipeg in the province of Manitoba. Coming from west of the city of Winnipeg, I can assure all members that we never did chase DDT fogging wagons. That may well speak to the level of abilities of the members from the province of Manitoba.
Bill C-53 is legislation that should have been before the House quite a while ago, certainly in the beginning stages of the government's first mandate. This piece of legislation goes back to 1969. It has been some 33 years since it has been in place. It should be updated on a regular basis because this is a part of the industry that changes quite dramatically, not only from year to year but in fact from month to month.
It was suggested by a previous minister of agriculture of the day, Mr. Don Mazankowski, that this legislation should come forward to deal with any number of issues. However, this has not happened. The government was somewhat negligent in its own opportunities to bring forward a very sound piece of legislation. The legislation does have its warts and pimples, however, in saying that, we believe it is far superior to the piece of legislation that has been in place since 1969.
The Progressive Conservative Party has always insisted that the pesticide legislation come forward, for two major reasons. The first is to evaluate the effects of the exposure and toxicity of pesticides, herbicides and chemicals on vulnerable parts of our population, obviously the younger individuals among us as well as older people who have a tendency to be more susceptible to the negative effects of pesticides and herbicides. We believe very strongly that the legislation should have come forward for that purpose.
We would also like to see an educational initiative undertaken with the ultimate goal of reducing the use of pesticides and herbicides. That does not necessarily mean that we should not replace them with alternate pesticides and herbicides that are better not only for the environment but for the health of our citizens. That is obviously where we should be heading. To a degree, Bill C-53 does speak to that particular end and goal.
I must say, however, that this is like all pieces of legislation developed and drafted by the department. It does not necessarily encompass all of the necessary nuances to make it perfect. That is why we have the process we do, whereby after this reading it will go back to committee, which will debate it, have an opportunity to listen to all stakeholders and people affected by this and hopefully come back with some changes or amendments to the legislation that in fact will make it better. Nobody has a lock on ideas, least of all the government. We hope that there is some open-mindedness and we hope that the government is prepared to listen to some of those very positive amendments to the legislation to in fact make it better.
I mention that because there are a number of shortcomings in the legislation. I simply will mention them in passing. I know that our member sitting on the health committee, the member for Richmond--Arthabaska, will be able to take our position forward and hopefully change the legislation.
First, Bill C-53 fails to expedite access to newer and safer pest management products. I will speak to that a little later, but the ability to bring forward newer and safer pesticides is not built into the legislation. That is so very, very important because there are pesticides, herbicides and chemicals out there that are much better for the environment and much better for human health and safety, but we do not have the built in opportunity to bring them forward under our current regulatory system.
The bill also fails to differentiate between the commercial and the cosmetic uses of pesticides. I come from a riding that is dependent on agriculture. Agriculture, in order to not only feed Canadians but also feed a greater number of people outside our domestic market, is dependent upon and requires the ability to use pesticides and herbicides to grow that crop.
Unfortunately we have not differentiated between that absolute necessity of a commercial requirement for pesticides and herbicides and a cosmetic pesticide in this legislation. They are dramatically different, particularly in our agricultural areas. I am sure Canadians appreciate that.
The legislation also fails to translate into viable alternatives to the current regime and does not translate into a workable registration system. Again, I speak to the PMRA, and I will get to that in the not too distant future.
Also, the legislation does not provide adequate transparency. Agricultural stakeholders agree that transparency is necessary but not at the cost of allowing public access to confidential business information.
Agriculture is very important with respect to this, and I would like to talk about the PMRA. For those people who do not know PMRA, that is the Pest Management Regulatory Agency. The PMRA reports to the Department of Health and is responsible for the registration of any chemical pesticide or herbicide for use in Canada.
The problem is that the Pest Management Regulatory Agency does not have the ability to react in a timely fashion. The bill fails to create that mechanism that would speed up the registration of proven low risk pesticides. The bill fails to create an effective mechanism that would speed up the registration of minor use pesticides.
Speeding up the registration of minor use and low risk pesticides would allow the PMRA to dictate more resources to studying more complex new pesticide applications. The bill does not call for an ombudsman or a proper oversight committee.
The two issues I talked about were the registration of new pesticides and minor use pesticides. In Canada we have an agricultural industry, a horticultural industry, a fruit industry, that unfortunately is a very small part of a very small market.
The agriculture committee just had the opportunity to travel across Canada from coast to coast. One of the issues that was consistent from coast to coast was the fact that we did not have the ability to react with respect to minor use registration of pesticides.
Right now in British Columbia there are not sufficient tools in that chemical chest to pull from that chest the proper pesticides to use on the product. However the United States, which is our major trading partner, has the ability to use many more chemicals and pesticides on products.
The irony here is that we can import a product of the Americans, having had them use a chemical which is not registered in Canada. The product may well have residue on it but it is perfectly all right to import that product. We in Canada can grow the same product but we cannot use the same chemical used by the Americans. In most cases we have to depend upon a chemical that is harsher than the chemical in the U.S., a chemical that well should and could be registered in Canada.
We believe very seriously that there must be a built in harmonization in the PMRA system. If the chemical can be used by one trading partner of ours in the United States, then we should be able to use that science to register the product in Canada. It would certainly assist our producers, both with the registration of product in general terms as well as minor use registration.
We talked about the inability to differentiate between the commercial and the cosmetic use of pesticides.
The bill does not speak to the cosmetic use. I assume it was left out by the government on purpose when drafting the legislation. It was suggested earlier by my colleague from Winnipeg Centre that the federal government should have indicated its desire to put forward a regulation or restriction on cosmetic pesticides.
I do not feel the same way. I believe very strongly that the municipalities have the right and should have the right to dictate to their own users, customers, clients and constituencies as to whether there should or should not be the ability to use cosmetic pesticides in that municipality. The reason I say this is not that I am necessarily totally in favour of cosmetic pesticides, although I must admit, other than a few things in this House, dandelions really do infuriate me.
However I believe it is the right of municipalities to make that call, as they have with things like smoking bylaws. Municipalities have made the decision as to whether they should or should not allow smoking in public places. We have seen this in the city of Ottawa where it has decided that there will be no smoking in any public place. However constituencies of other municipalities decided there should be more open smoking bylaws.
I remember in another life I fought a battle with respect to Sunday shopping. That decision was made by the municipalities, not by the federal government or the provincial government. It is the individual municipalities, and their constituents, that should have the right to say what goes on in those areas. Therefore I do not have difficulty with not having the federal government place conditions in this legislation.
There are a couple of other areas that have been touched on in the legislation. The bill provides that any person may apply for a change in maximum residue limits for a product in the registration process. Maximum residue limits must be based on science. By allowing anyone to apply for an MRL for a pesticide confuses the nature of the registration process and allows for any interest group to apply for an MRL. Registration should be based on sound science and not on political procedure.
What this is saying, which I believe is wrong, is that any interest group or any contrary thought to the industry or any user group or stakeholder can simply come forward and ask for a change to the maximum residue limits. This will open up what I believe will be a number of frivolous situations where a lot of legitimate producers of pesticides and herbicides may well be chased out of the country.
That also ties into the special review section of the legislation. It says that, generally speaking, the special review section of the bill is poorly worded. The legislation fails to define the parameters under which a special review could be initiated. The minister is likely to be inundated with public requests for reviews. A request for a special review must be based on known or assumed product risk or scientific evidence. Unfortunately, this again lends itself to abuse when under special reviews anyone can come forward under any circumstance and simply stop a legitimate product from being produced and used in the marketplace.
The third area I have some concerns is the public access to confidential business information. The public will have access to confidential business information once a product has been approved. Members of the public will be able to view only confidential business information with ministerial approval, which we recognize may have its own flaws built into that process.
Access to registry information is currently provided for within the Access to Information Act. The current regime also protects confidential business information. We suggest that it should go back to that area of access to information.
I go back to the agricultural community and its need and desire to deal with legitimate minor use registrants as well as registrants to new pesticides. The PMRA has deficiencies and it is important that we rectify those deficiencies or we will not have the ability to produce the way we produce today. It is important that the legislation deal with that regime and that we look at a serious harmonization process with respect to the United States and Canada particularly. Even beyond that we need a harmonization process that would encompass the globe because at the current time we trade globally. It is important that we have the ability to import and export products that would deal with the same types of pesticides.
Agriculture now accounts for 91% of the total use of pesticide sales in Canada. It is important that the legislation recognize a need for good logical pesticide regulations and we must have the stakeholders of agriculture involved in the legislation.
It used to be that young children would chase fog wagons. It used to be that farmers and producers perhaps did not have the same kind of care and caution when dealing with pesticides. That has changed quite dramatically.
Producers now know that pesticides and herbicides, chemicals of any sort, are very expensive. Therefore it is best to reduce the use of pesticides, not increase the use. It is better to use a better, more environmentally friendly product than one that is not environmentally friendly like we have seen in the past. Those pesticides have been taken off the market.
Producers want the ability to be able to have more choice in those chemicals and would like to be able to have a better opportunity to have some minor use registration. As producers farmers in Canada account for only 3% of the world total pesticide use. The United States accounts for 33% of the world pesticide use and 25% of the pesticide use is accounted for in western Europe. Canada is a very small player, but a player nonetheless, that must have good legislation.
The Progressive Conservative caucus will support the legislation going forward. We will vote to make sure it gets into committee because it should have been there at least 10 years ago and it is about time that it got to the committee level. The government was changing 10 years ago. If it could not put this legislation before us in 10 years then obviously there are more deficiencies than just this legislation. There are deficiencies in the government itself.
We support this going back to committee and hope, beyond hope, that the committee and the department will listen to valuable amendments that will be proposed by the Progressive Conservative Party.