Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to finally speak to the bill. It is one that the NDP, environmentalists, scientists and the general public have been calling for decades for the federal government to introduce.
The current legislation was introduced over 30 years ago. Not since 1969, when DDT was still in wide use, have there been any substantial changes to the legislation. If I may digress for a moment, I would like to try to set in context where we are at in this country. There are a few salient points that need to be addressed.
First, at the present time there are between 6,000 and 7,000 pesticide products registered for use in Canada, an estimated 50 million kilograms of herbicides, insecticides and fungicides each year. That includes everything that we think of as normal pesticides used in agriculture and in lawn care to the products used in combating head lice in children.
It is also important to note the main problem we have with pesticides and it is relatively simple. They are designed to kill. They are deliberately introduced into our environment and onto our food to kill. It is also interesting to note that only 1% of all pesticides used actually gets to the intended targets. The other 99% stays in the environment, affecting humans and wildlife.
As well, over the last 30 or 40 years we have learned that many of those 6,000 to 7,000 pesticides I mentioned do not break down. They in fact accumulate in the environment, oftentimes in human beings, affecting the reproductive systems and the immune systems of both humans and animals.
It is also interesting to note that in the last while we have developed some alternatives, specifically in Ontario, where the World Wildlife Federation and the Ontario apple growers have developed an ecological program that is now producing five million pounds of premium apples. That program dramatically reduces the use of pesticides, at least in that province. There are a number of other alternatives like that.
It is impossible to address the legislation without looking at the report of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, released in May 2000 and entitled, “Pesticides: Making the Right Choice for the Protection of Health and the Environment”. This report was the result of widespread consultation among scientists, academics, labour groups and community organizations from coast to coast to coast. Many of those individuals gave evidence and supported the committee's report. As a party, we encouraged the government to take action immediately after that report was tabled and to implement the extensive recommendations of that committee.
There were a number of important recommendations. I believe that the most pressing was the call on the Minister of Health to introduce new legislation as a matter of top priority. Of course it has now been just about two years and we are just finally getting it, only at committee stage.
There are a number of recommendations, but I want to use that report as a litmus test, if I may, for what should have been done, as a test for assessing the viability of the legislation. Very quickly, the major recommendations made for what the act should cover were: to protect human health in the environment as the absolute priority in all pest management decisions; to apply the precautionary principle; to promote and increase reliance on pollution prevention strategies in order to eliminate or minimize the use of pesticides; and finally, to foster public confidence by actively informing and educating Canadians about pesticide use by involving them in the decision making process.
More specific, committee members are saying that the precautionary principle means that appropriate, preventive measures are to be taken when there is reason to believe that a pesticide is likely to cause harm even when there is no conclusive evidence to prove a causal relationship between the pesticide and its effects.
In effect they are saying that human health comes first. The onus falls on the producer of the product to establish absolute safety. Otherwise it does not go on the market and does not go into our environment. Unfortunately the government has not addressed all the concerns of that litmus test.
I would like to list a few points that still need further protection. One is that there is an inadequate provision for wildlife protection. The public is still denied full access to important information about pesticides. This is true both for the users of the pesticides and the workers who use those pesticides.
The information clauses in the legislation are not adequate. They paid lip service to the precautionary principle. It is mentioned in the legislation but is not operationalized. It is not a mandatory or functional aspect of the bill at all. There is a lack of streamlined process for registering low risk products for farmers, landscapers and other users to allow for the use of less harmful alternatives.
At the start of my address I mentioned that alternatives were available. One thing we have heard from the apple farmers in Ontario was that there were alternatives. The European Community in particular has a number of them that have not been registered in Canada because of the length of time it takes for that to be done. They need to be streamlined or fast tracked. In addition there is a lack of specifics in the bill. As the government so often has done, it has left way too much to regulation.
The greatest failure of the bill is the lack of the ban on the cosmetic use of pesticides. I believe the minister mentioned it again today as she certainly has in the past. She said not to worry about it, that the municipalities would take care of that. Approximately 37 municipalities have banned or severely restricted the use of pesticides for cosmetic reasons. The most recent one is Halifax which has introduced what in effect will be an eventual ban of all pesticides.
We have to set it in this context. Somewhere approaching 75% of lawn owners still use pesticides. Lawns and gardens in municipalities, in urban areas, are sprayed more heavily than farms. People still seem to consider that the use of pesticides is essential for lawn care in spite of the fact that a four to sixfold increase in incidents of child leukemia occurs when pesticides are used on lawns in urban areas.
A ban is necessary. We do not have the time in terms of protecting the health and well-being of Canadians to wait for every municipality to ban or at least severely restrict the use of pesticides for cosmetic purposes.
In summary, there is no question the bill is a step forward. We have begun to address some of the problems the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development raised but it does not go far enough. It does not ban pesticides in urban areas. It fails to protect generally the health of Canadians.