Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise and speak to this important piece of new legislation. It is a remarkable piece of legislation and important to all Canadians.
We are all concerned with the environment, our health and safety and what we are doing to our environment, whether it is air pollution, our water supply, or what the person next door is doing. As our population grows Canada and nations around the world become challenged in some ways.
Bill C-53 deals with some of the things we are doing with pesticides, herbicides, insecticides and fungicides. There is an overwhelming desire for consumers to understand and discern exactly what is happening to the environment. It is important for them to understand what is involved with the use of herbicides, pesticides and fungicides. To that end this is an important piece of legislation and comes at a time of tremendous interest by the population.
I am a farmer and come from a farming background so I have some personal experience with working with pesticides. There is not a farmer I know who really enjoys working with pesticides. It is something we do as a matter of practice because they are a tool that is available for us to efficiently and effectively look after our lands in the most effective way possible
When dealing with pesticides we must realize that there is a need to respect the dangers as well as the benefits of their use. There are a tremendous number of benefits but there are perhaps some fears and other things that we should be cautious about.
One of the things we need to be cautious of when we are dealing with pesticides is their application outside of the agricultural community. We need to be cautious of their use in urban settings where pregnant women and children can be affected. We must be concerned about how these pesticides are applied. It is fair to say that some of them are perhaps applied too rigorously in those situations.
We must recognize the value of herbicides in our society and in our agricultural community. As farmers use herbicides they need to till their soil far less and this results in less air pollution. Diesel tractors go up and down the fields far less times, some say 7 to 10 times less, because of some of the pesticide uses today than compared to what has been practiced before. There is much less soil erosion. Pesticides are able to restore soil and farmers are able to utilize their soil more because they do not have to work the land so much.
There is more moisture conservation. We hear of a fear of global warming and the lack of moisture allowing farmers to grow crops and yet with the use of pesticides a tremendous amount of moisture is conserved to sustain agriculture in areas that would never possibly have been sustained before.
Agricultural efficiency has enhanced tremendously because of the use of herbicides and pesticides. Chemicals are tools that protect the environment from being overrun by pests from other countries which come in all the time and are difficult to control. We have herbicides for different foliage and weeds that come in from around the world and it is a way of keeping them in balance. If we never had pesticides we would have a very difficult time dealing with that problem.
Recently I have seen many advancements in safer chemicals. There is much less residue in herbicides used today than what was used back in the sixties when the first piece of legislation came to be. It is important that we discern and understand the new technologies coming in and take advantage of some of that technology, but at the same time we must be careful to think of the safety and health of our society. Our number one overwhelming responsibility is to look after the people we serve.
I make these personal remarks because of my understanding of where agriculture is at and what I sense as being some of the problems with the application of pesticides. I also have a primary hat that I would like to wear today as the senior opposition health critic.
The Canadian Alliance would generally support the intent of health and safety in the bill but we must be cautious listening to the minister's remarks. We will be interested in getting this to committee where we can take a good look at exactly how this piece of legislation would be applied. Generally we are in favour of a piece of legislation that would address the health and safety of the population but I will reserve my judgment on it until we get it into committee and we take a good, serious look at it.
We support the goals of strengthening health and environmental protection, making the registration system more transparent and strengthening the post-registration control of pesticides. However it is important too that our current regulatory framework, dating back as late as the 60s, be updated to incorporate the modern risk assessment concepts, to entrench current practices into law, to account for new developments in pesticides in regulations around the world, and to reflect the growing concerns for the health of children and others.
We believe there are some shortcomings in the bill and a number of amendments should be made. I will outline some of those concerns later in my presentation.
The primary objective of the bill is sound. It is to prevent unacceptable risk to people and the environment from the use of pesticide control products.
As health critic I am committed to promoting and protecting the health of Canadians. The health of Canadians should be paramount when it comes to pesticides. I believe that most farmers who use pesticides are committed to protecting human health as well. Their livelihoods depend upon producing safe and healthy food products.
There are three main objectives in Bill C-53. I will speak to each of them in turn.
The first objective is strengthening health and environmental protection. These are important goals. Increased efforts to protect the health of infants, children and pregnant women are welcome. Entrenching in law current practices of additional margins of safety for pesticide use around homes and schools is appropriate.
We support the provisions related to the labelling of pesticide products and the requirement that the product safety information be available in the workplace where these products are used or made. Those who make and use pest control products deserve to know what they contain and how they are to be used with appropriate and safe measures.
Labelling on containers, from my experience, is very important. We have come a long way when it comes to that. One of the problems we saw at the farm gate level when dealing with pesticides was when metric conversion happened in Canada. It became difficult for the agricultural community to be able to discern exactly how to mix appropriately. Labelling has come a long way. We must enhance that and become even more clear on the labelling. If members have ever read the labels on containers, it is easy to become confused
The second objective is to make the registration system more transparent. The objectives of increasing transparency in pesticide regulation is noteworthy. Who would oppose more openness in the operations of government, particularly in the matters of health and safety? To that end we support the proposed establishment of a particular registry that would allow access to detailed evaluation reports on registered pesticides.
We believe that this commitment to greater transparency is so important that it should be carried over into areas of drug safety regulations because we have a serious problem when it comes to drug safety.
We think that the pesticide problem is large and is endangering our society. I will be explaining in the next few weeks just how dangerous it is and what actually is happening on the drug safety side of our society. I will not dwell on it now because of the bill that is before us, but I would suggest that if we can have such concerns when it comes to pesticides that we certainly can follow this as a pattern on the drug safety side.
The third objective is to strengthen the post-registration control of pesticides. The provisions requiring pesticide companies to report adverse effects are of obvious importance. Effective and meaningful provisions must be in place to ensure that pesticides, once on the market, can be reviewed and if necessary pulled from the market. Again, this hearkens back to the drug safety issue.
Regarding the required re-evaluations of pesticides that have been on the market for over 15 years, we are somewhat concerned that this might unduly strain the resources of the pest management review agency.
As mentioned, we support the overall direction of the legislation but we have a number of concerns. Let me briefly outline some of those.
First, the bill's laudable objectives may be difficult to achieve if management problems and the misallocation of resources at the Pest Management Regulatory Agency are not corrected.
My colleague, the member for Selkirk--Interlake, the Canadian Alliance agriculture critic, is perhaps better able to speak on some of the shortcomings of the PMRA. He has done so on numerous occasions and will undoubtedly do so again as he speaks to the legislation.
Suffice it to say that there are fundamental flaws at the Pest Management Regulatory Agency which the bill has not sufficiently addressed.
Accordingly, we propose the following amendments. First:
That the PMRA be required to consider credible research and acceptable data from re-evaluations done in other jurisdictions where the pesticides are used under similar conditions.
I note that the bill specifies in subclauses 17(2) and (3) that information from other OECD nations and from other federal and provincial jurisdictions can trigger special reviews of registered pesticide.
On the positive side, the bill does not specify that information from such jurisdictions could or should be used to support the registration or the re-evaluation of the pesticide.
We would like to see the PMRA work more closely with the regulatory bodies in other countries and end unnecessary duplication and thus save valuable resources. We would also like to see it help to ensure that safe and efficient new chemicals come from the Canadian market more quickly.
Farmers in this country have expressed repeated concerns over the inability to access some of the new products because of the roadblocks set up by the PMRA.
Second:
That the re-evaluation provisions be amended so that the chemicals are only re-evaluated if an effective alternative product exists.
This is necessary to prioritize scarce PMRA resources.
We would also amend the bill to include specific approval procedures for minor use chemicals.
Unlike legislation in other jurisdiction, the bill requires manufacturers to show that their chemicals are more effective as part of the approval process.
I would like to refer to clause 7(6)(a) which states:
During an evaluation, the applicant has the burden of persuading the Minister that the health and environmental risks and the value of the pest control product are acceptable--
The notion of value is defined in the bill definitions under clause 2, Interpretation and, among other things, includes the notion of efficacy. The requirements to prove efficacy may add unnecessary costs and time to review the process.
The PMRA should only be concerned with safety. The market will decide if a pesticide is efficient and few companies will go through the process for a chemical that does not work.
We look forward to discussing and debating those proposed amendments in committee.
I would like to note that we were pleased to see that the bill did not impose a ban on the use of pesticides for cosmetic purposes. We believe the government is correct in allowing municipalities to maintain control over such decisions.
While the official opposition is supportive of developing and using proven alternatives in urban environments, we do not believe that the moratorium on pest control products should be in place before there is a substantial body of conclusive scientific evidence that unequivocally links such products to human disease or ill health.
The official opposition believes that proven, sound science, domestically and internationally, should continue to be the cornerstone of debate.
In conclusion, we look forward to reviewing the bill at committee, to hearing from the interested parties and to proposing amendments that will produce the best legislation that we can.