Debates of April 9th, 2002

Business of the House

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

Is there unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

(Motion agreed to)

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-47, an act respecting the taxation of spirits, wine and tobacco and the treatment of ships' stores, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Excise Act, 2001

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[An hon. member]

On division.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

I declare the motion carried. Accordingly, the bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Finance.

(Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to a committee)

The House resumed from April 8 consideration of the motion that Bill C-53, an act to protect human health and safety and the environment by regulating products used for the control of pests, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Pest Control Products Act

[Charles Caccia, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, let me start by thanking the Minister of Health for her speech yesterday and particularly for what she said at the outset:

--the purpose of federal pest management regulation is to protect Canadians and their environment from the risks associated with pesticides.

She went on to say:

The proposed new PCPA would ensure Canada's children and other vulnerable populations were given special protection from the health risks posed by pesticides. It would do so by enshrining in legislation the requirement to incorporate modern risk assessment concepts--

She also said:

It is important to keep in mind why we regulate pesticides. We do so for a variety of reasons including the following: Some pesticides may pose risks to people and the environment; many pesticides are released into the environment; our exposure to many pesticides is involuntary; and redressing harm from pesticide exposure is generally difficult.

Human exposure can occur when pesticides such as those used in agriculture, forestry, lawn and garden care, and on golf courses are released into the environment where people may be exposed to them involuntarily. In addition, since pesticides are often applied to crops and livestock we may be exposed to their residues involuntarily through the food we eat.

It would be an understatement to say that the bill is long overdue. It amends legislation passed in 1969. It is therefore highly welcome, badly needed and most appreciated by anyone concerned with public health as affected by pesticides.

Before going into the pros and cons of the bill, it would seem desirable to say a couple of words about its title. The official title of the bill is “an act to protect human health and safety and the environment by regulating products used for the control of pests”. However, the short title of the bill is same as the title of the legislation it is supposed to replace, namely “pest control products act”.

It would seem to me that to continue with the use of the old term, pest control products act, would mean adopting an industry oriented title, not a publicly oriented one as the full title conveys. If the intent of the bill is truly to protect human health and welfare, then this contradiction in titles should be corrected.

An appropriate short title might read “an act on the use of pesticides” or “an act on dangerous substances used to control pests” or simply, “the pesticides licensing act”. Instead, what is being proposed is a short title with a focus on pest control products and as such, it sounds pretty good to consumers. After all, who could be against the control of pests? To conclude, the long title is good, but the short title leaves much to be desired.

Bill C-53 has been in the making for some time. In its report on pesticides, the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development made many recommendations, some of which appear to have gone unnoticed. I will mention some shortly but first I have a few words on the new and positive features of the bill before us today.

First, human health and the environment, as other members have commented before me, are now leading principles of the proposed legislation.

Second, in evaluating the health and environmental risks of pesticides, the minister must now apply appropriate margins of safety for pregnant women, infants, children, women and seniors and must apply a margin of safety 10 times greater than now if a product is to be used around homes or schools.

Third, in determining maximum residue limits in foods, the law will require the use of an additional safety factor of 10 in determining the tolerance of pesticide residue in foodstuffs.

It will require the application of appropriate margins of safety for pregnant women, infants, children, women and seniors. It will require the implementation of government policy as defined in the toxic substances management policy, which I am told does include track one toxic substances under CEPA. Finally, it will require the application of such government policy through sections 7(8) and 19(3).

Fourth, pest control products must now meet the requirements of the workplace hazardous materials information system. This insertion is in answer to many interventions, including the one by the member for Ottawa West when we were in committee.

Fifth, there is a very narrow application of the precautionary principle. For instance, the minister may cancel or amend the registration of a pest control product if, in the course of a re-evaluation or a special review, the minister has reasonable grounds to believe that the cancellation or amendment is necessary to deal with a situation that endangers human health or safety or the environment.

Sixth, as to the re-evaluation of existing pesticides, with this bill all pesticides are to be reviewed every 15 years, which is not as good as the recommendation made in committee which suggested that by the year 2006, if I remember correctly. The term in the special review will be mandatory for any pesticide banned or restricted by an OECD country, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris.

These positive features tell us that the government recognizes the fact that pesticides, euphemistically called pest control products, are highly dangerous substances which should be used rarely and with extreme care. Otherwise how could one explain the symbol of the skull and crossbones used to identify most pesticides, softened in its impact by the intensive advertising campaign by pesticide manufacturers who find it necessary to try to convince the public that everything is fine with pesticides? For instance, in the mollifying ads promoting lawn beautification the word pesticides never appears. What we are treated to are bucolic green lawns, happy children playing and pets frolicking in a sea of perfectly uniform green blades of grass.

It should also be noted that in its attempt to dominate the market, industry avoids the word pesticides and instead uses intriguing, scientific sounding formulas like 2,4-D or other fancy abbreviations intended to reassure the potential consumer of chemicals about using pesticides on his or her front yard lawn. Fortunately, municipalities have not been bamboozled by the pesticide industry's public relations campaign. Today over 30 municipalities have banned the cosmetic use of pesticides on private property and in some cases on public property.

All this is after prolonged and extensive legal battles which peaked last June when the Supreme Court of Canada hit the pesticide industry on the head and gave it a lesson in constitutional law. The court declared that yes, municipalities do have the power to ban the cosmetic use of pesticides and that yes, the public interest can and should be served by municipal governments.

Before leaving the subject, I would like to pay a warm tribute to the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce--Lachine for her bill on banning the cosmetic use of pesticides. The bill was unanimously adopted at the last national convention of the Liberal Party of Canada. Unfortunately, the cosmetic use of pesticides is not mentioned in Bill C-53, one of several shortcomings which of course could be corrected in committee by way of appropriate amendments.

There are other serious shortcomings in Bill C-53 which I would like to bring to the attention of the House.

There is no statutory mandate and responsibility given to the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, which makes it a rather unique feature in the government structure.

There is no inclusion of the substitution principle, therefore no requirement to deregister older pesticides once newer, safer products are registered and brought to market.

There is a very narrow application of the precautionary principle. Why is it applied only at the consultation or amendment stage of the registration of a pesticide and not right at the beginning of the process, namely when deciding whether to register it or not? That is the question. It would make enormous sense to apply the precautionary principle all the way through as it was already advocated yesterday, if I remember correctly, by the member for Rosemont--Petite--Patrie.

There is no definition of acceptable or unacceptable risk and that is also a very serious matter which needs to be brought to the attention of members.

There is no requirement to take into account aggregate and cumulative exposure when registering a product. Time and again witnesses at committee hearings brought this to our attention, particularly the Canadian Institute of Child Health and other organizations concerned with the health of children.

There is no room for independent scientific findings which could be followed by mandatory feedback. Let us be realistic. Only so much can be achieved through public consultations and comments on decisions. More needs to be done in the public interest.

There is the matter of what constitutes confidential business information and that matter remains the same in this bill as in the 1969 legislation. It seems to me that surely there are situations when the public good can be of greater importance than confidential business information, or am I living on another planet?

Another shortcoming is the fact that the bill focuses only on the active ingredients of a pesticide but not on ingredients that can pose a threat to human health and the environment and are not necessarily active.

Finally, and this may be a budgetary requirement and not necessarily a legislative one, there is a need also identified by the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development for better statistics on pesticides, be it their sales or other related data. There is indeed an important challenge here for Statistics Canada.

As others have already outlined, Bill C-53 is definitely an improvement over the 1969 legislation. It should however be stronger in ensuring a healthy and safe environment for Canadians. The bill relies too heavily on product, product management and product regulation, and too little on the reduction in the use of, the reliance on and the risks posed by pesticides. That in a nutshell would be my way of assessing the bill.

It is my sincere hope that colleagues on the health committee will be able to address these shortcomings and amend the bill, which is quite possible at the committee stage, as members present have experienced.

To conclude, it seems to me that the Canadian population can expect a law which will give full and unconditional precedence to human health and the environment over pesticides and the very powerful industrial interests behind them.

[Peter Adams, Liberal, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to what my colleague had to say. I noted that he mentioned the court decision that enabled municipalities to regulate the so-called cosmetic use of pesticides and other products on lawns and things of that type. I thought a good deal about that myself. On the one hand, that is the appropriate jurisdiction to deal with these matters of enforcement. It would be very difficult, for example, for someone in Ottawa to enforce such regulations in downtown Peterborough.

On the other hand, because there are thousands of municipal jurisdictions, it may well take a very long time before they take up the cause as some jurisdictions, such as Quebec, have already done.

In legislation of this type, how could we introduce something that would move along the aspect of what he was discussing? I suppose it might range from advertising and education to a federal government department that might do that. Has he given any thought to a practical way of bringing that aspect into this new legislation?

[Charles Caccia, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is quite right in pointing at the government of Quebec as having introduced legislation which across the board empowers municipalities to ban the cosmetic use of pesticides. In addition to that, some municipalities in other provinces have done so. They were challenged in the supreme court which ruled in their favour.

However, the main point is this. We did recommend in committee that the federal government could phase-out pesticides that were put on the market for cosmetic purposes alone. We set a time limit of five years. I believe the hon. member from Lachine did the same. It would gradually be phased-out as a decision of the federal government, which is responsible for the registration of products. To decide what enters the market and what does not is fully a federal responsibility. Failing that, then we would have to rely on the goodwill of the provinces or the political will of the municipalities to do it on their own.

As to the final suggestion that a public education program could achieve that purpose, that is a very good idea. However let me draw to the attention of the member the fact that the producers of cosmetic pesticides are very engaged in advertising campaigns themselves which show beautifully uniform green-bladed lawns, happily frolicking pets and the like. Therefore the competition for public attention would be very intense.

[Roy H. Bailey, Canadian Alliance, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated listening to my learned friend and to the question from the member for Peterborough. I have had more than 50 years of experience with the use of pesticides, insecticides, herbicides and so on. I appreciate the fact that the 1969 legislation needed to be updated. However I suggest to the House and to the Minister of Health that to make the bill effective and to make it have broader appeal, control and easier to regulate, we have to have a program which will involve a great amount of co-operation between the provinces, the local governments and individuals.

When my learned friend was speaking, I could not help but go back to a time that many people will not remember; the grasshopper plague in western Canada. The hordes of grasshoppers blocked out the sun. In an attempt to control this pest, carloads of sawdust. were brought in. I do not know what they mixed with it, but as a kid I would throw this out. The control was worth two things and that was nothing twice. It really did nothing in the control the grasshoppers.

It is possible that there are millions of acres in western Canada, given the right temperature and amount of sunshine, that could be facing a similar situation to the thirties. Once before we used a spray called dieldrin that really killed the grasshoppers but it was very hard on the operators. It was a very dangerous insecticide.

We have a situation that has developed where we would not have enough pesticides on hand in western Canada and eastern Canada because the grasshopper population could explode over a weekend with the right amount of hatching. Therefore, those areas that are most polluted with grasshoppers right now and if they have any crops growing, they could lose their crops again without adequate supply. Western Canada has not had any crops for two or three years. I lived through that in the sixties and part of the seventies.

When I talk about co-operation, I know what that means. I know what we have to do and I know that a lot of legwork has to be done to make this bill effective. I have seen children who have been hurt by the spray. I have even seen animals, pets running alongside the tractor and the sprayer, that have been hurt by the spray.

We get so excited at times about some things and then we do the wrong thing. For instance, the same area that is likely to explode with a huge grasshopper population is also an area of western Saskatchewan and into Alberta that is polluted with the Richardson's ground squirrel or the gopher. We can now get the proper percentage of pesticide and the farmer must bring the oats or grain in to be spread. I do not necessarily disagree with that.

However what happened to the chap who invented the gophinator? It used the same gas as the farms used for fertilization. Just one shot down the hole and it controlled the spread of gophers in a painless way. However the animal rights people did not see that this was not only valuable as a fertilizer and that the pesticide was controlled. Therefore for some reason or another the patent was disallowed. Now this very thing that is being used is labelled a toxic substance. I am not too sure if we do not move in the wrong direction very often.

I would like to relate another incident that we would not allow today, and we have come a long way.

A church group in town bought three extra lots which were once used for propane storage and delivery. They had a herbicide on the market which sold under the generic name of Spike. It was used mainly around the elevators, so any grass fires would not get up close. However, nobody had properly tested that. Let me give some examples. I said that I would plant trees around the edge of that lot but before I did I noticed that nothing was growing there. I took in a soil sample and was told that nothing would grow in that soil for 25 or 30 years and maybe never.

At one of the schools I was supervising they built a football field with a track around the field. They put this Spike herbicide on the field, which was a good idea, but a heavy rain fell. They put enough on that it ran down corner wise some distance away and killed two big pine trees at the edge of the lot. We have come a long way but in some instances we have not come far enough.

Let me tell members about co-operation. Two years ago I had a double row of a very popular hedge called cotoneaster. Cotoneaster is subject to infestations of what I call pear slugs. They are cone shaped like a pear and if they are not controlled they ruin the whole hedge. They do not kill it but it is nothing to look at for the year.

The most effective insecticide was malathion. Let us talk about co-operation. I would tell the widow lady to the east and the one to the west the day I was going to spray the hedge. The smell still got into the house but I wore a mask when I sprayed. Eventually I took the hedge out. I wanted to do that because I did not want to have bad relations with two friends that I have had for years. That is what I mean by co-operation.

Where I live we have all kinds of empty lots. The town does not have enough money to hire crews to keep these vacant lots properly trimmed and so on. The town is caught in a dreadful squeeze. It does not have enough money to hire a crew to keep up the lots. It only has enough money to spray the lots. Some of these sprays come under the province's noxious weed act. All provinces have noxious weed acts. One can see that the ragweed, the sow thistle, the Canadian thistle and so on are very high.

Here is the catch. If the towns do not go in and spray the ragweed the people who suffer from that pollen will suffer terribly but if the towns do spray then they also suffer. I support the bill but, in all honesty, I think we have to do a fair amount of public relations in order to make it successful.

Let me tell members of another example. When I was farming in Saskatchewan, under the noxious weed act authorities could destroy the weeds on any given piece of land that contained noxious weeds and I would be charged.

Today, however, with the herbicides that have been used it is not difficult to control the weeds. Most spraying is done miles away from another farm or miles away from somebody else and, for the most part, has been mostly controlled.

This is a little off topic but Prince Edward Island developed a genetically modified potato that insects did not chew at the leaves. The excuse customers in the United States used was that they had the right potato but that they were GMO potatoes and that potatoes had to be from Maine first. So the PEI potatoes were banned. PEI went back to growing the original potato. It had a good crop but it had to be sprayed about three times. On that little island the spray comes right up against the schoolyard. They have smaller fields and there is a real problem.

How do we deal with that? How do we deal with taking away the livelihood of an individual and still comply with this particular bill? We need to find ways to make that happen.

I think the government is correct in allowing the municipalities to maintain the use of pesticides for cosmetic purposes. I also believe that it will require a great deal of public relations. I believe that one of the things that has to be done with the passage of the bill is that various departments need to co-operate, such as the Department of the Environment and the Department of Health, in putting out a campaign across the country showing the health dangers and also co-operating at the local level with the municipalities and the provinces.

If there is indeed an outbreak of grasshoppers this spring the municipality's responsibility is to spray some of those roadways where most of the eggs are lying at the present time. This is a big problem and perhaps bigger out there where there are so many acres and so many problems that we have, particularly with gophers, grasshoppers and so on.

We believe that proven sound science domestically and so on should be on an ongoing basis for debate so that we can provide the best for those who are growing the products but also the best for our health and in particular the health of children and, as my hon. friend mentioned, pregnant women and so on.

I support the bill. I think we can do great things with the co-operation of the federal government, the provincial governments, the municipalities and the individuals who have to use the products.

[Clifford Lincoln, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to read from a book entitled Our Stolen Future written in 1996 by three famous scientists: Theo Colborn, Diane Dumanoski and John Peterson Myers. It states:

Through the creation and release of billions of pounds of man-made chemicals over the past half century, we have been making broadscale changes to the Earth's atmosphere and even in the chemistry of our own bodies. Now, for example, with a stunning hole in the Earth's protective ozone layer and, it appears, the dramatic decline in human sperm counts, the results of this experiment are hitting home. From any perspective, these are two huge signals of trouble. The systems undermined are among those that make life possible. The magnitude of the damage that has already occurred should leave any thoughtful person profoundly shaken.

Theo Colborn appeared before the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development during its review of pesticides. She urged us very strongly to review our legislation and to bring in better and improved legislation.

I would first like to commend the minister for bringing forward this new legislation which is, by any standard, an improvement on the existing one which goes back to 1969 and is therefore 33 years old.

I should mention that the process for managing and regulating pesticides goes back quite a long way.

The previous Conservative government produced a report that was known as the purple book. In October 1994, I was one of four parliamentary secretaries assigned to implement the recommendations in the purple book. One of the recommendations called for the establishment of a pest management agency, which is now called the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, that would be transferred from the department of agriculture to the department of health in 1995.

After the environment and sustainable development committee held hearings over many months, it made recommendations in a report produced on May 16, 2000 entitled “Pesticides: Making the Right Choice”.

I would like to take a minute to congratulate my colleague from Davenport who was chair of the committee at the time. The committee did very deep study on a critical issue for all of us concerned with human health and the environment. It was a groundbreaking report that led to the introduction of this legislation, which thankfully follows many of the recommendations contained in the report.

We can see many improvements reflected in the recommendations from the report. The bill's primary objective is to prevent unacceptable risks to people and the environment from the use of pest control products. The critical question of assessment of risk is based on the consideration of children's health, pregnant women, seniors and, in certain cases, of special risk in a safety margin 10 times greater than would otherwise be predicated.

The bill provides for a public registry which is a good start to giving the public access to health information. Whistleblower protection is provided in a meaningful way. There is the possibility of sharing information among government departments, a question which was raised by the commissioner for sustainable development who had strongly criticized the government for lack of communication among its departments with regard to pesticides. The bill provides for the burden of proof for the safety and value of the product to be clearly on the registrant or applicant, which is a big step forward.

As my colleagues have stated, there is room for a lot of improvement. I say this constructively hoping that when the bill reaches the health committee much improvement will occur and it will be treated in a very constructive manner by the government in addressing the question.

Let us look at the Pest Management Regulatory Agency which licenses and re-evaluates pesticides so they can be sold to the public. No statutory mandate in the legislation is given to the PMRA. All responsibilities and obligations fall on the Minister of Health.

In 1995 the PMRA was established as an administrative branch within Health Canada. We need to create an arm's-length agency. As we recommended, the PMRA should be accountable to parliament. The committee report gives the example of the patent office which is an agency set up within a department but given a full statutory mandate.

The committee also recommended a very clear mission for the PMRA. It recommended that it give absolute priority to the protection of human health and the environment when considering whether to approve a pesticide for use in Canada or allow its continued use. The committee recommended that it promote the use of sustainable pest management strategies that seek to reduce use, risk and reliance on pesticides. It emphasized the development of safer pest control products and to inform and educate the public about pesticides and the risks associated with their use. No such provisions are contained in the law and they are in my view essential.

My colleague from Davenport referred to the precautionary principle and its narrow application to the act. There is no mention of it in the preamble and there is a narrow application in the legislation itself. It is essential that the new act implement the precautionary approach in all aspects of decision making. Mrs. Barbara McElgunn of the Learning Disabilities Association of Canada made the following statement at one of our hearings:

Critical to this issue is the fact that for the majority of priority chemicals or for important new innovations, there exists very little, or no, human health safety data. Many decisions on chemical safety have been taken on very limited toxicological data re their safety to developing organ systems, i.e. children. It takes many years to obtain these data. Under current law and policy in Canada, it takes many more years to develop regulations to protect public health and the environment. Therefore, under the Canadian Perspective on the Precautionary Principle, the health and safety of Canadians is placed in a “Catch-22” situation, that says, “We must have strong scientific evidence before precautionary action can be taken--but we don't have that exact evidence, and therefore we cannot use the precautionary principle to act in a timely and protective manner

This is why we need the precautionary principle which Canada endorsed way back in 1992 at Rio in all facets of this legislation. The definition in the proposed legislation falls short of what the committee recommended and short of international standards. The committee recommended the following clause:

Appropriate preventive measures are to be taken where there is reason to believe that a pesticide is likely to cause harm, even when there is no conclusive evidence to prove a causal relation between the pesticide and its effects.

There is no definition of acceptable or unacceptable risk in the bill. In fact the whole purpose of the bill is to avoid an unacceptable risk. The implementation of the bill would depend on the subjective interpretation of this concept, which is not defined. The precautionary principle is only applied in the proposed legislation in re-evaluation or special reviews. At an operation level the precautionary principle must be used in all decisions respecting pest control products.

There is no requirement to consider aggregate and cumulative exposure. The committee addressed at length that the minister shall consider available information on aggregate and cumulative exposure when determining maximum residue only. That is not sufficient.

There is no science based inherent toxicity criteria, that is, there is no threshold for endocrine destruction, neurotoxicity or carcinogenic content of a pesticide specified for testing of the products. There is no requirement to re-register or evaluate pesticide for use on GMOs.

Another issue that the committee dealt with was an educational mandate. I remember legislation I passed in Quebec, in 1987, where one of the central features was an educational mandate. Without educating the public at large or the people who use pesticides, farmers and others, we will never change attitudes toward pesticides. We had a system where CEGEPs and schools gave instruction on pesticides and changed attitudes in the public mind.

The committee recommended that PMRA be expressly mandated under the new legislation to inform and educate the public about the risks associated with the use of pesticides and the availability of less harmful alternatives. Attitudes about pesticide use must be changed through aggressive public education programs. PMRA should not be given the exclusive responsibility to carry this out given that many federal departments make vital contributions to public awareness raising. It should be spread throughout the system. Public education should be a key mandate of the legislation.

We need a commitment in the bill to the pollution prevention principle. There is no substitution principle included in the bill, that is, a requirement to deregister older pesticides once newer and safer ones are registered.

There is a lack of consideration given in the bill to alternatives, to the essential need to use alternatives when they are available and use them on a fast-track basis. Track 1 toxic substances of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act are not explicitly disallowed, again a breach of committee recommendations.

There is no requirement to obtain information or to evaluate registered formulants and contaminants. There are no requirements either for the establishment of a government-use database or to develop reduction plans. There is no phase-out of cosmetic pesticides as referred to by my colleague from Davenport.

I will address the question of transparency under the bill. The need to involve Canadians in the decision making process and to inform them about pesticide use in the environment is clearly evident in the amount of attention this issue has garnered in the press and in the public forum for several years now. The key to fostering public confidence in pest management is to develop an open and transparent system. Canada does not have a tradition of allowing the public to act as a watchdog to the extent the U.S. does now. We have many lessons to learn from our American neighbours in enabling public participation in decision making.

That includes access to what we call CBI, confidential business information. Yesterday, the minister stated:

Confidential business information will be defined very narrowly in Bill C-53 and will include only financial information, manufacturing processes and formula ingredients that are not of health or environmental concern. This means that the identity and concentration of formulas that are of health or environmental concern will not be held in confidence and can in fact be made available to the public on labels and material safety data sheets and through the public registry.

That is a good step forward but it falls far short. The restrictions on CBI should be much tighter. For example, there is no definition of what financial information should be protected. Knowing how wily industry is on all these issues it will find a way to make confidential what the public wants to be transparent.

It is my hope that the details of this legislation will be examined closely by the Standing Committee on Health. What constitutes confidential business information is broadly defined in the bill in that the person who is providing the information decides if the information is CBI or not.

Another point regarding transparency is that there is no requirement for a sales database, for which we had asked. There is no direct mechanism for submission of independent scientific findings. We asked for that as well. There is no requirement to establish a database on reported adverse effects. There is no specific mention of the Pest Management Advisory Council. There is no requirement for harmonization between the protection of human health and the environment in order not to weaken Canadian standards.

Nicholas Ashford, a professor of technology and policy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology warned us in 1996 of the most serious environmental problem facing industrialized countries today. He is known for his work on the theory of multiple chemical sensitivity, MCS. He was one of the first to suggest that people who become sensitized by exposure to one form of contamination are much more liable to be affected by a whole range of other pollutants, including detergents, traffic fumes and tobacco smoke. He gave many examples.

Theo Colborn and her colleagues stated that only after DDT had been spread as liberally as talcum powder across the face of this earth did we realize that DDT brought death to wildlife, but in a different way. She added that when concerns emerged about the persistence of DDT and its impact on wildlife, regulators imposed controls on less persistent compounds such as methoxychlor and we now know that the same chemical which is still in wide use disrupts hormones.

We have gone from one pesticide to another, from one chemical to another, producing more millions of chemicals and pesticides all over the world and spreading them all over our earth thinking that each new one is better than the other and we will be safe. Yet we are finding out time and again that what we judge safer this time is found to be toxic and dangerous to human health and the environment, especially for children, seniors and pregnant women.

We owe it to ourselves to accept the bill as a big improvement on the previous legislation, but to also ask the minister constructively to allow the committee on health to look at the improvements we have all suggested and make the bill into leading legislation for the federal government. This is my strong hope.

[Roy H. Bailey, Canadian Alliance, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed the comments of the hon. member.

I want to ask the hon. member a question in regard to the legislation. The bill would require manufacturers to show that their chemicals are effective as part of the approval process. The PMRA should perhaps be more concerned about the safety features of the chemical itself. The market will decide the effectiveness. If we need a product we should look at the health safety of the chemical and its use. Would the hon. member not agree that the testing of the effectiveness should be left with the purchasers? They would find out whether or not it was effective.

[Clifford Lincoln, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I think the precautionary principle has to be the guiding light in all aspects of decision making, including that of the PMRA. If there is any uncertainty it should not be licensed and used. If we are sure, after using the best assessment methods using the benchmark of children, pregnant women and seniors and the safety margin of 10 times, if we are 100% sure that a pesticide is reasonably safe for use in regard to human health and the environment, then it can be licensed, but only after it has been made 100% certain.

Our problem is that in our landscape today there are pesticides being used that have been in use for 40 or 50 years that are completely out of tune with the environment and human health. They have not been retested. We have to start retesting. We must start using the precautionary principle in a proactive and aggressive way. We must tell the PMRA that its mandate is, first of all, human health and the environment and all the rest comes afterwards. If we were to do this then all things would fall into place. This is our hope.

[Jean-Yves Roy, Bloc, Matapédia—Matane, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as my colleague from Rosemont—Petite-Patrie mentioned yesterday, I want to say at the outset that the Bloc Quebecois will support Bill C-53, an act to protect human health and safety and the environment by regulating products used for the control of pests.

I also want to thank my colleague from Lac-Saint-Louis, who just spoke. He was environment minister in Quebec. In many respects, I agree with what he said, particularly with regard to the number of years that we have been using pesticides and the impact they can have on human health.

We have been using pesticides for many years. We started using chemical pesticides 40 or 50 years ago perhaps. We have very little knowledge of the impact that these pesticides may have had on our lives, on the lives of our children and on the lives of the elderly, as the member pointed out.

He gave a very good example when he mentioned the use of DDT. Everyone will remember that 25 or 30 years ago, DDT was used on a large scale. Researchers found traces of that product in animals in Canada's and Quebec's far north. These animals were still carriers years after the use of DDT, a very common pesticide at one time, had stopped.

I clearly remember that in Quebec, before the introduction of Bacillus thuringiensis—which, incidentally, was developed by a Quebecer—highly toxic chemical pesticides were used in our forests to control pests such as the spruce budworm in New Brunswick and in other provinces. There was no real control over the spraying of that pesticide. It was sprayed all over our forests and even over inhabited areas. As a child, I was exposed to these highly toxic products before biological pesticides were developed. It happened in my province as well as in other Canadian provinces. I am sure that many people my age were affected by the chemical products that were used in those days.

So what is the purpose of this bill being introduced? This bill is to replace legislation that dates back to 1969. It is legislation that is now outdated and should have been replaced before now, given the environmental awareness that has developed in recent years, and our awareness of things that have been done and the impact pesticides can have on our lives, on the lives of our children and on our environment.

There is another element that I consider important. I am the Bloc Quebecois critic for fisheries and oceans. As such, I am fully aware that chemical pesticides used, which in most cases are not biodegradable, can be found in the environment, in streams and rivers, and ultimately, in the oceans. They can also be found in the food chain.

What are the consequences? Obviously, when fishing in a polluted ocean, the resource is polluted. If you eat what is caught in the ocean, you are ingesting a resource that is highly toxic.

At the present time, we do not know enough about the consequences of using this resource to be 100% reassured about what has taken place until now.

As I was saying, we obviously support Bill C-53 in principle, but we would like to see a number of amendments. We know that the bill will be referred to the Standing Committee on Health.

I will summarize, as my colleague from Rosemont--Petite-Patrie did yesterday, the main amendments to Bill C-53 that the Bloc Quebecois hopes to see.

The first amendment that we would like to see stems from the fact that Bill C-53 does nothing to speed up the registration process for less toxic pesticides. A focus group was set up in Quebec by Minister Boisclair last October.

In fact, this group wanted the registration of less toxic pesticides to be speeded up. The reason is quite simple. Currently, non organic pesticides are being used. It would be necessary for the government to invest into research and to foster the registration of less toxic pesticides, particularly organic ones. But it should also be cautious.

The government should foster the speeding up of registration, but in taking the precautionary principle into account, as my colleague from Rosemont—Petite-Patrie mentioned yesterday, and as my colleague from Lac-Saint-Louis said earlier. It seems to me that the precautionary principle is lacking, or at least not present enough in the bill before us. As my colleague from Lac-Saint-Louis mentioned, this is an essential element, and we ask that the bill be changed, amended, improved. This opportunity to amend the bill would allow us, as a society, to have less toxic products that can be used in a much safer environment.

Second, the bill does not suggest any alternatives to current pesticides. As I indicated, we should have alternatives. Of course, the government can ask people to stop using specific pesticides, but it must at least provide alternatives. Alternatives are necessary, not only in terms of biopesticides, but also when it comes to agriculture; reference is made to organic agriculture. Since I represent a rural riding, I know full well that, in the industry, farmers are still using products that may be considered as highly toxic and that it is necessary to have some control on the way these products are used.

There is also another element that is close to my heart. I remember quite well that, in the last 20 or 30 years, when a highly toxic pesticide was banned in more advanced societies like Canada or the United States, the companies manufacturing these products would make them available in the third world. This may not have been taken into account in the bill, but it might be important to do so.

Today it would be necessary to consider that what is going on elsewhere in the world may have an impact on us, on our societies, in the long term. What goes on in the third world can have an important impact. If highly toxic products are used in the third world and end up on our market, then we will have a serious problem in the more or less long term.

As I said, this bill proposes no alternatives to the pesticides in current use, as was recommended in their respective reports by the focus group on the use of pesticides in urban areas I have already referred to—and will come back to later—created by the Quebec Minister of the Environment, and the Standing Committee on the Environment of the House of Commons.

In its report, the standing committee even recommended incentives be given for organic agriculture, as I have already mentioned, as well as sustainable pest control strategies. What does this mean? It means developing new approaches to controlling pests and stopping the use of highly toxic products which can be harmful to human health.

For example, as my colleague from Rosemont--Petite-Patrie pointed out yesterday, certain European countries offer financial incentives to encourage growers to eliminate the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, that is chemical fertilizers. Bill C-53 seems to have been completely stripped of any recognition of the importance of research and development of biopesticides.

We can hope that chemical pesticides, pesticides potentially hazardous to human health, will disappear, but there must be alternatives available, and research must be developed and encouraged if the process is to be speeded up.

Another thing that was recommended by the standing committee is for there to be a re-evaluation by the year 2006 of all pesticides that were registered prior to 1995. Once again, the bill seems not to have set a time limit for the re-evaluation of old pesticides. This is an important point.

Basically, even though we have a bill and are trying to replace pesticides said to pose health risks to humans, if we do not re-evaluate the pesticides that are being used, that were used in the past and that are still used today, it is obviously useless to try to go any further.

It is important to consider that we can already, through serious research, come to the conclusion that the pesticides that were in use 20 or 30 years ago—earlier, DDT was mentioned—can be considered as posing health risks to humans. We have a laboratory precisely because these pesticides were used for so many years that we can now evaluate them in a very real and serious fashion. When it comes to evaluating biopesticides, it is the same thing. We are told that it is always a matter of time, that it takes a lot of time to evaluate these products.

There is another important factor to consider in the bill and regarding which amendments are desirable. The bill includes what I would call a wish, in the form of a special protection for children, infants and pregnant women.

I find it hard to see how, through a bill such as this one, we could, without being specific, protect children and infants in a special way, considering that it is society as a whole that is affected by pesticides. In light of this, how can we single out infants, except when they are directly affected in their immediate environment by chemical pesticides or by pesticides that pose health risks?

Earlier, I discussed the position defined by Quebec, by the focus group set up by Minister Boisclair. This position goes much further than the bill before us. On October 15, Minister Boisclair announced the creation of the focus group on the use of pesticides in urban areas. The objective of the focus group was to identify possible solutions that would allow Quebecers to reduce their dependency on and the risks of exposure to these products, including those used to maintain lawns, for environmental horticulture and for extermination purposes, while developing a sense of responsibility among citizens.

A sense of responsibility is very important, and one of the aspects I wish to mention is developing people's sense of responsibility. This is an aspect which is very difficult to control, however. Developing people's sense of responsibility has to do with methods of pesticide use, with people using pesticides in their immediate environment, either on their lawn or on their fruit trees. People often have very little information about how these pesticides should be used. They use them any old way. Sometimes they may very well misuse products and not be aware of their possible hazards. Even if each of these products is very clearly labelled and the recommended use very clearly indicated, not everyone is an expert on pesticides and sometimes amounts can be considerably increased and pose a threat to human health.

Some fifty or so organizations and individuals presented briefs to the group formed by Minister Boisclair. Over half of these organizations, representing municipal government, the research, health and business sectors, and ecological groups, expressed their views during the four days of consultations held in January 2002.

The focus group and the people who presented briefs at the hearings made 15 major recommendations designed to considerably reduce the use of pesticides in urban areas.

But I would like to see this go a bit further than the urban setting. I would like to see rural areas included, because we are well aware that pesticides are also used in farming. They are not restricted to urban areas. They are also used in our towns, our villages and our countryside. I would like to see a broader approach taken and all of society made aware of the problem of using pesticides, which can be potentially dangerous to human health.

The first recommendation of the focus group is to ban pesticides, unless action levels have been reached or the survival of plants is being threatened, as one of my colleagues mentioned earlier.

The group asked that this be done within a quite short deadline. This provision seems to be lacking in the bill. In the bill before us, it seems that the government does not wish to ban the use of pesticides in the more or less long term, among other places in urban centres, as other members have mentioned. These are pesticides that are used only for lawn and park improvement in cities.

We will have to raise people's awareness. We will have the raise the awareness of businesses that are using such pesticides. We will have to allow them to have access to organic pesticides and make them aware that the use of specific chemical non biodegradable pesticides may be harmful to human health, even to those who spray them, that is workers in these businesses. Consequently, it seems important to me that the government should try, through an amendment to the bill that will be sent to the Standing Committee on Health, to set a deadline to ensure that the use of potentially harmful chemical pesticides be banned in green spaces and on our lawns.

Other recommendations were made by Minister Boisclair's focus group on the use of pesticides, including environmental management training for those working around the public, such as lawn care businesses, those who sell pesticides, professionals who provide services or those who work in public areas, so they can give advice and set an example. Those who work in public areas include municipal employees.

Public information and education with regard to the risks associated with the use of pesticides, with regard to environmental management and with regard to alternative methods and products must be an important part of the bill. The public must be informed and educated on this issue as quickly as possible so that people become aware that the use of these products can be extremely harmful to their health and, in the long term, to human health and to the environment.

One wish expressed by the focus group, and it is something that I mentioned myself, is that alternative methods using less harmful products be made available. We cannot ask people to stop using pesticides if they do not have access to much less dangerous products that would therefore be less harmful to their health.

The focus group also wanted to see an adequate regulatory framework, including the adoption, in the near future, of a pesticide management code that could accelerate the implementation of environmental management.

Since I am running out of time, I will conclude by saying that we agree with the principle of the bill, but it needs to be amended to give it more teeth because, as it is now, it seems to be nothing more than a paper tiger.

[Leon Benoit, Canadian Alliance, Lakeland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have some questions for the hon. member who just spoke. I certainly agree with the intent of the bill. I agree with anything that will ensure pregnant women and children are better protected. All Canadians have that same concern and we certainly want to have a look at it.

My greatest concern with the bill is that the problems in the PMRA, the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, have not been dealt with. There is a real lack of requirement for good scientific information to be used. There is much overlap between testing done in the United States and testing done here.

Farmers are probably the widest users of many of these pesticides. They are held at a disadvantage while the PMRA deals with the registration of these products. When good scientific studies have been done in the United States why is there duplication? It is very expensive. Farmers have to pay an extra tax on these products because they have gone through the PMRA. I have some concerns about that aspect.

I want to ask the member some specific questions about his presentation. He talked about DDT, a product that was banned probably 30 years ago in Canada. Perhaps the member could tell me how long ago it was banned. Nothing to do with human health led to its banning. It was an eggshell problem. Raptors and birds of prey had thin eggshells which resulted in their young not hatching and a decline in the raptor population. If we look across the country now we see a mammoth increase in raptor population. Clearly that problem has been taken care of.

Why would the member raise DDT when it does not seem to fit in with the bill? Maybe he could explain why it would.

Herbicides in particular have become far safer than they were 20 years ago although there was very little evidence that they were not safe at that time. Farmers are more comfortable using these new products because they are extremely safe and have been well tested. That is a real positive.

Who could be more interested than farmers and others who have to use these products when it comes to human health considerations and the environment? No one has a greater vested interest. As a former farmer, my children were around these products. We sprayed crops near our home and had to be very aware of safety.

Would the member comment on that and especially on why DDT was raised as an example of the problem? It was in the past and we have clearly learned from it. Why not mention the new class of herbicides and pesticides that are much safer? The unsafe pesticides are very clearly labelled and someone needs to be licensed to use them.

[Jean-Yves Roy, Bloc, Matapédia—Matane, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question, but he may have misheard or misunderstood certain things.

I did of course refer to DDT, because that was the example I wanted to use. I wanted to use that very specific example because it is an actual example of the use of a pesticide which had, and which obviously caused, major environmental hazards.

He spoke of the raptors as being affected, but they are not the only ones. In all countries where DDT was used at that time, this highly toxic substance was found throughout the food chain. Of course, it had an impact on human beings. What would that have been? Research could be done today, updating the situation, and then we would perhaps have a better idea.

My colleague has raised another point. Today, of course, certain pesticides can be considered less dangerous, less harmful, than at that time, 30 or 40 years ago. Nevertheless, it is often only in the long term that there is an awareness of the potential effects. In the short term, we can say, “Yes, a given pesticide does not seem to be highly toxic”. If it is not biodegradable, however, in the long term it can obviously be dangerous. A pesticide that is not biodegradable inevitably ends up in the food chain and inevitably also in our environment.

When my colleague from Lac-Saint-Louis referred just now to the 500% principle of precaution, I am totally in agreement with him. We must have total or near total assurance, if this is possible, that the pesticides we use are not dangerous in the long term to human health and to our environment. One of the points he raised was the very serious problem posed by the use of thousands of tonnes of pesticide products.

I would also like to add, as I did in my speech, that our countries must not stop using highly toxic products, stop manufacturing them, ban their use, and then send them off to the third world, as has been done in the past.

[Karen Kraft Sloan, Liberal, York North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin my speech I want to make a comment on the issue of DDT for the member of the Canadian Alliance who asked the member from the Bloc why he mentioned the issue. I think the issue of DDT is very informative in terms of what we are looking at with regard to the Pest Control Products Act.

First, in 1951 studies indicated issues with regard to human health. If I may share a personal anecdote with the House with regard to DDT, in 1951 my mother was carrying me. I was born in 1952. All members can do the math. I am getting very old now. In 1951, a year before I was born, studies showed that DDT was affecting human health in a negative way. DDT was not banned in Canada until 1978. In January 1978 my daughter was born. Here we have a situation where two generations have been affected by a chemical when it was understood that there were human health problems associated with the use of that chemical.

How does this relate to the Pest Control Products Act, an act that is 30 years out of date? When we talk about the kinds of pesticides and chemicals being used to control pests, yes, as the speaker from the Canadian Alliance said, there has been a new generation of pesticides, but there also is a huge proliferation of pesticides of which we have no understanding and no real knowledge in regard to some of the human health and ecological problems. As well, we have information on pesticides which we are not acting on.

Therefore I am pleased to rise in the House today and speak to this long awaited Bill C-53, the new pest control products act. Indeed, it is an act that many people have been anticipating for a long time. It will amend an act that is 30 years out of date. In May 2000, the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development tabled a report in the House of Commons entitled “Pesticides: Making the Right Choice for the Protection of Health and the Environment”. It was the result of a long study of the pesticide regime in Canada, during which the committee heard a great deal of disturbing testimony about life under the very outdated Pest Control Products Act.

The committee's first recommendation in the report was that the Minister of Health introduce new pesticide legislation as a matter of top priority. Despite the delay, I commend the minister for finally bringing forward Bill C-53. Canadians have been looking forward to the arrival of the bill for a long time.

More important, I congratulate the minister for what is in the bill. On a number of critical issues, the government clearly has listened to the testimony of witnesses and to the recommendations of the committee. The new PCPA strengthens our pesticide regime quite simply by bringing it up to date with modern science, with modern concerns about these products and with modern expectations of government transparency in the protection of human health and the environment.

What is to be applauded about the bill? There are a number of things. To begin, the emphasis of the standing committee's work was on vulnerable populations and, of those, especially children. As we heard over and over from witnesses, children are not little adults. They run a greater risk of exposure to pesticides because of specific characteristics of their physiology. They are developing organisms. For example, they drink more water and breathe more air per kilogram of body weight and thus can absorb larger quantities of pollutants present in the environment. Their diets are appreciably different, consisting largely of fruits, vegetables and mother's milk. They have habits like rolling about on the grass, and little kids like to eat dirt. Because of this, compared to adults, they are exposed to pesticides to a greater degree. For this reason, the committee was greatly concerned that a new pesticides bill grant legal recognition to vulnerable populations, including infants, children, aboriginal people, professional users of pesticides, people in poor health, pregnant women, seniors and others. I am pleased to note that it does.

In addition to recognizing vulnerable populations, the bill would apply margins of safety for protecting them. The U.S. food quality protection act requires the Environmental Protection Agency to use an additional safety factor of 10 when assessing the risks posed by the presence of a pesticide in the diet of children. There is no such legislative requirement in Canada under the current act. For this reason, the committee called for the use of an additional safety factor of 10 in determining the tolerance of pesticide residues in foodstuffs. This recommendation is addressed in the bill. However, I believe it requires clarity and perhaps some amendments to provide that clarity. I hope that the health committee will look at clause 11 very closely.

The bill also calls for a greater margin of safety in using pesticides around schools and homes, which is commendable. During its hearings, the environment committee heard alarming stories about the safety of workers handling pesticides. The committee agreed that such workers need the same level of protection now afforded to workers handling other hazardous substances. For this reason, it recommended that the new legislation ensure that pesticides meet the workplace hazardous materials information system requirements. Although the bill does not specifically mention WHMIS, I am pleased to note that it does include the ministerial requirement that a material safety data sheet for each product be provided to workplaces.

The committee was also greatly concerned about the state of product re-evaluation under the current act. Presently there is no timeframe for re-evaluating pesticide products. Re-evaluation ensures that product registrations are supported by up to date science. Not surprisingly, with no timelines we are far behind in reassessing them. Under Bill C-53 all pesticide products would be re-evaluated every 15 years. Unfortunately, there are no timelines associated with the completion of the process. Again, this is an area that I hope the health committee will address.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that when we continue debate on Bill C-53 I will be able to continue my presentation on these issues.

[The Deputy Speaker]

I want to thank the hon. member for York North for her co-operation. Certainly when this matter is before the House again she will have the floor, with approximately 12 minutes remaining in her intervention.

The House resumed from April 8 consideration of Bill C-15B, an act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, as reported (with amendments) from the committee.

An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (Cruelty to Animals and Firearms) and the Firearms Act

[The Deputy Speaker]

It being 5.56 p.m., the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded divisions at report stage of Bill C-15B.

Call in the members.

(The House divided on Motion No. 5, which was negatived on the following division:)