Mr. Speaker, I would like my address today to be designed in two or three parts, some specifically on a couple of the amendments that the department has moved subsequent to the committee's work, which again represents the attitude of the government that the committee work generally is useless work, that it is to be ignored, that any changes to legislation that are sent from the bureaucracy or the minister's office, or in some cases the PMO, are sacrosanct, not to be altered by the plebeians of the House of Commons in the form of members of the committee, in this case the health committee.
It shows up in what was really a fairly important but small amendment that was made by the health committee with regard to the giving of information to the public, requiring producers of these pesticides to disclose in detail the contents of the product they were putting out for consumption in the general marketplace and which many times has a negative impact on our natural environment, as well as the health of Canadians.
In that regard, it was simply saying that we, as intelligent members of society, citizens of Canada, have a right to know what is being placed in the natural environment. We have a right to make decisions as to whether we will expose ourselves or our dependent children to these chemicals. If we are going to make intelligent decisions we need to know the contents, not just the main ingredient, which the bill does provide for, but all the other ingredients.
The first motion today in effect makes that much less likely to happen as a result of the intervention by the minister and the department to reverse the work done by the committee, a committee which was working not just from this bill as drafted by the department, but also from a lengthy report that was done a year and a half to two years ago by the environment committee which had put forward in great detail the type of legislation, set out what the problems were as far as regulating pesticides and set out in very extensive detail what would be required in legislation to provide a legislative and regulatory system to protect Canadians and our natural environment.
To some significant degree the bill does not represent the recommendations that were in that report. One of those recommendations was to give individual citizens who would be exposed to these chemicals as much information as possible. This would have been just one way they could have done it. As I said, at least that was accepted by the health committee. However it is now being reversed by this subsequent amendment from the government.
We need to appreciate the significance of this. There are other parts of the bill that do not go far enough. For example, it does not go far enough in giving workers who will be using these chemicals and who will be exposed to them quite extensively, in some cases, on a daily basis, such as horticulturists and farmers, sufficient information they need. As well, it does not give the doctors who will be treating those workers should they develop health problems enough knowledge about what they have been exposed to.
As I say, the position of the government is that we are forcing producers to tell us the main ingredients. I heard an example used at the health committee. This is like saying to an individual who has a very high intolerance level to the peanut, “Here is a salad. There is lettuce in it”, and then forgetting to tell the person that ground peanuts are also a part of that salad. Therefore the person has a very negative reaction to the salad. We are doing exactly the same thing. We know there is a major chemical in the pesticide but do not mention all the other ones.
We have to consider, with this proposed amendment, the whole question of the cumulative effect. We may have a chemical that forms 75% of the product and three or four others that form 5%, 6%, 7% or 8% of it. How can a researcher analyze the impact of the cumulative effects of 5% of this chemical and 2% of that chemical on the human body, on animal tissue and on the natural environment, when this information is not available? Researchers, whether they be biologists or medical researchers, will not be assisted at all in their ongoing scientific work and analyses when they do not know to what people, animals and the natural environment have been exposed. The bill does not require that to occur.
We have to put this in context. There is something like 6,000 to 7,000 chemicals that are regulated and permitted in Canada as pesticides. We must think of the potential cumulative effect of those and the potential danger from interaction. We now know more and more about the potential danger, and in many cases real danger, of the ill-effects of the interaction of various chemicals, whereas in the past we ignored them. A small amount of one chemical acting independently may be of no concern to human health, animal species or to the natural environment. However, if it is combined, sometimes in a very small proportion, with another chemical there might be a very negative impact on human health.
Another point I want to make is a more general one. We would have liked to have seen in the bill a regime for phasing out the use of pesticides by general consumers on gardens and around households and schoolyards, basically in an urban-suburban area. One major recommendation in the report of the environment committee of couple of years ago was that the phase out and absolute ban of cosmetic pesticides be a cornerstone of any legislation of this nature.
I sat in on some of the hearings of the committee. It was really quite sad to hear about people who were on occasion confined to their homes. They could not go outside due to danger from cosmetic pesticides.
I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the bill at report stage. I ask that the House not approve the amendment contained in Motion No. 1.