Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the motion put forward by the member for Toronto--Danforth, and I do so for a variety of reasons.
If we were to go on the Internet and look at pesticides, it would result in many different opinions. Internet sites are not quality-based and some are not credible sites. They may be evidence-based or not. One could get the whole gamut from pesticides being no problem, to never use them under any circumstances anywhere in the world. In order to formulate my own views about the use of cosmetic pesticides, I tried to look at sites with some evidence-base to them, sites that were reasonably credible, and medical sites where good research had been done.
I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Ottawa Centre.
I do not know if everybody will remember the Leave It To Beaver show. Everybody had a nice white house with a picket fence and the lawn was absolutely perfect. It was green and gorgeous. I can remember my father looking after our front lawn and people knocking on the door and asking how he managed to get his grass looking so nice. I look back now and I am fearful of what was put on it to make it look so nice. The age of these kinds of front lawns is gone.
I am very concerned about the long term effects of pesticides. Pesticides are designed to kill something. They are not designed in particular to do damage to people, but they are designed to be toxic to certain things. We do not know the longevity of the pesticides that are being used. What concerns me the most is the effect of pesticides on children.
The literature really does not support the concept that some pesticides are safer than others. Children have a different kind of take up rate in the pesticide. We do not know whether there is a different latency period. We do know that young children metabolize substances in their bodies differently than adults. If children are exposed when they are three or four years old, we may not see something until they are 14, 15 or 16 years old because we do not have the ability to see that many years down the road. We cannot assure parents that their children will be safe under those circumstances.
Points have been made by previous speakers about the fact that the Canadian Cancer Society does not support the use of cosmetic pesticides and many cities do not support the use of cosmetic pesticides. Nobody is saying there is a direct link to poor health and pesticides, but we have seen many vulnerable groups of people become at risk for a whole variety of cancers such as non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, brain cancer, breast cancer, that can be potentially caused by exposure.
Let me give the House an example, and it is a very sad one in many ways. A number of years ago we noticed that there was a lot of spraying going on in a certain part of Canada that had a large forest industry. We noticed also that the rate of infants and children with neural tube defects like spina bifida was about 10 or 15 times what would have been expected in the normal population. It was way more than what we would see in a “statistical glitch”.
Dads were making a living for their family, putting a roof over their heads, feeding their children, and doing the best they could. They were spraying in the forest. They would come home in their work clothes and expose their families to the pesticides that were all over their clothing. They did not know any better.
However, what we did know then was that there were a significant number of youngsters being born with spina bifida and other kinds of neural tube defects. So I do not think that we can guarantee people that it will be safe for them in a few years or in five years or whenever that would be.
It is interesting because the company at the time that was doing the spraying described the deaths as simply collateral damage. The company said that one would expect this from any activity that was going on in order to save the trees not taking into account the number of children that were exposed.
A number of other things that are of concern to me are those very vulnerable groups of people in our society. Children, and I do not mean this to sound facetious, are very short and therefore, because they are small, they are exposed to a whole variety of contaminants that an adult is not, because they are closer to the ground.
They do all these things that we think are wonderful. Our babies pick something up and then they put it in their mouths. That is great, except that means they may very well be more at risk if they have dropped it on the grass outside and there have been pesticides used.
We have seen, I think, a combination or a coming together of moms or dads. Moms in particular, who have worked a lot in gardens and nurseries during their pregnancy, have indeed had a higher incidence of children with difficulties, with a number of difficulties, actually, as a result of the fact that mom had been exposed to pesticides during her pregnancy.
I think the same thing happens with the elderly, who have a different kind of immune system. As we age, and nobody in this House is aging, I am sure, our metabolism changes and we process those contaminants and those pesticides differently than a normal healthy adult might, and so we have no way of knowing what that really might mean.
I am little concerned, I must say. The PMRA is supposed to be re-evaluating 405 pesticides that are registered in Canada to see if they meet current standards by 2006, not the new ones but the ones already registered. My understanding is that 1.5% of those have been evaluated and most of those have been taken off the market after they have been evaluated. I am feeling very uncomfortable not only about the new ones to be evaluated but the ones that have already been approved and that are out there being used on a daily basis.
When we look at the urban and rural split or the urban and rural differences between pesticides, the amount of pesticide on an agricultural acre is far less than we see on an urban acre, which I think is the question one of the members asked earlier. We are talking about cosmetic use of pesticides. Although we could certainly, at some stage, have further debate about whether that should be extended. However, that is not the intent at all. This is cosmetic. If being careful, if testing properly, and if waiting until we have better scientific evidence-based information to look at saves the life of one child or one infant, then surely that is worth doing.