Mr. Speaker, it gives me great joy today to rise and speak to Bill C-298, presented by the hon. member for Beaches—East York. This bill requires that the Minister of the Environment add perfluorooctane sulfonate, more commonly known as PFOS, to the Virtual Elimination List under subsection 65(2) of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, passed by this House in 1999, and to do so within nine months of the enactment of the bill.
The minister,under the bill tabled by the member, must also make regulations prescribing the quantity or concentration of that substance that may be released into the environment, either alone or in combination with any other substance, in order to achieve the virtual elimination of the substance.
I would first like to recall that virtual elimination, in the context of discharging a toxic substance into the environment as the result of human activity, means the ultimate reduction of the quantity or concentration of a substance released into the environment to below the level of quantification specified by the ministers in the list contemplated in section 65 of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
What is PFOS? This substance is such that its salts and precursors belong to a broader category of fluorinated chemical substances. The term PFOS may refer to any of these forms, that is, anions, acids or salts.
PFOS and its precursors are used mainly to manufacture water-repellent and soil-repellent agents on surfaces and papers, such as rugs and carpets, fabrics and upholstery, and food packaging, as well as specialized chemical products, such as carpet stain removers, surface-active agents, such as detergents, frothing agents, wetting agents, dispersing agents and emulsifying agents for mines and oil wells.
As some of my colleagues have indicated, in Canada, there is no known production of compounds, of which PFOS is one. Some 600 tonnes of compounds were imported to Canada from 1997 to 2000, PFOS representing only a very small part of this total.
What are the effects of PFOS? First of all, according to the available data, PFOS penetrates the environment in quantities or in conditions that may immediately or in the long term have a harmful effect—and I stress the word harmful—on the environment or its biological diversity. The presence of this product in the environment is chiefly due to human activities, and these inorganic substances do not occur naturally in the environment.
As we consider this bill introduced by my hon. colleague, it should be pointed out that, in 2004, the government published in part I of the Canada Gazette a notice of its intention to add PFOS to the list of toxic substances and recommend its virtual elimination. The notice invited comments from the public for a 60 day period.
To date, however, schedule 1 of the Environmental Protection Act has yet to be amended to include PFOS. One might think that, at the time, the government heard from industry representatives who came forward to ask that the government defer adding it to the list. I want to stress that it is very likely that industrial sectors intervened with both the previous government and the current one. The latter announced today that it opposed the bill introduced by the former minister.
Is it normal not to be further along after two years?
One has to wonder if this long delay is due to a lack of will on the part of the administration, which is certainly under pressure by the industries concerned to delay designating PFOS as a toxic substance. Should, however, this be a standard delay due to a ponderous democracy, it would be totally unacceptable. It is indeed unacceptable to take nearly two years to restrict the use of a substance proven to be harmful. If the blame lies with the bureaucracy, we will have to do something about that at the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development, to ensure that, once they have been assessed as harmful, substances become regulated without delay.
In fact, the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development is currently reviewing the Environmental Protection Act and, as part of our work, we will certainly have to hear evidence from groups, both environmental and industrial ones. We will also have to ensure that the process can be sped up from the moment that a substance has been declared harmful.
As the parliamentary secretary said, high concentrations of PFOS have been found in certain wildlife species. For example, it has been found in polar bears, elsewhere in the world in some kinds of fish, in Japan and the Netherlands, and in the environment. The documents provided by Environment Canada show that the highest ambient concentration recorded was higher than the threshold concentration, which suggests possible effects on aquatic organisms, birds and mammals. Minimal concentrations were found in the livers of wildlife species in remote parts of the Canadian Arctic, including mink, common loon, seal, brook trout, Arctic fox and polar bear. This is the reality. Some toxic effects have been discovered, and departmental specialists have found concentrations in aquatic organisms.
In my final minute, I would like to say that we will support the bill introduced by the member today. We will support it because, among other things, a study released in 2005 by Environmental Defence showed that high concentrations have been found in humans. Eleven volunteers agreed to take part in a number of studies and evaluations.
Given the toxic effect on aquatic environments, and given existing concentrations, even in humans, we will support this bill and we hope it will pass speedily given the current situation. We will most likely be examining this issue during our review of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which is currently before the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development.