Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-298, an Act to add PFOS to the Virtual Elimination List under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
I would like to make it immediately clear that we are in favour of this bill, which aims, as I said, to add PFOS to the list of substances for virtual elimination. First of all, what is PFOS? The principal applications for PFOS and its precursors are for water, oil, soil and grease repellents for use on surface and paper-based applications, such as rugs and carpets, fabric and upholstery and food packaging, as well as use in specialized chemical applications, such as carpet spot removers, surfactants such as detergents, hydraulic fluids, mining and oil-well emulsifiers and other specialized chemical formulations.
In Canada, there is no known manufacture of perfluorinated alkyl compounds, including PFOS. Approximately 600 tonnes of perfluorinated alkyl compounds were imported into Canada. PFOS represent only a very small percentage of the total amount of perfluorinated alkyl compounds currently imported into Canada.
What are the effects of PFOS? 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 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 our colleagues said a few minutes ago, we know that as early as 2004, the government announced in Part I of the Canada Gazette that it intended 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. Unfortunately, to date, schedule 1 of the Environmental Protection Act has yet to be amended to include PFOS. One might think that the government had heard from industry, asking that the government defer adding it to the list.
The real question we have to ask ourselves in studying this bill is why it took two years for the government to see the importance of adding this substance to the virtual elimination list. In the meantime, many people continued to have access to this substance, even though it is very clear that it has a harmful effect on the environment and biological diversity.
One has to wonder whether this long delay was due to a lack of will on the part of the administration, which was certainly under pressure by the industries concerned to delay designating PFOS as a toxic substance. It is unacceptable that this delay should be considered standard or due to red tape. It is indeed unacceptable to take nearly two years to restrict the use of a substance proven to be harmful. It is the federal government's duty to ensure that, once they have been assessed as harmful, substances are regulated without delay.
I would also like to mention phosphates in dishwasher and laundry detergents that are still available in our grocery stores. Why is the government taking so long to ban these phosphate-containing products when everyone knows that they are the main cause of a phenomenon that is affecting over 160 lakes in Quebec: cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae.
As everyone knows, on May 12, the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development passed a Bloc Québécois motion to force the government to adopt regulations banning products containing phosphates. Unfortunately, all summer, the government turned a deaf ear to a majority of parliamentarians demanding this ban. During that time, more of Quebec's lakes than ever before have been contaminated.
I would like to assure my colleagues that in the next few days, the Bloc Québécois will introduce a bill in this House to ban dishwasher detergents that contain phosphates. We hope that the government will pay attention this time and support the Bloc Québécois' bill, because this is a huge problem. Many other countries, such as Switzerland, have brought in regulations to address this issue.
We have to act now to protect our lakes and rivers. We also have to ensure that parliamentarians have a political arena in which they can introduce strict regulations to fight the degradation of our environment and our ecosystems.
In closing, I am pleased to support the member for Beaches—East York's Bill C-298. However, it is appalling that the government has waited more than three years to act on this issue even though it had access to all the studies at Environment Canada.