House of Commons Hansard #7 of the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was pfos.

Topics

Resumption of Debate on Address in ReplySpeech From The Throne

5:15 p.m.

NDP

The Deputy Speaker NDP Bill Blaikie

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

Resumption of Debate on Address in ReplySpeech From The Throne

5:15 p.m.

Some hon. members

Yea.

Resumption of Debate on Address in ReplySpeech From The Throne

5:15 p.m.

NDP

The Deputy Speaker NDP Bill Blaikie

All those opposed will please say nay.

Resumption of Debate on Address in ReplySpeech From The Throne

5:15 p.m.

Some hon. members

Nay.

Resumption of Debate on Address in ReplySpeech From The Throne

5:15 p.m.

NDP

The Deputy Speaker NDP Bill Blaikie

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #3

Resumption of Debate on Address in ReplySpeech From The Throne

5:40 p.m.

Liberal

Le Président Liberal Peter Milliken

I declare the motion carried.

Resumption of Debate on Address in ReplySpeech From The Throne

5:45 p.m.

Liberal

Massimo Pacetti Liberal Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC

Mr. Speaker, I would like to be recorded as having abstained from the previous vote, if possible.

Resumption of Debate on Address in ReplySpeech From The Throne

5:45 p.m.

Liberal

The Speaker Liberal Peter Milliken

I am sure the hon. member is aware of the practice of the House, which is to record yeas and nays and pairs, but nothing else. So, if the hon. member was paired, that would show up, I am sure, if his whip has signed the appropriate book. Other than that, there is not much I can do to assist the hon. member.

Resumption of Debate on Address in ReplySpeech From The Throne

5:45 p.m.

York—Simcoe Ontario

Conservative

Peter Van Loan ConservativeLeader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand here with our government renewed with that mandate. I move:

That the address be engrossed and presented to Her Excellency the Governor General by the Speaker.

Resumption of Debate on Address in ReplySpeech From The Throne

5:45 p.m.

Liberal

The Speaker Liberal Peter Milliken

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

Resumption of Debate on Address in ReplySpeech From The Throne

5:45 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

Resumption of Debate on Address in ReplySpeech From The Throne

5:45 p.m.

Liberal

The Speaker Liberal Peter Milliken

(Motion agreed to)

The House resumed from October 22 consideration of the motion.

National Peacekeepers’ Day ActPrivate Members' Business

5:45 p.m.

Liberal

The Speaker Liberal Peter Milliken

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at report stage of Bill C-287 under private members' business.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #4

National Peacekeepers’ Day ActPrivate Members' Business

5:55 p.m.

Liberal

The Speaker Liberal Peter Milliken

I declare the motion carried.

It being 5:55 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

I have received notice from the hon. member for Pickering—Scarborough East that he is unable to move his motion during private members' hour tomorrow, Thursday, October 25.

As it has not been possible to arrange an exchange of positions in the order of precedence, I am directing the table officer to drop that item of business to the bottom of the order of precedence.

Private members' hour will thus be cancelled tomorrow and the House will continue with the business before it prior to private members' hour.

Perfluorooctane Sulfonate Virtual Elimination ActPrivate Members' Business

5:55 p.m.

Liberal

Maria Minna Liberal Beaches—East York, ON

moved that Bill C-298, An Act to add perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and its salts to the Virtual Elimination List under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, be read the third time and passed.

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure today to again debate this bill . I am very proud to be here. The bill represents an important step in protecting the health of Canadians and our environment. Bill C-298 seeks to eliminate from our environment a chemical that poses a threat to the health of Canadians.

With a few minor amendments in committee, the bill passed with unanimous support before prorogation. I look forward to its passage in the House of Commons with similar support this time around.

PFOS is one of a larger class of chemicals known as PFCs. The full name for this particular chemical, PFOS, is perfluorooctane sulfonate. As members can hear, it is a mouthful. These chemicals are mainly used in consumer products for their non-stick, stain repellent and water repellent properties. PFOS itself is used mostly as a stain repellent in various consumer products as well as in certain industrial applications.

This chemical is used in rugs, carpets, fabric, upholstery, clothing, food packaging and certain industrial and household cleaners. Other applications include firefighting foams, hydraulic fluids, carpet spot removers, mining and oil well applications, and metal plating processes such as chrome plating.

PFOS was in Scotchgard products made by 3M. 3M voluntarily stopped using PFOS in 2000 at the urging of the U.S. EPA, citing the health and environmental dangers posed by the chemical. That is interesting. It is very rare for an industry to actually stop using a product before it is banned by the government.

PFOS has been studied by many countries and international bodies that have concluded PFOS is a threat to human health and the environment. It is more persistent in the environment than both DDT and PCBs. All of the studies have shown this consistently.

It is also persistent in the human body. In fact, it takes at least eight years for it to work its way out of the human body. Even if we eliminated PFOS from our environment immediately, it would take eight years, on average, for our bodies to get rid of half of the PFOS in our system.

In April 2004, Environment Canada and Health Canada completed their own assessments of PFOS and came to essentially the same conclusion. There are four basic questions that we need to ask when deciding whether a chemical poses a sufficient risk to human health and the environment such that it should be regulated.

First, is the substance inherently toxic? That is, does it pose a health risk for humans or wildlife? Second, does it persist for long periods of time in the environment without breaking down into harmless compounds? Third, does it bioaccumulate? In other words, does it become more concentrated as it moves up the food chain? Finally, is it used widely enough or in such a manner that there is a serious risk of human exposure?

Unfortunately, PFOS meets all of these criteria.

Bill C-298 seeks the virtual elimination of PFOS from our environment. Virtual elimination has a specific meaning under CEPA, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which is laid out in section 65 of the act. It means that the substance cannot be released into the environment at any level or concentration that cannot be accurately measured using sensitive but routine sampling and analytical methods. Essentially, the chemicals should not be entering the environment at any level that is detectable using the best commonly available measurement techniques.

Other countries have already taken action to protect their citizens and their environment from exposure to PFOS. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for example, banned the use of PFOS in 2000. With the exception of a few very specific applications, other countries have since moved to ban or severely restrict the use of PFOS.

Sweden has proposed a global ban on the substance under the Stockholm convention on persistent organic pollutants, sometimes called the POPs treaty. The POPs committee is now moving forward with its consideration of PFOS to decide if it should be included under the Stockholm treaty.

PFOS belongs to this list of resistant organic pollutants banned under the Stockholm treaty, but in the meantime we need to deal with it here at home. We simply cannot allow Canada to lag behind when it comes to protecting human health and the environment. We must act now, not later, to protect Canadians from exposure to PFOS. That is the objective of this bill. I hope that all parties and all members will support the bill.

Perfluorooctane Sulfonate Virtual Elimination ActPrivate Members' Business

6 p.m.

Liberal

Paul Szabo Liberal Mississauga South, ON

Mr. Speaker, in the last session this bill was successful at all stages and went through committee. I believe there was an amendment at committee. Could the member assure the House that the nature of the amendment was not substantive to the purpose of the bill?

Perfluorooctane Sulfonate Virtual Elimination ActPrivate Members' Business

6 p.m.

Liberal

Maria Minna Liberal Beaches—East York, ON

Mr. Speaker, there was a friendly amendment. It does not change the bill. The bill has the same impact that it had before. As I said, the amendment was a friendly one. We sat around the table and discussed it. Actually, I think it improves the situation.

My understanding from talking with experts in this field is that there are many chemicals in our environment. This is one of the most persistent and one of the worst ones that we are dealing with.

I thank the hon. member for his support and the support I have received from members of the House. Before Parliament prorogued, there was unanimous support for the bill to pass at the other stages. I hope the same will be the case at third reading.

Perfluorooctane Sulfonate Virtual Elimination ActPrivate Members' Business

6:05 p.m.

NDP

Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

Mr. Speaker, we have similar bills sitting at the environment committee right now that deal with a whole range of other chemicals.

As the member just mentioned, the number and range of chemicals that we are now finding have some sort of deleterious effect on human health is broad. We heard from government officials from Health Canada and Environment Canada. Oftentimes there are not the budgets nor the capacity to deal with the sheer number of chemicals. That industry is constantly evolving. Mr. Speaker, allow me to digress for a moment, but it is similar to the doping scandals we see in sports, where the creators of the chemicals make new ones quicker than detection systems and screens can be put in place. There are constantly new combinations and new innovations. Generally speaking, these are for consumer products.

I wonder if the member has any thoughts on the ways that we could apply a larger and broader screen to enable government to actually do its job, which is to protect citizens from harms of which they could not possibly have any knowledge. This is going to come up again and again. There are literally thousands of chemicals that we are interacting with on a daily basis and which are affecting us in negative ways. There is no real capacity on the government side to put measures in place. I wonder if she could comment regarding what we need to do in this country to make things a lot better and safer for Canadians.

Perfluorooctane Sulfonate Virtual Elimination ActPrivate Members' Business

6:05 p.m.

Liberal

Maria Minna Liberal Beaches—East York, ON

Mr. Speaker, my understanding is that there are some 3,000 chemicals which are very bad for the environment and are considered to be carcinogens. Of those 3,000, my understanding is that the government has brought it down to a smaller number that the departments are trying to analyze to fast track. The reality is there is a very large number.

We have all been exposed to this chemical for quite some time. Obviously it has been affecting our health for the last number of years.

I would suggest that under our environmental plan, when we talk about climate change and all its consequences, all of these things are interrelated. It is impossible to take them apart. When we deal with the environment we have to specifically ensure that we allocate sufficient funds for the enforcement of CEPA and for the analytical work that needs to be done on the chemicals that are remaining, so that we can very quickly start banning them and adding them to a list for virtual elimination.

The hon. member is absolutely correct that we need to move faster. The process is much too slow and it takes far too long. When I came across this chemical, I took the opportunity to act on it as quickly as I could since both Health Canada and Environment Canada had already said that it was a dangerous chemical and met all the conditions, but nothing had happened to that point. I thought I would take the opportunity to at least get one of the worst offenders off the table. Hopefully we can move on the rest of them quickly.

Perfluorooctane Sulfonate Virtual Elimination ActPrivate Members' Business

6:05 p.m.

Conservative

Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB

Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-298, the perfluorooctane sulfonate virtual elimination act.

The bill seeks to add perfluorooctane sulfonate and its salts to the virtual elimination list under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. I am pleased to say that the government supports the bill as it has been amended.

Let me explain what the government is doing to protect Canadians and their environment from PFOS and related chemicals and why we are taking action. The departments of the environment and of health undertook an extensive environmental assessment of PFOS, its salts and its precursors, which concluded that PFOS is persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic under CEPA, 1999.

PFOS has been detected in many wildlife species worldwide. Field evidence has identified high concentrations of PFOS accumulating in the liver and blood of fish-eating mammals and birds in the Canadian Arctic far from known sources or manufacturing facilities. PFOS concentrations in polar bears are higher than any other previously reported concentrations of other persistent and bioaccumulative chemicals. Current levels show that some wildlife organisms such as polar bears and some bird species could be near or at levels of effect and could be harmed by current exposures to PFOS

Since the government concluded its scientific risk assessment in the summer of 2006, the government has acted quickly and taken very strong action to prevent the risks from PFOS and its salts and certain other related compounds. These actions address a broad group of approximately 60 known substances in Canada and approximately 120 known substances internationally.

On December 16, 2006 the government published the proposed perfluorooctane sulfonate and its salts and certain other compounds regulations. These regulations propose to prohibit the manufacture, use, sale and import of PFOS and related substances, as well as products and formulations containing these chemicals.

Temporary five year exemptions have been proposed to allow the use of firefighting foams and the sale, use and import of fume suppressants used in the metal plating sector. These actions will prohibit the vast majority of historic PFOS uses immediately and allow for the orderly transition to alternative products for critical applications.

In the case of firefighting foams, the five years will allow users to replace their PFOS containing products without compromising fire safety. For fume suppressants used in metal plating, the five years will allow for the development of alternative formulations. Alternatives to PFOS in this application currently do not exist and we want to provide a phase-out period so that emissions of other harmful substances are minimized.

In comparison with actions taken by other international jurisdictions, the Government of Canada's proposed regulatory approach represents the most comprehensive action to manage PFOS, its salts and other compounds.

We will also conduct environmental and human monitoring domestically to ensure that our objectives are met.

In addition to domestic regulations, the government will also work with international partners to manage the global concerns surrounding PFOS.

Canada is engaged in multinational efforts to address the risks posed by this substance. For example, Canada is actively leading in technical and policy discussions relating to the proposed regional and global restrictions on PFOS. Such restrictions would be taken as a result of the nomination of PFOS to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Protocol on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution and its nomination to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants.

Furthermore, Canada is actively engaged at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development forums to share information and promote action on these chemicals. Canada will continue to engage our international partners in global action on PFOS to complement our domestic policy. Supporting these efforts is critical to addressing the long range transport of PFOS into the Canadian environment.

In terms of monitoring, the Department of Environment and the Department of Health are also committed to research and monitoring of PFOS and related chemicals. This research is to ensure that the actions being proposed are making a difference in the Canadian environment and among the Canadian people and to generate relevant information on current and emerging risks associated with these chemicals.

In December 2006 the government announced its chemicals management plan which included significant resources for research and monitoring. The plan, a comprehensive strategy to manage chemicals in Canada, includes a major investment in research and monitoring. The work under the chemicals management plan, which has already been started, will help inform the government and the public on the effectiveness of the PFOS regulations and help to ensure new and emerging risks are identified.

Allow me to read a section on PFOS under our chemical management plan:

The Government of Canada published a proposed order to add PFOS to the List of Toxic Substances under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 on July 1, 2006. A proposed risk management strategy has also been published. This strategy outlines the Government of Canada's proposed actions to prevent the re-introduction of PFOS into the Canadian market and address the remaining uses in order to reduce or eliminate releases of PFOS into the environment.

At the same time, with the significant reduction in global PFOS production that began in 2000, exposure sources have been reduced and may eventually be eliminated. Since some PFOS production is known to still occur globally, the Government of Canada is continuing to work with other countries to encourage reduction and, eventually, elimination of PFOS manufacturing. Proposed regulations addressing PFOS are expected to be issued by the end of 2006.

The government has acted in developing actions on PFOS since the conclusions of the environmental assessment were finalized in July 2006.

Under the current regulatory process established by the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, a proposed regulation or control instrument must be developed within 24 months of proposing a substance to be added to schedule 1. Once proposed, the Minister of the Environment and the Minister of Health have a further 18 months to finalize the regulation or instrument. Typically, this would result in a period of 42 months, or three and one-half years. The government is well on its way in accomplishing this for PFOS in under one and one-half years.

In conclusion, we are pleased that the environment committee was able to amend this bill to make it something that we can support.

We are committed to taking action against toxic substances. This is just further proof that this is indeed a government of action. We are cleaning up the environment for the sake of the health of our environment and for the health of all Canadians, particularly the most vulnerable in our population.

Perfluorooctane Sulfonate Virtual Elimination ActPrivate Members' Business

6:15 p.m.

Bloc

Bernard Bigras Bloc Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC

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.

Perfluorooctane Sulfonate Virtual Elimination ActPrivate Members' Business

6:20 p.m.

NDP

Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to participate in the debate this evening. This subject raises a number of major issues.

For New Democrats, this is a very straightforward issue, while the resolution is complicated. There are certain roles for industry and certain roles for government, which are called into question with respect to the bill put forward by my colleague. Many Canadians assume that the products they purchase and the foods they put on their tables for their families are safe.

Over the last number of months and years, time and time again only through news reports have Canadians learned that not only are the products they purchase for themselves or their children in stores not safe, but the very food they put on their tables has been exposed to an increasingly wide range of chemicals, which government is either incapable or unwilling to screen properly to understand what the effects are in humans.

Oftentimes, we have done research on certain chemicals. In doing that we look to industry to find out what actual tests have been performed and what type of longitudinal studies have been conducted to know what the effects are over a certain amount of time. We have found that there have been goldfish and small lab rat tests done on a single dose basis over a 24 hour period. Those tests satisfy many of the regulations now on the books in Canada. Clearly and intuitively, we know that this is no longer sufficient. The complexity and diversity of the chemicals now being included in the Canadian food system and product lines are far beyond the capacity of the laws as they are now written.

We recently went through a major review of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. The review found that many parts of the act, while good in principle, were wanting in detail and that government after government in succession had not put in the resources required to keep Canadians safe.

There is a fundamental principle that the bill attempts to address in the specific, which applies to the general. The fundamental principle is one that has been known for a great many decades. It is called the precautionary principle. Very simply, when there is evidence and suggestion of the capacity of harm through the introduction of a chemical or product to Canadian society, we need to take a precautionary approach and not introduce it until the evidence is strong and overwhelming that it will not cause harm.

The problem for governments, and this applies to governments of all political stripes and persuasions, is that the investment required to properly apply the precautionary principle to the overwhelming number of chemicals being introduced is significant. We cannot simply throw a small amount of money at this or the odd department section and hope that is enough.

Oftentimes in the environmental movement there is a tendency to want to fearmonger, to bring forward doomsday scenarios. However, in this case, when it comes to chemicals affecting our well-being and health, Canadians are increasingly concerned about the exposure to themselves and to their families, and both the Minister of the Environment and Minister of Health clearly know this. New Democrats feel that fear is well placed.

The role of industry is not to do this. Too often we have deferred to the private sector to take on more and more responsibilities that were previously held by government. When it comes to protecting the health and well-being of Canadians, it is simply not the role of the private sector to do this. Its role is clearly stated in almost all other constitutions, which is to maximize profits for shareholders or whatever the arrangement may be in other cases. The role of government is to protect the citizens it endeavours to represent.

In this minority Parliament, as in the previous one, we have an opportunity to shift the debate when it comes to protecting Canadians from these chemicals. We have the opportunity to shift the debate to strengthen our ability to apply and effectively use the precautionary principle and other principles that would better strengthen the confidence of Canadians when they purchase food or products for their families.

PFOS, the chemical we are dealing with specifically, is one of the most notorious. This is the grand lesson of unintended consequences, where a chemical is developed in a lab to perform a specific duty, whether it is to prevent food from sticking to cookware or to prevent flames from catching on clothing, but that duty oftentimes also enables a chemical to have very serious and harmful effects.

We have seen this time and time again, whether it was the fight against agent orange or the fight of the whole slew of chemicals that followed after that. We realized that when there was one and only one intended use for a chemical and there was no proper study of what was caused by that chemical, the effects were long reaching. We are still dealing with it today.

Canadians are living with the ill effects of agent orange, agent purple and others and have not been properly compensated by previous governments or this one. It was never the intention of government or the military, in this case, to cause any harm to Canadian soldiers or workers, of course, yet lo and behold, after many years there is a list of horrifying health effects. It is very difficult to read through the literature and not be properly braced with the issue. The fact is that governments for too long have failed Canadians and for too long have limited studies.

Right now we are dealing with another set of chemicals called phthalates, softeners for plastics. These softeners, while they enable plastics to be softer and more malleable, also disrupt endocrines. They are a chemical that goes right to the base of the genetic system. They cause a whole range of horrifying diseases and predicaments, particularly for young people. While they soften plastics in a fantastic way, they cause these other effects.

For too long, studies were limited. When Health Canada and Environment Canada went through the study around these phthalates to say whether or not they were safe to enter the Canadian system, they limited their studies so that they would not actually apply the study to consumer products. These phthalates existed in plastics, children's toys, nail polish and lipsticks. That is where our concern lay with these very products.

When officials come forward, they say they did a study that lasted three years, x number of dollars were spent on it and they feel confident. However, we have to dig below that. Lo and behold, when we do, we find out that they limited the focus and scope of the study to such a point that the answer was predetermined. Of course it would safe, because the wrong question was asked.

Within Parliament we need to start to ask the right questions to get at the root of what it is that we are after, which is to ensure that anything introduced into the Canadian market or system, any food produced here and brought to our tables, has been passed through rigorous study so that we know there will be no unintended consequences. This is oftentimes portrayed by the chemical manufacturers and other industry representative groups as something that would harm Canadian industry. I would argue the exact opposite. Bills like this actually protect Canadian industry and Canadian jobs from the lawsuits that are pending.

It also puts Canadian law in sync with what many other jurisdictions in the developed world do. Right now Europe is going through an extensive review of its entire chemical regime. More than 15,000 chemicals are being brought into the study. The regulations that will be coupled with this study are going to be serious and will prevent Canadian companies from selling to the European market.

We see this at the state level in the United States. Many states have taken the lead and have brought forward a number of prescriptive laws that say one simply cannot introduce these products if these chemicals are present. Lo and behold, Canadian manufacturers are marching along pretending, almost with their heads in the sand, and hoping these laws will simply not apply to them. The truth and the reality are that in a global environment, in an internationally competitive market, we simply cannot produce products that are going to be restricted in the markets of over 300 million people. It is an ignorant approach, it is the wrong approach, and ultimately it hurts Canadians.

The last point I will make on this particular set of chemicals and the broader condition is that there is a certain amount of externalization of costs that we do not properly catch in our natural market forces: the real cost of this part of business.

Climate change is oftentimes taken as the debate for this. If a company is able to operate its business with its known costs, with the lease of its building, the pay for its employees and the products, that is fine, but there are often costs associated with pollution that our system as it is currently structured does not catch. Who ends up catching them? The public. The public system ends up catching these serious and significant costs. In this case, it is the health effects. It is the lost hours of work and productivity. In the case of climate change, the costs are enormous. The numbers keep running and running, but the government refuses to even do a study to consider what the cost to business might be of the effects of climate change on our industry and our nation.

We think this is irresponsible. Internalizing these costs, making the full cost of doing business appropriate and responsible, is better both for the businesses and for society at large. It is time that we evolved in this place and in other legislatures across the country and considered the full cost of doing business with a full understanding of what the effects are on Canadians, to make for a better environment and a healthier Canada.