Mr. Speaker, we are now moving from the world food crisis to something that I believe is equally important for the House to address, which is consumer product safety.
We all have a responsibility to protect and promote the health and well-being of all Canadians, but there are some circumstances where the system we have today has not met that need.
Bill C-52, if I may just highlight the summary, modernizes the regulatory regime for consumer products in Canada and creates prohibitions with respect to the manufacturing, importing, selling, advertising, packaging and labelling of consumer products, including those that are a danger to human health and safety. The bill will make it easier to identify whether a consumer product is a danger and more effectively prevents or addresses the danger.
The Liberals will be supporting the bill at second reading to go to committee. There are some very serious questions that need to be addressed, which cannot be fully handled at second reading because we do not have the opportunity to have the opinion of the expert, the stakeholder and a broad range of people. I suspect that the committee, should the bill pass at second reading, will have a very lively debate and hearings on the issues related to consumer product safety.
I reviewed the minister's speech when he introduced the bill. He noted that the vast majority of suppliers that make, import, distribute and sell consumer products take safety very seriously. He also noted that it is basically because these businesses value their reputations. I suspect that is a logical conclusion.
However, problems can and do occur, and Canadians will recall that there were a number of incidences. One which I even raised in the House with the minister at the time had to do with high levels of lead in the paints on children's toys. Those were, I believe, coming from China, if I recall the details.
The fact remains that there are problems that can and do occur, and there have been a number of them. The bill is timely and appropriate for Parliament to look at, particularly since the Hazardous Products Act has not been thoroughly reviewed in some 40 years.
Issues are changing. Technology is changing. We have a responsibility to ensure that the regulatory framework that we have is in a position to prevent and detect, so we can protect the health and safety of Canadians.
As I indicated, there will be some questions regarding the bill. One of those would be with regard to the issue of introducing the power to effect a recall of products. That does not exist right now under the current legislation. This is done on a voluntary basis.
Members and the public will know that there are numerous examples of where companies voluntarily recall their products because they have identified a problem through incidents that have occurred that have been brought to their attention and that indicate that there is a prevalence which is unacceptable. If they value their reputation, obviously there are companies which will want to remediate the problems quickly so that they do not have any other significant impact on their ability to provide goods, services or otherwise conduct their business.
The concern about the power to recall is that it may turn out that this would be used excessively by inspectors. That becomes a problem if there are complaints. Depending on the criteria and the assessment process, there may in fact be a situation where the pendulum swings very far to the other side, to the extent that there are some unintended consequences to businesses, maybe some harm to a business simply because recalls are becoming more prevalent.
There is a significant move toward the American way, a litigious society. People are going to start going to the courts. There is the potential for lawsuits in the future rather than to negotiate a recall or action by the private sector that is currently done.
The point is whether or not there has to be some clarification about when the power can be used and some of the options we may want to consider. These are important areas that the committee would be able to explore with expert witnesses. The committee would be able to call specific witnesses to find out what is happening not only in other jurisdictions but in similar circumstances with other legislation with regard to remediating or dealing with a problem area.
The second area that would require some discussion at the health committee has to do with staffing requirements to deal with this new power of product recall. I have had an opportunity to look at Bill C-52, at least up to the section where it requires regulation, and I am going to speak about those in a moment.
The way the bill is currently structured, it will require the collaboration of border security agencies, Health Canada inspectors, as well as CFIA inspectors. Of these three groups, the one that is currently least able to deal with this on the inspection side is Health Canada. It has the lowest number of inspectors and the bill puts a lot of responsibility on Health Canada.
The first committee I was ever on was the health committee. I have had substantial involvement with Health Canada, whether it be on tobacco labelling, aboriginal health issues, or reproductive technologies. Bill C-13, the reproductive technologies bill, I think took about three years of our lives and, incidentally, the regulations that were required under Bill C-13 still have not been fully prepared, implemented and promulgated. The regulations in that bill on which we spent so much time still have not been fully implemented. I will speak a little more about regulations in a second.
There certainly is that issue of staff. Those are two of the items that should be dealt with regarding the committee consideration should this bill pass at second reading, which I believe it will.
It is easy to protect the health and well-being of Canadians and to ensure safety if we are prepared to go to the nth degree and establish all of the checks and balances and procedures using all of the tools that Parliament could authorize Health Canada to put into place. However, if we take it to its logical extreme, we get into a situation where the commercial activity has been impeded and all of a sudden a business cannot provide the goods and services it normally would because of the regulatory environment.
A very serious issue for parliamentarians to consider not only with this bill but with many others is whether or not there will be the unintended consequence of impeding economic activity by increasing a regulatory regime that is not justified by the issue we are trying to deal with. It is never black and white. It is never a matter of touching one thing to take care of another. We have to look beyond that and find out what the consequential implications may be.
The issue here is whether or not we are moving into a new regime of policing the commercial activity to the extent that it will impose a regulatory regime. We do not know what that is right now and we do not know the extent to which it is going to be used. As a matter of fact, we will not know that until after the bill goes through all stages and receives royal assent because that is the way things are happening.
However, committees can, as the health committee did with the reproductive technologies bill, say that no regulations shall be promulgated unless they are sent to the health committee for review and comment in advance. Unfortunately, in the case of the reproductive technologies bill, the committee had no authority specifically in the bill or from the minister to make any changes to the regulations. The committee could only review and comment, and that is a problem.
If regulations are enabled by the legislation, but the detail gives us something different that we did not understand to be the case, Parliament has no tools whatsoever to deal with what I would call, and maybe it is strong language, draconian regulations. There may be some unintended consequences, such as an impact on legitimate businesses by increasing the burden of the regulations, the responsibility of the businesses to know what those regulations are, to monitor them and to ensure that their businesses are compliant. It is a very significant cost to business to understand and to know the law.
We are dealing with an area which, from a lay perspective, Canadians will certainly want to ensure that Parliament and the Government of Canada have taken appropriate steps to provide for the safety of consumer products. There are certainly a number of areas in which there will be some concern by the stakeholders who will be impacted by this bill.
I did not have a copy of the bill readily available so I printed out a copy. The bill itself is at least 48 pages long, but I was scanning it and I came to the part dealing with regulations. This is something that I raised previously in the debate on Bill C-33. Under “Regulations”, clause 38(1) of Bill C-52 says that the governor in council may make regulations for carrying out the purposes or provisions of the act. It does not say it will, or has to, or shall. It says may. I have always questioned that.
In this regard, because there is the potential that we are expanding the responsibilities of the border services agency, Health Canada and CFIA, all of a sudden the regulatory activity, and the cost and coordination of it, is going to create a significant demand of human resources and a significant risk in some respects to impeding or slowing down the current velocity of commercial activity, particularly with regard to imports.
There will also be differences in standards around the world. Certain products sold to Canadians have components made in various jurisdictions, but there is a final producer who puts them all together. Where the legal obligation and the rights and responsibilities lie also become very interesting questions to deal with.
It is important to remind members that the purpose of the bill is to protect the public by addressing and preventing dangers posed to human health and safety by consumer products that are circulated within Canada and those that are imported. As I indicated, we have products that are imported as finished products, but also components which go into other products. The bill covers everything that we should be concerned about in terms of public safety.
The current consumer product safety system functions on a voluntary basis, as I indicated. If a product is dangerous or poses a health risk, the corporation can issue a recall. This bill would prohibit the sale, import, manufacture, packaging, labelling, and advertising of consumer products that may pose a risk to consumers. While voluntary recalls would continue to happen, inspectors named under the act or by the minister would be able to order a recall of a consumer product.
I must admit that when I hear about a product recall in the media, I have often wondered how much it really costs. I have often wondered how much of that cost is effectively passed on to the consumer. Public safety is certainly an issue, but in terms of adding to the economic cost of a product increases more in recalls that may not be totally warranted and may be adding to the cost of the consumer product as well. Obviously due diligence should be used in exercising this extraordinary power.
The bill would also create a tracing mechanism. It would force corporations, manufacturers and importers to keep all documents containing information needed to identify the origin of the product and where it was distributed. This would ensure that when a recall was made, the products would be easily removed from the store shelves. Knowing the origin of the product would help to enforce the act and would prevent further occurrences. These provisions make some sense.
The bill would also substantially increase the fines and penalties, something that this House has dealt with significantly in a number of ministries not just through the amendments to the criminal justice act, but I can think of other ministries where fines or penalties are proposed.
Deterrence is an important aspect of the dialogue. At committee I am going to be looking for an assessment of whether or not the proposed increases in the fines and penalties when a product is deemed unsafe would have the intended effect based on the experience of other jurisdictions, other countries, or the experts who are proposing them, if there is not any research on that particular aspect.
The bill would also allow the minister to seek an injunction when an act is being committed or to prevent someone from committing an act that contravenes the bill. There is an enabling provision in the bill regarding the minister.
Inspectors would be given extraordinary powers to search and seize. They could effectively search any place they believe is involved in manufacturing, importing, packaging, storing, advertising, selling, labelling, testing or transporting consumer goods. A warrant would only be necessary in cases where an inspector wished to search the dwelling.
This is very serious. When there is that kind of list of broad-sweeping regulatory powers, we want to be absolutely sure it is not going a little too far.
This is a very difficult bill. It is a very long bill for us to assess and on which to give informed opinions on some of its aspects at second reading, but I will look very carefully, as I am sure all members will, to the proceedings at the health committee to find out what the facts are. Hopefully we will have better consumer protection for Canadians.