Mr. Speaker, today, I rise to speak at second reading on An Act respecting the safety of consumer products, the bill introduced by the Minister of Health. The first thing I would like to say is, “finally”. Finally, there will be legislation governing hazardous products. In a way, we do not have Parliament to thank for this bill, but the Auditor General of Canada, who sounded the alarm on this issue in November 2006 in a fairly substantial report.
However, there is no one in this House who has not heard about dangerous toys in the past several years, especially with the significant rise in imports from countries whose environmental standards are not necessarily as high as Quebec's or Canada's. This is the downside of globalization. There are some very positive aspects of globalization and market expansion. But although in the past we were concerned about protecting our domestic market, today we have to make sure we are properly protected against products from other countries.
In the Auditor General's November 2006 report, one chapter, entitled “Allocating Funds to Regulatory Programs”, clearly indicated that product safety program managers cannot fulfill their mandate, for several reasons. Let us look at this report in a bit more detail.
First of all, consumer products such as cradles, tents and carpets are very concrete things that children and families use. Cosmetics, deodorants and soaps are also part of our daily lives. There are also workplace hazardous materials information systems, which provide information on corrosive materials, for example, and protection against radiation from chemicals and clinical and consumer products, such as X-rays, laser beams and sun lamps. Lastly, there are new substances such as fabric dyes and fuel additives. These are very concrete things that were not adequately covered, according to the Auditor General.
Moreover, product safety program managers, the officials responsible for running the program, believe that many of the activities related to regulation do not allow them to discharge their responsibilities adequately. These conclusions are based on an internal study of what is needed in terms of resources allocated to the program, documents concerning resource allocation and interviews conducted during the Auditor General's audit.
Clearly, an effort needed to be made. It is unfortunate that the government took so long to react, but at least we have this bill now. We hope that it will be passed quickly, but only after the committee has studied it, because the committee might improve it. At least the people will get the message that we want to provide adequate basic regulation.
We have already had several warnings, such as when some toys were found to have high lead levels. A week or two ago, a product that was in almost all water bottles that people bought to use while exercising or going about their daily activities was suddenly banned. There are more and more of these kinds of products in the things we use every day that are not subject to enough regulatory control. This bill should help fix that problem.
Currently, Canada does not require manufacturers of dangerous products—such as the cosmetics, cradles, tents and carpets mentioned earlier—that fall under its jurisdiction to test their products or prove that they are not a danger to consumer health and safety. Before this bill was introduced, the government had no way to intervene. As you can see, it is high time we moved forward on this.
Consumers do not have any real protection against incidents like the forced recall of thousands of toys made in China or the discovery of toxic, prohibited substances in tubes of toothpaste from South Africa. Those are very concrete examples. After the incident is over, after there are very negative and unfortunate consequences, including death, is not the time to monitor these operations. We must move as much as possible towards zero tolerance in this area, in order to minimize these incidents.
In our society, if we can afford to spend so much money on defence, for example, we should have the money for proper monitoring of these kinds of measures.
In our society, it is rather absurd that we have no legislation to monitor these substances, although we seem to find the money to take military action overseas, offensive action that, in my opinion, is unjustified and must end. Enough of that comparison, however. It is obvious that major improvements are needed.
Furthermore, in the summer of 2007, thousands of toys made in China were recalled by manufacturers because they contained lead. The Bloc Québécois urged the minister to take immediate action. It proposed tightening all hazardous products safety requirements in order to ban the production, promotion and marketing of any product that could present an unacceptable danger to health.
It only makes sense. That is what we were calling for. It took several months, nearly several years after the Auditor General's recommendations, before anything was done. And here we are today, considering this bill.
We also called on Ottawa to make manufacturers responsible for inspecting their products and proving that they pose no danger to the health and safety of consumers. Clearly, a manufacturer of products of this nature should ensure their quality and be accountable.
Last December, after four months of inaction, the government finally said it would introduce a bill—sometime in early 2008—to change its strategy for regulating product safety. That is the bill we have before us.
The Conservatives' inaction in this federal jurisdiction has caused growing concern among many Quebec and Canadian parents about health and safety issues when buying toys.
The bill is now before us. What will it do? The purpose of Bill C-52 is to tighten the safety requirements for dangerous products by creating prohibitions with respect to the manufacturing, importing, selling, advertising, packaging and labelling of consumer products, including those that are a danger to human health or safety.
Holding manufacturers and importers accountable is another very important aspect. The mechanism for tracing the person responsible in the chain of production has to be as clear as possible. Manufacturers and importers must ensure compliance of their products and report to the minister.
This problem seems to be more prevalent in the food industry, where wholesalers make large purchases from countries all around the world. It becomes very difficult to determine who was responsible for importing a dangerous product that was not properly inspected. There needs to be proper monitoring to avoid mistakes.
Under the bill, the government will be able to require safety reports on all supply sources and all components of a product. These safety reports are like a traceability system to be used in the event of a product recall. Merchants must keep records of the purchase and sale of products and the minister must be informed within two days of an incident involving the product or country concerned. Clearly they were starting from scratch.
These important elements are currently missing. It is hard to understand how products ended up circulating freely in our consumer system without any monitoring, except that we had satisfactory domestic rules. Now that we are part of the global market, these rules need to be reinforced and the people who manufacture goods have to know there will be consequences if their products do not do comply with standards.
In fact, the government could demand the withdrawal—or recall—of products that may prove harmful to consumers. At present, this occurs on a voluntary basis. There have been cases where manufacturers, acting voluntarily, took their time in providing replacements or decided that it was not urgent enough. Now, there is the possibility of imposing the recall of products and that is a step forward.
On conviction on indictment, the penalty would be a fine of not more than $5 million and imprisonment for two years. On summary conviction, a first offence would result in a fine of not more than $250,000 and imprisonment for a term of not more than six months. A subsequent offence would be punishable by a fine of not more than $500,000 and imprisonment of not more than 18 months. We are sending a very clear message that the fun and games are over. We will no longer tolerate the type of behaviour exhibited in the past. We wish to ensure that there is adequate protection.
Naturally, there is a difference between passing a bill, allowing its entry into force and ensuring that there are sufficient resources to implement it. In the past, we did not get the job done.
This can be seen with the inspectors. It can also be seen in the field when inspections are carried out, when speaking to those who do inspections at customs. There was a great deal of criticism about the lack of regulations and legal tools, but there was also not enough money and too few inspectors to achieve the objective.
The bill clearly states that there is a need for the resources. We have seen the government estimates for the budget. However, we will have to quickly evaluate all components to determine if the amounts are sufficient. Otherwise, it could have the opposite effect of what was initially expected if we create a law, impose regulations with possible fines and then, in the end, no one is monitoring it. It would be a little bit like having a system for traffic fines but no one was ensuring that a driver who broke the speed limit was fined. The driver needs to know that there is a system and that there are adequate controls. For that, sufficient resources are needed.
Officials with the product safety program have asked for funding. Program managers have indicated that their inability to discharge their responsibilities could have repercussions on the health and safety of Canadians, such as exposing consumers to dangerous, non-compliant products. Unfortunately, we have already seen this happen.
There is also the possibility that the government could be held responsible for certain repercussions. The government is responsible for providing adequate regulation. We cannot just say that companies are responsible for regulating themselves. We can see that attitudes about this are changing. Years ago, it was about voluntary recalls, but now, the government can demand a mandatory recall. At the other end, we have to ensure that the government discharges its responsibilities.
In November 2006, the Auditor General's report revealed that the Government of Canada knew that consumers were exposed to risk because of lack of funding for the program. It took the government a long time to act on that, which makes us wonder about the government's level of interest and competence with respect to its own files. That gives people real cause for concern. We hope that passing this bill will help allay people's concerns. We need concrete examples to show that we are achieving results.
The government's repeated failure to act gives us good reason to be very vigilant about this. For example, on August 2, 2007, Fisher Price issued a voluntary recall of some of its products—including figurines and toys sold separately—manufactured by foreign suppliers between April 19 and July 6, 2007. The products listed may have been painted with paint containing too much lead. Lead is toxic when ingested by young children and can have undesirable effects on health.
This kind of thing does happen, and we want to prevent it from happening in the future. We are seeing an international movement toward doing something about this. The United States took steps that are very similar to what we are doing here in the federal Parliament. For example, 413 different products were recalled last year in the United States, and 231 of them, more than half, were toys. In the United States, 84% of toys sold are made in China. In Europe, the European Commission proposed making toys safer by prohibiting the use of carcinogens in manufacturing them and by increasing monitoring. That measure will not come into effect until the end of 2008. The entire western world seems to be moving forward with measures like these because we have had serious warnings. It is high time we took action with these measures.
Europe is planning to ban chemicals, carcinogens, mutagens and toxins that affect reproduction from toys made for children under the age of 14. They are lowering allowable limits for other substances such as lead and mercury and have prohibited about forty allergenic perfumes. The EU wants to broaden the rules to prevent the risk of ingesting small parts and also wants to tackle toys contained in food—because of the danger of choking—and ban toys that could be ingested along with food.
The legislation in the United States, Europe and perhaps other countries in the world may have information or other elements that could be incorporated in the bill at committee stage. Based on the testimony we hear, we may be able to improve the principle of the bill, the general framework—which in and of itself is fine—through appropriate amendments to ensure its effectiveness. This is an area where we have no right to fail. It is essential that this legislation, which will surely be in place for many years, produce the desired results. Unfortunately, if in two, three or four years we still have cases of lead poisoning in children, or any other similar negative outcome, it will most likely be because we did not study this bill closely enough and give it enough teeth.
The committee will have to keep that in mind.
One new thing in the bill has to do with preparing and maintaining documents.
13. (1) Any person who manufactures, imports, advertises, sells or tests a consumer product for commercial purposes shall prepare and maintain:
(a) documents that indicate:
(i) in the case of a retailer, the name and address of the person from whom they obtained the product and the location where—and the period during which—they sold the product—
We often hear about additional documentation, about the paperwork required by governments, but it is clearly necessary sometimes.
Some people may rant about government requirements always being there to trip up businesses and create more restrictions. But in this case, experience calls on us to implement these things, and we must ensure that we have everything we need.
The bill warns that if things are not done right and documented properly, there could be a penalty. Requiring people to document a product's history makes it possible to quickly track down a product's origin as well as the stores that have the product in stock.
I already spoke about increasing fines. The bill's preamble has a definition that is very similar to the precautionary principle.
Whereas the Parliament of Canada recognizes that a lack of full scientific certainty is not to be used as a reason for postponing measures that prevent adverse effects on human health if those effects could be serious or irreversible;
According to this version of the bill, toy manufacturers cannot claim that there is no clear, certain, scientific evidence that the toy is dangerous. It will be possible to say that there is sufficient doubt to ban the product or require that appropriate corrective action be taken. This is a good thing. It would be useful to apply the precautionary principle in a number of bills in different sectors.
For this situation, it is important to give more power and money to inspectors so that they can do their jobs properly.
In conclusion, the government knew as far back as 2006 that the law did not adequately protect the public. Still, the government waited until now to introduce this bill. The Bloc Québécois has long called on the minister to tighten hazardous product safety requirements in order to ban the production, promotion and marketing of any product that could present an unacceptable danger to health. We will be extremely vigilant, to make sure the bill achieves that goal, not only in principle, but in practice.
We also demanded that Ottawa require manufacturers to inspect their own products and show that they do not pose a danger to consumer health and safety. The legislative approach in the bill answers the Bloc's requests. We will wait for the regulations and examine them to see whether they produce the desired results.
In my opinion, we owe the Auditor General our thanks for producing a report on this issue, because it helped move things forward more quickly. In fact, we heard from businesses and families that the Auditor General's report had spurred the government to finally take action.
Even though the bill requires that companies make sure their products are harmless, the government will have to ensure that there are enough inspectors to implement the legislation.
In conclusion, in our society, the federal government finds money to do many things and has invested in numerous areas that are not its responsibility. The government needs to make sure it invests enough money in this area to exercise adequate control.
The Bloc Québécois supports this bill and hopes that it will be amended and strengthened further. As I said in my introduction, “finally”. I repeat, “finally”. Let us hope that parents, children, families and consumers in general will feel safer about the products they purchase. It will be a challenge to continue to feel safe about new products, especially those coming from all the other countries of the world thanks to globalization.