Environment committee  No, we would not do that. There is no pre-authorization. If we have a new product that comes forward, we will assess it. If we find we need more time than is allowed, we'll say “Stop, we need more time. We can do the assessment.” If we are confident that some uses are reasonable, we can condition it for those uses only while further work is done, or we can limit its use to only those.

Environment committee  Yes, of course.

Environment committee  There is the International Joint Commission, and that has a particular focus on that geography. It brings together academia from both sides of the border. It brings together officials and experts, and it's the principal way to stimulate cooperation and develop site-specific work plans so there is cooperation between the U.S.

Environment committee  Through the International Joint Commission there are agreements reached between the parties on what to do, what to measure, how to measure. They are specific. There are watershed approaches that are adopted, and joint measures that they attempt to realize. Some of the problems related to that would be data sources that are different on both sides of the border, how to capture and aggregate that data, but attempts are made to make sure we are comparing apples to apples.

Environment committee  We attempt to make every effort to.

Environment committee  It has, more or less. I wouldn't suggest that it's universal, but every effort is made to do that.

Environment committee  The International Joint Commission is a signed agreement between the governments involved. It is multi-year, to convince the governments to act on multi-year work plans. Those have sustained the test of changes of governments on both sides of the border through numerous years. Data can always be interpreted, but--

Environment committee  The good news is that we do have relationships with other countries. These are mutual relationships. One type of relationship allows for sharing information from product assessments. We also have agreements with various governments. For example, if a government conducts an assessment and we have an agreement with that government, because for example they conduct their assessments in accordance with standards that we accept, then the Government of Canada can accept that country's decision because that is what we would have decided.

Environment committee  Officially. It is done within the framework of an agreement signed by officials.

Environment committee  They are chemicals.

Environment committee  More or less. The CEPA refers mainly to substances.

Environment committee  I don't know the exact number of days. I could provide you with this figure at the end of the meeting in order to give you an exact answer, but the time period is not very long. I think it is less than 100 days. It is very quick. I'm being told that it is 90 days. If the government thinks that there's a problem, we can take a break and ask for more time.

Environment committee  The onus is on industry to provide data to the federal government, Health Canada, and Environment Canada, in order to allow us to assess that. So they do provide us data, and they make assertations about the safety, and we double-check those. It's important to know that even with reverse onus for existing substances, that would not be a silver bullet; we would still have to assess and validate all of the claims made by any industry.

Environment committee  Without a doubt it would be banned, and that would mean for use or production here.

Environment committee  No, we set standards with which they must be done. We look for their quality measures to make sure the data we're provided meets those standards and were done to protocols that are internationally accepted. When we're sure and satisfied that those are done, we accept them. There are test guidelines that are internationally accepted and approved, and there are ways to validate and replicate those, so it's not necessary to repeat all of the tests in order to be confident in the data provided to us.