Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  My organization is Environmental Defence Canada, and I represent the views of my organization. I'm not sure if that answers your question. There is an existing model that works in CEPA, which is tried and true in the courts—it's the equivalency model—and I don't see any reason to change that model.

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  You are thinking of a pull-up fashion. Absolutely, and under the equivalency model in CEPA, provinces are free to have more stringent standards. Any jurisdiction in Canada is free to have a more stringent standard than the federal standard. What the equivalency model ensures is that no provincial jurisdiction falls below a certain standard.

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to thank the committee for inviting me to appear on the air pollution sections of Bill C-30. I know the committee's time is short, so I'll focus my remarks on the changes that I feel are necessary to make Bill C-30 effective in dealing with air pollution in Canada.

Environment committee  We would certainly support that. In our larger submission, we have a series of recommendations relating to the National Pollutant Release Inventory that include better auditing and verification, but also making the reporting more comprehensive. For example, certain forms of mining waste, which form a huge segment of the pollution stream, are not reported under NPRI.

Environment committee  Yes.

Environment committee  What we've proposed is to grant the minister the authority to designate significant areas that are uniquely exposed to pollution or unique in generating pollution. We think the Great Lakes Basin would be a primary candidate to be designated as such, because of its importance as the largest freshwater ecosystem in the world, but also in terms of how much pollution is generated in that area and how vulnerable the population is in the basin.

Environment committee  It may be a PFOS, but we don't know.

Environment committee  This relates to your first comment more. I would strongly support the inclusion of vulnerable populations in the preamble, but I would also support vulnerable geographic areas. It's difficult, given the problems Canada faces, to separate the two in some cases.

Environment committee  We've done two studies under the toxic nation project that we've been running. I wouldn't characterize these as scientific peer-reviewed studies. We don't pretend that they are, although they are consistent with a lot of the studies that have been done in other jurisdictions. We've tested for many of the chemicals, which we've talked about here—perfluorinated compounds and flame retardants—and we've come up with very similar findings.

Environment committee  I'm not an expert on child health. I can tell you some of the impacts that have been discussed in the Great Lakes, but I'm not sure if that's what you want to hear.

Environment committee  Sure. My submission goes into greater detail about the legislative and the non-legislative requirements of how to implement this recommendation. We think that this would provide protection for the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence Basin. It would provide a mechanism to implement international agreements such as the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement and to fulfill a campaign promise for each of the four major political parties.

Environment committee  My name is Aaron Freeman. I'm the policy director with Environmental Defence Canada. I'd like to talk about the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Basin as one of Canada's most vulnerable ecosystems. The basin is home to more than 30% of the Canadian population, and it generates about one-quarter of our GNP.

Environment committee  If I may comment on the current system, what we're talking about here is the new substances regime, for which there is a timeline of eighty days for the government to respond. This is for new substances. I'd like to point out to the committee that if we talk about domestic substances, the existing substances in the market, they've already had seven years to go through the categorization process and collect data through that process.

Environment committee  Well, I guess I would say that the timelines are an expression of political will and that political will will flow from those timelines, and so will the resources. The timelines we've proposed assume that the government will put more resources into the assessment and management processes.

Environment committee  How do we...?