Environment committee  Let me take a crack at that. I fully agree the spectrum needs to be looked at, and it shouldn't be this false dichotomy between strict regulation and voluntarism. There are things in the middle. I talked about using pollution prevention planning, which is something in the middl

Environment committee  First of all, I think we should stop using the word “voluntary”, because it has the wrong connotation. It has the connotation that these are things you do if you want to. Where you're going to have these kinds of programs and you're going to rely on industry to do it in a non-reg

Environment committee  I think there's actually something that's in the middle, where it's quasi-regulatory in the sense that it's reflected in the legislation, like pollution prevention planning is. I think one of the bases of pollution prevention planning is that there's a recognition that if govern

Environment committee  We don't have sufficient operations in the other provinces to warrant doing that. We actually have what I would call a national MOU, memorandum of understanding. The federal government is a signatory at the ministerial level from three departments: Industry, Health and Environmen

Environment committee  Sure. Let me tackle the second question first. I've made this point, as has our CCPA president, Richard Paton, to this committee before. I think it's really unfortunate that improving capital cost allowance isn't being looked at from an environmental dimension. We've talked here

Environment committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the committee. I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to participate in this round table. In my presentation I will be focusing on one topic, the question of tools for CEPA, and I'll really only be talking about one tool, industry re

Environment committee  Some of the technology breakthroughs will come. We don't know when they'll come. Companies are always working on the type of process change DuPont did in making nylon. They make huge profits when they come through. They're great energy efficiency breakthroughs. When will they co

Environment committee  I'll respond to that. One of the concerns is, what will be the impact on the economy as a whole? There are two ways to meet Kyoto. One is by actually reducing emissions, and that's what our sector and manufacturing have done. We've done even better than the minus 7% that manufa

Environment committee  In this section that we've been talking about here a lot, subsection 77(3), for virtual elimination, the intention of Parliament was to make this mandatory. That's why they used the word “shall”. There are conditions that the ministers have to be satisfied about beforehand, and I

Environment committee  If the government wanted to do away with the virtual elimination approach, we wouldn't object, but I think that when you operate a plant and maybe have dioxins coming out of your plant operations, virtual elimination and LOQs and the architecture in here, I believe, make sense. I

Environment committee  I believe so. I wouldn't disagree with that. But someone else used the precise number.

Environment committee  There seems to be consensus that the thinking in the Stockholm Convention should be incorporated in CEPA in terms of the LOQ issue and trace contaminants. Our language may not be the proper drafting language, and I wouldn't be surprised if it could be better written, but I think

Environment committee  It's similar to the response I gave before, on which Mr. Clarkson corrected me. My understanding is under section 93 the government can decide that something should be banned, and if they do decide that, it will be banned. I thought they were able to put that on schedule 1. Maybe

Environment committee  Right now that list would be what would be scheduled on the toxic schedule in schedule 1 after they'd done a risk assessment, if they decided that banning that chemical was the risk management approach to take.

Environment committee  I'd rather let the government people answer that.