Environment committee  The clerk can confirm, but I believe the intention is that the third “re-” is “refining”, so it would read “to be followed for replacing, reducing or refining the use of vertebrate animals”. That is the sequence that has already been adopted in other amendments that the committee has already discussed.

Environment committee  The regime established under Bill S-5 would require the ministers to take particular actions to risk-manage substances that meet certain criteria. The act provides authority to articulate those criteria and put them in regulation. The bill provides direction about what those criteria need to include at a minimum.

Environment committee  I want to be careful not to get into a situation of debating the merits of amendments with members of the committee and I want to respect your role in decision-making. I think the concern that we as officials might have with this amendment is that it's not.... The bill attempts to create a new list of substances of concern.

Environment committee  I need to clarify that I'm not here as a lawyer, nor are we providing legal advice to the committee. However, the Quebec hydro case has been public for decades, and it has been fairly well reviewed and understood. In its essence, the Supreme Court.... First of all, there were a number of different decisions on the part of different members of the court that led to the court deciding that the particular use of a regulation under part 5 of the act was constitutional.

Environment committee  I can try to give you a brief explanation. In fact, previous iterations of this committee have reviewed this issue a number of times. All came to the conclusion that the regime is unworkable. That includes the committee's most recent review of CEPA and a review of a private member's bill about 10 years ago.

Environment committee  I can comment on the amendment in clause 12, which is to eliminate the whole virtual elimination regime. That requires the creation of a second list. However, as I just explained, in Bill S-5 we are also proposing a second list. If you will, it's a list of substances that, because of certain characteristics to be defined in regulation, need to be identified, put on a list and subjected to very stringent risk management actions.

Environment committee  Perhaps I can start. The government did adopt a concept of virtual elimination, both in the toxic substances management policy and in the statute when it was amended in 1999. Since then, however, the virtual elimination regime in the act has proven to be unworkable and has had almost no impact on decision-making in the federal government or on actual prevention of risks.

Environment committee  I don't think we have any objections to the stated goal of promoting pollution prevention, in that the act itself already requires ministers to give priority to pollution prevention when risk-managing substances. The challenge with this amendment is that it would require a government to require pollution prevention plans with respect to every listed substance.

Environment committee  That's not our interpretation. Maybe I can turn it over to my colleague, Ms. Laura Farquharson.

Environment committee  I think this question is better posed to the clerk, but indeed, the amendment would delete all those lines that are referred to.

Environment committee  Perhaps I can help. When CEPA 1999 was passed, it enumerated the list of documents that the law required the government to include on the registry. In Bill S-5, one thing the government intended to do in multiple places, including in the registry, was to increase public access to information.

Environment committee  The registry has been in the act since 1999. I can't tell you why, but it has been referred to in this way since then as “Registre” only in French and “Environmental Registry” in English, so this is just retaining that inconsistent approach. I don't think it creates a problem, but I appreciate that the wording is different in French and English.

Environment committee  I would just echo what Ms. May said.

Environment committee  It's Mr. Carreau, but maybe I can jump in initially. The issue here would the difference between codifying a list in a statute that is fixed until amended by Parliament versus providing an illustrative list as a matter of policy, which Health Canada has done, as you've already noted.

Environment committee  I think the current drafting approaches, consistent with the way in which statutes are being interpreted in the courts, suggest that such language is not necessary. “Including” is intended to be read as “including but not limited to”, as one uses it in normal parlance.