Health committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee. On behalf of the CCTFA and our more than 160 member companies, which represent about a $5.4 billion industry in Canada, we'd like to thank you for the opportunity to speak to you on this very important parti

Health committee  Mr. Chair, if I could address that as well, I would say, very simply, if we're looking for regulatory change.... We live in a world with regulation or a regulatory structure that is 50 years old, so if there's one thing we need, it's a modern regulatory structure that allows the

Health committee  I can't defend my antiperspirant?

Environment committee  Good morning to all the members of the committee. We want to thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you today. We have prepared a presentation in both official languages that I think was distributed, but I'm not going to read it. I simply want to touch on some of t

Environment committee  I am going to ask Beta Montemayor to comment specifically. He is a toxicologist by training and has worked in this field throughout his career.

Environment committee  I want to start by saying we've been very engaged in this for over a year. In fact it was Mr. Brian Masse, the member of Parliament for Windsor West, who first reached out to us to work with us. Our industry recognized that there was a problem with these plastic microbeads. They'

Environment committee  I want to say you got to the heart of it. There is a fundamental difference between a hazard-based system and a risk-based system. It sounds great to say that we don't want any hazards in our environment, but every single substance out there has the potential to be a hazard. If

Environment committee  If I may say so, it has actually worked very well, because you have the review of substances, the general review of substances for human health and the environment, and where that has affected our formulations it has been translated by the people at Health Canada into things like

Environment committee  I think what it boils down to, in setting up a system, is that it should be about three things: science, science, science. At the end of the day, we all want to make sure that we're doing the right thing. That article I referenced said that suspicion should lead to investigation.

Environment committee  I would love to have an opportunity for us to sit down and chat, because we're in a position where we're putting out principles. We may not be understanding each other, so we probably have to do some work today. I'm not going to dismiss anything out of hand; but again, if you're

Environment committee  Do you want to answer it, Beta?

Environment committee  First of all, I think everyone agrees that no legislation in our system is ever perfect. When I put it in context, it was compared to what's happening in many other jurisdictions. In that context, we've achieved a lot, but one shouldn't rest on one's laurels. When you pick up on

Environment committee  I'm not sure exactly what you're getting at. If you were in a pre-approval process, where you have to bring a new substance forward and you have to go through a process, you would have to bring sufficient evidence to meet the threshold to indicate its safety. One of the other pa

Industry committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee. I want to thank Mr. Masse, who, I understand, submitted our name as a proposed presenter here today. Mr. Masse reached out to our association last year on the plastic microbeads issue, and we were quite successful in w

Industry committee  I have a bit of a unique presentation for you today. Some of the themes my colleagues have raised also run through it. When you look at cosmetics in Canada, we are a net importer of cosmetics and personal care products, but we are also a major manufacturer. That dichotomy prese