Environment committee  Thank you. I'm Andrea Peart. I'm with the Canadian Labour Congress, and we represent 3.3 million workers in Canada in nearly every industry and sector. Overall, the purpose of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act is to ensure pollution prevention. While other federal laws

Environment committee  It's hard to speak about absolutely every industry. Certainly substitution does happen in some industries and some sectors, but overall, we see there's a hurdle to substitution. A lot of companies are not thinking about the other options for chemicals. They're doing it in paralle

Environment committee  Asbestos is not banned in Canada. It's legal to import it. It's legal to sell it and a number of asbestos products. Asbestos imports are actually rapidly increasing.

Environment committee  Yes.

Environment committee  We were reporting just over $4 million a year five years ago. Now that's over $8 million, the bulk of which, about 45%, is with regard to brake pads.

Environment committee  That's ridiculous. Most people, certainly I in my vehicle, have ceramic brake pads, which are dominant. There's also quite a plethora of semi-metallic brake pads that don't contain asbestos. With 56 countries around the world, including major automotive producers like Germany, it

Environment committee  We represented the workers, and I can say that we closed our last mine in 2012.

Environment committee  Certainly we're supportive of those things, but as a labour organization, we're also somewhat skeptical about principles that aren't also paired with enforcement and on-the-ground practicality. However, information about toxic pollutants at a postal code level would also help o

Environment committee  I certainly don't think so. The point is not to automatically follow suit with an OECD country, but rather that if there's a substantive restriction or regulatory change in an OECD country, it should trigger a CEPA assessment, in which case it would be assessed here.

Environment committee  I don't believe that to be accurate. The new GHS—WHMIS 2015—as it will be called in Canada, does include environmental protections—

Environment committee  Canada implemented the system bilaterally with the U.S. and chose to make those environmental things optional so companies can choose to provide them or not. Most chemical companies as well as quite a lot of global companies are based outside Canada, and they're providing that in

Environment committee  I think it would be a boost to our green economy and our economy as a whole. Exposure is high for women working with automotive plastics. We have five major companies manufacturing in Canada, and they're all going to do research simultaneously to look at alternatives, when ther

Environment committee  No.

Environment committee  Yes. I think there should be a registry of public buildings, and not just buildings like this one, but hockey rinks, schools—

Environment committee  Even for public buildings.