Industry committee  Right. You got it.

Industry committee  I would like to say it's not so much about getting rid of red tape, but about aligning the dispensers.

Industry committee  Yes, and I would even put this forward. There are certain issues when we import product, and I don't think we're here to talk about those today; we're here about how we can encourage exports. Often the role of our regulators isn't so much to change what we're doing here—althoug

Industry committee  I'll just add that this issue is slowly coming to the attention of folks in our industry. There are a lot of changes going around in the retail scene right now. Obviously online retailing is becoming a larger segment of the retail world, and certainly in our products. I think con

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

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

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