Environment committee  REACH takes a bit more of a hazard approach, which is one thing you may want to look at.

Environment committee  One thing to be clear about is that just because a chemical is added to schedule 1 doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be eliminated; in fact, the vast majority are not eliminated. I wish I had it in front of me, but I don't. The number of chemicals that have actually been e

Environment committee  Yes.

Environment committee  That's a good question. I don't know. There has been a request that I think was submitted in 2012 to have institutes [Technical difficulty--Editor] well, is fracking being added to the NPRI, and it has not been answered yet. There is an ongoing study happening within Environment

Environment committee  This exemption is actually not related to the employee threshold. It's explicitly defined.

Environment committee  I was just going to point out that I know that the schedule 1 toxic substances list is not popular with industry because of that label of toxic. One thing to be clear about is that just because a substance ends up on schedule 1, it doesn't mean that any real effective risk manage

Environment committee  It's toxic because it's been found through a risk assessment to meet the requirements of section 64, which is how toxic is defined.

Environment committee  Just because something doesn't kill you right away doesn't mean it hasn't a long-term effect or a chronic effect on you or on the environment. I think if you think of toxic that way, defined as impacting the environment, impacting human health, or impacting the environment as rel

Environment committee  We have national guidelines right now. A lot of the provinces will adopt these guidelines as their provincial standards. National standards, if they're health-based, would ensure uniformity across the country. We know there are gaps. We are working with a family right now in a c

Environment committee  I have never seen an alternatives assessment in Environment Canada or Health Canada risk assessments under CEPA. Maybe the industry is doing it. Risk assessments aren't defined in how they're done under CEPA. They're done completely outside the act. It is used to determine whethe

Environment committee  Can I make a suggestion?

Environment committee  The Pest Control Products Act actually tries to do it. Now, I'm not a fan.... The act is fairly new. It's newer than CEPA. The problems with the act are mostly about lack of implementation, but if you look at section 19 of the Pest Control Products Act, you'll see that in subsect

Environment committee  Let me explain my comments, since you refer to them, on section 70. There is a provision that requires industry to submit data to the government, if they discover an environmental health harm. When I asked civil servants working on CEPA if that section had ever been acted on, th

Environment committee  Yes, if a safer alternative is found, then there isn't necessarily a reason to continue with a full risk assessment for that substance. It also would be fairly efficient for Canada to adopt this now, because so many countries are ahead of Canada already, and we can learn from th

Environment committee  Yes, in my submission, I had a number of recommendations on improving reporting and transparency, particularly the NPRI, which is really our only source of pollution release information nationally. Yes, I would say that right now the NPRI is not prescribed in detail in the act.