Industry committee  I think nanotechnology is one of those things that is still very cutting-edge in terms of where they are at. There's a lot of uncertainty associated with those materials. I think the first thing we have to do is to better educate the public about what these materials are; what

Industry committee  Absolutely.

Environment committee  I would say that science is science, and sound science is ensuring that you use the totality of the evidence before you. The difference between the two is that you can have one scientist saying one thing and another scientist saying another thing. How do you balance that? From

Environment committee  I'm not sure if I can off the cuff, because I'm not aware of the specific data that was referenced. What I could probably do is to conceptualize the issue of the focus being simply on releases and measuring those. Releases are an important part of the equation, as we've talked ab

Environment committee  You have to take a look at, in context, what those releases really mean and what they represent. I think it's important to understand that materials are going to be released, and I think you have to look at how those releases are going to impact Canadians. I think making that ass

Environment committee  I was interrupted and I can't even remember what I was saying.

Environment committee  I think you have to come up with an understanding of what metrics you are using to evaluate whether or not those controls are accomplishing the risk management objectives they are outlined and identified to accomplish. I think CEPA has an inherent process that allows the governme

Environment committee  Absolutely. I think what CEPA does is provide for an opportunity to look holistically at how a chemical behaves. You look at it from the start. How does it get into the environment? What happens to it in the environment? How does it get through the body? How does your body proces

Environment committee  From our perspective, we believe the statute is sufficiently robust. It is a risk-based system. As I mentioned previously, when we do a risk assessment it inherently takes into account cumulative exposure considerations and multiple exposure considerations. It looks at the availa

Environment committee  I think risk assessment is a complicated process. It is not always easy to explain, but I will try to do that very briefly. I think we mentioned three concepts that are always taken into account. First, we look at the properties of a material. These are things like the shape. W