Environment committee  Well, you were giving me the example of a chemical, so I was trying to respond in terms of how it works. I will point you to the language in the bill. It actually does say “subject to any reasonable limits”, which is really how a court would interpret the right anyway, so that i

Environment committee  There actually is a concept in CEPA called “the best place to act”, which recognizes that sometimes CEPA is not the best place to take the regulatory action. It might be better under the Food and Drugs Act, the cosmetic regulations, the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act or somew

Environment committee  We would prefer the right to be stated as “a right to a healthy environment” without the inclusion or consideration of those factors. We understand the government wants to leave that in. I think it is exactly because of your concern about potential litigation, so that they can ba

Environment committee  When CEPA regulates chemicals, it doesn't do it writ large for all the uses of the chemicals across the country. It focuses in on the risks. That's why it's a risk-driven piece of legislation. If it's going to regulate a new chemical because of a risk, it might only be one aspect

Environment committee  Yes, I'm familiar with that one, too.

Environment committee  Yes, we do have a recommendation in our brief that's specifically that the implementation framework should include a requirement for the minister to take action when a Canadian air quality standard is exceeded to try to address that issue. Working it in through, once again, the i

Environment committee  That's a loaded question. It's an interesting question. I was initially concerned when I saw that, too, but then, when I went back and looked at the act and the bill, everywhere they talk about schedule 1, they still refer to it as a “list of toxic substances”, throughout the l

Environment committee  I think we heard Cassie Barker speak earlier to the issues around labelling. That's one big piece of transparency. We've talked about having a reverse onus system, in which the confidential business information requests are reviewed by the minister or a delegate to ensure that th

Environment committee  That's a tough one. We did have recommendations that we had put forward pre-bill with respect to section 22—sections 17 to 22—in case the bill did open up those sections. That's where my focus has been. I think there may be opportunity through the implementation framework to lo

Environment committee  Yes. We see Canada as being behind, in terms of not reviewing these. These are accepted. Bill S-5 adds the requirement to provide reasons, but there's no requirement in Bill S-5 for a minister—or a minister's delegate—to actually look at these and determine whether they truly mee

Environment committee  This is done in Europe and the U.S. We just want Canada to start doing it, too, because there is evidence showing that there are frivolous CBI requests out there, or requests that do not meet the bar of CBI.

Environment committee  There's nothing published publicly. There is no information at all, in terms of how CBI claims are handled internally, within the department. There's no public information.

Environment committee  Yes, for sure. I think it's in clause 19 that Bill S-5 sets out a new priority planning process. Once the bill comes into force, they'll have two years to set out a new plan that's going to identify the priorities under CEPA for the assessment and management of substances. Consu

Environment committee  You can't ask for things you don't know about.

Environment committee  This is what we see the watch-list doing and why we think it is so important. The watch-list is an early-warning system to warn us that these substances are, potentially, ones you want to avoid substituting if another substance is banned or restricted. We call it “regrettable sub