Tories get ready to tackle toxic chemicals






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September 2, 2006

Tories get ready to tackle toxic chemicals
Common items could hold dangers
Action to be part of Green Plan II

Peter Calamai
Science Reporter

Toronto Star

The green credentials of the Harper government are going to be severely tested even before the House of Commons resumes Sept. 18.

Four days earlier, officials in the federal environment and health departments are to reveal which among 23,000 chemical compounds used for years in Canada pose the biggest toxic danger to people or ecosystems.

Some of the hundreds of candidates for the danger list are found in everyday items, such as lip balm and water bottles.

"These are the worst of the worst of the worst," says Rick Smith, executive director of Environmental Defence, a Toronto-based activist group known for measuring chemical residues in prominent Canadians.

The danger list results from an exhaustive seven-year scientific survey of the 23,000 chemical compounds, not including pesticides, thought to be already in use when Parliament updated the Canadian Environmental Protection Act in 1999. While any new substances introduced into the country had to pass a toxicity check starting in the late 1980s, the updated law set a seven-year deadline for government officials to investigate those already on the market.

Environment department officials first determine if the substances are "inherently toxic" to fish, the test animal, and also if they are either persistent (don't break down chemically) or accumulate in fish. If those boxes are ticked off, officials check whether the compound is still in use and rate the chances of exposure to toxic levels.

Health department officials look for compounds inherently toxic to humans and carrying the greatest risk of exposure.

Government sources say this investigation produced a list of about 4,000 suspect substances with 500 tagged as high-priority. About 400 of those pose potential ecological risks and 100 health risks but as many as 200 overall may no longer be in widespread use.

"If the Conservatives don't have an action plan ready to deal with this on Sept. 14, they're going to look like idiots," says Smith.

Undefined action on toxic chemicals is included in the first phase of the Harper government's Green Plan II, which is scheduled to be revealed between now and spring in a kind of slow political strip-tease. (The original, highly lauded Green Plan was hatched by Brian Mulroney's government.)

Yet the Tories want to train the initial public spotlight on a new Clean Air Act, said to be combining strong measures to curb urban smog with a minimal response to the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming.

Senior federal officials have held closed-door briefings with cities, business and environment groups in the past two weeks. Only a vague outline of Green Plan II has emerged, and aides to Environment Minister Rona Ambrose are tight-lipped.

Here are some tentative highlights of Green Plan II, pieced together through interviews with environmentalists who were briefed and with federal officials speaking on a promise of anonymity:

The Conservatives will continue backing away from previous Liberal plans to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases under the Kyoto Protocol. Latest items for the scrapheap are specific reduction targets for large final emitters, meaning oil and gas operations, power plants, smelters, cement plants and other big industries.
A key selling point will be claims of a health payoff, especially for the very young and very old, from reducing some compounds that create urban smog: sulphur and nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds.
There could be a crackdown on the scores of municipalities still dumping wastewater after only rudimentary sewage treatment, by putting teeth into a voluntary standard.
Several schemes are being developed to encourage energy efficiency and new sources of "clean" energy. These include a consumer program to replace the scrapped EnerGuide program and tougher federal standards for energy efficiency in appliances and equipment. No final decisions have been made and programs aren't expected to be introduced until spring.
Also not expected before the new year is a bundle of clean transportation strategies. These could include adopting California's strict limits on emissions for motor vehicles and setting new pollution standards for freight carriers.
The provinces will be pressured to take on more enforcement responsibility under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

Sources say the rough price tag for all this came in at about $2.4 billion, about $400 million more than the government initially allotted. The clean energy program costs the most.

At the core of Green Plan II lies a heavy emphasis on tough regulation rather than the kind of voluntary compliance typically followed by the federal environment department. Ambrose is said to favour the U.S. approach of administrative fines and other penalties as opposed to drawn-out court proceedings.

Says Bea Olivastri, who heads the Canadian office of Friends of the Earth: "The talk on compliance, enforcement and accountability is stronger language politically than we've heard for some time."

Such tough talk only increases the expectation the Harper government will take real action on the several hundred high-priority toxic chemicals in wide use.

Yet severe budget cuts by the Chrétien and Martin cabinets crippled the ability of the environment department to move rapidly on deciding which chemicals should face the "virtual elimination" specified under the 1999 federal law. One estimate is that checking out and managing all 4,000 suspect chemicals might take a decade. "In Europe and the U.S. many of these chemicals are in the process of being banned," says Rick Smith. "Do we really want Canadians exposed to chemicals that even the Bush administration is eliminating?"