December 13, 2006

Feds introduce new toxic pollution plan
Scientists urge changes to environmental laws

Novae Res Urbis

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, along with environment minister Rona Ambrose and health minister Tony Clement, unveiled Canada’s new Chemicals Management Plan. The federal government also announced a commitment of $300 million over four years to implement the new toxics plan, which takes “immediate action to regulate chemicals that are harmful to human health or the environment.”

Although both Environmental Defence and Pollution Probe say the plan is a significant step forward for pollution control in Canada, 721 scientists and doctors have called on Harper to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which is in the final phase of review, to ensure it reduces Canadians’ exposure to toxic substances.

The impressive list of signatories to a letter to Harper have organized a campaign—Scientists for a Healthy Environment—to pressure the federal government to amend four key areas in the legislation.

“This letter reflects a remarkable breadth of scientific opinion,” said organizer Dr. David Schindler, ecology professor at the University of Alberta. “Canadian doctors and scientists are calling on the federal government to fix the problems in CEPA, and reduce toxic pollution in Canada.”

The House of Commons environment committee began a mandatory review of the law in the spring and heard from its last witness panel this week. A parallel review is currently taking place in the Senate’s Standing Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources.

Witnesses appearing before the committees have highlighted many weaknesses in the law that have resulted in a lack of effective action to reduce pollution in Canada. “ Canada has a growing pollution problem that is a threat to both human health and the quality of our environment,” the letter states.

“CEPA requires significant improvements in order to deal with the emerging challenges of harmful substances in our environment.” •

The letter focuses on four areas that need improvement in CEPA:

• Protecting vulnerable ecosystems, such as the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence basin;
• Requiring deadlines for each stage from assessment to management of potentially harmful substances;
• Employing the precautionary approach by shifting the onus on to industry to show that products are safe, rather than the current system, under which the government must generally prove that a substance is harmful before taking regulatory action;
• Providing the authority to regulate potentially harmful substances in consumer products.