Hon. Jack Davis (Minister of Fisheries):

No, Mr. Speaker.

Hon. Jack Davis (Minister of the Environment):

Mr. Speaker, the simple answer is that we are both right, the Minister of Justice and myself, in respect of my answer the other day. All works which have been put in place currently or as a result of the current flood threat, as well as damages incurred as a result of the flooding, are subject to the federal formula and compensation from Ottawa. It is a fact that the province makes out the cheques and the federal government then pays the province on a matching dollar basis, the formula for which includes a threshold above which the federal contribution rises in an ascending fashion. Dikes recently put in place to deal with the flood threat, sandbagging and so on are all subject to federal support.

Hon. Jack Davis (Minister of Fisheries):

We have changed the opening dates from year to year depending on natural conditions such as ice.

Hon. Jack Davis (Minister of the Environment) moved

that Bill C-3, to protect human health and the environment from the release of substances that contaminate the environment, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Forestry.

He said: Mr. Speaker, Bill C-3 is an important piece of legislation. Passed into law it will become an important weapon in the government's armoury for dealing with pollution. Described as the Environmental Contaminants Act, it will set up a screening process. It will ensure that man-made substances will be checked out thoroughly before they are produced in this country and sold to an unsuspecting public.

We are, all of us, concerned about the quality of life. This new law will give the federal government the power not only to ask for, and get information about, substances which may be harmful to the environment, but also to take steps to control their use. Some products may also be banned. The idea is that artificial or unnatural substances should be spotted well ahead of time. They should not be sold in large numbers or vast quantities and broadcast around the country before we know what their environmental effects are likely to be. They should be checked over carefully before they are scattered around and before the cost of recovery and recycling gets out of hand.

Obviously we are moving into a preventative phase of our war against pollution. We are moving ahead of events rather than following in their wake. Bill C-3 is designed to stop pollution before it starts. Our new Environmental Contaminants Act will put us into the business of prevention rather than cure. We will not have to go around picking up non-degradable plastics after they have been produced and sold in their millions; we will make sure that they are not manufactured or imported in the first place.

With this new law on our statute books we shall be in a position to demand information, not only about substances already in use in this country but also about products in their early developmental stages as well. Data about their chemical characteristics, their biological qualities and

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their persistence in our natural surroundings will be assembled. Statistics as to how much may be sold and how these substances may accumulate in our natural food chain can also be collected. With this information, we shall be in a position to see whether the new substance, or family of substances, will have a harmful effect on our environment and on human health in this country. Its impact on our quality of life will be known in advance. It will be known before it is mass produced and before it gets into our natural environment in a big way.

This legislation, aimed at dealing with environmental contaminants before they contaminate our natural surroundings, has not been developed in a vacuum. We have been in close consultation with industry. We have also sought the advice of the provinces. Numerous changes have been made and a number of suggestions have been incorporated in Bill C-3 to make it more effective. There is a minimum of red tape involved. There is no overlapping with existing laws. Our new Environmental Contaminants Act will fill in gaps in existing legislation. It will backstop other laws, federal and provincial. It will round out environmental legislation in this country. It will also help government to work more closely with industry in the development of new products, the production and use of which is beneficial to all concerned.

If I may draw an analogy, the new Environmental Contaminants Act is akin to the screening of new kinds of foods and new kinds of drugs. Industry is responsible not only for developing new ideas but also for vetting them ahead of time. Government will call for certain kinds of tests to be made and industry must make them. Industry must pay for the testing procedures and it must produce information on the environmental consequences of these ideas or products which government will be insisting upon before they become commercially marketable.

Our basic policy in so far as pollution is concerned is that the polluter shall pay. In this case the potential polluter will pay for the screening of his products. He will include the cost of carrying out the necessary tests in the cost of developing the new idea or product he hopes to sell at some future date. Environment Canada personnel will give the manufacturer certain guidelines. They will outline procedures and set standards. But most of the scientific and other staff needed in the screening process will be employed in the private sector. Most of the equipment and most of the testing will also be done there. Government will have a hand in this screening all right, but the federal taxpayer will not have to foot the bill. The company or industry in question will have to meet most, if not all, of the expenses involved in this process, the main purpose of which is to prevent pollution from occurring in the first place.

I said earlier that we have worked closely with industry in this connection. The reaction from trade associations and individual firms has been good. Chemical companies, in particular, would like to have their products screened before they go to the expense of manufacturing them on a large scale, because the losses involved in their being banned at a later date are bound to be large. An early warning system is best not only from the public's point of view but from a corporate point of view as well.

Environmental Contamination

What are we talking about here? We are talking mainly about artificial, man-made substances. We are talking about chemicals. We are talking about substances many of which have never existed on this planet before. We are talking about things which are either poisonous in nature or which do not readily break down in nature. If they are likely to accumulate in large quantities in the food chain and have ill effects not only on human beings but also on other forms of life, animal and vegetable, then they may be restricted or banned under our new Environmental Contaminants Act.

Perhaps I should go back a bit and give hon. members a few examples. Metallic mercury would have been dealt with directly under this legislation had it been in place in 1970 when we first found that this poisonous metal was escaping from our chlor-alkali plants. We used the Fisheries Act because mercury had a deleterious effect on fish. But mercury had a harmful effect on birdlife also and posed a serious threat to human health as well. As I say, we could have dealt with the so-called mercury crisis more effectively using Bill C-3, but the most effective approach would have been to screen mercury out of these various chemical processes ahead of time. We would have known about its effects in advance and we would have restricted or banned its use before, and not after, it got out into the air and into the local rivers and streams.

Phosphates in detergents constitute another case in point. When the Canada Water Act was being drafted- and that act deals primarily with the management of water in the physical sense of the word-a section was added to deal specifically with the phosphate question. We have cut back, progressively, on the phosphate content of detergents manufactured or imported for sale in this country. We have cut the content from 20 to 30 per cent to less than 5 per cent. This is in contrast to what has been done in the United States where, by and large, phosphates have not been limited and have had to be taken out at great expense to the taxpayer.

We did a lot of testing along the way. We made sure that a figure of 5 per cent or less would have a minimum effect on water quality in Lake Erie, for example. We drew up protocols for testing and we set standards. We called the industry in and we insisted, using these special sections in the Canada Water Act, on its cutting down on the phosphate content in our Canadian soaps and detergents. This we did in order to prevent the unnecessary fertilization or enrichment of our inland waterways. We saved our municipalities a lot of money because we did not put these enriching substances into our sewers in the first place. I am told that the capital cost saving in this case is in the order of 50 per cent. It shows the economic benefit of following the prevention rather than the cure approach to contamination and protection of the environment in this country.

If we had had an Environmental Contaminants Act back in those days we would not have had to add a few special sections dealing with phosphates to the Canada Water Act. In future we will be able to use either of these pieces of legislation in dealing with phosphates, but there are many other substances which are harmful from an environmental point of view. They are not covered in the Canada

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Environmental Contamination Water Act, and we need a broader piece of legislation to deal with them as they are developed and offered for our use in the future.

A third example is a group of compounds, the so-called chlorinated hydrocarbons like DDT. They are also chemical in nature. They are, most of them, extremely harmful from a biological point of view. We have to keep them under control. Many of them, environmentally speaking, should never see the light of day. Like the PCB's, they are a contaminant in the worst sense of the word. We should not allow them to be produced in any quantity. Certainly they should never be allowed outside the factory fence. They are an emphatic no-no, from an environmental point of view. They should be stopped in their tracks and a new Environmental Contaminants Act is needed to make sure they never leave the laboratory, let alone be produced on a pilot scale anywhere in this country.

Having given a few examples, I should now like to describe, in a more general way, what is meant by an environmental contaminant. Environment Canada, in requesting information about new products from chemical and other firms, will be asking about their chemical, biological and toxicological properties. It will be asking these firms about their persistence in the environment. It will be asking the firms to anticipate the way in which these new products or class of products will be dispersed in our natural surroundings. Environment Canada will want them to anticipate the manner in which they will be concentrated in some of our foodstuffs or in substances which are consumed by other living things. How might they be sold and with what limitation? Do they break down naturally and can they eventually be assimilated in our natural scheme of things? And, otherwise, what measures, if any, are being made for their recycling and recovery by industry?

We need this information urgently because literally hundreds of new chemicals are being introduced into our local environment every year. Some of them should be withdrawn; that is after the event. But many others can be intercepted in the future; that is ahead of the event. It is the ahead of the event operation which our new Environmental Contaminants Act is all about. However, it can also be used to deal with harmful substances which are already making a mess of things and which, using any reasonable standard of environmental housekeeping, should be withdrawn from the market today.

There is reference in Bill C-3 to a schedule. This is a schedule or list of substances which will either be restricted or banned by Environment Canada. The naming of a substance to a schedule, in other words, withdraws it from circulation or, as is much more likely in the future, will prevent it from being manufactured or imported in the first place. The list will undoubtedly grow as time goes by. Occasionally, on further testing, some names of substances may be deleted from the schedule, but these are likely to be exceptions rather than the rule. More and more chemical-type substances will be banned or limited because we are becoming more inventive all the time. Chemical-type industries are expanding faster than most other activities and the diversity of their output is proliferating with the passage of time.

The Minister of the Environment will obviously need a lot of advice. There is provision in Bill C-3, therefore, for the setting up of advisory committees. These will be established to hear representations from interested parties- that is to say, manufacturers, importers, users and others who may be directly affected by this new law-or concerned members of the public whose advice will also be sought in order to help the Minister of the Environment and the Minister of National Health and Welfare to decide on the names of products or groups of products which should be added to the schedule and which should not.

Bill C-3 also provides for the creation of ad hoc boards of review. This provision was included at the request of industry. It will give any company or individual affected by this legislation an opportunity to state his or her case. Producers, importers, etc., will therefore have an avenue of appeal open to them. These industry-oriented boards of review will have powers and responsibilities similar to those already enjoyed by the board of review under our Canadian Hazardous Products Act.

Still on the subject of relations with industry, I would like to say this: We do not want to be working at cross purposes. We want industrial development in the sense of new industry and new products. We want more industry, better industry, in order to generate more and better jobs. But we do not want, at the same time, to be spewing out hundreds of additional products every year, a sizeable number of which are harmful to our natural environment. We want to preserve quality while enjoying more in the sense of quantity. We want to maintain, and if possible improve, our quality of life while, at the same time, enjoying a rising material standard of living.

This legislation certainly goes with the grain of nature. I believe that it can also go with the grain of development. A forward looking industry does not really want to produce a product or class of products which is going to be banned at a later date. It does not want to get a bad name for producing something which is frowned upon by a large segment of our population, So an early screening process makes a lot of sense, not only from an environmental point of view but also from an economic point of view. It makes a lot of sense to developers who want to see a good financial return on their investment, and a good financial return means many years of successful sales. Continuity in sales means compatibility with the rest of the marketplace and the marketplace of modern man is much more sensitive to the needs of our environment than it was even a few short years ago.

Bill C-3, our new Environmental Contaminants Act, breaks new ground. It breaks new ground on the environmental front. But it is not unprecedented in the sense that we have similar screening arrangements in respect of foods and drugs and other hazardous substances. It is new or advanced in the sense that no other country has gone as far as we are going in this connection. A similar bill is before Congress in the United States. Similar legislation is already in effect in Sweden, but is not quite as good as ours. It does not involve as close a liaison with the private sector as ours does.

I commend this legislation to all members in this House, Mr. Speaker. I think it is a good bill and one which merits the whole-hearted support of all hon. members here. I

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hope it does not take too long on second reading and that it goes quickly to committee for detailed examination. I am prepared to accept changes if they are reasonable and if they go along with our main theme, which is one of prevention rather than cure, to stop pollution before it starts. Along with our new system in Environment Canada for screening projects from an environmental point of view, this legislation will help us to preserve the wonders of nature in this country. It will help to ensure that the quality of life in Canada is second to none.

Hon. Jack Davis (Minister of Fisheries):

As to evidence, the answer is yes, we have evidence of overfishing. As to what we are going to do next, the Internationl Commission for the North Atlantic Fishery meets in June and we shall be dealing with the salmon issue at that time.