Canadian Government to Propose Chemical Management Revisions in 2018

Canada's environment minister has agreed that "changes are needed to modernise and improve" the country's Environmental Protection Act, 1999 (Cepa) and has committed to providing a complete proposal by June 2018.

The House Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development released a report on 15 June urging sweeping revisions to Cepa and the Chemicals Management Plan (CMP). Among its 87 recommendations is one reversing the burden of proof onto industry for demonstrating the safety of 'substances of very high concern' – a hazard-based approach borrowed from the EU's REACH regime.

Environment minister Catherine McKenna's response, made on 7 October, noted that some of the recommendations can be "realised through implementation". She said her agency plans to address issues related to public participation and information gathering in that way.

However, she said, the government "is considering regulatory, policy and programme changes that respond to some of the committee's recommendations".

Ms McKenna said the government is on track to meet the CMP's goal of completing assessments of 4,300 chemicals by 2020. The chemicals being assesed were identified by a categorisation process completed in 2006.

"In parallel with the review of Cepa, the government is consulting a broad range of stakeholders to determine what the focus of chemicals management should be in the post-2020 period," Ms McKenna said.

'Something is coming'

Environmental advocates hope, and industry fears, that the Liberal government will alter Cepa and the CMP to move toward a hazard-based approach.

"It could be they didn't want to rock the boat during Nafta negotiations," J Gary LeRoux, president of the Canadian Paint and Coatings Association, told Chemical Watch.

A response proposing drastic changes could complicate those negotiations, he said, while rejecting the proposals would cause upheaval among the government's supporters in the environmental community.

"The easy way out is kick the ball down the field, which they did to next June," Mr LeRoux said. "Industry and NGOs will have to, and will, regroup".

"Rest assured something is coming," he said, and added that government officials consulted extensively with stakeholders and were working on "a more robust response that was shelved".

W Scott Thurlow, legal counsel and director of chemicals management at the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada (CIAC), told Chemical Watch: "The minister is taking the recommendations of the committee seriously and appropriately wants to do her own analysis of them."

He said the committee rushed to judgment on revising a system that took years of hearings and debate to devise.

"I would say we already have it right," he said. Canada's risk-based model has assessed chemicals much faster and more efficiently than European or American systems and "done a good job of targeting areas of greatest concern," he said.

NGOs strongly disagree

"Reforming Cepa goes hand-in-hand with the federal government’s agenda to improve Canada’s environmental laws that were gutted in the past few years," Annie Bérubé, director of government relations with Équiterre, said in a joint statement issued by five NGOs. "Cepa is almost two decades old and has largely failed to protect us from the effects of toxics".

And Muhannad Malas, toxics programme manager at Environmental Defence, told Chemical Watch: "I think it is a promising first step that the minister acknowledged and agreed that Cepa is outdated and needs to be modernised. And her commitment to examining potential amendments is also encouraging.

"So this is a step closer to a meaningful update of Cepa," he said, "but we would like to see is a bill introduced in the House of Commons in early 2018".