Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources
Issue 9 - Evidence - May 15, 2008
OTTAWA, Thursday, May 15, 2008
The Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, to which was referred Bill S- 206, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (clean drinking water), met this day at 8:34 a.m. to give consideration to the bill.
Senator Tommy Banks (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I welcome you to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources. I am Tommy Banks, a senator from Alberta, and I have the honour to chair the committee.
I would like to introduce the members of the committee here with us today. On my far right is the distinguished dean of the Senate, our longest-serving member, Senator Willie Adams from Nunavut. To his left is Senator Brown from Alberta. On my direct left is Senator Grant Mitchell from Alberta, and next to him is Senator Grafstein, the author of the bill we are considering today. To his left is Senator Ethel Cochrane from Newfoundland and Labrador.
Today we will continue our examination of Bill S-206, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (clean drinking water). The bill seeks to amend that act to include water from a community water system, whether privately or publicly owned, and to consider water as a food subject to regulation under the act.
Appearing before us today to assist in our deliberations are John Cooper, the Director of Water, Air and Climate Change Bureau, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Health Canada; and Paul Sockett, Director of the Environmental Issues Division, Centre for Food-borne, Environmental and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases of the Public Health Agency of Canada.
Gentlemen, thank you very much for appearing before us this morning. We are grateful. We hope that you will tell us what you think about this bill, and that you will allow us time to ask you questions after that.
John Cooper, Director, Water, Air and Climate Change Bureau, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Health Canada: I would like to thank the committee for inviting Health Canada to appear again to answer questions on this very important issue. I had the pleasure of being a witness at committee hearings in December of 2006.
With the committee's indulgence, I would like to make several statements on the subject of drinking water in Canada that I believe are fundamental to addressing discussions which have taken place. First, while there has been much discussion concerning this issue, Canada does have de facto national drinking water standards in place. All provinces and territories use the guidelines for Canadian drinking water quality as the basis for their regulatory regimes. These are not voluntary; they are enforced. I will go further into that later.
Second, we do recognize that, while our drinking water is among the safest in the world, there are problems. The recent report by the Canadian Medical Association documented 1,776 boil water advisories as of March 31 of this year across the country. I must tell you that, in my written brief the numbers were transposed to read 1,667. I was not attempting to downplay the number. This is clear evidence of a problem that needs to be resolved. Health Canada recognizes that the safety of drinking water for all Canadians is a priority, and is taking actions with others to address this problem.
Third, the proposed solution of establishing federal regulation of drinking water will not address the fundamental challenges and will lead to significant costs and duplication. I would like to discuss each of these points briefly in turn.
The Government of Canada leads the development of the guidelines for Canadian drinking water quality. These are used by all provinces and territories as their basis for their own regulatory regimes, effectively applying enforceable and consistent national standards or benchmarks across the country. The guidelines are developed collaboratively, and adopted and applied by all jurisdictions according to their respective priorities and needs as it pertains to protecting the health of their citizens.
All provinces and territories use the guidelines to ensure drinking water quality. To be clear, 10 of them do so directly through legislation or regulations, while 3 provinces use them to issue enforceable permits or licences to individual treatment plants on a site-specific basis. The three provinces that use the latter approach are Newfoundland, New Brunswick and British Columbia. In addition, British Columbia has regulations dealing with micro-biological contaminants, the ones of most concern, but they issue permits of approval to treatment plants for chemical contaminants.
There is a slight distinction in the way that these laws are applied across the country, but essentially they all use the guidelines for Canadian drinking water quality as the standard, so we do have consistent, enforceable standards.
I would like to take the opportunity to provide some clarification regarding concerns that have been expressed before this committee that our guideline process is slow and that the majority of our guidelines are out of date. The audit that was conducted by the Office of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development in 2005 was of tremendous value in highlighting shortcomings in our guideline development process. We have responded to these important concerns and recommendations by streamlining our processes and undertaking a regular priority- setting exercise to ensure that the guidelines we have in place remain current and protective of health. I would be happy to provide more details on this following the presentations, if senators have questions.
On the second point; what are the challenges that we face in Canada today with respect to drinking water? A premise of Bill S-206 is that by having federal regulations, we could provide equal access to all Canadians to clean drinking water. Although adverse drinking water events can occur in large cities, they are extremely rare and are generally short-term problems related to drinking water treatment plant issues or the distribution system. Indeed, the major challenge for communities large and small is replacing or upgrading ageing or inadequate infrastructure, not a problem which is resolved by regulation. The government's investment under the Building Canada Fund of $3 billion over the next seven years to support infrastructure development, including water and waste water treatment projects, is a practical approach to help address this issue.
Previous witnesses, and indeed the Canadian Medical Association, have pointed to small community water supplies as being the area where most boil water advisories occur. The question is: Would federal regulation of drinking water eliminate or reduce boil water advisories? The fact that we have 1,776 boil water advisories as of March 31 means that the current, enforceable regulatory regimes in provinces and territories are having an effect. If the water is considered potentially unsafe under legislation, regulations or approval permits, a boil water advisory must be issued.
In reality, regulations cannot solve a problem that comes down to resources and capacity. All orders of government in Canada are facing this challenge, even though the regulatory regimes are in place. In fact, this problem exists worldwide: in the U.S. and the European Union and, obviously, in developing countries.
As another aside, I would like to point out that Health Canada works with the World Health Organization and with countries such as Australia on the specific issue of the challenges faced by small community water supplies.
In Canada at any one time, there are between 1,200 and 2,000 boil water advisories, almost all of which occur in small, rural or remote communities of fewer than 500 people, and often fewer than 50 or 10 people. These can occur in Ma and Pa bed-and- breakfast operations, gasoline stations and camp grounds. They tend to occur in 99.9 per cent of the situations in small communities. These communities lack the capacity and resources for protecting source water and for treating drinking water to a level equivalent to that of larger communities.
As has been stated, the issuance of boil water advisories is a protective measure to reduce people's exposure to risk from drinking water. However, it is not a solution to a serious problem. Everyone on the committee and the witnesses that have appeared before the committee understand that this is unacceptable and needs to be addressed.
Small communities face challenges such as inadequate treatment and distribution systems, lack of trained and certified operators, reduced capability for monitoring, reduced access for testing at accredited laboratories and little capacity for source water protection. The number of boil water advisories in place needs to be addressed. Resolution will not happen through regulation but through national and international initiatives to develop best management practices, tools and communication to address the fundamental challenges.
This committee heard from Dr. Steve Hrudey, who appeared recently before the committee. Certainly, he provided very good insight into the Australian situation, where there are fewer boil water advisories in place. Clearly, we need to catch up and do a better job in Canada. We work with Australia and with Dr. Hrudey, who is one of the world's renowned experts on drinking water. The challenge is there for us to do a better job.
Health Canada is leading work with the provinces and territories, the regulators, academia, industry and non- governmental organizations such as the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, whose representatives also appeared before the committee, to develop and promote practical solutions that will help to address these issues. I would be pleased to discuss this in more detail if senators have questions subsequent to the presentation.
It has been suggested that this is a no-cost bill, requiring only an oversight role by the federal government. However, the government would be required to implement an enforcement and compliance mechanism and a level of accountability. Regulation of drinking water community supplies requires a different knowledge and skill set than the regulation of foods currently covered under the FDA. With over 60,000 community water supplies across Canada that could be captured by this bill, the enforcement and compliance costs would be significant.
I seem to be having a few problems with numbers today so I would like to make a correction to the figure of 60,000 community water supplies. That number was provided by an agency dealing with water and waste water as an estimate. We conducted a survey in 2007 that brought the number closer to 48,500.
Bill S-206 would duplicate efforts of the provinces and territories to manage drinking water effectively. It would be considered an expansion into areas traditionally managed by the provinces, not only in respect of drinking water but also in respect of sources of contamination in all areas of the watershed. Bill S-206 might also jeopardize the long- standing collaborative relationship of 60 years that the government has developed with the provinces and territories in the area of drinking water. The provinces and territories provide information and feedback that is critical to guideline development and to addressing challenges that we face in the area of drinking water across Canada.
In summary, it is important to focus our attention and our efforts on providing equal access to safe drinking water for all Canadians. I commend this committee for focusing attention on the issue. I believe the objective is best served not through more regulation but by working together to address the known risks through conservation, investment and action.
Paul Sockett, Director, Environmental Issues Division, Centre for Food-borne, Environmental and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, Public Health Agency of Canada: On behalf of the Public Health Agency of Canada, I thank you for the opportunity to appear today to answer questions about Bill S-206 on clean drinking water. The focus of my presentation is to describe the role of the Public Health Agency of Canada in monitoring gastrointestinal illnesses broadly, including those that might be associated with waterborne events.
The Public Health Agency of Canada holds as its priorities: to develop and lead Canada's long-term strategic public health initiatives; to develop, enhance and implement integrated disease-specific strategies, which would include surveillance and monitoring for disease; and to develop and enhance the capacity of the Public Health Agency of Canada to improve those activities.
Within those aims, the Public Health Agency of Canada provides national leadership in the surveillance of acute gastrointestinal illness, including individual cases and outbreaks monitored within the Centre for Food-Borne, Environmental and Zoonotic Diseases in collaboration with the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and the Laboratory for Food-Borne Zoonoses of the Public Health Agency in Guelph, Ontario.
Acute gastrointestinal illness is caused by a number of pathogenic micro-organisms that include bacteria, viruses and parasites, some of which are more likely than others to be associated with contaminated drinking water. The protozoan parasites cryptosporidium and giardia are amoeba-like organisms that are considered to be predominantly waterborne diseases. Other pathogens that may be occasionally waterborne include bacteria such as campylobacter, E. coli or VTEC, entamoeba, hepatitis A, salmonella, shigella, yersina and norovirus. For example, the Walkerton outbreak was linked to both E. coli and the campylobacter infections and was relatively unusual in terms of causes when compared to most waterborne disease outbreaks.
All the pathogens mentioned above are monitored weekly through a national laboratory reporting program called the National Enteric Reporting System. This surveillance program compares current weekly reporting with long-term trends in disease events in order to identify weekly reporting which may go above normally expected levels. When such an event does occur, this system will initiate inquiries to try to understand the cause.
A unique electronic alerting system, the Canadian Integrated Outbreak Surveillance Centre, allows local health units and provincial and territorial health departments to post alerts on proven or suspected outbreaks into a national system which is monitored daily by the Public Health Agency of Canada staff. These postings can result in the initiation of an investigation by provincial, territorial or national public health authorities of the suspected or proven outbreaks.
In a recently compiled report on waterborne diseases, the data indicated that, in general, waterborne disease outbreaks represent a small proportion of the total number of outbreaks which are reported each year in Canada. For example, between 1996 and 2003, provinces and territories reported 5,893 outbreaks due to gastrointestinal pathogens. The source of infection was indicated in less than half, 48 per cent of these; and 2 per cent of that 48 per cent indicated water as a mode of transmission.
However, since many waterborne outbreaks are linked to recreational uses, the proportion linked to drinking potable water is likely even smaller than that. In a review of data collected between 1980 and 2004, only 110 of 396 outbreaks linked to water were linked to public or municipal systems; 146 occurred in semipublic systems and 65 occurred in private systems.
Overall, the data indicates a decline in recent years in the number of annual cases of many of the gastrointestinal pathogens, in particular, cryptosporidium and giardia, the two particularly linked to water. Only two significant outbreaks of illnesses linked to municipal water systems have been recorded since 2000: The outbreaks at Walkerton, Ontario, in 2000 and the outbreak in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, in 2001. Both illustrate the point that these types of outbreaks are relatively rare but when they do occur, a large proportion of the population can be affected. Currently available data indicates outbreaks affecting municipal water supplies are unusual in Canada, and that our surveillance systems are sensitive enough to detect significant acute events.
I would like to thank you for your indulgence. I would be pleased to answer any questions you may pose.
The Chair: Before I go to the list — and, senators, I invite you to signal that you would like to be on the list — I need you, Mr. Sockett, to explain something. You said that the pathogens are monitored weekly through a national reporting program, the National Enteric Reporting System. Surely you do not monitor all 48,500 systems?
Mr. Sockett: This reporting system is based on reports from provincial public health laboratories to the Public Health Agency of Canada on a weekly basis. In other words, the laboratories report new identifications of the list of gastrointestinal pathogens on a weekly basis.
The Chair: When they are found?
Mr. Sockett: When they are proven in the laboratory.
The Chair: But small systems exist that do not have access to the kind of laboratory tests that are needed to identify those things.
Mr. Sockett: These are reports of human cases of gastrointestinal illness, and not waterborne events in water systems.
The Chair: From all sources?
Mr. Sockett: From all source, yes.
Senator Milne: You just asked my first question of Mr. Sockett. This weekly reporting is of actual illnesses rather than of results of water testing?
Mr. Sockett: Yes; that is absolutely correct. These are human cases of gastrointestinal illness which are confirmed in laboratories and reported to the Public Health Agency of Canada, on a weekly basis.
Senator Milne: All municipal systems, at least in Ontario, must be tested at least weekly, and even some private users, for example, the Brampton Fairgrounds, that get their water straight from the municipal water source still must test their own water weekly.
Mr. Sockett: The focus of the public health agency's work is on human illness rather than on results from water testing programs, which would be more in the province of my colleagues in Health Canada.
Senator Milne: Mr. Cooper, you said that resolution will not happen through regulation but through national and international initiatives to develop best managing practices. You mentioned going to Australia because they have such a lower incidence of boil water advisories than we have in Canada. What is happening with that initiative? Is it actually under way? Are you picking up hints or directives from Australia as to what should happen? If you do, what happens then? Are you, somehow or another, putting these hints and directives into practice in Canada? What is the process?
Mr. Cooper: There are several dimensions to this process. I will start with the international dimension. About two and a half years ago, the World Health Organization set up a network of small community water supplies to deal with the millennium development goal to reduce by half the number of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015. All nations face the same issue of how to provide safe drinking water when resources and capacity are limited, not only in developing countries but also in developed countries. This brings a number of nations' representatives together, including Australia, many of the European countries, Africa, South America and the Caribbean to share information on best practices so that we do not need to reinvent these solutions, and so that we can effectively start implementation instead of talking about how to solve issues.
Senator Milne: The follow-up question is, are you doing so?
Mr. Cooper: Yes, that is where I would like to get to. Three years ago, we set up a national committee, and as I referenced it in my presentation, it involves all federal and provincial regulators because you must have them all at the table. It also involves the academics who have the best insight into the latest technology and science, and NGOs such as the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and industries that themselves do UV treatment, chlorination and membrane technology, because we are trying to bring forward some solutions.
There have been many exercises where we have identified what the challenges are, but the focus is on what are the solutions and how do we get the solutions out there? That has been our approach. I can describe briefly what we are doing right now to try to bring some of those solutions to the table.
Boil water advisories is an issue that has arisen at this table a few times in terms of whether or not we have a system that can actually bring together how many boil water advisories, and what are the causes for those boil water advisories across the country. Canada was one of the first countries to set up a system to do that. The U.S. does not have such a system, nor does Australia, nor do the European Union countries. In April, we launched a program that, with the provincial-territorial involvement which is just beginning, will identify immediately when a boil water advisory is issued. It will be a real-time system. When the advisory is rescinded, it will explain why it was put in place. We need to understand the reasons for boil water advisories in order to focus our attention on trying to bring some solutions to the issue. Not knowing is not helping us at all.
This system is being done through the Public Health Agency of Canada. It is part of what my colleague referred to as the Canadian network of public health intelligence, the integrated outbreak surveillance system. Within the next few months we will have information on a regular basis on what is happening in terms of boil water advisories so that we will have accurate numbers and reasons, and a mechanism to focus our action.
Much of the success of Australia has hinged on their implementation of what they call water safety plans. Dr. Hrudey mentioned those. They are risk assessment tools that allow the regulator to look at the system from source to tap in order to identify the weaknesses in a small system that need to be addressed on a priority basis.
We evaluated 15 of these tools, because we need one that is applicable to Canada. The Australian tool is certainly one of the best. Ontario has an extremely good system that we have evaluated. They are implementing that for small community water supplies.
With limited resources, you want to focus your investment on fixing the problems that put you at the greatest risk. As I said, we have evaluated 15 of these national and international tools. This spring we will be pilot-testing three or four of them to see which work best in different situations. There are a variety of situations across Canada, including groundwater supply, surface water supply and climate conditions. We want a system, or several systems, that allow us to use the water safety plans that Australia has so effectively implemented.
We are working with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the provinces and territories, because tools are no good unless you can get them to the people who need them. We believe that, by working with provinces and territories and with the federation, we will have a mechanism to deal with the many small communities across the country.
We are currently pilot-testing capacity operators with the provinces and territories. We know that in small communities the operators often have many jobs. They do not spend 24 hours at the plant monitoring the situation, and this is a significant risk. If anything goes wrong, where is the backup in terms of the multi-barrier approach?
We are currently looking at remote monitoring, that is, monitoring 20 or 30 systems from a central hub linked by computer. These systems will have sensors that will measure turbidity, chlorine residual and other key aspects. We are considering products from cheap to more expensive to ensure that we have a range of products for a backup system for operators, which is one of our biggest challenges with small community water supplies.
With three or four provinces we will be testing these remote monitoring systems beginning this spring and into the fall, after which we will try to roll them out. We will also bring that information to the World Health Organization, because they have a particular interest in dealing with the capacity issue in small communities, particularly in developing countries.
That is a sample of what we are doing. Communication and getting information to communities on the importance of investing in drinking water is key. That has been raised by witnesses before this committee and by committee members as a very important factor. Ottawa has raised the cost for water services by 27 per cent over three years for infrastructure, and I see communities and governments moving towards that. We have to pay for the services if we want clean drinking water.
Senator Milne: How effective is UV?
Mr. Cooper: UV is extremely effective. There are some concerns, mostly in the U.S., with certain viruses that are very resistant to UV. The adena virus requires a much higher power output. However, UV is one of the more effective new technologies, and there is a shift towards UV, ozonation and membrane technology. This is the one-hundredth- year anniversary of the use of chlorine for drinking water, and new and very effective technologies are coming on line.
Senator Brown: Mr. Cooper, I believe you said that there have been 1,776 boil water advisories this year. After an advisory, do you monitor for repeat outbreaks in the same area or in the same system?
Mr. Cooper: Provinces presently collect this information, and the whole point of establishing this new national system is to allow us to do exactly that, to find out where the repeat problems are. It is the case that in some locations there are ongoing problems for three to five years with nothing being done to fix the situation. In other situations, the problem recurs. This is part of the reason for establishing a real-time alert system for boil water advisories. We do not currently have that information. Both the committee and Senator Grafstein have stated that it is important to have boil water advisory information. Dr. Steve Hrudey has given encouragement along those lines and we recognize how important this is. We can only deal with the issue if we know where the problems are recurring, and why.
Senator Brown: You said that the Australian system was designed to go in after a problem has occurred, to tell the small communities what they need to do to avoid future problems.
Mr. Cooper: I think the Australian water safety plan is more of a pro-active approach. They try to identify where problems could occur before they do. That is what we want to do by applying water safety plans and risk assessment tools here in Canada.
The Australian situation is somewhat different from Canada's. They have a lot fewer smaller communities, and their smaller communities tend to be in very arid areas where water sources are very deep and confined to aquifers, which tend to be pure. That is not to excuse the fact that we have far too many boil water advisories. We need to address that situation.
The Chair: On that point, I believe Dr. Hrudey said that one reason the system works as well as it does in Australia is that there has been an amalgamation of many small systems into a few large ones. Therefore, there is only one place to go rather than 20 in order to apply the regulations. Do I have that right?
Mr. Cooper: Australia has 384 water providers, so there is some consolidation.
The Chair: As opposed to 48,000?
Mr. Cooper: Yes.
The Chair: Is amalgamation of the system under one control part of the plan being considered?
Mr. Cooper: It is an option that needs to be explored. At this point it is not, but it is one thing that could help deal with our situation.
Senator Mitchell: Of the 1,766 boil water advisories, how many were on Aboriginal reserves?
Mr. Cooper: I do not have the exact numbers. I believe that approximately 93 were high risk. I would hesitate to say. It is generally about the same proportion as in small communities, which tend to be around 10 per cent. I do not have that information. Indian Affairs and Northern Development has this information. Part of our objective in establishing this real-time alert system for boil water advisories would be to be able to collect that sort of information on a real-time basis.
Senator Mitchell: Are you responsible for water in those communities, or is it the responsibility of Indian and Northern Affairs?
Mr. Cooper: Indian and Northern Affairs shares the responsibility with First Nation communities. Health Canada provides support in terms of monitoring, sampling and dealing with the health aspects, but actually under the jurisdiction of Indian and Northern Affairs.
Senator Mitchell: How confident are you that we even know where our aquifers and groundwater are and that we have a grasp of its quality, and potential threats to its quality?
Mr. Cooper: I am not very confident. This is an issue that has been raised regularly for the last 20 years. We need to do a better job in understanding the vulnerability of our groundwater resources. Approximately 30 per cent of Canadians depend on groundwater for their potable water supply. Natural Resources Canada has undertaken some major studies to look at vulnerability and characterization of major aquifers. More work needs to be done. I believe the government is looking at options in terms of working to develop a better knowledge of this very precious resource. Clearly, when we are talking about unconfined aquifers or aquifers that are subjected to influence by surface waters, then that becomes much more of a risk because then pathogens can certainly occur. More work does need to be done, yes.
Senator Mitchell: What consideration, assessment or review do you give to the effects of climate change on water quality and water availability?
Mr. Cooper: Climate change certainly is a significant issue when it comes to drinking water, and to water availability more broadly. As you know, glaciers appear to be melting in the Rockies. They feed all the rivers that flow eastward from the Rockies, the North and South Saskatchewan and other rivers. Certainly there is concern that water availability will be affected. When you affect water availability, you actually increase the potential for pollution and more concentration of pollution. There can even be infrastructure problems because if levels go down, then your intake pipe is not as deep, so the risk could be greater. That is being looked at. There probably needs to be a more concerted effort to address this issue as it comes along. It is an extremely important element in the management of drinking water in the long term.
Senator Mitchell: You mentioned that something was occurring or had occurred as of this April. I missed that.
Mr. Cooper: That was the launch of the drinking water advisory real-time alert system. I should point out that this system is secure. That means it is available to provincial, territorial and federal health regulators, the medical officers of health, because they use it as information-sharing on the details of health issues, problems and outbreaks. However, the system is designed so that you can extract information and make it publicly available, and that certainly is our intention with boil water advisories — not to keep it secluded in a secure database, but to make that information available.
Senator Mitchell: Why would it have taken so long, until April of this year, for that system to be put in place? That seems to me to be something that would and should have been there a long time ago.
Mr. Cooper: We are the first country to establish this sort of system. The Canadian Network of Public Health Intelligence, I believe, only came on line in 2003-04, and it provided the mechanism by which we could actually use this system to our advantage. Previous to that, we did have a paper-based copy of how we would react to these sorts of situations, but paper sits on shelves. We wanted an electronic system that would alert the people who need to know, as well as provide us with a means of informing the public on what the actual situation is. That is really the time line.
The Chair: Senator Mitchell, our analyst has reminded me that the answer to your question about the inclusion of boil water advisories on reserves is in the report referred to in the Canadian medical journal. The 1,766 boil water advisories do not include any Aboriginal communties. In other words, they are all outside of reserves.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Thank you, gentlemen. We are learning a great deal from these many presentations. It is terrible to ask questions when you have missed a major part of the presentation, although Senator Brown has been very helpful to me.
In Canada, at any one time, there are 1,200 to 2,000 boil water advisories, almost all occurring in small, remote or rural communities. In New Brunswick, and I think generally in Atlantic Canada, we have had it happen in a number of cities. I know of one city in particular that had a very short-term boil water warning. I remember at one point I was travelling and staying at a hotel, and it was not clear just exactly what the situation was.
I wonder if you might inform us a bit about cities and larger towns that may have had this problem over the last five or ten years?
Mr. Cooper: In terms of larger towns, certainly that does occur from time to time. We all remember Vancouver and the situation with the rainfalls that caused high turbidity in 2005. This is a situation where you have a large city being supplied with drinking water by a treatment plant which does not filter its water but takes it from surface water. Vancouver is in the process of finishing the construction of filtration plants for two of its reservoirs, scheduled to be completed by 2009 before the Olympics so they will not have this issue. What tends to happen in that sort of situation is that it is generally a short-lived problem, and a lot of attention is focused on it and it gets sorted immediately. In small communities, it can go on for years without any resolution, which is a concern to us.
Certainly there have been larger municipalities in New Brunswick, for example, that have undergone boil water advisories. Again, I believe St. John takes surface water and does not filter it. This is a matter of working with jurisdictions and recognizing the importance of investing in safe drinking water treatment systems. It tends to be short- lived because the public pressure of larger towns is much more effective than it is in small communities.
On your second question, in terms of providing information to people in a community that a boil water advisory is in existence and, most important, to people who are transient or just passing through, more needs to be done, and this will be part of the process that we undertake when we are addressing small community water-supply challenges.
I should point out that the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch of Health Canada has developed an excellent system to inform reserve people if they are under a boil water advisory. They go door-to-door and hang notices that explain the boil water advisory. The notices are based on pictograms and are very informative. They also have supporting documentation. We presented this information to the provinces and territories that are interested, and it is likely that they will begin to use similar information messaging to ensure that people are aware. Certainly, we need to do a much better job of informing residents of communities when they are under a boil water advisory.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: You mentioned a number of cities in the reply to my earlier question. Are these short- term advisories of 3-10 days more common than the presentation material implies?
Mr. Cooper: They are rare because most large systems have excellent high-level treatment and distribution systems, notwithstanding the problem we had with the watermain break on King Edward Avenue in Ottawa that was built in 1895. I raised the issue of infrastructure problems in the presentation material. We tend to find most of the problems with most large community water supplies in such older systems and we need to do more to address that issue.
In answer to your question, large city boil water advisories tend to be rare, short-lived and generally associated with the treatment plant.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Did the recent flooding in New Brunswick produce any boil water advisories?
Mr. Cooper: I am not aware that it did, although flooding creates that potential — such as during the Manitoba floods — for flooding of a number of drinking water treatment plants. That automatically means a boil water advisory. Unfortunately, I am not aware of any associated with the recent flooding in New Brunswick.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I should know probably, but I do not.
Senator Adams: You mentioned the boil water advisory notices for communities. Are they in English and French only? Do you send out these notices for First Nations communities?
Mr. Cooper: Yes, we have notices for First Nations reserve communities.
Senator Adams: Do you send them out for Inuit communities too?
Mr. Cooper: At this time, I do not believe the system has been implemented for Inuit communities, but I would strongly recommend it. Certainly, I would recommend talking to First Nations Inuit about the health concerns. I could not say for sure whether it is in place but I do not think so.
I should point out that because of the many different languages involved, most of the notices are presented as pictograms, accompanied by appropriate language, not only English and French.
Senator Adams: Most Inuit, in particular the elders, do not read English. Often, they do not even drink tap water. In Nunavut, there are only three community water and sewer systems — one each in Rankin, Iqaluit and Resolute — out of 25 communities. At times I am concerned about the majority of communities that rely on a reservoir for their water. This year, we had very cold weather and I do not know how deep the reservoirs are, maybe six to eight feet only. I talked to my son yesterday and he went out fishing last weekend where they usually fish. The ice was solid right to the bottom. The ice was so thick this year, between eight and nine feet, and it is usually six feet. They cannot go through a hole in the ice and find water. It is not a problem on the lake but the reservoir does not have a running source of water to it so during a very cold winter, it freezes right to the bottom. As soon as the fish run out of oxygen in the water, they die. Is any testing done on these reservoirs for the communities? Right now, humans and mammals have problems with the water in communities. Many snow geese come to these communities and land on the sewage lagoon. People sometimes eat the geese. The sewage can overflow into Baker Lake and in the summer the caribou drink from Baker Lake and the sewage lagoon this year. At Chesterfield Inlet, the caribou were there at the dump. There should be some way to fence it to keep the animals out, but I do not know how to do it. This has been reported in the local papers in Nunavut. Last summer, and again this year, the sewage lagoon overflowed into Baker Lake.
Mr. Cooper: I am not sure how to respond to your question because we all recognize that the north, and certainly Nunavut, face challenges with respect to drinking water. I remember your concerns from previous discussions about chlorine and making good tea, which is important.
When we talk about bringing some real solutions to small communities, that includes the north. I admit that the challenges we face in trying to address the northern issues are much more significant than those in the south. Currently, we are working with the Northwest Territories on potential solutions. They have issues with mining camps, and they are looking at remote sensing.
The issues that you raise are about how to protect the reservoir water supply and the waste water treatment system so that you do not have issues of cross-contamination making the water unsafe. Certainly, providing treatment in the north is a much more challenging and daunting prospect than it is in the southern areas. We are more than happy to work with the governments of Nunavut and the northern territories to help to address those issues. Certainly, with climate change occurring, some of these issues could be even more significant, so it is a priority for us, although I cannot come to the table and offer solutions for you today.
The Chair: Mr. Sockett, I am not suggesting that the systems would be the same in any way, either in monitoring or enforcement, but what would the Public Health Agency of Canada's reaction be if there were 10 simultaneous outbreaks of E. coli in 10 different packing plants across Canada? What would the process be to deal with such an event? The Canadian Food Inspection Agency would have found the problems. From the standpoint of the Public Health Agency of Canada, what would happen in those situations?
Mr. Sockett: That is an interesting question, and one which exercises our minds on occasion.
The Chair: Something would happen, I assume?
Mr. Sockett: Something definitely would happen. We would work closely with a number of the other government departments and agencies that would be involved in managing an issue of this kind. We would be working very closely with our colleagues in the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, with our colleagues in the Food Directorate of Health Canada and with our colleagues in the provinces and territories.
In a situation like that, the agency would probably take a coordinating role in trying to ensure each of those incidents are effectively evaluated and responded to in an appropriate way. The agency's prime responsibility would be in monitoring and trying to prevent human illness. We would be looking to our colleagues in the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to try to understand better how those incidents were actually occurring, and working with them to develop risk assessments which would eventually be turned into actions, such as the withdrawal of whatever product was felt to be causing that particular problem.
For example, you may be aware that there have been some very large withdrawals of ground beef products in recent years — even in recent months in North America, spanning both the Canadian and U.S. border. Some of these have run into multiple millions of pounds of products, and these have had to be removed from the shelf. This requires a high degree of coordination and collaboration between the relevant agencies, provincial and territorial departments in Canada, as well as our colleagues in the United States.
The Chair: There are standards that must be met in those places. In packing plants, in most cases of the larger kind, there are federal government inspectors, is that not so?
Mr. Sockett: In certain plants, yes. If plants are exporting product outside of provincial or Canadian borders, then they would be federally inspected and be subject to regulations under the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
The Chair: To your knowledge, would there be a sanction of any kind if the operators of those plants and their proprietors had been found, in those instances, not to have met the standards that are set for health interests in those places?
Mr. Sockett: There are two levels at which that would operate. There would be an immediate level, which would result in the Canadian Food Inspection Agency working with the plant owner, or the company that is producing the meat, to remove the product off the shelf as quickly as possible. Although that is normally a voluntary activity carried out after discussions between the CFIA and the company itself, the CFIA would have the powers to ensure that that happens, if necessary.
The second level would relate more to the examination of any infringements of safe food production, which would then, again, be up to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and/or the provincial or territorial health authorities to decide on further action to be taken to ensure that safe product is produced in the future in that plant.
Senator Milne: Did you say, Mr. Sockett, that not all meat-packing plants are inspected; that only those exporting meat between provinces and internationally are inspected?
Mr. Sockett: I did not mean to say that they are not all inspected. However, only those plants which are exporting product are federally inspected. That is my understanding. However, for others, there would be provincial-level information and regulation.
Senator Cochrane: May I diverge from water while I have Mr. Sockett here? I will put you on the spot, Mr. Sockett.
Mr. Sockett: It would not be the first time.
Senator Cochrane: Just last week, I became a little nervous. I heard about a train incident near Sudbury, I believe. A lady died on the train which contained several hundred people. They put out an alert stating that everyone should be careful; that a disease may be present, or something of that sort.
Are we sufficiently prepared for any type of outbreaks or anything like that?
Mr. Sockett: I think that is a very interesting question.
The Chair: In this place, we call that a ``boot-leg question.'' Boot-leg things are not regulated by definition.
Senator Cochrane: Do you know the incident I am referring to? One lady died and another one was sent to hospital.
Mr. Sockett: I am fully aware of that particular incident. The reason the question is so interesting is that there is no doubt that, in Canada, we have made great strides in recent years to ensure that we have very good systems in place to respond to outbreaks of various types. One only has to look at some of the investigations carried out in recent years — in Walkerton, for example — to see that we have a competent cadre of people to do this.
Within my own centre, we have a division devoted to outbreak investigation. We have a number of experts who are there either to provide provinces and territories with guidance on investigations that they are conducting — this is particularly for foodborne and waterborne diseases — or who are prepared to actually parachute in and lead or support an investigation on the ground, should that be required.
Obviously, with the potential threats that we have been concerned about in recent years relating to things like bioterrorism, there has been a big push to try to develop even further our capacity to carry out large-scale outbreak investigations and to work collaboratively with other first responders.
The reason I said your question is so interesting is that the train outbreak — or the train ``situation'' because it was not, at the end of the day, an outbreak — showed that the various components of a response of this nature did work extremely well together. People came together. People knew what they were supposed to be doing on the ground. There were excellent communications. The Emergency Operations Centre within the Public Health Agency of Canada provided a lot of the coordination for that response, even to the point of using satellite communications equipment to talk to the doctor on the train who treated the lady. Unfortunately, she died despite treatment.
One of the things that incident showed us is that many of the capacities that we put in place can and do work very well. Obviously, there is always room for improvement. However, it was encouraging for us to see that we could respond, together with many other agencies and emergency responder groups, in such an effective way.
Senator Cochrane: That is good to hear.
Senator Grafstein: Welcome again, Mr. Cooper. I am absolutely delighted to hear, after all these years, that in April of this year we are addressing some problems that I raised with you seven years ago, I believe.
Mr. Cooper: It was not quite that long ago.
Senator Grafstein: Six years ago, regularly. I am not saying that in any malicious way. I am simply delighted that finally this thing called the federal government is awakening to its federal responsibilities.
Let us start with a statement you made: Resolution will not happen through regulation. I would like you to inform this committee of the structure of all the various agencies in the federal government that are responsible for water and safety. Let me give some examples: Your own department, the Department of Agriculture; the Department of Natural Resources; Department of Fisheries and Oceans; Transport Canada; and, particularly, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. All of these are responsible for regulations. Each of these departments has regulatory power, as does the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the example you have just given. Nothing would have happened with respect to forcing those goods off the shelf without the underlying federal power. It would have been a coalition of the willing.
It is important that we finally get a look at all the agencies that use regulation with respect to resolving problems relating to water. I know of a number of them, and it would be useful for the committee, when examining this bill, to look at where this bill would fit into this system. Would that be difficult to do?
Mr. Cooper: It would be quite complex unless we scope this a little more clearly. The Canada Labour Code requires that drinking water be potable at the federal government level. That is the fundamental legislation that deals with safe drinking water for all departments.
Senator Grafstein: That is for employees. There are also clients of each of these departments for which the agencies are directly responsible. Examples are airplanes, parks and Aboriginal communities.
Mr. Cooper: That is right, and the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development raised recommendations regarding public conveyances and safety of drinking water, and much progress has been made in terms of establishing agreements and sampling protocols with the aviation industry to address that issue.
In terms of the broad range of departments and their responsibilities vis-à-vis drinking water, it is not as simple as saying that they have specific authorities. An interdepartmental working group was struck four or five years ago to deal with the issue of drinking water on federal lands, not only for public servants but also for people visiting parks, correctional facilities and national defence bases. Documents have been produced that lay out their approach to protecting drinking water. They all apply the guidelines for Canadian drinking water as their standards for assessing whether they are doing the right job.
Senator Grafstein: Mr. Cooper, this would be helpful because a canard is being raised against my bill on costs. This would demonstrate that there is lack of accountability with respect to overlapping agencies within the federal government. The purpose of this bill is to systematize the activities of the federal government across all agencies as they apply to drinking water.
Mr. Cooper: That is the intention of this group, with the support of the departments. However, I am unclear how this information deals with that issue. For the federal government to regulate drinking water across the country is a very different exercise that requires a different skill set than regulating food.
Senator Grafstein: With all due respect, I heard that, but you already do that. You do that in the areas where the federal government has untrammelled jurisdiction. This is not new. The idea is not to do something new but to do something cost effective to reduce overlap and duplication at the federal level. Perhaps I am not making my point clear.
In the last two or three years, since we started this discussion, we have heard minister after minister, Prime Minister after Prime Minister and Throne Speech after Throne Speech, saying that we are going to look at water. We have heard it for five, six or seven years.
The Chair: We have been at it for five years.
Senator Grafstein: I have been at it for a few more years.
My point is that the bureaucracy is finally coming to grips with the fact that there are overlapping responsibilities for clean drinking water in the federal agency. This bill is proposing to rationalize that system and, using that base, to cost-effectively provide oversight of regulation with respect to provinces. That is the notion of this bill. It is a reform of the federal government as it applies to drinking water. It is an accountability bill.
Mr. Cooper: That is not how I have read the bill. Making community water systems and drinking water food would actually expand the federal role into all provincial areas, not only oversight. You cannot do just oversight under the Food and Drugs Act.
In terms of First Nation reserves, there is a process ongoing and consultations are currently in progress with First Nations groups on the best way to bring a regulatory regime across the country to 1,000 communities.
Senator Grafstein: That makes my point. We are now in agreement. Senator Adams and Senator Watt are the godfathers of this bill, because seven years ago they both complained to me about the water situation in Aboriginal communities. There has been no question about direct federal responsibility for Aboriginal communities since Confederation, yet look at the last medical report we received. Senator Adams brought to me the filter from his own home, which was full of mud and chemicals.
Let us look at the structure and see where the federal government is directly involved, and let us cost-effectively examine how we can provide clean drinking water, equally and fairly, to each citizen of this country. That is the larger purpose of this bill.
Let us start with the structure. We have some time to receive this. Perhaps we should call the other agencies and have them all account as you have, Mr. Cooper. By the way, I am not critical of what you do. I think you are doing good work.
Mr. Cooper: The Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development looked at the provision of drinking water in other federal documents. It looked at the First Nations issue and at the travelling public. They have pulled together the information to make recommendations on what is needed. Since 2005, governments have been active in trying to respond effectively to those recommendations.
I would not suggest duplicating the work of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development. There is ongoing work being done in all the areas you deal with. This is an important area, and the federal provision of safe drinking water in areas of its responsibility needs to be effectively addressed. My concern is that Bill S-206 goes well beyond that.
Senator Grafstein: It obviously does. I am not suggesting that it does not. I am prepared to meet the challenge of looking at costs if that is a hurdle I have to overcome. I will do the homework on this.
It is fair to say that there is tremendous skill, knowledge and expertise within the federal sphere in providing clean drinking water. It is a tangle of overlapping bureaucracies. I do not quarrel with that. Agencies are established in that way; they are pillared. I am sure Mr. Sockett had that problem when his new agency was established.
You are smiling, Mr. Sockett. I understand the difficulties that your agency encountered in trying to bring public health to one place. It was a tremendous battle to do that.
We are trying to rationalize drinking water, and this would be helpful. Give the committee what you can.
Mr. Cooper: I suggest that the first approach should be to go through the Commissioner on the Environment and Sustainable Development. They have collected this information and are currently doing a follow-up audit to see what actions have been taken in response to the recommendations.
I would also point out that many federal departments work with their provincial colleagues on an ongoing basis because they have the expertise that the federal government lacks, in certain instances.
Senator Grafstein: Thank you very much, Mr. Cooper. I will deal with Mr. Sockett in a moment, but I will try to be very brief. Time is running out and I know the committee has to adjourn relatively shortly. I will cover a lot of ground very quickly.
Relating to Senator Trenholme Counsell's question, my understanding — and this is all anecdotal — is that in the last five years, there has been a series of outbreaks concerning water safety in Vancouver, Moncton, Winnipeg, St. John's, Montreal and other cities across Canada. We do not know the extent of them but we know that, for instance in Vancouver, according to Dr. Schindler, there were 17,000 people affected in one year because of bad drinking water for precisely the reasons Mr. Cooper pointed out. This is before Mr. Sockett's agency was in existence.
It would be useful if we could have the fuller picture — even if they are short outbreaks in big urban areas; this is not just a small city problem.
Mr. Cooper: I would like to turn over the question to Paul Sockett. However, quickly, on the issue of 17,000 people falling ill in Vancouver, this relates to the study that was done in 2000 by Health Canada, is that correct?
Senator Grafstein: I am not sure of the date; you may be right about that.
Mr. Cooper: It was a study looking at the instances of turbidity in the supply, because it did not show through drinking water, and to estimate the number of GI illnesses associated with that. When you say 17,000, that refers to 17,000 over a six-year period. That is not a one-year period. Let us be clear about that.
It was a modeling exercise where, on an average, the GI illness associated with water was less than 2 per cent. I take your point; it is still a serious issue. I am not discounting that but we need to look at the parameters under which it was put forward.
Senator Grafstein: I think it is fair, when we talk about small communities, that we need to look also at the problems we have had in larger communities. Even thought it might be small in a percentage way, in a cumulative way it might be quite large.
Mr. Cooper: This is generally an infrastructure challenge, where we have large towns that perhaps do not filter their water. This needs to be addressed. Certainly, in the issue of Vancouver, that was the cause. With issues elsewhere in large towns, there can be problems with the treatment plant.
The Chair: I have to interrupt, and I beg your pardon. We have been hearing for five years that these things have to be addressed. When will they be addressed and how — by whom, when and what will happen?
The reason I am asking you the questions, Mr. Cooper, is that I asked Mr. Sockett earlier. We all know that if there were a problem with Coca-Cola bottlers not living up to the regulations that apply to them — or meat packing plants, or people who make cornflakes or bubblegum were not meeting the standards — there would be an immediate reaction and things would happen right now because of the federal power, because those things are regulated. Nobody is suggesting that water should be regulated in the same way, by the same means and to the same extent that meat and potatoes are; merely that it should be regulated so that there is a consequence of not meeting the standard.
We have been hearing — and some of us find it frustrating — that yes, these things have to be looked at and yes, we are working on that and yes, there is an interdepartmental working group; but the guy riding home on the bus tonight at five o'clock hearing all of this would take from the conversation we have had that we cannot do this because it is inconvenient, because it would be too complicated, and it would cost money.
We can get away without meat. We can live without wheat and bread; we do not even have to have bread. We can certainly live without other things.
Senator Grafstein: Be careful about Coca-Cola.
The Chair: I did not go there. However, we cannot live without water. It should be the most important thing. It should be the thing about which there is the most clear, immediate action, and the thing which ought — more than anything else in the country — to be assured in respect of its not causing illness. The guy riding home on the bus tonight, hearing this conversation, to my mind, would think they are saying they cannot do this because it would be inconvenient. It needs to be addressed. When will it be addressed, how and by whom?
Mr. Cooper: I will answer briefly because I would like to give Mr. Sockett an opportunity. I hope that is not the message that I have brought to this committee, that it is not convenient to address drinking water problems. I think we all share the concern that we need to address them, and it is a priority.
What I have tried to convey is that there are regulations in place across the country, and regulations are not necessarily the way in which we will solve this issue. Regulations actually mean that you put boil water advisories in place if you have a problem. We need to address the problem.
The Chair: The boil water advisories are the alarm system. Where is the fireman?
Mr. Cooper: We agree. That is why I am saying that we need to invest in infrastructure. That is why communities now are taking on this task, where Ottawa has increased, over three years, by 27 per cent the wherewithal to address the infrastructure problem. This is a communication tool.
Regulation will not make people invest in infrastructure. For a small community water supply, they do not have the tax base; they cannot provide a system that is equivalent to a large system. This is not a matter of convenience. I think we are all agreed at the table that infrastructure needs to be addressed. One of the most important messages coming out of this committee is the need to focus on trying to address these issues. Regulations, by themselves, will not deal with that issue. It is an investment capacity issue. Even if you had the treatment plants, you still need the trained, certified operators, which is another challenge.
The Chair: Just like in meat-packing plants.
Senator Grafstein: It has been a useful discussion about the federal power. What this bill is talking about is addressing the question of the federal power. In my view, based on my experience in municipal affairs, that has been ongoing.
Our colleague Senator Milne's father was the mayor of Toronto and he ran on a fantastic ticket. His ticket was the best political ticket I have ever heard of, and I have noted this in my brain. It was a very simple slogan. He said, ``You have to have respect for the taxpayer's dollar.'' He was overwhelmingly successful as the mayor of Toronto because of that slogan.
I am sensitive to costs, and we are sensitive to costs. The question is the proper allocation of costs as it relates to the federal power. For Toronto or Walkerton or Winnipeg or others who have been dilatory in improving their water systems, you bring the federal criminal power to bear and councillors across the country will be more sensitive to their responsibilities. That is the whole purpose of this bill. It is not to set up a criminal regime; it is to use the federal power as a tool to persuade councillors and municipalities to do the job that they were paid to do to begin with. That is the whole purpose of the federal power. It is not to put people in jail. It is to use the federal power in a creative way. In any event, we will have a discussion about that later.
Let me just conclude with one other comment. Again, it concerns Mr. Hrudey's evidence on the Australian experience. There, it is not the lack of regulation; it is not the coalition of the willing; it is the application of power and regulation. That is why the system in Australia is effective at the regional and federal level. It is not a voluntary guideline applied; it is an enforceable guideline required to be applied. Is that not so?
Mr. Cooper: I would suggest that the provinces and territories in Canada have more enforceability attached to the regulations that we apply in Canada than the Australians do in that situation. In the Australian situation, there are Australian national water guidelines. They are reflected in state legislation, but not generally in individual regulations of each of those states.
We do not have voluntary guidelines in place in Canada. This is the point I raised earlier in this discussion. We have national guidelines, but they are adopted and enforced as national standards in all provinces and territories.
Senator Grafstein: We will deal with that evidence again. However, my understanding from reading carefully Dr. Hrudey's evidence is that he believed in a multi-barrier approach, which you have evoked. Multi-barrier means municipal, provincial and federal. In other words, in order to preserve the health of Canadians, in order to ensure that everyone has equal access — as Senator Adams has pressed me on — the purpose is to use the multi-barrier approach. It is like a triple filter.
By the way, if the provinces and the various departments are doing a good job, then the federal agency will not spend a lot of money. They will just be spot-checking across the country.
Mr. Cooper: That is an innovative definition of the multi-barrier approach, and I commend you on that. From a technical perspective, the multi-barrier approach is to ensure that source is protected, treatment is best and distribution, operation and all those features of providing drinking water from source to tap are not only protected but that they have back-up systems in place. In that way, if something goes wrong, there is something to come in to replace or protect it. I understand your analogy to federal-provincial-territorial.
Senator Grafstein: Let me make one more analogy and I will go on. The whole purpose of the United States government is checks and balances. No one should trust the human being; various agencies should check and balance each other. That is the American system.
The Canadian system is very similar, but different. It is similar in the sense that the federal government, under our Constitution, can disallow provincial action. We have not used that power. However, the purpose of that was to have responsible government so that the federal government would be responsible for the welfare of Canadians as a whole. Anyway, that is for another day.
I will end with this question, if I can. It is in regard to the guideline, where we started. Again, the evidence that we received from the medical association is: In Canada we have 54 elements that go into the guideline. In the United States, it is 87. Why the difference?
Mr. Cooper: I do not know where you got those numbers. We have approximately 90 chemical guidelines. We cover all the radiological guidelines as well, plus we have all the microbiological guidelines.
Senator Grafstein: How recent is that?
Mr. Cooper: We have had at least 80 to 85 for the last 15 years.
Senator Grafstein: We will need to take a fresh look at that evidence.
The Chair: I think we may be talking about two different lists.
Mr. Cooper: One of the concerns raised by the Commissioner on Environment and Sustainable Development, when they audited the guideline process, said that 50 of our guidelines were out of date. Perhaps that is the source of your 50 number. In 2005, in response to that audit, we were able to reaffirm 42 of those 50 guidelines, based on the fact that there had been no new science that would change the health impacts, the treatment or the exposure. However, we did a complete priority review of all guidelines — existing guidelines as well as new and emerging contaminants.
We have a regular process to prioritize what we look at. It is done every three years. However, between those three year processes, we discuss priorities because new information becomes available within those three years. Therefore we will adjust within to ensure that we are looking and developing guidelines that really focus on protecting public health.
Senator Grafstein: What is the current regulatory lag between instituting up-to- date guidelines and the implementation of those guidelines, or the enforcement of those guidelines at the provincial level?
Mr. Cooper: To develop a guideline from start to finish takes, on average, three years. That is why at any one time we are working with approximately 15 guidelines. Essentially, we push out five guidelines per year. That was a commitment we made to the Commissioner on the Environment and Sustainable Development because we wanted to streamline our process and ensure that we were current and protective of health.
Senator Grafstein: They are undergoing that study to confirm that, are they not?
Mr. Cooper: Yes, to confirm that. We have been successful over the last few years by doing five guidelines per year. They are adopted by provinces and go through the regulatory process, which can take effect immediately, or can take effect in one to two years subsequently. However, they have that information and they will apply it if they know it is a health concern, whether it is in regulation or not. We have to use common sense when we protect people's health.
Senator Grafstein: One short question to Mr. Sockett. As I understand your testimony, you report what is reported to you.
Mr. Sockett: Correct.
Senator Grafstein: If, in fact, the reporting systems are out of date or not kept, you get the residue of what filters through the system that is actual.
Have you done any studies to determine how effective is the system that you draw inputs from, and what the regulatory delay or the informational delay might be in terms of reporting it?
Again, the information I have received from Dr. Schindler and others is anecdotal. It states that there is a huge under-reported element of illnesses in Aboriginal communities and other communities because it is just not reported.
Mr. Sockett: That is a complex question.
Senator Grafstein: I know it is.
Mr. Sockett: I will attempt to give a relatively simple answer. First, I will start off by saying that I am gratified that you think I am young enough not to have taken part in the Vancouver study in 2000. It was my division staff who conducted that study in collaboration with the health authorities in Vancouver.
There is no doubt from the data that we have that we know there is under-reporting of infections. My experience is gastrointestinal, which is foodborne and waterborne diseases, as well as the person-to-person spread of these infections in Canada. We are not alone in that almost any country around the world that conducts this type of surveillance will openly admit that they do not capture everything.
First, the types of surveillance activities we carry out are designed to identify major outbreak-type events so that we can respond to those, or provoke a response on behalf of our public health colleagues in the provinces and territories to investigate such an event as rapidly as possible. Our major concern in those types of surveillance activities is to identify events which are affecting segments of the population and to ensure that the investigation is carried out as effectively, quickly and efficiently as possible.
However, having said that, we also carry out, or are in the process at the moment of carrying out, a number of studies under a program called the National Studies on Acute Gastrointestinal Illness, or NSAGI. These studies are designed to try to give us a much better handle on how much gastrointestinal illness is occurring in the population.
We have completed the first phase of those studies. The figures we are about to publish would suggest that there are somewhere in the region of 35 to 39 million events of gastrointestinal illness a year in Canada. These would be individual events; it may be one person who becomes sick once or one person who is sick several times during a year. Obviously there will be people who do not get sick at all.
The major challenge we face in trying to interpret that information is to try to identify how much of this is due to food, how much could be due to water or how much may be due to person-to-person spread. What are the different organisms — bacteria, viruses or other parasites — that are causing this sickness? That is the next phase of these studies that, we hope, will look at the socio-economic impact of these infections to some extent.
As you will appreciate, these are fairly complex studies that take a lot of time and resources to complete.
Senator Grafstein: Thank you. That confirms my anecdotal information that this is a deeper problem. The question is about the nature and the cause of the sickness, because those 39 million incidents affect the cost to the federal health system. How we reduce costs is another argument.
The Chair: Mr. Cooper mentioned the FCM. We are having representatives from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities with us on June 12 and we will be pursuing that question with them. We will take your advice about going to the commissioner to get the list that Senator Grafstein was talking about. If we do not get it, we will come back to you.
Senator Milne: Does the Public Health Agency of Canada come under Health Canada? Are you funded by Health Canada?
Mr. Sockett: We report directly to the Minister of Health.
Senator Milne: Then you are both funded separately.
Mr. Sockett: We are funded separately, but within the health portfolio.
Senator Milne: Can you provide an estimate on how much each of your groups spends annually on drinking water quality issues? Would Bill S-206 actually help you?
Mr. Cooper: The budget we have for drinking water guidelines is approximately $3.5 million to develop guidelines, not including the overhead. I cannot give you a value for the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch grants that support First Nation's monitoring and testing. The First Nations and Inuit Health Branch works on a wide variety of health-related issues within First Nations communities. I am not sure that they factor out the water component.
The Health Products and Food Branch deals with things such as bottled water, but we are talking about the guideline development process, which is a key element. There is another section dealing with water on public conveyances that has a small budget.
Mr. Sockett: I cannot give you a precise figure on this question. The reason is simple. In our surveillance programs, the organisms that cause waterborne illness are much the same as the ones that cause foodborne illness. It does not get divided into separate pots.
The budget allocated within my centre for active surveillance of gastrointestinal pathogens as a whole, including outbreaks, investigation and other activities, is between $1.5 and $2 million.
Other organizations within the Public Health Agency of Canada also contribute to these activities, for example the National Microbiology Laboratory and the Laboratory for Enteric Pathogens. I do not know their budget. They do most of the reference work on the microbiological testing of these different pathogens and the sub-typing of salmonella and further typing those into PFG patterns and further strains. There is also the Laboratory for Foodborne Zoonoses in Guelph that has some activities related to foodborne, zoonotic and water issues. However, I cannot tell you how much their budgets are.
Senator Milne: This bill may help to get you more money.
Mr. Sockett: I have never been known to turn down offers of money to bolster my programs.
Senator Milne: Are parasites such as giardia strictly waterborne?
Mr. Sockett: Cryptosporidium and giardia are recognized as being predominantly waterborne pathogens, but there are other mechanism by which they can be spread, such as person-to-person and contamination of food. It is important to remember when we talk about waterborne infections that we are not only talking about consumption of potable water from the drinking tap. There is a lot of evidence of outbreaks related to both those organisms through municipal swimming pools, swimming in lakes and rivers and other types of recreational settings such as water parks. It is a complex issue.
Senator Milne: That is certainly how my son and grandson picked up beaver fever.
Mr. Cooper: To respond to whether more money would help, I think more money is always good. However, realistically, the collaborative approach we have ensures that there are a number of contributors to the pot, which is very effective. If we did not have the provinces and territories doing the work that they do for us and for themselves, the costs would be enormous.
Senator Milne: That is valuable information.
Mr. Sockett: I would echo that comment for the surveillance and investigatory activities in which we are involved.
The Chair: We need to bear in mind that waterborne does not necessarily mean that it — the organism — came out of the tap. It may have come from elsewhere. That is important to remember.
Senator Brown: I would like to thank Mr. Cooper for his presentation and for answering all the questions so far.
I think you are correct when you say that the management of the system and the improvement of that management is how you solve any problems with water. I agree one hundred per cent with that.
Four years ago in Calgary, we had about 12 inches of rainfall in less than 48 hours. That is a 100-year event. No one would question Calgary's quality of water. However, a warning went out that people should not use more water than they had to because the turbidity of the Bow River had become so great that the city's filtering and settling ponds had reached maximum. The population needed to use less water so that it would not become dangerous.
With 48,500 groups of people supplying our water across this country, I think that you are correct in saying that it is the management of the system that is important. I do not know much about Vancouver. However, if they were drawing water without proper filtration and getting away with it for 100 years, or whatever it was, certainly they cannot do that under emergency flood conditions.
We have water pipelines and filtration systems infrastructure all over this country that is at the breaking point. We should spend the money we have available on improving those systems.
I would like to see an emergency fund from the federal government available for things such as Senator Adams has raised. If northern Aboriginal communities have recurring conditions that makes the water unsafe at various times of the year, then we should fix the system. We should find the funding to fix the system so that people do not get sick, which happens in almost every instance.
Mr. Cooper, you mentioned in your presentation that we have some of the safest water in the world but we will always have problems because of infrastructure and population growth. I do not see how any regulation could prevent problems with 48,500 different systems supplying our water. I believe that criminal powers were applied in the Walkerton tragedy because, first, two people were not trained to do their jobs; second, they did not take the samples of water that they were supposed to take; and third, they reported that the samples were okay. It was a combination of three things that they did incorrectly. I have forgotten what the penalties levied were, or whether the two people in charge of the water system ended up with a severe reprimand or were incarcerated.
I cannot imagine criminal powers applying to every community water system in this country because that would make an awful lot of people back away from such a responsibility. I agree that we have to have some way to enforce water quality standards. I would liken this to airplane safety. Our pilots are among the best in the world. Certainly, their punishment is pretty severe if they fail to do their jobs properly. If they do anything that does not meet their standards, they are relieved quickly of their licences.
In my understanding, oversight means being on the site on a regular basis to determine whether things are being done correctly. We depend on the people who sample our water, filter it and chlorinate it. If they are not on site continuously, I do not see how our water can be safe because we have floods, rainstorms and fractures of infrastructure. These are instantaneous happenings. We could have hundreds, maybe thousands, of people getting sick at any given time if these systems fail and the water is not shut off, or we do not have a boil water advisory. I do not see how any regulation will stop that. You are correct when you I say that what is important is the management of the system and the need to improve the system on a continuous basis. I would like to see money devoted to that.
Mr. Cooper: I will respond quickly. Since Walkerton and North Battleford, every province and the federal government have awakened to the issue of the safety of drinking water. They have upgraded, strengthened all the legislation, regulations and approval permits that exist across the country. They have done it on a very comprehensive, multi-barrier approach way. All provinces now require training and certification of operators. That becomes a problem in small communities because the certified people generally move on.
All provinces require sampling in accredited or government laboratories. Source water protection is being implemented across the country but it is an extremely difficult thing to do. It is not something you can accomplish overnight, given the many stakeholders in a watershed. However, the regulations exist across the country. We still have 1,766 boil water advisories and I do not think another set of regulations overlaying the existing stringent regulations in the provinces and territories will solve the issues of infrastructure and small community water supplies. We need to focus our effort on education, investment in infrastructure and bringing real solutions to small community water supplies.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I will add to the debate on reporting of illnesses. I believe I am safe in saying that the vast majority of illnesses from food and water are not reported. They would be reported in a huge outbreak such as Walkerton. We all know about the diarrhoea that accompanies acute gastrointestinal illness. We generally tend to blame it on something we ate or drank in a restaurant or in our homes a few hours earlier. Someone might advise us to drink lots of water. This happens all the time. That leads me to think that there is a vast underreporting. It would only be through a public awareness campaign that citizens could realize how important it is to report cases of such short- term illness. Of course, the corresponding people in the health care field would comply and report. Even with cases of infectious diseases that are supposed to be reported, unless things have changed drastically in the last decade, there is far too little reporting. Underreporting is widespread.
Mr. Sockett: Underreporting is an issue that we recognize, not only in Canada but in every country that collects data. The reasons things are underreported are many and varied. The vast majority of the cases that I mentioned earlier, we suspect, are people who have very mild illness that lasts only a day or two. They do not seek medical attention and, therefore, they will never get into the system.
Those people who are a little more ill and go to see a doctor will probably be given the kind of advice that you just identified: What to eat and drink and come back in three days if they have not recovered. The vast majority of those people would recover during that time. Only those who return to the doctor a second time will have a laboratory specimen taken. We know from studies done, not only in Canada but also in the United Kingdom, other European countries and Australia, that a very high proportion of those laboratory specimens might not provide a positive result. Thus, we have yet another layer to get through before we get a positive result, which will then get into the reporting system.
As I mentioned earlier, the intention of the reporting system is to pick up those people who are getting to the severe end of the spectrum of illness so that we can identify issues such as outbreaks and investigate them. We believe that our surveillance activities work reasonably well. When we compare them with similar surveillance and public health activities in other countries, such as Europe, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, which have equivalent levels of development, we see very similar patterns. Canada is not at all unusual.
In my view, the key issue is whether we successfully pick up those really important events where we need to have a level of investigation and protection for the population. I believe that on the whole, we do so.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: This applies more to food than to water, but if people realized there was a societal importance and value to reporting, then they would report. They would make sure that if they were to become ill after eating at a restaurant, they would report it; or if they bought something at a grocery store, such as sushi, and they became ill, they would report it. This would be for the greater good of us all. There would be more attention paid to standards. I know that it is more relative to food than to water, but there is a relevance to water as well.
Mr. Sockett: Within the public health community, we understand that the local public health infrastructure is there to provide that level of support for members of the general public. There is good evidence that, if people believe something they have eaten has caused the problem, many of them will contact their local public health department and report that. If the public health department is aware that there are a sufficient number of cases linked to an issue, they will initiative investigation at the local level, but we may not capture that within federal statistics.
The Chair: Please tell me if I have this wrong. The mayor of a city, the reeve of a small community, or the guy that my nine neighbours chose to operate a water system is not susceptible to the same kind of immediate action as would be a purveyor, large or small, of candy, chocolate bars, beer, bottled soft drinks, bottled water, meat, vegetables, bread or any other thing that we consume, if found to transgress any of the standards that apply from whatever source in the purveyance of goods or commodities with the possible result of making people sick. Although some have been taken care of, there are at least 1,500 boil water advisories. The people operating those systems are purveying, from the end of a tap, a commodity that we need to live, and they are charging for it. Even though we know that the water coming out of those taps might not be safe, they continue to sell it.
I think the point of this bill is that if there were a sanction that applied to those who continued to sell this unsafe water, priorities for spending corporate or municipal monies might be different than they currently are.
Would you both please react to that? I need to understand why there are sanctions with meat, potatoes, candy, soft drinks and beer, but not with water.
Mr. Cooper: There are sanctions under provincial and territorial legislation for noncompliance with regulations.
The Chair: How do they apply to the 1,766 people who are selling water out of the tap now?
Mr. Cooper: That is an enforcement action. You provide water because you need it. If you are told you cannot drink it, it is not necessarily down to an operator. Sometimes it is an operator's fault; sometimes the chlorinator does not work; sometimes the turbidity is high. There are a multitude of reasons for boil water advisories for which a person need not necessarily be charged.
The Chair: I would leave aside the 100-year events.
Mr. Cooper: It is not only the 100-year events. Every spring there is high turbidity, and if you only have intake and chlorination, you will have a problem. As stated in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, there are more boil water advisories in the springtime due to high turbidity. The provinces and territories do audits of drinking water treatment. All bad results coming from labs must immediately go to the regulator, and the regulator does take action.
Applying penalties to small communities is not always the most effective way to deal with a situation, because water is rarely sold for a profit, unlike chewing gum or other things where costs can be cut. Operator training and certification is required. They do audits. Labs are required to report any incidents of excess in order that action can be taken on a microbiological level. At the back of that there are penalties applied in a reasonable way, because the priority is to fix the problem rather than to put someone in jail for turbidity.
The Chair: I want to agree with what you said earlier. Not only do we not sell water for a profit, we do not sell water for nearly enough. The internalized proper cost of water is not in our water bills. None of us pays enough for water.
Mr. Cooper: That is changing with climate change. We are seeing the impacts of climate change in the West where water resources are declining. We will see higher prices. To deal with the infrastructure problem, jurisdictions are going to full-cost pricing.
Mr. Sockett: I will echo the comments that Mr. Cooper has made in terms of water and water safety. There is regulation.
I would add that the Walkerton outbreak was not due simply to the failure of two individuals to carry out their proper responsibilities. There was a very complex set of circumstances that combined at one time to lead to that outbreak. These included a very heavy rainfall event, the switching of water intake into the water system from the main supply to what turned out to be a less safe supply with damage to its internal casing, the proximity to that well of a farm where cattle were potentially excreting the organisms that caused illness in the community, and a topographical structure that allowed water to flow from that farm into the catchment for the well area. These are things that cannot be regulated against. They are the types of things that frequently crop up with outbreaks. It is not a simple issue of whether two individuals should have done their job properly. That is certainly true, but these other things, which are mainly natural phenomena, cannot be regulated against.
The Chair: You have both been very helpful and made some very good suggestions. We are grateful for your testimony.
The committee adjourned.