Honourable senators, I rise to speak to the message from the other place on Bill S-5, strengthening environmental protection for a healthier Canada act.

A year after our comprehensive study of the bill to reform the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, known as CEPA, we are finally close to modernizing Canada’s legislative framework on toxic substances. I need not remind you that CEPA was adopted in 1999 and had not been updated since. Twenty-four long years is an outrageous amount of time to leave untouched the most important tool for protecting the environment and our health while science has progressed at an unprecedented rate and has warned us.

As we see the omnipresence of plastic pollution, microplastics in human organs, uncontrolled toxic spills, terrifying wildfires, floods and other extreme weather events caused by polluting gases warming the atmosphere, I can’t help but wonder: If we had revised CEPA 15 years ago, would we be at this dreadful cul-de-sac?

Bill S-5 is coming back to the Senate with a set of amendments modifying 38 clauses. We are grateful to the House of Commons, whose amendments are generally based on the work of the Senate. The House of Commons made no changes to 21 of our amendments, which validates the good work we did in committee. I sincerely thank every member of the Standing Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources.

The other Senate amendments were for the most part clarified or reformulated, and only a few were rejected by the Commons.

In my speech, I will address a few specific amendments, which, I believe, were improved by the House, and also a few remaining gaps and weaknesses.

One of the main features of Bill S-5 is the inclusion of the concept of a right to a healthy environment. During our study, most witnesses applauded the concept but criticized the bill for simply instructing the Minister of Environment and Climate Change to develop and implement a plan rather than enshrining the actual right.

The House made a few modifications, but the intent remains the same. It added a definition of a healthy environment, describing it as “an environment that is clean, healthy and sustainable.” It restructured the Senate amendment that required the implementation framework to elaborate on the reasonable limits to which that right is subject but maintained the Senate’s intent.

It also further clarified the principle of intergenerational equity by stating that:

. . . it is important to meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs;

Under CEPA, the government is tasked with assessing substances and categorizing them depending on their toxicity. The government assesses approximately 600 substances new to the Canadian market each year. However, it does not give itself enough resources to assess all the substances currently in the Canadian market. For that reason, I had attempted to amend the bill by imposing a set timeline for the minister to finalize an assessment and publish its results. At the time, the committee had opted not to impose a deadline, as the timeline of an assessment would depend on the amount of government resources dedicated to that matter.

To address this issue, the House proposed what I think is a reasonable compromise. If the assessment of a substance has not been completed after two years, the minister must publish a statement indicating the reasons for the delay and an estimated time frame within which the final decision is to be published.

This is a question of ministerial responsibility. Therefore, it is incumbent on the minister to justify any delay that could harm our health.

The next point I would like to address is confidentiality. Currently, when a corporation provides information on a substance requested by the minister, they can request confidentiality by written request. Under the current CEPA regime, confidentiality appears to be granted automatically with no need for approval by the minister. This demonstrates a lack of transparency. Of course, there may be many valid reasons for the need for confidentiality, including trade secrets, integrity of contracts or protection against financial loss. However, the requester should have to demonstrate why confidentiality is needed, and the responsibility should fall on the minister to grant or deny it. This is something that both Senator Miville-Dechêne and I had argued in our committee study. Unfortunately, the committee opted to defeat our proposal.

Thankfully, the House of Commons picked up on this important issue of transparency and found a compromise. Their amendment would require the minister to review a statistically valid representative sample of confidentiality requests granted and determine whether the request is justified under a set of four possible justifications. The requests that don’t qualify are then deemed non-confidential and the minister shall report annually on these confidentiality requests.

I believe this strikes a good balance. When information does not need to be confidential, Canadians have the right to access that information, especially when it concerns their health and the protection of the environment.

Overall, I feel the other place has reinforced the Senate’s work on this bill. That is not to say, however, that there aren’t any remaining gaps or unaddressed issues with CEPA.

Environmental policy experts are not satisfied with the removal of the title of Schedule 1. This list exists because these substances have been found to be toxic in certain contexts, amounts or paths of exposure. The industry complained, saying that some of these substances can be found in everyday products. Whether or not the title of this list includes the words “toxic substances” does not change any legal requirements on these corporations — it is merely a labelling issue. Out of transparency, and for the benefit of the average Canadian, nomenclature is important. Hiding the fact that these substances were scientifically found to be toxic in certain contexts is not being transparent with Canadians.

Another major issue remains with the government’s capacity to assess substances. The government is over-reliant on industry to provide the scientific basis for assessments and often merely does a literature review rather than scientifically testing the substances themselves. This is problematic as we rely on industry for decisions that are the minister’s responsibility. For example, just last week, we learned through an article published by the CBC that industry knew for decades about the risks of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS or forever chemicals, and kept it hidden. Major industry players knew these substances were toxic, yet they are present in everything from cookware to makeup. These chemicals are known to cause liver problems, pregnancy issues and cancer. Worse yet, the industry used tactics reminiscent of the tobacco and fossil-fuel industries to muddy the water around the toxicity of forever chemicals and to prevent more research to study the matter.

This is completely unacceptable, and it is our job as legislators to adopt a legislative framework that better regulates the industry. We cannot play with the health and safety of Canadians. We cannot rely on experiments that are overwhelmingly designed, performed, analyzed and disclosed by industry for the purpose of sales and profit rather than for the best interest of Canadians. We must equip our government with the adequate resources to make its own rigorous and transparent scientific assessments.

Colleagues, Bill S-5 makes essential updates to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. It’s not perfect, and we still have a lot of work to do to ensure that our environmental protection act really focuses on preventing pollution, not managing and monitoring it.

The current Minister of Environment and Climate Change promised that more revisions are to come, and I eagerly await those proposals. Never again should we wait 24 years to modernize legislation that is so crucial to protecting our health and the environment.

I encourage you to support the bill while continuing to advocate for other improvements in the near future.

Thank you. Meegwetch.