Bill 66: People and Places Matter More Than Profit

Bill 66 undermines the importance of decades of bipartisan environmental protections in Ontario.

The Clean Water Act, the Greenbelt, the Great Lakes Protection Act and the Toxics Reduction Act are important tools for ensuring land use, drinking water protection, and air quality. The Walkerton tragedy, disappearing agricultural lands and natural ecosystems - these are real risks and irreversible damages to our province.

This Bill even undermines their “Made in Ontario” Environment Plan, and the Ontario government's promise under Ford to protect the Greenbelt.

These conflicting policies demonstrate a true lack of vision for community health and environmental conservation. We must hear a commitment to public health and safety, that people and places matter more than profit, and that we will be protected by this government - and not paced at risk by selling our community's health to the lowest bidder.

What you can do: send a note by January 20 to the government and tell them you oppose this backwards bill - https://act.leadnow.ca/stop-66/

Citizens Across Canada Urge Ministers to Adopt Federal Toxics Law Changes

Toronto - The heads of over 30 civil society organizations from across Canada presented the federal ministers of Environment (Hon. Catherine McKenna) and Health (Hon. Ginette Petitpas Taylor) with draft legislation amending the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA), and urged the ministers to introduce the amendments in the Fall 2018 session of Parliament to better protect human health and the environment from toxic substances.

“CEPA has not been amended in two decades, and the government’s June 2018 response to a parliamentary standing committee’s 2017 report on hearings conducted in 2016 on CEPA, raised concerns whether Canadians will see amendments to the law before 2020”, said Theresa McClenaghan, Executive Director and Counsel at the Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA).

The amendments presented to the ministers by the groups follow a petition tabled in Parliament earlier this month signed by over 11,000 Canadians urging changes to CEPA, as well as a report by the federal environment commissioner on inadequate toxic substances enforcement under CEPA.

The amendments address five areas of concern with CEPA that were raised during standing committee hearings and reflected in the committee’s report, but not necessarily supported in the government’s June 2018 response to the report. These include: (1) control over endocrine disrupting substances; (2) establishment of enforceable national ambient air quality standards; (3) protection of vulnerable populations from toxic substances; (4) substitution of safer alternatives to toxic substances; and (5) civil enforcement of CEPA by the public in the courts.

“These five issues were recurring concerns identified by civil society witnesses appearing before the standing committee”, said Joe Castrilli, a CELA lawyer, who drafted the amendments.

“Hormone-related cancers and chronic diseases are increasing, especially in younger Canadians. These CEPA amendments would enable modern systematic science to address endocrine disrupting and other toxic substances, and to shift toward healthiest options across the board”, said Dr. Meg Sears, Chair of Prevent Cancer Now.

“Laws controlling toxic substances need to be updated more frequently than once every twenty years. These amendments address overdue issues like civil enforcement of the law’s requirements by the public and provide better opportunities for public involvement in the decision-making process concerning these substances”, said Erica Stahl, Lawyer, West Coast Environmental Law.

“Establishing enforceable national ambient air quality standards as these amendments propose will contribute to a reduced disease burden for people suffering from respiratory and other ailments caused by air pollution”, said Gordon Dalzell, Chair, Saint John Citizens Coalition for Clean Air.

“A key to protecting vulnerable populations, like pregnant women, children, and workers, from exposure to harmful chemicals is to require industry, with government oversight, to examine, develop, and substitute non-toxic alternatives”, said Rohini Peris, President, Environmental Health Association of Quebec.

“The Government should seize this opportunity to make important and much needed reforms to federal environmental law enacted to protect the environment and human health from toxic substances”, stated Joe Castrilli.

The amendments, and the letter sent to the ministers explaining the rationale for them, may be found on the CELA website.

1)    Letter to Hon. Catherine McKenna and Hon. Ginette Petitpas Taylor at https://www.cela.ca/letter-amending-CEPA

2)    Amendments to CEPA at https://www.cela.ca/proposed-ammendments-CEPA

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For further information or to arrange an interview, contact:

Fe de Leon, MPH, Senior researcher

Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA)

Telephone: 416-960-2284, ext. 7223; Email: deleonf@cela.ca

Women’s health groups demand better action on toxic pollution following damning Auditor General report

TORONTO / MONTREAL - Women’s health organizations are calling for stronger protections for Canadians, and better enforcement of pollution laws, following a damning report from the Auditor General on the federal government’s failure to manage carcinogens and hormone disruptors.

“This report tells us what we already know in our families and communities - we are exposed to more and more cancer-causing and hormone-disrupting substances each day, and our laws are not strong enough to protect us,” said Cassie Barker, Executive Director of the Women’s Healthy Environments Network.

The Auditor General outlined nine recommendations for  the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA 1999), which is managed by both Health Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada, saying that the government “lacked timely access to information about which businesses were regulated, had not yet set time frames to follow up on violations, and had not addressed all of the enforceability issues it had identified in regulations.”

Jennifer Beeman, Executive Director of Breast Cancer Action Quebec stated,  “We cannot stand by and watch our governments fail to clean up polluting industries and toxic products - we need action on pollution, and much stronger chemicals management in this country.”

The government is failing to adequately inform Canadians through their websites, which according to the report make it “difficult for Canadians to find information to make informed choices about toxic substances.” It also states that the law is not enforced in any prioritized way that links their action to real risks to human health and the environment.

In addition, the Auditor General identified government inaction in their failure to address the AG 2009 report, recommendations which have still not been addressed a decade later, and yet there has been over $1 billion spent on this program since 2005.

“We needed action decades ago, and we still need it today. The future of our hormonal, reproductive and neurodevelopmental health depend on better toxics laws, and on leadership in the chemical, manufacturing and products sectors of our economy” said Patricia Kearns, Research and Networking Advisor of Breast Cancer Action Quebec.

Though the government has made some progress on managing substances such as mercury and lead, it has not measured its progress on other toxics such as flame retardants, dioxins, furans and PCBs. According to the report, these chemicals are linked to “cancer, hormonal disruptions, neurological problems in humans, and a range of problems in wildlife.”

Contact:
Cassie Barker, WHEN 416-928-0880
Jennifer Beeman, BCAQ 514-483-1846

WHEN joins 80+ indigenous, environmental and health groups demanding better nuclear waste management

WHEN is pleased to join Grand Chiefs and NGO leaders from provincial, national and international organizations to seek an Auditor General inquiry on nuclear waste management and nuclear reactor decommissioning, in the hopes of seeking more responsible federal government policy for the long-term management of nuclear waste.

You can see our submission here.

Women Can’t Wait! Women’s Health Groups Denounce the Federal Government’s failure to Protect Canadians’ Health

Montreal / Toronto, June 29, 2018 – Women’s health organizations are disappointed to learn that the Minister of the Environment will not move forward on much needed reforms to the outdated Canadian Environment Protection Act, 1999 (CEPA). The reforms proposed by the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development’s report illustrate that women and other vulnerable populations face specific exposures to toxic chemicals that are not being considered by the government.

Under the current law, Canadians are not protected from toxic substances - the exposure to which leads to thousands of premature deaths each year and millions of preventable diseases. This fact was highlighted in the Standing Committee’s report, which included suggested reforms to update our outdated pollution law and better protect Canadians from toxic health risks.

The organizations speaking out on CEPA inaction include Breast Cancer Action Quebec, Women's Healthy Environments Network (WHEN) and six allied women’s health groups as part of the newly formed coalition Canadian Women against Toxic Substances, which submitted a statement on CEPA to the Honourable Catherine McKenna, Minister of Environment and Climate Change titled Toxic Substances are a Feminist Issue!

“When our regulators fail us, we are left to constantly worry about how toxic exposures in our
workplaces, our homes, the food we eat, and the products we use are impacting our health. We
shouldn’t need a degree in chemistry to understand how we can protect ourselves and our loved ones,” Cassie Barker, Executive Director of WHEN said.

This failure to take much needed action on pollution and CEPA means that Canadians continue to be exposed to poorly managed carcinogens, hormone disruptors and other toxic chemicals.
Patricia Kearns, Research and Networking Advisor at BCAQc states: “This government enjoys calling themselves feminists, yet they are failing women by not doing the work of protecting their health.

“We are very disappointed that this government is wasting this vital opportunity to protect our health and our environment from the toxics that wreak havoc on our communities, and will do so for generations to come,” says Jennifer Beeman, Executive Director of Breast Cancer Action Quebec (BCAQc). "Women can’t wait for the next election - they need leaders who won’t hold their health hostage.”

A class of chemicals called endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are proven to be tied to increases in hormonally driven cancers such as breast, prostate, testicular and thyroid cancers as well as chronic illnesses such as diabetes and asthma, neurological disorders such as ADHD and autism as well as both male and female reproductive disorders. However, under our current law, these endocrine disruptors are not classified as toxic.

Source: Breast Cancer Action Quebec and Women and Healthy Environments Network

Contact:
Patricia Kearns, Breast Cancer Action Quebec. 514-483-1846
Cassie Barker, Executive Director, Women and Healthy Environments Network. 416-928-0880

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Breast Cancer Action Quebec has advocated for breast cancer prevention and the elimination of environmental toxins linked to the disease for over 25 years.

Women's Healthy Environments Network Since 1994, WHEN has been educating the general public, media and policy makers that environmental health is a key determinant of public health and has promoted public action for the prevention of environmental health harms.