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The worst of all the worst: Canada’s environmental laws are still in process. They won’t solve the toxic pollution problem.

The worst of all the worst: Canada’s environmental laws are still in process. They won’t solve the toxic pollution problem.

Tiff Macklem, Carolyn Rogers,

A new analysis shows that polluting groundwater and the air with over 40 highly toxic chemicals has dramatically increased in Quebec, Ontario and Alberta in recent years.

Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA), conducted a review of federal emissions data from the National Pollutant Release Inventory. This inventory contains a number of cancer-causing chemicals, including arsenic and dioxins, and included data for the period 2006-2018. These toxins are often produced as waste in mining operations, factories, and other industrial processes. Then they are released into the atmosphere in concentrations allowed by Canada’s environment laws.

While airborne levels of these chemicals have declined in Ontario, research found that land-based polluting caused by dumping waste into rivers or landfills has increased in those three provinces. Quebec saw land-based pollution rise by 587 per cent while Ontario and Alberta saw their pollution increase by only about a third.

Although some of these rises can be attributed a new industrial activity, CELA warned the data showed that polluters simply replace old waste disposal methods that relied on airborne emission with newer techniques that release pollution into waterways.

The land-based pollution in Ontario of these chemicals was approximately 1,000 times higher than the pollution from New Jersey. New Jersey has a similar manufacturing and economic profile to Ontario. The Canadian province’s airborne pollution was 28 times more than that of the U.S.

Alberta’s airborne emissions also increased by about a sixth, compared to the two other provinces that saw decreases.

Joe Castrilli is the CELA’s legal counsel. He said that chemicals are “the worst of the worst”. Yet despite the chemicals’ known risks, they have been more widely emitted into the environment in recent years — a failure, he explained, of Canada’s main environmental law, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA). The legislation is currently being revised for the first time since over 20 years.

Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), says the proposed amendments will address Canadians “key concerns and expectations” in relation to toxic pollution and give the ministry the “tools to manage a wide variety of environment and health risk.” The proposed rules require that the government create a list of potentially dangerous chemicals to evaluate their potential negative effects before they are released to the environment.

They also replace existing regulations allowing the government to ban chemicals with new regulations that focus on banning polluting techniques. Castrilli finds this a worrying development. The government has largely avoided banning chemicals in the past and instead focused on reducing their harmful impacts — an approach that lets polluting industries continue releasing tens of millions of kilograms of harmful waste into the environment during the 13-year period CELA reviewed.

Meinhard Doelle, a Dalhousie University professor of marine and environmental law, said that we must look at it in the contexts of the larger picture. “Emissions are still huge … and if the goal (of CEPA) is to reduce and eliminate the emissions of toxic substances into a fragile environment, it’s an abysmal failure.”

Emissions of over 40 highly toxic chemicals in Ontario, Alberta, and Québec have significantly increased in recent decades, potentially exposing millions of Canadians to harmful groundwater and air pollution, a new analysis shows. 

Since the 1950s, chemical production has increased 50-fold. CELA estimates that the world’s chemical load will rise three-fold by 2050 if there is no curb on production.

An international team of scientists warned earlier this year that chemical companies produce more chemicals and different types of chemicals than the planet is capable of supporting. To prevent irreversible damage to the environment, animals, and people, the team urged countries to stop the production and development of new chemicals.

Miriam Diamond (a professor at the University of Toronto) said that “there’s no way we can really figure out a planetary boundary for each (chemical).” Instead, the researchers examined the pace of chemical invention and production to determine if Canada and other countries are creating enough environmental rules to prevent pollution.

“The answer to this question is a resounding yes. These entities are so difficult to understand and assess. We are not able to keep up.

Castrilli stated that these warnings were not reflected in the government’s proposed updates to CEPA.

The new legislation — Bill S-5 — does not propose stricter rules to ban harmful chemicals and replace them with safer alternatives. It will not force companies or other entities to create a pollution prevention program or test whether the chemical waste they produce has toxic properties. Nor will it cover pesticides — a major category of toxic chemicals — even as the EU has promised to halve pesticide use by 2030 for environmental and health reasons.

The new law does not provide an easy way for Canadians to sue polluters and the government to ensure that their right to a healthy environment is protected. The ECCC confirmed that the law will require the environment minister consider the cumulative effects of chemicals and their effect on vulnerable persons.

Yet without a clear path to justice for people impacted by pollution — disproportionately women and children, low-income Canadians and Black and Indigenous people — those provisions risk having little impact when it comes to protecting people from toxic chemicals, Doelle said.

Doelle stated, “Polluters can get away with polluting because those most directly affected are not the most powerful in society, at the very least in terms of political influence.” “That is why we have less effective measures to control and prevent pollution.”

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