Canadian Environmental Law Association
1500-55 University Avenue,
Toronto, Ontario
M5J 2H7
info (at) cela.ca
1-416-960-2284
1-844-755-1420
This site contains general legal information for Ontario, Canada. It is not intended to be used as legal advice for a specific legal problem.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Blog: Time to Fix Amendments to Toxic Substances Law
Blog post by Joseph F. Castrilli, CELA Counsel
The Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA) is urging the federal government to substantially improve amendments to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) which were introduced for First Reading in April 2021 in Bill C-28 but did not proceed further due to the intervening Fall 2021 election.
CEPA is Canada’s primary law for protecting human health and the environment. Yet Bill C-28, containing the first major amendments to CEPA in over 20 years, seeks to fix things in the Act that are not broken, and fails to correct things in the Act that are not working. The Canadian public should not have to wait another 20 years to fix in 2040 what is already long overdue for reform today. Among the problems with Bill C-28, identified in a 45-page CELA brief recently provided to the federal ministers of environment and health, include:
The problems CELA identified with Bill C-28 need to be corrected and are all capable of correction. The federal government should commit to correcting them either: (1) before re-introducing a Bill in Parliament, if possible; or (2) during Parliament’s consideration of a new bill. When it comes to dealing with toxic substances, including substances present in the environment due to human activity that cause cancer, mutations, or neurotoxic effects, the Canadian public deserves more than housekeeping tweaks, changes that do not go far enough, or amendments that lead the charge in the wrong direction.
Share: