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Results: 16 - 30 of 920
Bora Plumptre
View Bora Plumptre Profile
Bora Plumptre
2021-06-18 14:31
Thank you, Mr. Cannings.
I believe that the clean fuel regulation is fundamentally on the right track, but I think that we've ended up in a situation, just given the length of time it's taken to develop this admittedly fairly complex policy, in a place where the regulation is perhaps a bit unbalanced relative to what was originally envisioned.
When the government announced the clean fuel standard, as it was then called, back in 2016, they were targeting 30 megatonnes of emissions reductions by 2030. That scope of ambition and the scope of the coverage of the policy was reduced by about a third in favour of carbon pricing last winter, under the healthy economy, healthy environment plan, along with the commitment to quite drastically increase the rate of growth in the carbon price. That was a reasonable policy decision to make. However, as a result, I think the design of the clean fuel regulation has ended up in a place where there were all kinds of flexibilities introduced into the regulation to account for the fact that it was originally intended to cover liquid, gaseous and solid fuels, and now it's only focused on liquids.
View Jeremy Patzer Profile
CPC (SK)
The efficiency side of things is definitely good and benefits everybody, but on the government regulations, it states right in them that the avenues they are pursuing are going to disproportionally impact these people. To say that they're mutually exclusive is not necessarily the case. We know that GHG reduction is the point of a clean fuel standard and the point of the carbon tax, and it states clearly, right in it, that those people are going to be disproportionally impacted.
Michael Wolinetz
View Michael Wolinetz Profile
Michael Wolinetz
2021-06-18 14:36
Sure. What I mean is that the goals of those policies are not mutually exclusive. You can use revenue recycling in any number of ways to try to mitigate the economic impact on certain segments of the population. You can use changes to your tax policy to do the same. You can use other sorts of policies to mitigate that.
I think that you—and everyone—are always concerned for lower-income segments of our society. In implementing greenhouse gas policy, we should always be mindful of how it impacts them and should consider adjustments to the policy or, in fact, other policies outright, in order to make sure they're not unduly affected.
View Lloyd Longfield Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Lloyd Longfield Profile
2021-06-18 14:42
To continue in that argument, if we look at Japan going to zero-emission vehicles, the study we looked at in the environment committee as well, Europe going to zero-emission vehicles, we may be buying vehicles that are zero emission and the market might be ahead of us in terms of us delivering policy and programs.
Mark Zacharias
View Mark Zacharias Profile
Mark Zacharias
2021-06-18 14:42
Yes, maybe.
I would look at Canada, particularly in the battery medium, heavy-duty vehicle space. We're doing quite well.
Lion Electric has an order for 2,400 trucks from Amazon. GM is going to be building vans at its plant in Ontario. We have the metals and minerals to supply battery manufacturing, and a lot of work going on in that space. It's happening through government right now.
Again, it's not hydrogen related and it's not low-carbon fuels related, but it generally has the same objective at the end of the day, which is decarbonization of transportation.
View Tako Van Popta Profile
CPC (BC)
Thank you.
Two minutes is too short for this, but thank you to all three witnesses. Mr. Fogel from the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, and Mr. Farooq and Ms. Omer from the National Council of Canadian Muslims, thanks for being with us and helping us through this very difficult conversation.
I'm going to ask a question that a couple of people attempted to ask and ran out of time, which is about balancing civil liberties and keeping Canadians safe, particularly when it comes to the Internet.
Mr. Fogel, I think it was you who said that we need new tools when it comes to regulating the Internet. I don't know if you were talking about criminal laws or civil remedies. Perhaps you could expand on that. What would civil remedies look like as far as that goes?
Shimon Koffler Fogel
View Shimon Koffler Fogel Profile
Shimon Koffler Fogel
2021-06-16 17:38
Thank you for the question.
I'll try to be really brief over here. It's a challenge for me.
I think one of the takeaways of this whole discussion is that to really address this effectively you need a whole-of-government approach. You have sister committees in Parliament that are looking at some of these questions. Online hate is something that the anti-racism secretariat has been focusing on a lot and providing some resources for stakeholders, such as the NCCM and us, to be able to explore remedies. Social media platforms have been brought in and not quite coerced, but encouraged, to take some ownership and to provide some of the solutions.
I don't know what all of the instruments will be. I know that for them to be effective it requires the buy-in from all of the stakeholders. That means government, communities and social service providers.
We have to distinguish between two groups. There are the vast bulk of Canadians who may be ignorant and insensitive to the impact of social media posts. They need to be educated. Then there are the marginal ones who have to be chased into the corner or prosecuted or somehow defanged, so that they don't constitute an ongoing threat.
View Marilène Gill Profile
BQ (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to ask about something we were told at the last meeting. Despite what we're hearing now, witnesses were telling us about difficulties in applying policies and regulations because of the lack of resources. They were saying that it makes the work of the department difficult. These were people in the business.
Do you think that that is the case?
Just now, we were told two things at the same time. First, we were told that is not possible to get around the regulations and, second, we were told that people are concerned that some do succeed in getting around them. Then again, we are told that everything is overseen and everything is going well, while, at the last meeting, we were told there are a lot of difficulties with oversight and that resources are inadequate. In a word, a lot of things have gone by the board. For 40 years, blind eyes have been turned to things that are actually happening.
What is your opinion, Mr. Burns, Ms. McCready or Mr. Whorley?
Adam Burns
View Adam Burns Profile
Adam Burns
2021-06-16 17:04
Thanks for the question.
Prior to the coming into force of the inshore regulations, we were working with a policy, which is a different beast to implement. We now have the inshore regulations, which are, I think, what folks were referring to when they were referencing resources. The difference we now have—and this isn't related to the offshore—is that those inshore regulations prescribe licence eligibility related to being an independent inshore harvester and maintaining the rights and privileges of that licence themselves. There's an eligibility requirement in order to have a licence issued to you. If you are not compliant with the eligibility requirements, a licence cannot be issued to you.
In the prior circumstance, with PIIFCAF, that wasn't the case. It wasn't a regulatory eligibility requirement but rather a policy, and so the timelines were much more protracted. It is true that some harvesters would be under review, which is what it was called under PIIFCAF, for an extended period of time.
Under the inshore regulations, if there is a question around eligibility and around the separation of those rights and privileges from the licence-holder, then that licence-holder would need to demonstrate their compliance with the regulations before a licence could be reissued to them. The moment their licence expired, their ability to fish would cease until they rectified that and a new licence was issued.
View Serge Cormier Profile
Lib. (NB)
Mr. Burns, I understand what you're saying, but when it comes to companies like Royal Greenland, again, backed by the Danish government, are you aware of these companies that are coming to Canada and trying to have control over our fisheries? You stated earlier that it's important to have the licences stay in our communities. Yes, the licence is one thing, but if the resource goes everywhere but in our communities, and the prices go so low as compared with now, what will we do 10 years from now?
Adam Burns
View Adam Burns Profile
Adam Burns
2021-06-16 17:19
Inshore regulations would prohibit inshore licence-holders from passing any of the rights and privileges related to their licence to any processing company, including one that may be owned by Royal Greenland. That requirement of maintaining the rights and privileges with the licence-holder would prevent that licence from entering into control by a processing company. In fact, the licence-holder's eligibility would end should that occur.
View Fayçal El-Khoury Profile
Lib. (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank our guests for joining us today and welcome them.
My first questions are for Mr. McCrorie.
How many times has the Canadian Transportation Agency ordered railway companies to make changes to their operations?
Why is the mediation process still [Technical difficulty—Editor]?
Finally, how much time is generally needed to find a solution?
Tom Oommen
View Tom Oommen Profile
Tom Oommen
2021-06-15 19:40
Thank you, Chair.
Yes I will mention that processes of either mediation or arbitration are confidential. On our website we have time frames, once a complete application is received, as to how long our processes take. For that we list, for example in the case of facilitation, that it's 20 business days for rail disputes, 20 business days for the resolution of a mediation process, and 30 to 65 days, depending on the type of arbitration.... Those are listed on our website.
Joel Lexchin
View Joel Lexchin Profile
Joel Lexchin
2021-06-11 14:07
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee.
I work as an emergency physician in downtown Toronto. Between 2001 and 2016, I taught health policy at York University. Over the past 40 years, I've been involved in researching and writing about pharmaceutical policy issues.
I want to address the question about proposed reforms to the Canadian regulatory system, although I will also touch on some points that Mr. Labrie made.
When the pandemic started, Health Canada brought in an interim order to allow for a more rapid introduction of products to treat and prevent COVID-19. More recently, it's produced a discussion document about what it terms “agile regulations”, which are supposed to decrease regulatory burden and get new drugs onto the market in Canada faster.
The first point to make is contrary to Mr. Labrie's. Independent research has shown that only about 10% of new drugs that are introduced into Canada—or, in fact, in other markets—offer any substantial therapeutic gain over what already exists. This applies to drugs that are approved in general. It applies to drugs that are approved through Health Canada's priority review process. It applies to drugs that are approved with limited data through the notice of compliance with conditions process.
Even if you look at what are called first-in-class drugs—drugs that are unlike anything else on the market—the proportion of those that are innovative is only about one in six. When you look at drugs for orphan diseases, about one in five of these are substantial therapeutic improvements. This is not based on my assessment. This is based on independent assessments by organizations that have nothing to do with the pharmaceutical industry.
When we think about changing the regulatory system, we also need to think about the safety of drugs that are on the market. The push for agile regulation makes mention of safety, but it seems to put safety second to reducing regulatory burden, which is a mistake. It ignores what we know about the safety of drugs that come on the market based on how long they are reviewed by organizations like Health Canada.
If a drug goes through a standard review process, eventually about one in five of those drugs will acquire a serious safety warning. If it goes through a priority review process, which is shorter—instead of the standard 300 days, it's 180 days—one-third of those drugs will acquire a serious safety warning, up from one in five. If you look at drugs that go through a notice of compliance with conditions process, about one in four of those drugs will acquire a serious safety warning.
There are consequences to changing the regulatory system in terms of safety. Currently, in any five-year period, if you look at the drugs that are withdrawn from the Canadian market, about one out of every 20 will eventually be pulled from the market for safety reasons. If we go ahead with changes in the regulatory system, that percentage may increase.
In conclusion, it's reasonable to change how we get drugs on the market in response to a pandemic. As a doctor in the emergency department, I recognize that. If you're talking about making long-term permanent changes, then you have to look at whether that results in better, more effective drugs reaching the market and in the increased or decreased safety of the products that come onto the market.
Until Health Canada can come up with good data to show that we'll get more therapeutically efficient drugs and more safety, we should not be going ahead.
Thank you.
View Dave Epp Profile
CPC (ON)
Thank you.
I'd like to get one more question in if I can to Mr. Gilvesy. What would be ALUS's position on cross-compliance between BRM programming and environmental initiatives?
Results: 16 - 30 of 920 | Page: 2 of 62

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