REGULATIONS AND POLICY

Canadian PCB Regulations and Policy

Overview | Federal | Ontario | Quebec | Federal-Provincial

Federal-Provincial Agreements

The Canada-Ontario Agreement (COA) is the mechanism through which Canada and co-operate to implement the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (GLWQA). The first COA was signed in 1971, prior to the signing of the GLWQA. Six such agreements have been signed since then.

In the 1994 COA, Canada and Ontario made a commitment specific to PCBs:

Seek to decommission 90% of high-level PCBs in Ontario, to destroy 50% of the high-level PCBs now in storage, and accelerate the destruction of stored low-level PCB waste, by the year 2000.

In 1999, Canada and Ontario reported that they would not achieve the 90% decommissioning target for high-level PCBs by the end of 2000. They estimated that approximately 50% of high-level PCBs had been decommissioned by the end of 1999.

Canada reports that as of the end of 2000, "approximately 70% of high-level PCBs [in storage] have been destroyed" and that "approximately 25% of low-level PCB waste have been destroyed."

In her October 2001 report, Canada's Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development concluded that "major budget cuts after Program Review compromised the federal participation and had an impact on departments' capacities to meet their commitments under the Canada-Ontario Agreement and the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement." Even larger budget cuts were made by the Province of Ontario.

The COA signed in 1994 terminated on March 31, 2000. Two years later, in March 2002, the governments signed a new COA that replaced the commitments for PCBs made in 1994.

This COA has the following two goals related directly to PCBs:

1. Have in place policies and programs to make progress towards virtual elimination for persistent bioaccumulative toxic substances such as mercury, dioxins, furans and PCBs;
2. Have comprehensive knowledge of the sources, movement, fate and impact of harmful pollutants, including persistent bioaccumulative toxic substances, for policy and program development purposes.

The COA sets as its "result" the achievement of "the virtual elimination of high-level Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs)".

Canada and Ontario make the following commitments aimed at achieving this result:

Canada will:

• Replace the current federal Chlorobiphenyls Regulations to require the phase out of PCBs in accordance with the requirements and deadlines to be established under the new regulations;
• Introduce PCB storage time deadlines through amendments to the federal Storage of PCB Material Regulations; and
• Replace the current federal PCB Waste Export Regulations, 1996 to harmonize controls on PCB waste imports and exports and to allow for better control and tracking of wastes with 2 to 50 parts per million of PCBs.

Ontario will:

• Use regulatory or other measures to destroy all PCBs in storage by 2008.

Canada's commitments in the COA that they signed differed from the proposed commitments in the draft COA that they released in September 2001. In the draft COA, Canada proposed to "require the phase out of all PCBs in service by December 31, 2008, and prohibit PCB storage after that date for existing stored material." In the final COA, Canada removed these commitments to achieve the goals by specified dates.

St. Lawrence Vision 2000

In 1989, Canada and Québec signed the first St. Lawrence Action Plan aimed at protecting and restoring the St. Lawrence River ecosystem. In 1994 they signed Phase II of this plan and renamed it St. Lawrence Vision 2000 Action Plan. Phase III of this plan was signed in 1998 and is to extend to 2003.

The St. Lawrence Vision 2000 Action Plan does not specifically refer to PCBs.

The Action Plan sets as a goal "to reduce discharges of toxic effluent into the environment, with the long-term objective of virtual elimination of persistent bioaccumulative toxic substances into the River." During the first ten years of the St. Lawrence Action Plan, 106 priority plants were focussed on to reduce toxic effluents. These were from the following industrial sectors: pulp and paper, chemical, mining, metal, petroleum, and surface-finishing. In Phase III, in addition to continuing on this work, the plan is to assess three industrial sectors (metallurgy, metal processing, and chemical processing) to prioritize action on ten priority substances.