By Paul Weinberg
TORONTO, Nov 3 1999 (IPS)

Canada has become a legal dumping ground for hazardous wastes from US manufacturers whose exports of toxic waste into the province of Ontario alone surged to leaped 414 percent in 1994 to 288,000 tons, according to figures released here.

Among the materials being stored in Canada were leachable toxics, corrosive liquids, battery waste, flammable liquids, contaminated soils and metal and mineral wastes, a four-year study by the Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy (CIELAP) showed.

1994 was the year that the United States introduced domestic laws on waste disposal of untreated industrial materials. The laws include a ban on land disposal of untreated hazardous waste; posting of adequate financial assurances against risks at waste handling and disposal sites and the establishment of stringent emission standards for hazardous wastes.

In the four years since then, Ontario and Quebec, Canada’s main industrial provinces, acquired a reputation in the waste disposal industry “for being cheap and easy,” said CIELAP Director of Research, Mark Winfield. The two provinces are the only places in this country where waste disposal sites are currently available.

Although the hazardous waste crosses an international border, environmental protection remains largely a provincial concern in constitutionally-divided Canada. Ontario and Quebec scaled back their environmental regulations during the 1990s in contrast to the United States that has raised its standards through its Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

“The rise in hazardous waste imports into Ontario makes clear that (Ontario Minister for the Environment) Tony Clement needs to match the other key hazardous waste disposal restrictions that have been in place in the United States since 1994,” Winfield declared.

Clement told reporters earlier that hazardous wastes were a priority for his government and that it had adequate staff for investigation and to enforce laws against polluters But Winfield said the province had a long way to go.

This year, Ontario was named the second worst jurisdiction in North America for the release and transfer of toxic pollutants by the environmental commission set up under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Much of the U.S. waste was flowing onto disposal sites in the highly populated area of southern western Ontario between the cities of Windsor and Hamilton, Winfield said. Two large companies Philip Services Corp. and Safety-Kleen Corp, both international operators, were largely responsible for the disposal of toxic materials in Ontario, he said. . Winfield charged that the corporations lacked “sophisticated technology.” and cited a recent mixing procedure at a Philip waste disposal plant near Hamilton, which had since been banned by the Ontario government.

Philip was mixing liquid cyanide sludge with metal sludge and non- hazardous cement in a concrete pit and then “declaring that it wasn’t hazardous anymore because it didn’t leach,” Winfield said.

Although he had not fully examined the CIELAP report, Rob Cook, executive director of the Ontario Waste Management Association, suggested that the low Canadian dollar and a thriving North American economy were the main reasons for the major increase in the amount of hazardous waste being stored in Ontario.

Cook questioned CIELAP’s 414 percent figure, which it obtained from Environment Canada. He said that, for business reasons, waste disposal companies tended to overstate the amount of materials being brought into this country when they applied for trans-border shipment permits from the Canadian environment department.

“So, people may well apply for permits that have limits like 10,000 tons a year. But they may actually export or import only 1,000 tons,” said Cook.

Winfield told IPS, however, that CIELAP had logged the actual shipments of hazardous waste coming into Ontario, not the projections provided by waste disposal companies. “Typically, Environment Canada has been giving out permits that are about 10 times higher than the actual manifested quantities,” Winfield said.

While Ontario received the lion’s share of imported hazardous waste from the United States the flow of materials into Quebec appeared to be increasing, said prominent Montreal environmentalist, Daniel Green, executive director of the Quebec Society to Vanquish Pollution.

The Quebec government a few years ago relaxed its environmental regulations by eliminating its waybill system – where local companies had to notify provincial inspectors if they were moving waste from one place to another, he said.

Also, local Quebec waste disposal companies were permitted to import a certain percentage of U.S. waste in order to remain viable. “In other words, to be able to treat the 20 to 30 per cent of Quebec waste, they had to import 70 per cent of the waste to be cost effective,” says Green.

Green said that environmental groups in Quebec were busy collecting data to give a broader picture of the toxic imports into the province.

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