Annex I: Additional Risk Management Actions Implemented by the Government of Canada

Risk management actions taken by Environment and Climate Change Canada

• Chlor-Alkali Mercury Liquid Effluent Regulations (1972; repealed 2018) under the Fisheries Act and the Chlor-Alkali Mercury Release Regulations (1978; repealed 2019) under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act: Limited the amount of mercury to be deposited into water and controlled mercury emissions to ambient air from chlor-alkali facilities using the mercury cell process. The last mercury cell plant in Canada closed in July 2008. To prevent any future operation of chlor-alkali mercury cell facilities in Canada and to help support the federal Government in complying with its international obligations under the Minamata Convention, both of these regulations were recently repealed.
• National Guidelines for the Use of Hazardous and Non-hazardous Wastes as Supplementary Fuels in Cement Kilns (PDF) (1996): These guidelines provided operating and performance standards for cement kilns using wastes as supplementary fuels. They provided guidance on the criteria for the selection of wastes; handling and storage of wastes; emission limits; testing, monitoring, and reporting requirements; and solid residue management. The guidelines set a limit on mercury emissions in terms of a limit of 0.15mg/Rm³ for the sum of mercury, cadmium, and thallium. These guidelines have been withdrawn from active circulation but remain available for reference and historical purposes.
• National Emission Guideline for Cement Kilns (PDF) (1998): This guideline provides a consistent national basis for restricting emissions of nitrogen oxides and other pollutants, while encouraging greater energy efficiency in the industry. The Guideline indirectly targets mercury by addressing fine particulate dust (to which mercury can be bound).
• Canadian Environmental Quality Guidelines (1999 to 2003): These are national recommended goals for the quality of surface water for the protection of aquatic life (2003), sediment aquatic life (1997), and terrestrial (soil, 1999) ecosystems. These levels should result in negligible risk to biota, their functions, or any interactions that are integral to sustaining the health of ecosystems and the designated resource uses they support.
• Canada-wide Standards for Mercury Emissions (Base Metal Smelters and Refiners) (2000) (PDF): These standards address both existing and new facilities in the waste incineration and base metals smelting sectors. The waste incineration sector includes hazardous waste, sewage sludge, municipal waste, and medical waste incinerators. For base metals smelters, the Standards set a limit of mercury released to air per tonne of metal produced.
• Canada-wide Standards for Mercury-containing Lamps (PDF) (2001): The intent of this standard was to reduce releases of mercury to the environment from mercury-containing lamps. The target was a 70% reduction by 2005 and an 80% reduction by 2010 in the average content of mercury in all mercury-containing lamps sold in Canada, from a 1990 baseline.
• Canada-wide Standards on Mercury for Dental Amalgam Waste (PDF) (2001): This standard led to the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding by Environment and Climate Change Canada and the Canadian Dental Association, committing each to actions towards the voluntary implementation of this standard. The objective was to apply “best management practices” to achieve a 95% national reduction in mercury releases from dental amalgam waste discharges to the environment by 2005, from a base year of 2000.
• Disposal at Sea Regulations (2001; last amended 2014): Under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act all disposal at sea is prohibited without a permit. Permits can only be considered for a small list of low risk wastes or other matter and then only after the material intended for disposal has been assessed. The small list includes dredged material from clearing navigation channels. Since this may contain mercury and other contaminants, the permit application for this material must provide information about contaminants. The Disposal at Sea Regulations specify that mercury levels higher than the “Lower action level” of 0.75 milligrams per kilogram dry weight are subject to biological toxicity testing before their suitability for disposal at sea can be determined. Toxicity test failure would generally result in a permit being denied.
• Environmental Codes of Practice for Integrated Steel Mills and for Non-integrated Steel Mills (PDF) (2001): These recommend good environmental protection practices for preventing and controlling atmospheric emissions and wastewater effluents and wastes from iron and steelmaking operations.
• Metal and Diamond Mining Effluent Regulations (2018; previously Metal and Diamond Mining Effluent Regulations (2002): These regulations under the Fisheries Act set effluent quality standards for arsenic, copper, lead, nickel, zinc, suspended solids, radium-226, un-ionized ammonia, non-acute toxicity, and hydrogen potential (pH) for discharges from mines extracting precious metals, base metals, uranium, iron ore, and diamonds. While these regulations do not include effluent quality standards for mercury, they do require mines to monitor and report mercury concentrations in effluent and in water bodies into which effluent is discharged.
• Environmental Emergency Regulations (2003; last amended 2019): These regulations require any person who owns or has the charge, management, or control of specified toxic or hazardous substances located at a facility at or above the specified quantity or concentration thresholds to provide certain information about the substances and facility to Environment and Climate Change Canada. The facility is also required to have environmental emergency plans in place when certain conditions are met.
• Export and Import of Hazardous Waste and Hazardous Recyclable Material Regulations (2005; last amended 2016): These regulations limit the cross-border movement of liquid elemental mercury to 50 millilitres per shipment. Mercury and mercury compounds are also covered under requirements for substances with specific physical characteristics, such as corrosiveness or leachate toxicity; and several mercury compounds are explicitly covered in schedules when those substances are being disposed of or recycled.
• Notice requiring the preparation and implementation of pollution prevention plans in respect of specified toxic substances released from base metals smelters and refineries and zinc plants (2006): This notice required base metals smelters and refineries and zinc plants to prepare and implement pollution prevention plans for specified toxic substances that they release. The notice specified a reduction target of 373 kg by 2008 in annual releases of mercury for the largest emitter of mercury in Canada, the Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting Co. in Flin Flon, Manitoba. The 2008 target was met when the facility closed its copper smelter in 2010.
• Environmental Code of Practice for Base Metals Smelters and Refineries (2006): This code recommends environmental protection practices to prevent and control emissions into the air and wastewater effluents and wastes from base metals smelting and refining operations. It includes mercury emission guidelines for existing and new facilities.
• Environmental Code of Practice for Metal Mines (PDF) (2009): This code describes the operations of this industry and the environmental concerns it raises. The Code applies to the complete life cycle of mining, from exploration to mine closure, and recommends environmental management practices to reduce environmental concerns. The practices that this Code recommends include the development and implementation of environmental management tools, the management of wastewater and mining wastes, and the prevention and control of environmental releases to air, water, and land.
• Environmental Code of Practice for the Environmentally Sound Management of End-of-Life Lamps Containing Mercury (PDF) (2017): The Code of Practice is a voluntary tool that provides best practices for the environmentally sound management of mercury-containing lamps at end-of-life. The Code encourages collectors, transporters, and recyclers to incorporate best practices into their end-of-life management of mercury-containing lamps to prevent releases of mercury to the environment. The document includes options for managing lamps in remote and northern areas.

Risk management actions taken by Health Canada

• Surface Coating Materials Regulations (2016): These regulations introduced a limit of 10 mg/kg total mercury in all consumer paints and similar surface coating materials manufactured, imported, advertised, or sold in Canada.
• Toys Regulations (2011; amended 2016): These regulations prohibit the manufacture, import, advertising, or sale in Canada of toys intended for children under 14 that have a surface coating material containing any mercury compound.
• The same prohibition of mercury compounds in coatings applied to products appears in:
  • Carriages and Strollers Regulations (2016), s. 2(1) ;
  • Cribs, Cradles and Bassinets Regulations (2016), s. 3;
  • Expansion Gates and Expandable Enclosures Regulations (2016), s. 2;
  • Playpens Regulations (2019), s. 3.
• Cosmetic Ingredient Hotlist (2018): This list of substances restricted or prohibited for use in cosmetics includes mercury and its compounds as prohibited substances.
• Food and Drug Regulations (last amended 2019): These regulations include a prohibition on the use of mercury or any of its salts or derivatives except for drugs used in the eyes or the area of the eye, in the nose or in the ears and other drugs for injection that are packaged in multi-dose containers in which the mercury or the salt or the derivative of it is the only preservative that can satisfactorily maintain the drug’s sterility or stability.
• Pest Control Products Act (2002; last amended 2019): Mercury-based pesticides are no longer registered in Canada as of 1998.
• Quality of Natural Health Products Guide (PDF): This guide sets a tolerance limit for total mercury in finished natural health products to comply with the established tolerance limit for mercury.
• Updating the Existing Risk Management Strategy for Mercury in Retail Fish (PDF) (2007): This document sets the maximum level of mercury in retail fish and provides consumer consumption advice.
• Blood and Hair Guidance Values (1970s; revised 1998): The first blood and hair guidance for the general adult population in Canada deemed blood levels below 20 μg/L (or 6 mg/kg in hair) to be “acceptable”, levels above 20 but below 100 to be “at increasing risk”, and levels greater than 100 μg/L in blood (or 30 mg/kg in hair) to be “at risk”. No specific threshold values were proposed for the developing foetus (though considered a sensitive subgroup). Later, the heightened risk to the developing foetus of methylmercury toxicity led to the development of a provisional Tolerable Daily Intake of 0.2 μg/kg bw/day for pregnant women, women of reproductive age, and infants. This corresponded to a blood guidance value of 8 μg/L for women of childbearing age, pregnant women, and children 18 years and under.
• Drinking Water Guidelines: The Federal-Provincial-Territorial Committee on Drinking Water sets the maximum acceptable concentrations of substances in drinking water to protect the health of all Canadians, including vulnerable subgroups such as children and the elderly. In 1986, the drinking water guideline for mercury was set at 0.001 milligrams per litre (mg/L) (0.001 ppm). Levels of mercury found in drinking water are generally well below the guideline level. All provinces and territories use the Guidelines for Canadian Drinking Water Quality as the basis for establishing their own requirements for drinking water quality.

International risk management actions

Other international initiatives, identified in the Risk Management Strategy, and listed below are expected to have no or minimal contribution to mercury levels during the current performance assessment period (e.g., they are completed) and are therefore not included in this performance measurement for mercury.

• Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal (1992): Canada is a Party to this Convention which has the overall goal to protect human health and the environment against adverse effects from the generation, transboundary movements and management of hazardous wastes and other wastes. Work under the Basel Convention includes the development of Technical Guidelines for the Environmentally Sound Management of Wastes Consisting of, Containing or Contaminated with Mercury.
• Commission for Environmental Cooperation’s North American Regional Action Plan on Mercury (Phase I 1998, Phase II 2000) The purpose is to provide the governments of Canada, Mexico and the United States with a path forward in their joint and differentiated efforts to reduce the exposure of North American ecosystems, fish and wildlife, and especially humans, to mercury through the prevention and reduction of anthropogenic releases of mercury to the North American environment.
• Protocol on Heavy Metals (1998): As part of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution this Protocol requires Parties to reduce their emissions of lead, cadmium and mercury below 1990 levels.^{Footnote 1}
• Global Mercury Partnership (2005): under the United Nations Environment Programme, the overall goal is to protect human health and the global environment from the release of mercury and its compounds by minimizing and, where feasible, ultimately eliminating global, anthropogenic mercury releases to air, water and land. The Partnership works closely with stakeholders to assist in the timely ratification and effective implementation of the Minamata Convention on Mercury.