Contacts

Francois Lavalée
Environment Canada
10th Floor, Place Vincent Massey, 351 St. Joseph Blvd.
Hull, Quebec, K1A 0H3
telefon: +1-819-9944073, fax: +1-819-9539542

Name of the system: the National Pollutant Release Inventory, NPRI

A. The Rise and Development of the System

The Canadian NPRI is public accessible database of chemical substances releases. The Canadian government hopes this system will collect data for setting priorities of the ecological policy, motivate pollutants to reduce emissions and it will support activities of ecological groups of public. General requirements of the system are as follows: simple reporting, gradual coordination of other Canadian registers, public accessibility.

Concealing data is based on a written request. Concealing data can be cancelled by the jury decision for the third person's request according to the Access to Information Act. The Environmental Protection Act - section 16 from 1992 is fundamental for the NPRI.

A group - Multi-Stakeholder Advisory Committee ( MAC ) - was created in 1991 to find the system conception. This group has consisted of industry representatives, NGOs, trade unions and state management. 10 workshops were done in September 1991. And 5 two-day-meetings of the MAC and 17 meetings of workshops happened till September 1992. A running report of the MAC activity was published.

The first reporting period was the year 1993 when 178 substances were followed. The term for giving reports was June 1994. To this date information from 1437 enterprises were collected. Based on these information a summary report was published in April 1995.

B. The Structure of the System

The NPRI database is directed by the federal Ministry of the Environment (the Environment Canada ). Data are collected by provincial governments once a year. Reporters are defined as enterprises with more than 10 employees or producers who use or produce some of the substances on the list in total amount 10 tons per year in 1% concentration. The duty of report is almost general; only following industry branches are excepted form this duty: petrol mining ( only if petrol is not processed in the same place where it is mined ), stores and shops, agriculture. Reported information are: the name of an enterprise, coordinates, number of employees, the SIC ( Standard Industrial Classification ), code of industrial activity, contact person, emission permission of the enterprise.

The list of 178 substances ( the Domestic Substances List ) for 1993 was created according to the American TRI list and the Canadian Chemical Producers Association's National Emission Reduction Master Plan. But all substances which occurred in smaller amount than 1 ton per year in Canada were exclude from the list. Next 78 substances are regulated by different Canadian governmental programs. They will be incorporated into the NPRI in future.

Information reported for individual substances are: origin of the substance, processing in the enterprise, amount, seasonal changes of emissions ( a quarter-year change of more than 10% when compared with the average is to be recorded ), changes of releases and transfers amounts and reasons of these changes, the CAS identification number ( CAS is an international number system of chemicals identification ).

Air-, water- and soil-pollution, underground injections and other releases are followed. Recycling, generating energy, waste destroying and tips were included among releases in 1993. Enterprises have to report the way they reduced the emission amount in last time period and they have to estimate the amount for the next year.

The Canadian Ministry of the Environment compiles data and publishes summary reports. Even source data are published; they are accessible in federal and provincial offices in printed and electronic form. Data are accessible at Internet as well. ( Comment: source data are understood as not compiled and not commented data in reports ).

The report from 1993 included the summary of releases of each province, total transfers amount, total volumes of individual substances releases, releases from single enterprises. The data compatibility was kept; no aggregated data of heterogeneous substances were published.