We’ve made changes to the Toxics Reduction Program to eliminate duplication with the federal government’s Chemicals Management Plan, (under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999) and reduce burden for industry.

On December 31, 2021, the Toxics Reduction Act, 2009 will be repealed and its associated regulations revoked, ending the Toxics Reduction Program. Until this time, facilities must continue to meet the requirements of the Toxics Reduction Act, 2009 and its associated regulations.

As a result of regulatory changes, facilities no longer need to prepare new toxic substance reduction plans or review their existing plans. Facilities with existing plans are still required to report annually on substances included in their plans that meet the thresholds.

The ministry is currently updating this Toolkit for Toxic Substance Accounting to reflect the legislative and regulatory changes. The updated version will be provided shortly.

For toxics substance accounting, the Act and regulation requires that all documents and records to be kept on site for 7 years.

This section provides one approach to creating and maintaining records to not only meet the requirement of the regulation but also to facilitate consistency for subsequent year reporting.

One approach to overall data and records management is to create a computerized database of flow diagrams, calculations, and supporting data for each prescribed toxic substance. If a spreadsheet format is used, each sheet could provide documentation of each step of the data gathering, tracking and quantification process.

The overall cover sheet of a spreadsheet could contain an overview of the contents of the spreadsheet along with instructions for the use of the spreadsheet. In this way, a standardized approach is created and documented. The next sheets could contain the illustrations showing stages and processes and process flow diagrams with detailed descriptions in logical order, from a big picture snap shot of the overall manufacturing stages to detailed process flow diagrams showing the movement of prescribed toxic substances. The process flow diagrams would then be followed by worksheets that provide the calculations used to track and quantify. The worksheets that provide the calculations would be linked to worksheets containing information derived from data sources. Lastly, the data sources could be scanned and attached to the file as reference records.

A facility may create a separate table (spreadsheet) per input/output stream, assign a unique identification to each stream, label the source, and provide a photo record of the stream or emission point in the table. In this way, all input and output points from each process are identified and may be referenced on the process flow diagram. This will enable a reviewer, such as a toxic substance reduction planner, to better understand the flow and fate of the prescribed toxic substance. This will also facilitate year to year comparisons of operations.