Recent Legislative Summaries from the Library of Parliament

2 new legislative summaries have been published recently by the research service of Canada's Library of Parliament. They are:

• Bill C-26: An Act to amend the Criminal Code (criminal interest rate): "Bill C-26 amends section 347 of the Criminal Code of Canada, which criminalizes the charging of usurious interest rates. The expanding presence of payday loan companies suggests that some Canadians are willing to pay rates of interest in excess of those permitted under the Criminal Code for their payday loans. Bill C-26 is designed to exempt payday loans from criminal sanctions in order to facilitate provincial regulation of the industry. Thus, the exemption applies to payday loan companies licensed by any province that has legislative measures in place designed to protect consumers and limit the overall cost of the loans."
• Bill C-30: Canada's Clean Air Act: "Air pollutants associated with smog (ozone and particulate matter as well as substances that can form ozone) had been placed on Schedule 1 of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 (CEPA 1999) in order to give the government the powers to use regulations and other instruments available under CEPA 1999 to control them. Schedule 1 of CEPA 1999 contains the list of substances defined as 'toxic' under section 64 of the Act. During the 38th Parliament, the government had also placed GHGs [greenhouse gase] on Schedule 1 of CEPA 1999 in order, most significantly, to move toward the use of certain portions of the Act to allow it to regulate and create an emissions trading scheme for GHG emissions from Large Final Emitters (significant industrial emitters of GHGs). This was done in order to help Canada meet its Kyoto Protocol obligations to reduce GHG emissions to, on average, 6% below 1990 levels during the period between 2008 and 2012. During the 39th Parliament, however, the government repudiated the Kyoto targets, stating that Canada could not meet them. Bill C-30 seeks to reduce the risks associated with air pollutants and greenhouse gases. Most notably, the bill removes substances associated with smog, smog precursors and greenhouse gases from the List of Toxic Substances, Schedule 1 of CEPA 1999, and places them in the list of definitions in the Act as 'air pollutants' and 'greenhouse gases' respectively. It leaves mercury on Schedule 1 while also defining it as an 'air pollutant.' The bill then creates a new Part 5.1, 'Clean Air,' which addresses air pollutants and greenhouse gases separately from Part 5, which addresses toxic substances."