FREDERICTON \u2014 New Brunswick’s government should adapt its clean water regulations more quickly to Health Canada guidelines, a physician with an environmental advocacy group told legislators Thursday.<\/p>\n
The government should put into law a process to eliminate the lag between federal guidance and on-the-ground application by the province, Dr. Chris Arsenault told a committee considering changes to the Clean Water Act.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just happens in an ad hoc fashion right now. We\u2019re recommending that it happens in a formalized way,\u201d Arsenault, with the local chapter of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, told reporters after his presentation to the committee.<\/p>\n
He cited the example of Health Canada issuing recommendations eight years ago on preventing chemical contamination of drinking water. New Brunswick, he said, only started in February monitoring for so-called forever chemicals.<\/p>\n
Health Canada in 2018 and 2019 established drinking water guidelines for various forever chemicals \u2014 known as PFAS \u2014 which are man-made chemicals that don’t break down easily and can pose health risks.<\/p>\n
High concentrations of forever chemicals were found in the water supply of a northern New Brunswick town in February. Arsenault said it will never be known how long the chemicals were in Charlo\u2019s water supply because the province wasn\u2019t monitoring for the dangerous chemicals until recently.<\/p>\n
New Brunswick\u2019s Environment Department says on its website that testing has so far indicated PFAS levels in the rest of the province are typically below Health Canada\u2019s objective levels.<\/p>\n
The provincial government wasn\u2019t immediately available for comment on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Arsenault noted that public health guidelines are continually evolving based on scientific evidence, so it\u2019s important to stay up to date.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny time Health Canada updates their guidelines, it’s because they’ve demonstrated with a reasonable amount of scientific certainty some kind of causal link between a toxin exposure at a certain level and a negative health consequence for human beings,\u201d Arsenault said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd so if we’re not updating \u2026 we’re potentially essentially ignoring undue exposures and their health consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n
Megan Mitton, a Green Party member on the committee, said the government’s water-protection mechanisms are inadequate because officials don’t quickly adopt the newest science.<\/p>\n
“We need to have a process \u2014 perhaps it needs to automatically happen. Or, there needs to be a short time limit to allow for the adoption,” Mitton said in an interview.<\/p>\n
The committee also heard from representatives of the Conservation Council of New Brunswick and Chief Hugh Akagi of the Peskotomuhkati First Nation.<\/p>\n
Marieka Chaplin, freshwater director at the conservation council, said the government should provide financial support for PFAS testing to private homeowners with wells.<\/p>\n
“I’ve learned that it costs $1,000 if you’re on a private well to test annually for PFAS, for forever chemicals. I could imagine a very small percentage of the population could afford that,” Chaplin said.<\/p>\n
In a presentation to the committee, Chief Akagi said the government needs to treat First Nations communities as partners. Too often, he said, it feels as though the government is checking off boxes on a list instead of truly dialoguing with Indigenous Peoples.<\/p>\n
“With co-governance, we have to make it real. It’s not real,” he said following the hearing.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, the climate change and environmental stewardship committee heard from a lawyer urging the government to enshrine the right to clean water in legislation.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 7, 2026.<\/p>\n
Eli Ridder, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FREDERICTON \u2014 New Brunswick’s government should adapt its clean water regulations more quickly to Health Canada guidelines, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[15729,17,15724,15725,15727,15726,229,1855,244,15728,1767],"class_list":["post-35997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-arsenault","tag-canada","tag-chris-arsenault","tag-clean-water","tag-dangerous-chemicals","tag-forever-chemicals","tag-government","tag-health-canada","tag-new-brunswick","tag-public-health-guidelines","tag-water-supply"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}