Members of the Senate Agriculture Committee are looking at amendments being proposed in Bill C-31, related to how Health Canada reviews registered pesticides.
Currently, Health Canada is required to do a mandatory re-evaluation of every registered pesticide every 15 years, even if it doesn't have any red flags.
The proposed amendment would give regulators greater discretion in deciding whether a pesticide needs an automatic review and instead would only be done if there's a reason for it such as the health or environmental risk of a product increased significantly since the last re-evaluation.
"This would, in turn, allow the department to direct its scientific and regulatory capacity toward the products and risks requiring the greatest attention," said Matt Jones, Deputy Minister of Health Canada to the Senate Committee last week.
"Reduce unnecessary duplication, allowing Health Canada to better coordinate related review activities and address risks more quickly. This improved regulatory efficiency would allow Health Canada to reduce its significant backlog of re-evaluations and address risks in a timely manner, while creating more predictability for industry."
Tom Rosser, the Assistant Deputy Ag Minister, told the committee the proposed changes "are important because they support timely access to innovation, helping farmers to manage evolving pest pressures, maintain productivity, and adapt to increasingly challenging growing conditions."
It would also allow the Pesticides Regulatory Directorate – formerly known as the Pest Management Regulatory Agency – to "respond more quickly to emerging safety information, prioritize resources to products and issues of greatest concern, and reduce regulatory burden where risks are well understood, while continuing to uphold robust health and environmental protections." Rosser added.
Farm groups are welcoming the proposed change.
Manager of Policy for the Grain Growers of Canada Kate Sauser said the key is "implementation with a clear, strong criteria."
"Farmers do need that regulatory system that would protect human health and the environment and nothing about moving towards a more risk-based approach should compromise that. So, from the farmer perspective, we would rather see these resources directed towards areas where new science or evidence indicates that risk has changed while also ensuring that the regulator has capacity to assess new products and technologies when appropriate." Sauser said.
General Manager of the Canadian Cattle Association Ryder Lee agreed, saying "this is about focusing resources where they need to and where the science points rather than by the calendar, as many have said. The confidence is there."
Asked about the impact delays in getting products into the hands of producers has meant in recent years, Lee explained its left Canadian producers at a competitive disadvantage with the U.S.
"So sometimes you'll have that one product, that initial piece, and after the patent expires you get some competitors come on the market. But if your regulator is busy over here assessing things based on the calendar, they don't have the resources to address these competitive products. So the Canadian price stays up here, and meanwhile the U.S. has four or five options, drives their price down, and our competition footing is impacted by that way. So part of the win here is smarter being able to allocate resources of the regulator better than they're required to now."
However, not everyone is on board with the potential changes.
During a hearing last Friday, Ian Culbert with the Canadian Public Health Association believed the issue is not "whether pesticide regulation should be risk-based or whether Health Canada should prioritize its work", but "whether prioritization requires eliminating the only mandatory recurring comprehensive review of products already on the market."
Culbert argued "removing the statutory requirement may make that backlog smaller on paper, but it does not answer the underlying public health question."
"How do we know that products approved years ago still meet contemporary standards?"
Phil Mount of the National Farmers Union said the mandatory re-evaluation is there for a reason.
"We've seen time and again that what pesticide manufacturers and regulators saw as safe and how they classified the risk of a product can sometimes change after we see it used at a scale of millions of kilograms a year in new landscapes and ecologies with different crops and production practices. Changing use profile can change the risk profile, and this needs to be checked at re-evaluation." Mount said.
As for the constant oversight proposed in the amendment, Mount said while it's a good idea, it's a "goal that we're nowhere near in Canada, and we can't rewrite legislation as if we had continuous oversight."
"We need guardrails left in place. We need to develop a proper strategy based on expert advice, and these changes actually move us away from the goals of continuous oversight."
The Senate committee will hear more testimony on this proposed change before holding a vote.
(With files from Dean Thorpe, CFCW Edmonton)
