Carney government prepares to dismantle pesticide rules

Sneaked into this omnibus bill are amendments to the way the federal government reviews and considers pesticides, namely adding economic considerations to the mandate. Officially, the government says this new economic lens to the Pest Control Products Act won’t trump current health and safety considerations, but unofficially seems to suggest it might.

“Food security is top of mind in Canada, as for our allies, so if there’s a determination that one of these rulings (by Health Canada) is having … big ramifications on our ability to produce something, (cabinet) will temporarily look at that in the interest of economic or national food security to allow for a temporary pause on a certain ban,” one government official explained to the Star on Monday.

The Liberals curtailed debate on the bill this month. Aside from public servants, no group testified on what these changes meant for farmers, for the environment or for human health. MPs then had less than 72 hours to table amendments, days before the first written brief from concerned stakeholders was published.

Those who wrote to the standing committee on finance raised the alarm.

Twenty-one scientists with “research expertise on pesticides and the environment” urged the government to reconsider its changes.

“Granting Cabinet authority to issue emergency orders to override the Minister of Health’s science-based risk assessments to restrict the use of a pesticide, even when it is known to cause unacceptable human health and environmental harm … would compromise the scientific integrity of pesticide regulation in Canada by potentially disregarding this evidence even when the harmful impacts are clear,” they wrote. 

The bill’s changes are only meant to impact environmental rulings — not those affecting human health — but, as the concerned scientists also noted, “Pesticides are essentially ‘legal poisons’ designed to kill pests that can also cause harm or death to a wide variety of non-target species, including humans and wildlife as well as species at risk. There is abundant evidence for short- and long-term harms for many pesticide active ingredients.”

They questioned the lack of clarity of how the terms used in the bill — “national economic, regional or food security” — would be defined and evaluated; how the proposed amendments would impact Canada’s efforts to align its pesticide regulation with more stringent international partners such as the European Union; and they suggested the new proposed regime would lead to more influence from the pesticide industry.

Industry lobbyists have interacted with the Carney government and Liberal members of Parliament more than 650 times since last year’s election. Health Minister Marjorie Michel — who is responsible for what used to be called the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, but is now called the Pesticides Regulatory Directorate at Health Canada — was recently praised for her “unprecedented” engagement with the industry. Yet, Michel has not called a single meeting of her Pest Management Advisory Council, a multi-stakeholder group that is supposed to advise her on such changes.

The Pesticides Regulatory Directorate, which was described by the scientists as “overloaded,” has also been hit with 47 job cuts, or 12 per cent of its workforce.

The scientists’ concerns were echoed by the Association pour la santé publique du Québec, Ecojustice, and the David Suzuki Foundation, who wrote on behalf of 25 groups.

The only industry group to write in, the Canadian Consumer Specialty Productions Association, raised concerns over transparency, costs, and the impacts on non-agricultural sectors.

The National Farmers Union said “Allowing cabinet — which serves at the pleasure of the prime minister and makes its decisions behind closed doors — to issue decrees that determine which laws and regulations no longer apply, or apply only to certain persons, is deeply disrespectful of our democracy and the rule of law.”

May had hoped to table a slew of amendments Monday — but after debate was limited to a total of 30 minutes, she’ll be lucky to get a few words in.

“What I fear, the worst is people die; also really bad, endangered wildlife die,” she told the Star. “My amendment suggests at least before you overturn a decision that this is unsafe, explore what alternatives are available, what other things could be done, what other integrated pest management controls might work instead of allowing something that at least one minister and one department have determined is too dangerous to be used.

“To allow cabinet to overturn that is monstrous.”