PMRA Notice of Intent: Strengthening the regulation of pest control products in Canada
In the summer of 2023, Health Canada proposed four areas of regulatory amendments to the Pest Control Products Regulations. This included:
increased public access to confidential test data;
increased transparency for maximum residue limit (MRL) applications for imported food products;
explicit authority for the Minister of Health to require the submission of cumulative environmental effects where information and methodology are available; and
strengthened consideration of species at risk in risk assessments by giving the Minister the explicit authority to require the submission of available information on species at risk.
In response, this submission emphasizes that Canada’s science-based, regulatory framework for pesticides is among the best in the world and already addresses several of the transformation objectives proposed by Health Canada through its operation. SaskCrops remains supportive of a fully transparent process and notes that it is important that any transformative processes do not draw scarce PMRA resources away from core PMRA work making crop protection tools available to farmers.