The federal government has lost its way in its duty to protect Canadians and the environment from harmful chemicals used on food crops, trees and gardens.
In particular, Health Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA), the agency tasked with regulating pesticide in Canada, is broken. Or worse; because to say something is broken implies it once was whole. It would mean Canada at one time had strong pesticide laws and a government department or agency that used them to aggressively weed out chemicals that contribute to cancer, fertility problems, fetal deformities, neurodevelopmental problems, and crashing populations of bees and other essential pollinators.
I see no evidence that this was ever true. My colleague Marc Fawcett-Atkinson has spent the last three years investigating pesticide regulation in Canada. His detailed reports show a health protection body in thrall to the pesticide giants and a government lacking the political will to create laws that protect Canadians and the environment from toxic chemicals. Pesticides, for reasons unknown, are excluded from the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which regulates all other toxic chemicals.
Canada’s National Observer’s reporting on pesticides paints a picture of a regulator captured by industry and the only way to break those ties is to blow it up and start over. Responsibility for pesticide regulation should be shifted to the Public Health Agency of Canada or Environment and Climate Change Canada, bodies with a better track record of public health protection.
Because the status quo simply isn’t working. Canada lags behind 90 per cent of countries in the world when it comes to banning harmful pesticides. And when presented with scientific and medical evidence of harm to human and animal health, the PMRA at every turn, seems to search for ways to keep pesticides in use rather than soberly weighing their risks against their benefits.
The latest outrage uncovered by Fawcett-Atkinson shows the PMRA collaborated with Bayer, one of the world’s largest agrochemical companies to undermine research by Christy Morrissey, a prominent Canadian scientist. A trove of emails and meeting minutes shows the agency and company colluded to stave off a pending ban of imidacloprid and two other related neonicotinoid pesticides used on corn, soybeans, potatoes and other crops. The chemicals are harmful to human brains and sperm and deadly to bees, insects and birds.
Water sampling data collected on the Prairies by Morrissey, a Canadian ecologist and University of Saskatchewan professor, helped form the basis for a national ban proposed in 2016. But it was reversed based on a scant replication of her research conducted by Bayer.
Then there is the disturbing history of chlorpyrifos, a pesticide that was widely used to kill insects in greenhouses, on farms and as a spray to kill mosquitos. It can cause neurological damage in children, including lowering IQ, and contributing to memory loss and attention deficit disorder.
Chlorpyrifos was banned in the E.U. in 2019 and in 2021 the U.S. was forced by the courts to follow suit. Canada stalled until 2021 when the PMRA finally issued a ban allowing farmers to use their backstocks for an additional three years, until December 2023.
Think about it. That meant three more years of spraying a pesticide that we know harms the brains of our children.
The PMRA dropped the ball again in 2023 when it failed to warn Canadians about the health dangers of a pesticide used on sports fields, golf courses and vegetable farms. Dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate, or DCPA, has the ability to harm human fetuses, causing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to issue an unusual public warning. Canadian officials knew about the American warning, emails reviewed by Canada’s National Observer revealed, but chose not to follow suit.
The litany of failures by the PMRA to become more accountable to the public and transparent about its decisions, prompted one scientist to resign his position as co-chair of the PMRA’s scientific advisory committee. Bruce Lanphear, a public health expert and Simon Fraser University professor, said he was routinely denied access to key health and safety data his advisory committee needed to evaluate the effectiveness of Canada’s pesticide regulations. The PMRA cited legal constraints as the reason, another indication that, in Canada’s world of pesticides, corporate proprietary rights trump public health. If our current laws truly prevent the public from scrutinizing scientific data provided by companies about the safety or danger of their products, then it’s time those laws were changed.
Lanphear said there is a culture of secrecy within the PMRA that he couldn’t crack. The agency is reluctant to be more transparent — including with its own scientific advisory committee, he told Fawcett-Atkinson shortly after he resigned.
"They just would distract us or ignore" the committee's requests to review pesticide data, he said. "They were always very pleasant, but would just not answer."
Efforts to obtain information about pesticide approvals by the Canadian environmental watchdog Ecojustice were similarly blocked. In a recent ruling, Canada’s Information Commissioner found the PMRA stalled the release of some information for more than four years, delays she called unreasonable.
The PMRA insists it is working on ways to provide more timely access to information. But it’s difficult to believe any number of new processes and procedures will succeed so long as the people within it are cozy with industry and seem hellbent on upholding a culture of silence.
Yes, pesticides help farmers and foresters obtain bigger yields. And few would argue Canada should do away with them altogether. However, in cases where the evidence is clear that chemicals are harmful, the choice must always favour human health over economic gain. It takes a strong civil service to beat back the ambitions of industry and it's sad to think we don’t have that now. Canadians deserve better.
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