Pesticide use in Canada soars, even as danger becomes clearer

Pesticide use in Canada has skyrocketed over the past two decades. Pesticide manufacturers sold Canadians more than 130 million kilograms of pesticides in 2021, a fivefold increase from 2005, a new analysis has found.

The findings come amid growing alarm about the human health harms and environmental impacts of pesticides — harms that have led advocates to call for an overhaul of Canada's pesticide rules and agricultural policy goals. 

"There is a narrative that is out there that pesticides don't really pose any kind of a problem," said Laura Bowman, a lawyer with Ecojustice who wrote the study. But those problems are mounting.

For instance, last month American researchers found that glyphosate – the most common herbicide in Canada — can increase the risk of neurological disease. Health experts have also linked widely-used neonicotinoid insecticides to reproductive harms and other health issues, while their harm to insects prompted a European ban in 2018. 

Despite those danger signs, Canada is the world's fifth-heaviest user of pesticides, and lags behind 90 per cent of countries when it comes to restrictions or bans on the products. 

The Ecojustice study found a silent surge in use of the products, driven by a combination of the widespread use of crops that are genetically modified to resist herbicides; using pesticides as a preventative measure against pests instead of as targeted treatments; and forestry practices that rely on spraying forests with herbicides to kill off unwanted plants. Yet despite their prevalence and growing alarm about their impacts on human health and the environment, the increase in pesticide usage has largely avoided scrutiny. 

In part, this is because obtaining information about pesticide use in Canada is difficult. The PMRA has repeatedly come under fire for obscuring this information by refusing to release precise sales data, citing corporate confidentiality rules. The agency also doesn't collect data on pesticide usage, and relies on private data analytics companies, a spokesperson told Canada's National Observer in an October statement.

The PMRA only publishes annual sales data for pesticides sold by three or more companies, the spokesperson said. 

Bowman used those reports, which were released with a few years' delay, to conduct her analysis. 

The massive increase in pesticide use is evident even in the scarce sales data made public by the PMRA, Bowman found.

"There is a really concerning situation here, and the failure to complete cumulative health risk assessments means that we don't have a handle on the scope of the problem," she explained.  Canada doesn't assess the cumulative health risks people face from being exposed to multiple pesticides and other chemicals simultaneously, meaning that risk assessments for individual products don't assess how people are actually exposed to the chemicals.

"The lack of monitoring in the air, in the water, is another huge barrier to really understanding people's exposure." 

Beyond exposing people and the environment to more pesticides, farmers' increasing reliance on the chemicals is making them more vulnerable to climate change, she added. 

Farming relies on complex ecosystems made up of soil biodiversity, insect predators, pollinators and soil fungi to keep crops healthy and bountiful. Pesticides disrupt this balance, eventually reducing yields, crop health and the soil's ability to store carbon; a 2021 study in the journal Nature estimated that 64 per cent of the planet's farmland is at risk of lasting pesticide pollution. 

Moreover, as the planet warms and Canadian farmland sees fewer freezing cold days, researchers expect farmers will need to manage weeds, pests and diseases historically associated with more southern climes. Combined with pesticide resistance — a growing problem where pests evolve to survive pesticide use — Bowman said Canada's current policies that support widespread pesticide use will leave farmers with few options to protect their crops. 

"It isn't feasible to deal with the climate crisis by simply using more and more pesticides," she said. "This is our window to start really thinking about other ways of controlling pests." 

That doesn't necessarily mean fully banning the products, but can rather mean modifying how and when they’re used. For instance, French researchers found that banning preventative pesticide use can reduce by 42 per cent the amount of chemicals used, with minimal impacts on crop yields. Like human medications, when used sparingly as a tool that complements environmentally-friendly tactics like helping pest predators thrive and boosting soil, pesticides can help bolster yields and minimize environmental impacts. 

Beyond the environmental and health problems linked to Canada's reliance on pesticides, Sean O'Shea, Ecojustice's law reform campaigner for toxics, warned their omnipresence could threaten farmers' financial feasibility — and Canadians' food security. Pesticides and fertilizers are two of farmers' biggest operating costs, and few are actually manufactured in Canada. As threats to global trade proliferate, the cost of those products is poised to keep growing, he said. 

Moreover, some European countries and the E.U. are considering stricter rules for pesticide residue on crops. If implemented, those rules could make it harder for Canadian farmers to sell their crops, especially if countries in other parts of the world follow suit, he said. 

Curbing Canada's pesticide use won't be immediate, Bowman said. Farmers will need financial support to transition away from pesticide-heavy agricultural techniques to more sustainable ones, and the shift will take time. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. 

"We know that we can't just flick a switch and make pesticides go away, but we need to have somewhere to start," she said. "That's really what this report is about: getting the public and decision makers to a place where we can start having this conversation about change."