Skip to main content
heading background image

Canada's Climate Weekly

October 18th 2024
Feature story

We deserve protection

Good morning, 

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. 

Adrienne Tanner 

 

TOP STORY

👎🏽Canada’s pesticide regulator collaborated with an agrochemical giant to undermine research by a prominent scientist to stave off an impending ban of a class of pesticides harmful to human brains and sperm and deadly to bees, insects and birds, Canada's National Observer has found. University of Saskatchewan professor Christy Morrissey discovered the effort after a proposed ban on neonicotinoid pesticides was overturned. Morrissey’s research data had contributed to the proposed ban and she was shocked at the about-face. What she found was a concerted effort by the government and Bayer, the pesticide manufacturer, to discredit her studies.

Marc Fawcett-Atkinson reports.

 

Number of the Week

140 — the number of countries that promised three years ago to halt deforestation by the end of the decade

 

MORE CNO READS

🐷You’ve got to wonder why Premier Doug Ford would need a 37-member cabinet, just one member fewer than Justin Trudeau’s team. Cabinet ministers, of course, earn more than the average MPP, so a large cabinet means more MPPs hauling in more coin. That’s not where it ends though. Another 34 of Ford’s MPPs have been awarded assistantships which come with a $16,000 raise. Not to begrudge hardworking politicians a raise, but these cash awards do not apply to opposition MPPs. The whole scheme smacks of backdoor pay raises for team Ford only. 

David Moscrop writes

 

🚴🏽Ontario Premier Doug Ford has never been a huge bike booster — he’s more of highway guy. But he recently kicked up his war against bikes up another notch this month with proposed legislation to require municipalities to seek provincial approval before adding new bike lanes. If it passes, municipalities will have to prove that vehicle traffic won’t be negatively impacted, among other restrictions. This drew fire from city of Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, who objects to the erosion of city powers and rightfully points out that bikes reduce traffic congestion.

Abdul Matin Sarfraz reports

 

🔌The shift to electricity, whether for heat pumps and home heating or electric vehicles, can almost always save you money. Unless you live in Alberta. A new report by Clean Energy Canada found that because Alberta has failed to invest in the electrification shift, with things like heat pump and EV rebates, and has high electricity prices, the average household making the switch comes out $21 poorer. That’s unfortunate for sustainably-minded Albertans. The good news is — for everyone else in Canada — the savings are there to be had.

Natasha Bulowski reports

 

👏🏽Bravo to seven young people who filed a constitutional challenge against Ontario’s emissions targets. The case was filed back when Premier Doug Ford was first elected and repealed Ontario’s cap-and-trade system for lowering emissions. Ontario’s Court of Appeal ruled this week that the case raises such important issues, it should be given a second hearing. A partial victory for the youth who argued the weakened target would spell more greenhouse gases which cause global warming that will harm future generations. 

Jordan Omstead from The Canadian Press reports.