The federal environmental commissioner says the government’s pest management system suffers from fragmentation, secrecy, a lack of performance measurements and an abysmal record on reevaluating old pesticides on the market.
In mid-December, commissioner Brian Emmett told MPs on the House of Commons environment committee that the Pest Management Regulatory Agency has promise, but is failing in many practical ways.
He said the agency shows poor application of good management principles, fragmented information collecting and sharing and “compartmentalized thinking.”
Emmett said the agency should do more followup on the results of its decisions.
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But he saved his most harsh criticism for the slow progress on retesting chemicals approved for the Canadian market many years ago. There is a backlog of chemicals on the market, waiting to be reevaluated.
“The government’s track record with pesticide reevaluations is alarmingly poor, both in relation to long-standing domestic commitments and in comparison to other countries where reevaluation seems to have been taken much more seriously than in Canada,” said the environmental commissioner, who works for the federal auditor general.
“Many pesticides used today were approved when standards were much less stringent than they are today. In some cases, standards were approved over 40 years ago.”
He said the rules for conducting reevaluations are not clear.
The Commons environment committee has been holding hearings on the performance of the agency and the need for new pest management legislation.
It has heard from environmentalists critical of Canada’s increasing pesticide use and from farmers who said they still need access to more chemicals available to their competitors but who also praised the PMRA for making improvements and for speeding up the registration system.
That issue of serving both the chemical industry and their farmer clients, as well as the public health need, was raised by Commons committee chair Charles Caccia. Is this not a troubling conflict of interest for PMRA? he asked.
Emmett said it could be seen as a conflict and added it should not be up to bureaucrats to make such decisions.
“It has a mandate which requires it to make decisions that balance off one set of interests against another set of interests,” said Emmett. “I think that is probably a conflict, yes. I would much rather see that made by public representatives as opposed to bureaucrats like me.”
But the commissioner said if PMRA has to make judgments about serving the interests of industry and public health, at least it should be more open about how and why the decisions are made.
