The new chief bureaucrat of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency agrees with critics that the much-maligned agency must do a better job of ensuring Canadian farmers have appropriate chemicals and that the public understands the importance of the products it regulates.
Karen Dodds, recently appointed executive director of the PMRA, went before MPs on the House of Commons agriculture committee to promise improvements in communications, transparency and farmer friendliness.
She won MP praise for her willingness to concede the PMRA has failed to make products available to farmers and to defend the pesticide safety system to a skeptical urban population.
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Dodds, formerly a senior Health Canada bureaucrat in the food safety area, took a different approach.
“I’m very sympathetic with the number of challenges that farmers face today,” she told MPs.
“Each time I meet with grower groups and others, I’m increasingly convinced that the question of balance is not only essential to our regulatory regime, but it’s essential to the story we tell about pesticides.”
She said a priority will be to implement the Pest Control Products Act this year, more than two years after it was approved by Parliament. The act clearly sets out agency testing procedures, its requirement to consult with the industry and its obligation to make more information public.
Improved communications and continued co-operation with the United States on joint testing and assessment also will be priorities, she said.
However, Dodds did not come with good news on the minor use registration issue.
The number of minor use registrations was down last year and she said the agency has not yet decided how to deal with the issue.
Several years ago, PMRA appointed a minor use adviser after a recommendation from the agriculture committee. Late last year, the adviser was quietly taken off the job and not replaced.
“In looking at the duties of the position, there are actually some internal conflicts,” she said.
“You are asking one person to do things that put that person in conflict. In my estimation, one person cannot do that job and we need more than one person and we need a different approach.”
