A wide perception gap continues to yawn between what the Pest Management Regulatory Agency says is happening in pesticide registration progress, and what industry and politicians see.
On June 2, PMRA and Agriculture Canada officials were on Parliament Hill assuring MPs that Canada’s effort to streamline the registration system to get more minor-use and less toxic products onto the market has been remarkable.
There have been more approvals, more submissions and more consultation with manufacturers and farmers than ever before, they said.
“We have come a long way in the past year,” said Mary Komalynsky, director general of adaptation and financial guarantee programs for Agriculture Canada. “However, a lot more remains to be done.”
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Murray Porteous, chair of the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, would agree with the last half of that statement.
In a scathing letter to MPs in late May, he complained that little has happened to make more and better pest management products available to his growers.
“The pesticide registration process in Canada needs to start over with a clean slate,” he wrote. “The status quo is not acceptable.”
One of last year’s innovations was a government decision to appoint Imme Gerke as minor-use adviser to the PMRA, reporting to agency head Claire Franklin.
Critics saw it as a half measure. The demand from the industry and the House of Commons agriculture committee had been for appointment of a minor-use adviser and an ombudsperson, both outside the PMRA.
Last week, Gerke told the committee she has spent the last months touring the country, meeting with industry players, setting priorities and clearing up misconceptions about how the regulatory system works and what information companies need to include when they apply for registration in Canada.
“The system works, but it isn’t always clear how it works,” she said. “I have neither the goal nor the power to turn around the system.”
Porteous, in a joint letter with Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers chair Rick De Brabandere, was not as positive about Gerke’s accomplishments.
“At best, this position is merely a buffer between PMRA and grower groups,” they wrote.
Gerke was surprised. She said farmers she talks to seem happy with her performance.
“I’m a little bit astonished about that remark,” she told Canadian Alliance MP Howard Hilstrom.
Janice Hopkins, director of alternative strategies and regulatory affairs for PMRA, said the agency is receiving $4 million in additional funds in the next year for the minor-use and safer chemicals program.
“We will use that additional $4 million to have an additional 30 staff,” she said.
The agency continues to encourage companies to make joint approval applications in Canada and the United States, rather than ignoring the Canadian market, and looks at ways to expand the minor-use applications of already approved chemical products.
In Parliament, health minister Anne McLellan tabled a response to an opposition query about PMRA that claimed much progress. PMRA is part of Health Canada.
“The new ombudsperson has facilitated increased communication between growers, the PMRA and Agriculture Canada to ensure the data requirements for approvals are met and has helped streamline the processing of submissions,” she said. “In 2002-2003, PMRA approved more than 450 minor uses, which was more than double that of any of the previous years.”
Hilstrom continued to complain that PMRA’s main approach seems to be to assume delays are caused by miscommunication and that manufacturers often make mistakes in their applications, delaying registration.
He said it is an old government tactic of assuming problems arise because people don’t understand what the government is doing.
“We need to see results and we need to see them quickly,” he said.
The agency response was that results are there to be seen already.
