CALGARY (Staff) – The head of the federal agency responsible for reviewing new pesticide registration applications says an unpopular cost recovery plan will eventually lower the cost of getting new products to market.
Claire Franklin, head of the one-year-old Pest Management Regulatory Agency, walked into the lions’ den last week when she spoke to the annual meeting of the Canadian Crop Protection Institute, which represents chemical manufacturers and distributors.
The agency and its plan to cover more than half of its budget with user fees has been strongly criticized by the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, horticulture groups and pesticide manufacturers.
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Franklin said although new user fees will cost the industry an additional $16 million a year, manufacturers and farmers will benefit because the agency is streamlining and improving the registration process.
The result will be that new products that meet the agency’s standard will be approved in 18 months instead of four years, as was the case when parts of four federal departments were responsible for the reviews.
“We have been told over many years that probably the most important aspect of competitiveness is to have the same products available at the same time as their competitors,” she said in an interview.
“It has to be valuable to farmers as well as the industry to have these products available a year or two or three sooner than they have been.”
To speed the process, the agency is working with other countries to harmonize the application process and make the package of data reviewed the same.
She said Canada and the United States now have very similar processes and there is progress with Germany and Australia.
Once the processes are harmonized, manufacturers won’t have to make costly adjustments to their application packages for each country.
Also, they will be able to simultaneously apply for registration in Canada and the United States and the two countries will be able to share the review.
“Under a joint review process, you might do all the environment stuff, I might do all the health stuff and together we’d use the reviews to come to a decision,” she said.
The agency has already cleared a backlog of applications. In July 1995 when it was created, there were about 900 major applications on the books. By December this year, that number is expected to be 400.
Franklin said critics often ask why Canada doesn’t simply accept products that have already been reviewed in the United States.
The federal government is legally responsible for the safety of products it regulates and can’t rest that duty on the approval process of another country, she said.
Franklin noted the government’s liability is a hot topic in another area of regulations, the blood supply.
She added the agency not only reviews pesticide applications, but also works with other government departments and industry to find solutions to pesticide problems.
For example, in an emergency situation with potato blight in the Maritimes, the agency was able to approve new protection products within nine months and help develop a crop management process to prevent repeated outbreaks of the disease, she said.
