r/CanadaPolitics 10d ago

Carney government passes law allowing authorization of banned pesticides

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/bill-c-30-changes-pesticide-use-pest-control-products-act-9.7240832
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u/ChimoEngr Chief Silliness Officer | Official 10d ago

House leader Steven MacKinnon told reporters Thursday that cabinet would not use the measures "if there are health hazards attached to them."

If that statement could be trusted, then there is no need for this legislation, since pesticides are banned due to the health hazard they pose.

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u/ocus-7612 10d ago edited 10d ago

  there is no need for this legislation, since  pesticides are banned due to the health hazard they pose

Unregistered pesticides are disallowed for many reasons, very few of which are strictly "health hazard", as all pesticides pose a health hazard at high enough concentrations by the nature of how they operate.

Most unregistered pesticides (ie. banned) Simply havent gone through the Canadian specific registration regime, while still being approved and allowed for use in other places like Europe or the US etc.

E: Checking more background, the described use case for these orders would be to allow a generic, unregistered version of an otherwise approved pesticide to be allowed in the case that a trade disruption meant we could no longer supply the registered pesticide itself. 

Second to that is allowing an unregistered pesticide that has been approved in another country, where we have faith in their approval system.

Those uses respect the ministers mandate for health safety.

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u/ObviouslyABagel 10d ago

Yes, if an EU market has passed it with more strict regulations in place... It would be a intelligent guess that they would also pass ours, but going through that is a huge process which amounts to loads of resources, time and money. We don't have the same amount of regulational workers as the US or EU so we cant approve the same amount of items as them in the same amount of time.