Agency takes too long to ban harmful pesticides: report

OTTAWA — The federal Pest Management Regulatory Agency is taking years to remove confirmed pesticide risks from the marketplace while failing to evaluate many other products, according to a new audit.

The latest annual report from the environment commissioner’s office also found conditionally registered pesticides, fungicides and herbicides that have not been properly vetted have in some cases been in use for more than a decade.

The Liberal government moved last week to stop the practice of conditionally registering the products, effective this June, but commissioner Julie Gelfand’s report indicates problems in the system run deeper.

“We’ve recommended to the agency that once they’ve decided that a pesticide has unacceptable risks for all uses, that it should remove them from the market as soon as possible,” the commissioner told a news conference.

“And that if they can’t remove it right away, they should give more information to the public.”

Gelfand’s audit found the pest agency took an average of five years, and up to 11 years, to get dangerous pesticides off shelves — and that the stalling mechanisms are built right into the law.

The act governing pesticides allows the minister to keep a harmful product in circulation if it’s deemed there are no readily available alternative products. It also allows manufacturers to sell existing stocks of pesticides that are found to be harmful before the product is de-registered.

The commissioner also found the agency did not assess the cumulative effects of products on human health, even when required to do so by legislation.

As for those conditionally registered products, the audit found that eight of the nine pesticides that had been conditionally registered for more than a decade were neonicotinoids. “These products are now used extensively in Canada and are widely suspected of being a threat to bees, other pollinators, and broader ecosystems,” said the audit.