NACC

Workers

Water

Energy

Security & civil liberties

Military

Safety & regulations

Transportation corridors

SPP resources

• Deep Integration Timeline
• Backgrounders
• Multimedia
• Media
• Logos
• Facebook

SPP Summit - New Orleans
April 21-22, 2008

• Summit highlights
• Photo gallery
• Media

SPP Summit - Montebello
August 19-21, 2007

• Summit highlights
• Photo gallery
• Highlights from public forum

Teach-in
March 31 to April 1, 2007

• Teach-in resources
• Final teach-in report
• Photo gallery

Government set to announce really dumb “smart” regulations for food and consumer safety

February 19, 2008
Posted by Stuart Trew

According to the Globe and Mail today), “Toys, food and drugs coming into Canada may soon be subject to sweeping new regulations designed to protect consumers from the types of problems that led to massive product recalls last year.”

Those problems took shape in the lead-up to the 2007 SPP summit in Monbebello, through a series of high-profile incidents involving allegedly dangerous and toxic toys and other products entering North America from China. Successive news articles put pressure on Canada, the U.S. and Mexico to do something, thus the announcement by Health Minister Tony Clement in December 2007 that his department would be changing how it regulates food, drugs and other consumer products.

“Sweeping” is a good way to put the new approach because the Harper government actually wants to sweep the problem under the rug by sweeping aside any serious government efforts to improve the safety of the products entering (or being produced in, for that matter) Canada.

As Carly Weeks notes early on in her article, the Harper government’s Food and Consumer Safety Action Plan focuses almost all of its efforts on dealing with problems “after they’ve been detected.”

Michael McBane of the Canadian Health Coalition told her, “They’ll [the government]manage the damage after the fact, but they refuse to protect us from getting those problems in the first place.”

This was the goal of “smart regulation” – a plan to overhaul how the government regulates (or not) every industry in Canada, from the dirty tar sands to the food we put in our mouths.

For example, the government’s approach in its Food and Consumer Safety Action Plan involves:

1. “Preventing problems in the first place” by making sure Canadians are better informed about the dangerous, possibly toxic goods they are nonetheless free to buy. Will that involve big cigarette-style labels? Doubtful. The feds, like most provincial and local governing bodies, consider websites an adequate means of educating people, despite the fact that only about 68 per cent of Canadians use the Internet.

2. “Targeting the highest or unknown risks,” based on information about products supplied by the producers themselves (not based on government testing).

3. “Rapid response,” which means higher fines when problems arise. And with risk assessments being based on industry data, not unbiased research, problems will undoubtedly arise.

This model will affect how drugs are regulated also, says the Globe and Mail article.

“Under a proposed ‘progressive licensing’ system, the federal government would allow some breakthrough drugs on the market faster, without the type of safety data normally required,” wrote Weeks. “The government would then monitor the drug after it's on the market.”

Says McBane: “The substance of the change is to lower safety standards. Rather than take the time to review the drug to ensure its safety, they speed it up under the guise of progressive licensing.”

Not reported by the Globe is that this specific risk-based system for regulating dangerous products, although in the works since early 2005, received a big boost by Harper, Bush and Calderon last August. It is how all toxic substances are to be regulated under a new Agreement in the Area of Chemicals.

Smart regulation has also been rolled into a broader government goal of “public service modernization”. Despite the transparent attempt to weaken Canada’s regulatory agencies so that so-called market forces can work their magic, the government claims that smart regulation, “involves a series of projects that strengthen the policy, processes, tools and regulatory community that are needed to sustain high levels of regulatory performance and facilitate continuous improvement.”

According to the Health Canada website, the government will be accepting comments on its food and consumer safety plan until March 4.

To read more about smart regulation and the SPP, click here.