Health Committee on Oct. 19th, 2010

[Diane Labelle]

In this case, it does not say “notwithstanding the Privacy Act”, so it's to work in a complementary fashion with the Privacy Act. The Privacy Act is not ousted here. What it does is provide government with an opportunity to work with other governments, including our own provincial governments, when a serious danger comes up and needs to be shared with another government so that appropriate policies and interventions can be taken.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

But you have the same availability in the business situation. Why are you providing them with a protection?

[Diane Labelle]

My understanding is that the Privacy Act provides a greater protection to individuals than any statute does with respect to businesses--

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

Then to satisfy Senator Banks, why not repeat those protections here?

[Diane Labelle]

That is something that can be looked at, but in essence we try not to duplicate Parliament's legislation.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

You're going to have to do one or the other. Either you're going to have to amend it or you will at least have to indicate that the Privacy Act would provide some protections.

Senator Banks is not a lawyer--well, maybe Senator Banks is a lawyer, but I'm a lawyer, and I'm having difficulty, so I think you're going to have to make some effort to deal with it.

[Diane Labelle]

The second concern from the government's perspective is that the requirement to notify after six months would actually create a legal obligation on the government to actually collect more personal information than it would normally.

The government does not automatically receive all the identifiers with respect to an individual. You might know their age and the type of injury they've suffered, but you don't necessarily know where they live or who they are and what their names are. Notification by the government would require an additional collection of personal information, which I think then defeats the Privacy Act.

We would simply say that the privacy commissioner appeared before the Senate committee and expressed the view that from a privacy aspect, there were no concerns.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you, Ms. Labelle.

Go ahead, Mr. Uppal.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

This legislation is obviously geared towards protecting consumers, protecting Canadians, from products that might be dangerous to them, but I'd like to ask you about Canadian businesses. How does this impact Canadian businesses, both those that play by the rules and those that may not? Also, how is it good for Canadian businesses?

[Athana Mentzelopoulos]

Given my previous statements that for the most part we have a very responsible industry in this country, I think the tangible impacts of this legislation would probably be marginal for most of Canadian industry, especially given, as I mentioned, that there's already a requirement in other jurisdictions and that much of our industry involves international players, so they do exercise such things as document retention. They're already responding to requirements, for example, for mandatory reporting in other jurisdictions.

There are some quite specific requirements. For some in industry, the requirements will be new, but the design, for example, of mandatory reporting is really oriented to make sure we have a system that's efficient and user-friendly. The requirements will be clear.

We have also taken it as a bit of a principle to aim at the highest levels of trade; for example, if I may come back to the clause 12 authority, in which the minister has the authority to request test results, we've targeted that at the higher levels of trade--importers and manufacturers--where the responsibility really ought to lie, rather than having such a requirement at, for example, the retail level.

I think we've calibrated it to where the accountability lies in the supply chain, and we've also tried to make sure that we've calibrated the requirements to what different levels in the supply chain are capable of.

In terms of an overall benefit, certainly I would come back to the level playing field. In terms of codifying the requirements to ensure safe products through the general prohibition, these are requirements that exist now. This makes it clear for anyone in industry that they have a responsibility to ensure that the products they're selling to Canadians are safe.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

I'd like to speak to you about the possibility of design flaws. A child's toy may be safe in the sense of what it's made of or what it is, but if the design is such that a child could very likely break off a piece and put it in his or her mouth or something, is there a plan? Are you following the design of products as well?

[Robert Ianiro]

Thank you for that question.

There is no doubt that there is a broad range of players, and the supply chain is quite extensive. If you go back to the uppermost level, it definitely includes designers. How we've structured the general prohibition in a statute is by refocusing the emphasis on creating that safety net again, to deal with products that may not have specific requirements or a specific regulation, to take into consideration safe design, to know what you're using in your products, and to consider their reasonable and foreseeable use.

As per some of my earlier remarks, we do understand and appreciate that we need to give practical tools and guidance to industry in the way of handbooks, guidance documents, and policies. There are a lot of international standards in place, as well, that we would be leveraging. I indicated as an example the ISO/PC 243 standard, which does take that broad look at consumer product safety--to factor in design, to factor in manufacturing protocols, and to look at quality assurance. All of these things have been built in and will continue to be built as part of the broader framework of the legislation.

[Athana Mentzelopoulos]

I would just add that through the food and consumer safety action plan, one area that has been resourced is standards development, so that will also be quite beneficial in the context of your question.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

You spoke about this legislation as being very much in line with the U.S. How does this legislation work in the EU? How do we compare with legislation there on product safety?

[Athana Mentzelopoulos]

This is a Canadian approach, but we've certainly designed it to ensure a similar level of safety compared to our trading partners. In the EU, for example, they have a general safety requirement that is similar to the general prohibition, which really is an effort to keep the accountability for safety of products with industry.

In the United States, the provisions around mandatory reporting are very similar--document retention.... Given that we felt we needed a Canadian approach, we wanted a similar level of protection to prevent, for example, product dumping. I believe we have achieved that balance.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to Mr. Thibeault.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

In its study of Bill C-36 in May 2009, this committee heard from Options consommateurs that there is a need for a national recall register, maybe something like the inclusion of a public complaints or a reporting database that can be updated. I think a good example of that is the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which has its food recall list up on the Internet. Is that something you would be willing to consider? Have you looked at it? Is there anything like that in this bill?

[Athana Mentzelopoulos]

There isn't a provision in the legislation. I'm not sure we need a legislative mechanism to institute that kind of thing.

We do have information on the web now about all of the recalls that have been undertaken. As well, we always work hard to make sure there is information about recalls where it's been an industry initiative. We maintain a listserv that's growing constantly. For the complaints, we have a PDF smart form. We want to try to make the information available and as user friendly as possible. As technology advances, we're always looking at ways to ensure that we're using the technology to its maximum to get the information out.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Where would you get that information? For example, just recently Fisher-Price and some of its products were put on there, but the products haven't been on the shelf for the last three or four years--maybe even five years in some cases. How do we ensure that in terms of technology, it's in real time?

[Robert Ianiro]

In October 2008 we launched a new recall website that actually includes pictures and is searchable by a variety of terminology, and by dates and product categories. That database can be accessed through a button on a toolbar of Health Canada's web page. As Ms. Mentzelopoulos also mentioned, we have a listserv that continues to grow in the thousands, where you'll get an automatic e-mail alert every time a voluntary recall is posted.

We posted over 250 recalls so far this year. We're definitely on track to probably exceeding the 305 that we issued last year. All that information is uploaded in real time. It obviously does require some time for us to reach a voluntary agreement with the manufacturers to issue those recalls, but that is all publicly available information. As well, our advisories, our warnings, and other key policy or consultation documents are sent out in fairly wide proactive net through our listserv.

[Athana Mentzelopoulos]

I would just add that Fisher-Price was something we worked on with the United States. They had received information through their own mandatory reporting system. We worked closely with them because we knew that the supply had been in Canada as well. It was a joint effort.

[Robert Ianiro]

I apologize; your question was specific to Fisher-Price. You can go to that website and get every single picture, every single model, the product lines, the hazard that was identified, the number of units sold in Canada, whom to contact, and the 1-800 number for Fisher-Price. All that information is available publicly on our database.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

In relation to the other side of it, if mistakes happen, is there a mechanism in place for appeals? If so, can we have it, or would it be considered independent?

[Athana Mentzelopoulos]

Can I just clarify? Do you mean in the context of an order?

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Yes. Suppose we thought toy product A from company A was toxic, and something was done, but then they realized there was an error. Is there an appeal process for them to present X, Y, and Z, and if that appeal process does exist, is it independent?