Health committee  I'll try that one. The labelling you're referring to, I would suspect, not having all the details, is reminiscent of labelling that is in place under Proposition 65 in the state of California, whereby you're required to label pretty much any product that contains any substance that is a known carcinogen, mutagen, or reprotox.

Health committee  Exactly. There are a couple of elements. The first thing is—we didn't raise this, and it didn't come up in any of the questions—that we have new requirements in Bill C-36 that don't currently exist under the Hazardous Products Act. These relate to false and misleading claims relating to certification or health and safety claims.

Health committee  Maybe I can just give a few other examples of wording or terms that are used in other statutes in other countries that would be analogous to our “danger to human health or safety”. One of the risks of providing any more specificity is the very nature of the general prohibition and the definition of “danger to human health or safety” is to create that safety net to deal with unforeseen hazards, unregulated products, unregulated hazards.

Health committee  There's no doubt that we would end up collecting all that information as well. I only spoke to the personal information, since the question was specific to personal information. There's no doubt that information on the product, the name, where it was purchased, who manufactured it, whether it was returned to the retailer or was still in their possession--all of those would be the sorts of questions that we would definitely compile.

Health committee  Sure. I think part of the answer also is that we've been focusing a lot around solely increasing our capacity of inspectors, which is clearly very important. We are doubling that capacity. By the fifth year of the action plan, 2012-13, in fact we will have overall doubled the entire complement in consumer product safety.

Health committee  I'm trying once again to wrap my head around the amendment. I can perhaps think of an example in which, if we're informed by a mother in Toronto that her child had an issue with their crib—a drop-side crib, for example—and she reported those details to us, the amendment that's being proposed is that if, for whatever reason, we needed to disclose personal information with another agency or with a provincial or another government about the specifics of that incident, within six months of that disclosure we would have to inform Mrs.

Health committee  That is correct. The assistant commissioner appeared before the Senate committee and did not raise any issues at all with respect to privacy and Bill C-6 at the time.

Health committee  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.

Health committee  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.

Health committee  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.

Health committee  The only thing I would add is specifically on the question of how we're liaising with the U.S. and, going forward, how we would share information. In fact, for both our consumer incident reporting form, which is available on our website in a smart, fillable PDF form, as well as the analogous form for consumer reports of incidents, we've looked at other jurisdictions, in particular the U.S., and have tried to harmonize those forms as much as possible.

Health committee  There are a couple of threads to that question, first and foremost with regard to the complementarity between health and safety in Bill C-36 and environmental legislation. We're dealing with health and safety relating to consumer products. CEPA really is the statute in place to deal with environmental concerns.

Health committee  That is correct.

Health committee  In specific reference to inspectors, as indicated, prior to the five-year action plan being announced we had approximately 45 inspectors. We've already hired an additional 20, so we're already up to about 65 and well on our way to doubling that capacity by year five of the action plan, which is 2012–13.

Health committee  The protections for individuals exists insofar as the information we would be disclosing in any statute is also subject to the provisions of the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act. Perhaps I can turn it over to our legal counsel, who could speak to some of the other legal statutes that are in place to support that.