Good afternoon. I'm Matt Jones, the assistant deputy minister for the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, and I'm joined by my colleague, Frédéric Bissonnette, who is the senior director general of operations.
The Pest Management Regulatory Agency is responsible for regulating pesticides under the Pest Control Product Act.
The act sets out requirements for the assessment and regulation of pesticides in Canada, including the need for science-based regulatory decisions regarding pesticides. It also defines the agency's primary objective, which is to prevent unacceptable risks to Canadians and the environment from the use of pesticides.
Pest control products are essential to the production of healthy and nutritious food. Pesticides, however, must be used carefully because of their potential toxicity. Before a pesticide is sold or used in Canada, it must undergo a scientific assessment by Health Canada. A re‑evaluation of registered pesticides is conducted at least every 15 years to ensure that they meet current standards. The evidence submitted to the agency is used to support the human health risk assessment. Special consideration is given to the possibility that a pesticide may have adverse health effects, including cancer and birth defects.
Health Canada also does an environmental risk assessment. The assessment takes into account the way substances migrate and are transformed in the environment, as well as the associated risks.
Lastly, we assess the value of the product, including its effectiveness, socio-economic impacts and overall contribution to pest management. Economic considerations include trade impacts on Canadian producers, crop value gains, access to alternatives, economic efficiency and broader social benefits, such as food security and public health.
There are many scientists at PMRA, and they are conducting these risk assessments every day. They take their work of protecting health and the environment very seriously.
PMRA's work also includes monitoring the risks of existing products on the market, for example, through periodic re-evaluations, special reviews, incident reporting and compliance and enforcement activities. Occasionally, over the course of this monitoring, new or unexpected risks can be identified, and these need to be addressed. This might result in changes in how a pesticide can be used or, in some instances, in products being removed from the market.
For growers, potentially losing access to something they rely on for pest control can be extremely challenging, especially when alternatives are limited. While PMRA already consults on all of its decisions, we will enhance our engagement with growers, industry and provinces to learn more about how pesticides are being used in practice and to better understand the challenges that stakeholders are facing.
We've been working through the red tape reduction report to identify a number of opportunities to improve how we are operating. This includes expanding joint reviews with trusted foreign regulators and strategically using reviews already conducted by other reputable regulators to accelerate our own endeavours. We are introducing a secure digital portal for real-time application tracking and modernizing pesticide labels to improve clarity, accessibility and efficiency.
We're also proposing regulatory changes to eliminate unnecessary renewals that take time, consume internal capacity [Technical difficulty—Editor] from registration, freeing up resources to focus on higher-risk areas.
Together these initiatives reflect a shift towards a smarter, science-based regulatory approach that is focused on risks and the needs of our stakeholders.
Thank you.