Thank you.
Safe Kids Canada is the national injury prevention program of Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, or SickKids, as it's known. As a knowledge broker, Safe Kids builds bridges between researchers, practitioners, policy-makers, and the public so that activities, messaging, and tools can be based on the best evidence available and make the best use of scarce resources.
Our vision is fewer injuries, healthier children, and a safer Canada. To achieve this vision, our mission is to lead and inspire a culture of safety across the country using a comprehensive and innovative approach. In pursuit of these goals, Safe Kids raises awareness, develops strategic partnerships, brokers knowledge, and advocates to prevent serious injuries among children, youth, and their families.
So why is children's injury prevention important to us? In our 2006 injury trend report, we found that on average 390 children and youth are killed every year, and another 25,500 are hospitalized for serious injuries in Canada. Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death for those between the ages of 1 and 14 years.
Preventable injuries to children cost Canadians approximately $5 million per year. Many of those who survive are left with lifelong disabilities, increasing the impact of injuries on both individuals and families. What may be more surprising, which Marie Adèle referred to, is that the majority of these injuries are predictable and preventable. In addition, many effective interventions that are already known have not been widely implemented.
Injuries specifically from the use of consumer products are common, frequently serious, and sometimes fatal. Between 1990 and 2007, over 1.6 million children and youth visited emergency departments across Canada for the treatment of injuries. In recent years, almost half of those injuries involved consumer products such as furniture, toys, and window coverings.
There appears to be a disconnection between product safety realities and consumers' expectations. Recent survey results from Safe Kids Canada have shown that even though more than half of parents knew that injuries were the leading cause of death for children, and 70% of them believed injuries were preventable, the majority of Canadians believe that if a product is available for sale on the market in Canada, it is safe or has been tested for safety. Children are particularly vulnerable to product-related injuries due to their age, physical attributes, cognitive abilities, and developmental stage.
In Canada, a variety of consumer products have no regulations, particularly children's products such as bunk beds and trampolines. The current Hazardous Products Act, which is over 40 years old, is limited in scope and lacks the government's recall powers and the ability to be proactive.
While Safe Kids Canada acknowledges that the consumer product landscape is complex and global, there is the ability to renew and modernize current legislation to address these challenges. This is an essential component of a comprehensive approach to injury prevention. The Canadian consumer product safety legislation is a positive step forward, as its three main principles--active prevention, targeted oversight, and rapid response--enhance consumer product safety through the renewal and modernization of Canadian legislation. It is proactive and seeks to address issues before they happen.
The active prevention pillar of Bill C-6 outlines a new general prohibition against the manufacture, importation, advertisement, and sale of consumer products that are, or are likely to, pose an unreasonable danger to the health and safety of the public. An important component in this pillar is the inclusion of “manufacture”, as previous bans under the Hazardous Products Act only prohibited importation, advertisement, and sale. This puts the onus on industry to develop and keep in mind the target audience they have for their product when they're designing it.
Injury surveillance systems need to be enhanced to include the ability to monitor product interactions and outcomes, including tracking injury, product data, and product use. The targeted oversight pillar in Bill C-6 gives the government authority to require industry to report health and safety issues concerning their products. It also requires companies to conduct safety tests and be responsible for the products that are brought into Canada.
Investments are required for response and enforcement through increased inspectors. The rapid response pillar of Bill C-6 gives the government authority to issue mandatory recalls of dangerous products. Currently under the Hazardous Products Act, the government can only issue public advisories or warnings, and it relies on industry to voluntarily recall a dangerous product. This makes the process long, resulting in delays in removing dangerous products.
Safe Kids Canada would also like to see increased public access to consumer product safety information through effective communication strategies. Since 2003 Safe Kids has worked with the federal government on legislative renewal to strengthen consumer product safety legislation and ensure that products available for sale in Canada are safe. We've participated in consultations along with other organizations and support enhancing the consumer product safety program's capacity for injury surveillance, reporting, and consumer education.
Safe Kids Canada has partnered with Health Canada and the Public Health Agency extensively on various injury-related issues, including consumer product safety. We have participated in consultations like the baby bath seats, and in partnership with Health Canada we communicate important information to professionals and the public. In addition, as Safe Kids Canada's executive director, I am the co-director of the Canadian hospitals injury reporting and prevention program, or CHIRPP, as it is well known, and I do that at the site located at Sick Kids.
As we have also heard, countries like the United States and the European Union have passed new consumer product safety legislation, and Bill C-6 would bring Canada in line with these global changes.
The ban on wheeled baby walkers is one of the best examples of why new legislation is required. For many years, over 10 in fact, major distributors in Canada voluntarily stopped selling wheeled baby walkers. Regardless of this, the product continued to be sold at second-hand stores, on street corners, through garage sales, and was handed down to friends and family.
For one of our campaigns, Safe Kids Week, in 2003, we launched a major national media campaign to raise awareness of the dangers associated with baby walkers. This campaign's message, to wipe out walkers, supported Health Canada's efforts to ban the sale, importation, and advertisement of baby walkers. With nearly 300 parents, doctors, and public health professionals participating in the advocacy campaign, Health Canada was able to make Canada the first country, and currently the only country in the world, to ban baby walkers.
Even with the industry challenge that was upheld, in 2007 the government concluded that wheeled baby walkers pose an unreasonable risk of injury and death. If the provisions in Bill C-6 had been in place this dangerous product would have been removed from the Canadian marketplace years before it actually was.
In another case, the case of yo-yo balls, Health Canada issued two public advisories to warn parents of the dangers of the yo-yo ball and sought voluntary compliance from suppliers and manufacturers, and importers and retailers, to not make these products available. Unfortunately, this approach did little to deter the toys from being found in stores and continuing to make their way into the hands of children. At least 20 cases of near-miss strangulation from yo-yo balls were reported to Health Canada. This did not account for the many incidents that occurred but are not reported. A number of countries, including France, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Brazil, banned the toy. Quickly thereafter, Health Canada issued a ban on this product and sent a clear message that this toy should not be imported, advertised, or sold in Canada. Again, recall powers would have allowed Health Canada to remove this product.
There are more recent examples, like magnets, that have followed a similar process.
The complex supply chain for these types of products, many of which are manufactured overseas and distributed through numerous channels, makes voluntary banning even more difficult and ineffective.
While current legislation prohibits the advertising, sale, and importation of dangerous products such as wheeled baby walkers and yo-yo balls, there are other products on the market that still require regulation in the interest of child and youth safety, such as infant bath seats, which have been associated with unintentional drowning and provide parents with a false sense of security.
Examples of product regulations that have led to injury reduction include childproof lighters, fire-resistant clothing, blind cords, and product packaging.
Every year Safe Kids Canada, in partnership with communities across Canada, launches a national public awareness campaign focused on a particular injury issue. On May 25 of this year we will launch this year's campaign with a focus on consumer product safety.
The campaign messages, activities, and tools are based on best practices, and over 600 partners will be distributing valuable information to parents and caregivers about how to purchase, assess, and report issues with products, conducting activities like unsafe product roundup events, as well as encouraging partners to write letters urging the new consumer product safety legislation to be passed. In addition, Safe Kids Canada has worked with Health Canada and the Public Health Agency on a CHIRPP report , Child and Youth Injury in Review - 2009 Edition Spotlight on Consumer Product Safety, which will be released during this week.
Unintentional injury remains the leading cause of death to Canadian children. In fact, it's a leading cause of death worldwide, as reported in the recent WHO/UNICEF report released in December 2008.
Bill C-6 will provide an important foundation upon which products brought into Canada will be measured. Safe Kids Canada, together with our partners in injury prevention, has called for a national injury prevention strategy that would include leadership, policy coordination, research, surveillance, and public information and education. Renewals of existing product safety legislation would be in keeping with the policy coordination pillar of the strategy. Research and surveillance are also needed across injury problems, including on product-related injuries. Public education is another pillar of the strategy that applies to product safety.
Safe Kids Canada's goal is to keep Canadian children healthy, active, and safe. Product safety is in everyone's best interest, and everyone has a role to play—Canadians, industry, and government.
Thank you.
