Mr. Speaker, I welcome the member on her return to the Health committee and I am looking forward to working with her over the next few months.
I am pleased to rise this evening to discuss the government's commitment to consumer safety and specifically to address Bill C-36, An Act respecting the safety of consumer products.
On June 9, as the member said, the Minister of Health introduced Bill C-36 and, as members opposite know, it now awaits second reading. The government has made important improvements to what was previous Bill C-6 and we are looking forward to support from our colleagues when the bill begins its progression through Parliament.
Bill C-36 fulfils a promise made by the government in our 2010 throne speech. Many Canadians believe that the consumer products they purchase every day are safe when used as directed. We know that businesses in Canada want to ensure the products they sell are safe. It has been estimated that up to one-third of Canadians have at least once bought products that were later found to be unsafe.
Each year, millions of Canadian consumers are affected by recalls. In 2009 alone, Health Canada posted over 300 recall notices. One-third of these recalls were for children's products. This statistic alone underlines the importance of the work the department has done to regulate products for vulnerable populations.
However, the regulation of consumer products has been done in the context of the Hazardous Products Act legislation which is now over 40 years old. While that legislation may have served Canadians well in the past, it is now out of step with market globalization and out of step with the legislation of our major trading partners. Clearly, it is time update and modernize our consumer safety regime. Bill C-36, the proposed Canada consumer products safety act, would modernize and strengthen Canada's product safety legislation.
What is our goal with the bill? Bill C-36 is part of the government's comprehensive food and consumer safety action plan and targets three areas for improvement. The first area is active prevention. We want to prevent problems with consumer products before they occur. The second area is targeted oversight. By having better information, such as through mandatory incident reporting, the government will be able to better target products with the highest risk. The third area is rapid response. The legislation would give us the tools we need to act swiftly when we required
Right now our legislation supports only a reactive approach. The vast majority of consumer products are unregulated by the Hazardous Products Act. This essentially means that for the vast majority of consumer products we are very limited in the actions that we can take when a consumer safety issue is identified. Even for regulated products, like toys, children's jewellery and cribs, we are limited in the actions we can take when a safety issue is identified.
Arguably, the most significant gap in our ability to respond to safety issues is the absence of any authority to issue mandatory recalls for consumer products. This means that when a safety issue is identified with a consumer product we have very little options other than to ask the industry to recall its product voluntarily.
We will always favour a voluntary approach with industry and we believe industry will usually respond favourably. However, Canadian consumers should not have a lower standard of protection than consumers in both the United States and Europe. The need for government to have new authorities has grown in concert with the dramatic changes we have seen in the global marketplace.
The marketplace of 40 years ago when the Hazardous Products Act was introduced was very different from that of today. Products sold in Canada now come from all over the world and there are new materials, new substances and new technologies. There are new products and more products from a multiplicity of sources all around the globe.
In Canada, these are found in post-market regulatory regimes. That means that, despite what many Canadians might think, producers, importers, distributors and retailers are not required to certify or otherwise verify the safety of their products with government before they are offered for sale in this country.
Bill C-36 would not change the fundamental nature of a regulatory regime--