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Health committee  Yes, we have. Certainly the advent of technology has very much helped our own ability to receive claims for exemption. It used to be only a paper process. I doubt if the committee will remember every detail of the regulations that we brought before you, but one of those provision

May 12th, 2009Committee meeting

Sharon Watts

Health committee  Thank you for the question. In fact, it's been 20 years. It was in 1988—on October 31—that WHMIS first came into being, and that's when we were created as the commission to look at trade secrets. I would say to you that not much has changed in terms of the fundamental system,

May 12th, 2009Committee meeting

Sharon Watts

Health committee  Thank you for the question. That's an excellent question, one that I can assure you our stakeholders have posed several times. Certainly one key factor in tackling this backlog situation has been the core, labour-intensive part of that work, which is the people. In terms of rec

May 12th, 2009Committee meeting

Sharon Watts

Health committee  I hope not. In fact, the backlog is due only in part to the complexity of the claims we have received. The primary factor is the number of claims, which has doubled in the past five years. Before, we were getting about 200 claims for exemption per year, and suddenly, in the middl

May 12th, 2009Committee meeting

Sharon Watts

Health committee  Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to provide information to you again on my agency, the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission, and to speak to the main estimates, of course, for 2009-10. I was appointed preside

May 12th, 2009Committee meeting

Sharon Watts

Health committee  Thank you for the question. In fact, this question is very timely, because we spoke of this at our council of governors meeting just a couple of weeks ago. You're right. The level of non-compliance in terms of the accuracy of material safety data sheets is high. It's at 95%.

February 12th, 2009Committee meeting

Sharon Watts

Health committee  I'll take that, thank you. Thank you for the question. Actually we have a very interesting governance structure at the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission. We have a council of governors, an 18-member, multi-jurisdictional, tripartite group, and those 18 members re

February 12th, 2009Committee meeting

Sharon Watts

Health committee  Thank you for the question. As I started to say a little bit earlier, we are part of this provincial-federal-territorial hazard communications system. Where a manufacturer does not want to disclose a trade secret ingredient, they're required by law to come to the commission, wh

February 12th, 2009Committee meeting

Sharon Watts

Health committee  Thank you. I just want to clarify. I think you mentioned pesticides. We don't handle the trade secret claims for pesticides; they have their own trade secret mechanism. We do handle trade secret claims for hazardous chemicals under the Hazardous Products Act.

May 28th, 2007Committee meeting

Sharon Watts

Health committee  When someone comes to us and says they have a trade secret, and they give us a summary of their information, the question is how we verify that.

May 28th, 2007Committee meeting

Sharon Watts

Health committee  They have to come back to us with the substantiating information. We say to them, yes, it's a trade secret, but have they taken measures? What kinds of measures have they taken to protect the confidentiality of this product? What security measures are in place? What types of conf

May 28th, 2007Committee meeting

Sharon Watts

Health committee  Ninety-nine percent of the time.

May 28th, 2007Committee meeting

Sharon Watts

Health committee  We agree that it's a trade secret and that their substantiating information does in fact support that claim.

May 28th, 2007Committee meeting

Sharon Watts

Health committee  Thank you for the question. Right now, interestingly, there is an initiative called GHS, globally harmonized system, which is an initiative to look at harmonizing chemical classification and labelling. In that respect, the United Nations has sponsored this event and this initiat

May 28th, 2007Committee meeting

Sharon Watts

Health committee  That was initiated probably back in the late nineties, when we were doing our consultations on renewing the commission. It was a proposal that was supported by, interestingly, both industry and labour, in the sense that we had come forward with reports on the progress with which

May 28th, 2007Committee meeting

Sharon Watts