Agriculture committee  No, I don't think that's accurate. In the case of all the chemicals that we re-evaluate, we don't take a different approach. We aren't taking a different approach, really, with the imidacloprid or the neonics. We use the same formula, the same sort of paradigm, when we look at th

Agriculture committee  No. It's not. Pretty much all the human health assessment work we've done on the neonics does not show a significant health issue.

Agriculture committee  The United States has released its risk assessment, but it has not made a determination on how it's going to manage that risk yet, which is to say that it hasn't proposed phasing it out, for example.

Agriculture committee  Under our statute, our primary mandate is health of the environment. That's our fundamental mandate under the PCPA. We also are required to ensure that pesticides have value, but there is no direct cost-benefit analysis or risk-benefit comparison as part of our decision-making. O

Agriculture committee  Just to clarify, we co-operate very closely with our partners at the U.S. EPA and other regulatory authorities around the world. The focus of that co-operation is typically a little more at the front end, as you describe it, in terms of understanding how we use all the available

Agriculture committee  In terms of the schedule, older chemicals typically tended to be authorized for use in the United States first and in Canada much later, which resulted in a lot of access concerns for Canadian agriculture. However, because we both have this statutory obligation around the cyclica

Agriculture committee  Certainly. As with our comments on the conditionally registered pesticides, I think that's at the heart of that issue. There was a perception that when we approve a pesticide and give it a conditional registration, there is somehow information missing or data gaps, or there's a l

Agriculture committee  Yes. Certainly over the last decade, for example, we've worked really closely to align our regulatory and registration approval processes with, for example, the United States specifically, so that we could both have access to the best science on both sides of the border and help

Agriculture committee  It's a very good question. In terms of what we proposed in this case for imidacloprid, for example, the actual proposal is to phase it out over a three- to five-year period, so the proposal, at least, indicates that a significant transition period is available. I would point ou

Agriculture committee  Environment Canada does monitor a very wide range of substances, including some pesticides in surface water.

Agriculture committee  Actually, Environment Canada was the source of much of the surface water monitoring data that we used in our assessment in Ontario. It came from an Environment Canada scientist.

Agriculture committee  Some of the information that we received from out west was, for example, from Dr. Morrissey at the university.

Agriculture committee  Yes, a number of the neonics, not all. Two of the neonics, thiamethoxam and clothianidin—long names—are chemicals that do in fact have conditional registrations.

Agriculture committee  As with all PMRA's major decisions, it's an obligation under the Pest Control Products Act to do a full public consultation before we make any major decision. We do publish an extensive scientific review of everything we've looked at, referencing all the information and studies w

Agriculture committee  We're continuing to work really closely with the United States Environmental Protection Agency and California on the pollinator risk assessment. The pollinator aspect is kind of in parallel with the aquatic risk assessments that we've been doing on the neonics. On the pollinator