Health Canada investigations claim government officials helped pesticide company overturn ban

Health Canada is investigating after Canadian National Observer revealed that government officials supported the pesticide industry’s efforts to discredit a researcher’s findings and overturn a proposed ban on a class of pesticides harmful to bees, the environment and human health.

During Friday’s question period in Ottawa, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May pressed the government to respond to the Observer story, which showed public officials colluded with pesticide maker Bayer Crop Science to discredit data on water quality compiled by Christy Morrissey, professor at the University of Saskatchewan. Their research was part of the basis for a proposed ban on neonicotinoids (neonics) in 2016.

Responding to May’s question, Yasir Naqvi, parliamentary secretary to the health minister, said the ministry takes the allegations seriously and the department’s pest management regulator will examine the concerns raised. Morrissey confirmed that she has been called to a meeting with the CEOs of Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) next week.

“None of this is done in a timely manner. It took three years and a media story to get it addressed,” he told CNO in an email Friday. Morrissey filed a formal notice of objection when the proposed ban was overturned in 2021, noting that Canadian pesticide laws require the regulator to address formal scientific objections to its decision within a reasonable time.

“That’s not reasonable,” he said. In his objection, he described how Bayer obtained its unpublished water sampling data from the PMRA and then hired a team of researchers to write a report claiming that most of it was not relevant to the agency’s neonatal review.

While they apparently set out to replicate his data, they did not ask for detailed GPS coordinates and relied primarily on Google Earth satellite images to make their assessment. They visited “a few sites,” the report notes, but at the end of the drought-stricken summer, when many of the wetlands Morrissey sampled were dry.

Neonicotinoids are a class of pesticides. harmful to the human brain and sperm and deadly to bees, insects and birds. They are banned in Europe due to the ecological damage they cause. Canada initially planned to do the same, but relented after years of pressure from the industry.

Critics were not convinced by Naqvi’s response.

“Over the last decade, Health Canada has repeated the line that they are examining the evidence of harm from neonics, while continuing to allow their widespread use,” said Lisa Gue, national policy manager at the David Suzuki Foundation.

“If the government is finally willing to take these concerns seriously, the health minister should immediately appoint an independent panel to review flawed neonic assessments,… ban neonics as the EU has done and reform the PMRA to prevent this type of inappropriate industry influence on future pesticide evaluations,” Gue said.

“It seems like this minister doesn’t know what’s going on in his department,” added Laura Bowman, an Ecojustice lawyer specializing in pesticides. “Health Canada waits years before requesting key health and environmental information for rapid-apply pesticides like neonics,” and has a habit of ignoring bans proposed by its own scientists.

“These rollbacks tend to rely on junk science from pesticide registrants to sideline published, peer-reviewed studies. “I don’t think that’s the kind of process that Canadians would call rigorous.”

talking to Canadian National Observer On Thursday, NDP agriculture critic Richard Cannings said his party supports farmers and recognizes that part of their efforts to grow food can mean using pesticides.

“Canadians are okay with the use of pesticides as long as they are used responsibly and properly regulated,” he said.

But the revelation that the regulator was helping pesticide producers undermine independent researchers to keep their products on the market “is not the way we should do science, and it is certainly not the way we should do designed science.” to protect the health of Canadians and the health of our ecosystems.