‘Health Canada Updates’
‘Health Canada Updates’ featured Nadira Rambritch, a representative from Health Canada, the Canadian consumer product and cosmetics regulator. Rambritch provided an overview of the Canadian consumer product regulatory regime, Health Canada’s enforcement approach and enforcement activities to date. She emphasised the extensive resources Health Canada has made publicly available on its website to help industry take a proactive approach to compliance. Highlights included:
- An outline of Health Canada’s program priorities, which focused on three key areas covering lithium-ion batteries, consumer chemical products and toys.
- For lithium-ion batteries, Health Canada is proposing to introduce risk management requirements under the Canadian Consumer Product Safety Act(CCPSA). To support this proposal, Health Canada plans to engage interested parties in 2025 on a ‘Notice of Intent’ to seek early comments on the proposal.
- For consumer chemical products, it was noted that current regulatory requirements set out in the Consumer Chemicals and Containers Regulations, 2001, are focused on acute hazards. Health Canada is now exploring the adoption of guidelines on risk-based labelling for chronic hazards.
- For toys, Health Canada is planning to update the Canadian Toys Regulation to enhance protections for children from chemical and toxicological hazards in toys, and to reduce or eliminate the need for animal testing. In terms of consumer outreach, Health Canada is currently finalising its next two-year plan, which is expected to focus on button batteries, safe sleep and incident reporting.
- For lithium-ion batteries, Health Canada is proposing to introduce risk management requirements under the Canadian Consumer Product Safety Act(CCPSA). To support this proposal, Health Canada plans to engage interested parties in 2025 on a ‘Notice of Intent’ to seek early comments on the proposal.
- A focus on collaboration. Health Canada emphasised the importance of increased collaboration and harmonised efforts with other regulators – in particular, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) – on key common product safety issues to ensure consistent safety requirements, facilitate efficient enforcement and reduce compliance burdens for manufacturers. A key feature discussed was the success of the recently published binational standard for power banks developed in conjunction with the CPSC to address risks, such as overheating, fire and explosion of portable power banks. This collaborative process is anticipated to become a blueprint for future North American collaboration as regulators seek to address emerging product safety risks.
- Priorities. Compliance monitoring by Health Canada remains risk-based, with product groups assigned a risk score each year based on trends in consumer complaints, international regulatory action, and new science related to consumer product and cosmetic safety. Although these risk scores and list of priority products are not publicised at the time, reports on the previous year’s enforcement priorities are published on Health Canada’s website, giving companies insight into the regulator’s historic areas of concern. The need to address ecommerce-related risks was noted as an area of growing concern for Health Canada. Certain measures have been implemented already, including new internet scouring tools used by Health Canada to facilitate the preliminary identification of unsafe products for sale online. The voluntary Canadian Product Safety Pledge, to which certain online marketplaces are signatory, also was shown to be successful, with signatories removing from their listings 78 products identified by Health Canada as noncompliant within two days of receiving the notice. Notwithstanding, ecommerce is likely to remain a focus area for Health Canada in the coming years.
The Cooley products team will be posting highlights from other plenary panel sessions on our blog throughout the event.
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