Nexreg is giving a presentation at the Southern Aerosol Technical Association’s annual conference. Topic of the presentation - Canadian compliance, including issues such as CCCR-2001 and proposed VOC regulations. For anyone who is interested a copy of the slides is available here.
The NHPPA an organization which opposes both Bill C-51 and Bill C-52 has a detailed analysis of Bill C-52. The analysis is from the perspective of a group that opposes the bill (so that should be kept in mind), but it is by far the most detailed analysis of the details of the bill we have seen.
The analysis is available here.
As promised, the first reading text of the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act was released today. The full text of Bill C-52, which contains the act, is available here. This needs to be passed before it becomes law and will likely be amended, but we feel our clients and colleagues need to be aware of its existence. Among other things, the bill gives inspectors the right to force an immediate recall of that product:
32. (1) If an inspector believes on reasonable grounds that a consumer product is a danger to human health or safety, they may order a person who manufactures, imports or sells the product for commercial purposes to recall it.
While we still need to study the act in closer detail, the main effect of the act appears to drastically increase the costs of manufacturing or selling non-compliant products. Now, more than ever, companies will need to ensure their products sold in Canada comply with Canadian regulations, such as the CCCR.
If you have any questions about the proposed Act, please contact Nexreg Compliance by e-mail at info@nexreg.com or toll-free at (866)361-3032.
UPDATE: The Act has been released. See: Canada Consumer Product Safety Act.
Last month we discussed the proposed Canadian Consumer Product Safety Act. It appears that the bill will be introduced tomorrow, April 8th. The Canadian press reports:
A spokeswoman for Health Minister Tony Clement confirmed the government expects to table the proposed legislation in the House of Commons, but wouldn’t reveal the bill’s contents.
However, Laryssa Waler said it’s “safe to assume” the legislation will closely resemble the government’s Food and Consumer Safety Action Plan, published last December.
“I can’t say what the proposed legislation would do. You can see from our action plan the areas we intended to address,” she said in an e-mail.
The Calgary Herald adds:
Currently, Health Canada does not have the power to recall products that violate the law, but can seize products from store shelves. A new consumer product safety law, to be tabled in Parliament Tuesday, will empower the government to issue mandatory product recalls when companies fail to act on legitimate safety concerns.
We will provide details of the law the minute it becomes available. See our earlier post to learn more about the Canadian Consumer Product Safety Act.
UPDATE: The Act has been released. See: Canada Consumer Product Safety Act.
We have been receiving a number of questions about when the Canadian Consumer Product Safety Act will be released and what is in the act. We expect a text of the act to be released in a few weeks - until it is released we cannot give exact details about what it contains. An article in the Globe and Mail describes the potential changes:
The changes are expected to include an overhaul of the decades-old Food and Drugs Act and a new Canadian Consumer Product Safety Act to “modernize” the country’s safety regime.
Some of the proposed changes are included in a discussion plan published by Health Canada, which was open for public comment until last Wednesday. In it, the government highlighted several new measures it hopes to introduce to improve safety of consumer products, food and drugs. These include providing new guidance to industry to reinforce product safety; creating new authorities that require suppliers to report health- and safety-related product defects and adverse incidents; and strengthening the government’s authority to verify food safety before it’s imported into the country.
The government also plans to increase information sharing with China and wants to identify potentially harmful products before they enter Canada. While it sounds good on paper, Ms. Ireland said, she’s worried the government won’t provide necessary funding increases to Health Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and other departments to ensure the changes become reality.
More in-depth information is available from an action plan released by the Government of Canada:
As soon as the full text of the act is released, we will be informing all of our clients and associates. To receive updates from Nexreg Compliance, please send a request to info@nexreg.com.