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.
Nexreg Compliance