Feds stalled release of pesticide health information for years

Canada's pesticide regulator is delaying the release of health and safety data, internal emails, briefing notes and other documents that justify its decision to approve several harmful pesticides, Canada's information commissioner has found. The government withholds all that background information unless forced to reveal it through freedom of information requests.

In 11 rulings on information requests, Information Commissioner Caroline Maynard found that the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) stalled release of some information for more than four years, calling delays of up to 1,500 days unreasonable. The information requests were made by the environmental group Ecojustice between 2021 and 2023 about pesticides approved for use in Canada, despite being linked to serious health concerns.

They include: atrazine, which is used on corn and linked to cancer and endocrine issues; dicamba, a broad-action weedkiller that can cause liver and bile duct cancers; and tiafenacil, a pesticide used on corn and wheat that breaks down into a compound thought to impair fertility and child development. 

"This is stuff that we're all involuntarily exposed to," said Laura Bowman, a lawyer with Ecojustice. "We should have a right to know what the scientists are really saying, not just the polished final decision." 

A trove of internal documents shared with Canada's National Observer about the pesticide chlorpyrifos, which causes neurodevelopmental issues, revealed that scientists working for the agency had for years raised red flags about the pesticide's health impacts. The documents showed their concerns were repeatedly ignored, and Canada only decided to "phase out" the chemical after it was banned by the U.S. and European Union.

The agency's claim that the lengthy delays were needed to find and process the requests were not "justified" and a "clear contravention of Health Canada's obligations" to provide Canadians with information about pesticides used in the country, Maynard found. 

The chlorpyrifos files revealed why obtaining these internal documents is so important, Bowman said. In that case, the conversations between government scientists, regulators and risk assessors revealed a level of internal debate over the pesticide's safety that raised questions about the government's decision to allow its use. 

They revealed the government ignored its own models which showed that rules for the pesticide's use would leach dangerous amounts into the environment, and the agency's minimal water monitoring efforts raised questions about the models' accuracy. 

In a statement, Health Canada said that since April 2022, the PMRA has received 88 "complex" access to information requests, which have led to 18 investigations by the information commissioner. The commissioner determined that half of them were "not founded," while seven were well-founded and required the agency to release the information on tighter deadlines, which the agency met.

"The PMRA is committed to improving transparency of its decision-making process on pesticides. We recognize the importance of providing the public and interested stakeholders with easy and timely access to information that forms the basis of our decisions. Since 2021, the PMRA has launched and implemented several initiatives...to make this information more accessible. We believe that these efforts will ultimately contribute to reducing the need for stakeholders to rely on the ATIP process and improve timeliness of response," it said. 

The delays come as no surprise to Christy Morrissey, a researcher at the University of Saskatchewan who studies the ecological impacts of pesticides. 

In 2021, she tried to file a so-called "notice of objection" – a scientific document refuting the decisions – to the government's 2021 decision to allow the use of the neonicotinoid pesticide imidacloprid. Neonicotinoids kill insects and are linked to massive declines in bee and other pollinator populations. 

The agency refused to give her the data – most of it created by pesticide manufacturers – in a timely fashion and dragged out the request for almost a year.   When she received it, the information was on an encrypted thumb drive that only gave her access to documents in a read-only format that was nearly impossible to analyze. 

By the time she obtained the data, which she still could only take notes on in longform, and filed her objection, years had passed since the pesticide was approved for use, harming key ecosystems across the country, she said. Not only that: despite being legally required to assess and answer her objection, Morrissey said she is still waiting to hear back from them.  

In June, the agency proposed updates to Canada's pesticide rules, but critics say the changes will further restrict access to the data it uses to approve pesticides for use. The proposed changes will only allow people to see the data for research purposes, prevent the data from being used to make public comments or objections to pesticide approvals, and would make it easier for the PMRA to prevent people from accessing the information. 

Nearly a dozen health and environmental advocacy groups, including Ecojustice, have slammed the proposal, arguing it will make the agency's decision-making process even less transparent. 

In a statement, Health Canada said that "the PMRA makes confidential test data through the Reading Room process, where members of the public may inspect confidential test data either in-person in the Reading Room, located at the PMRA's National Head Office in Ottawa, Ontario, or remotely, as part of an ongoing project. Such inspection does not constitute public disclosure as the public is not allowed to make a copy of the test data, but it gives Canadians an opportunity to look at the data used by the Pest Management Regulatory Agency in support of its regulatory decisions."

The information commissioner's rulings reveal the latest in a string of transparency problems with the agency. Critics remain dubious the agency is adequately protecting Canadians from harmful pesticides and herbicides. 

Last year, prominent health researcher Bruce Lanphear resigned from a scientific advisory position with the PMRA due to transparency issues. In his letter of resignation, he lambasted the organization's "obsolete" approach to pesticide regulation. 

In 2021, public outrage over a proposal to increase how much residue of the herbicide glyphosate could be on food crops forced the government to give the pest management agency $42 million to lead a so-called transformation agenda meant "to further strengthen its human and environmental health and safety oversight and protection." That process ended in August, but critics say little has changed. 

However, in a statement Health Canada noted that under agenda, it has expanded its water testing program, is developing a new "framework" for a pesticide database and is creating a continuous oversight process to better review pesticides in light of new science. 

For Morrissey, it’s unacceptable that the agency is allowing delays and slow responses to requests for health and safety information about pesticides used across the country and why government decided to approve them. 

"Canadians have the right to have a system where they can question whether the PMRA is correct or not in their decision making. They can ask why [the PMRA] made decisions and what data supported it, and they should be able to question if a decision is supported by the data," she said. "Unfortunately, they're not following that."