Science, not cabinet discretion, should decide pesticide safety

Canada's pesticide law rests on a simple principle: politicians should not overrule the scientists who judge whether a pesticide is safe. Bill C-30 would break it. Under the Spring Economic Update 2026 Implementation Act, Health Canada experts could find a pesticide's environmental risks unacceptable and deny it, and cabinet could order it used anyway. It passed the House with little scrutiny. Now the Senate is being rushed to pass it within days.

My concern is not with farmers, who are among the world's best stewards of the land. It is with how Canada decides which pesticides are safe. The Pest Control Products Act exists to protect people and the environment from dangerous pesticides. Independent decisions by Health Canada experts are meant to be the firewall between Canadians and unacceptably risky products. Bill C-30 weakens that firewall.

New powers would let cabinet override a registration denial to protect "national economic security, regional economic security, or national food security," terms the bill leaves undefined and that the government will only work out after it passes. Such an order could keep a pesticide in use for up to six years after Health Canada found it poses unacceptable risks, including cancer and reproductive harm. For that entire period, the bill bars the department from re-examining those risks. It is a power with neither the limits nor the time bounds international guidance requires.

These changes would deepen this country's pesticide dependency. Canada is the fifth-largest pesticide user on the planet, with use rising 47 per cent between 2011 and 2021. Glyphosate alone has climbed from roughly 500,000 kilograms in the 1980s to more than 50 million a year. The World Health Organization's cancer agency classified glyphosate a probable human carcinogen in 2015. In late 2025, a foundational study long cited as evidence of its safety was retracted after emails revealed the manufacturer had ghost-written it. Such reversals are not rare. The concern reaches beyond glyphosate, too: chlorpyrifos, restricted on health grounds in the European Union and United States, remains in use here. That is why the evaluation must stay independent.

The government's case that these changes serve food security does not hold up. The United Nations' special rapporteur on the right to food has rejected the claim that heavy pesticide use secures the food supply. Twenty-one researchers from 13 Canadian universities, with 25 health and environmental groups, warn that weaker regulation could itself threaten it, and that no science supports letting cabinet reverse a decision Health Canada reached after thorough review.

Then there is trade. The EU, now Canada's third-largest agricultural market at $6.2-billion in 2025, regulates by precaution: atrazine, used on corn in southern Ontario, has been banned there since 2004, as has the pre-harvest glyphosate desiccation still common here. Several of our most valuable markets, including the EU, Switzerland, and Japan, set stricter residue limits than Canada does.

The cost of diverging is not hypothetical. In late 2025, Canadian lentils were pulled from the French market after residues exceeded European limits. Our own canola industry warns growers that approval here is no guarantee buyers abroad will accept the crop. Loosening our rules does not open these markets; it risks closing them.

The deepest problem is the process. The Pest Control Products Act is already undergoing a mandatory statutory review, the proper venue for such changes. Food and Agriculture Organization and WHO guidance urges that registration stay free of industry influence and that reform come through broad public and expert consultation. C-30 does the opposite.

It bypasses that review and reached House committee without hearing expert witnesses, including Health Canada's own Science Advisory Committee on Pest Control Products. As a scientist and a Senator, I have heard from many organizations alarmed by these provisions, voices the rushed process did not hear. Yet, Health Minister Marjorie Michel addressed an event hosted by the pesticide lobby, CropLife, the day the bill was tabled, and the lobbyist registry records repeated meetings with her office.

All this comes as Health Canada's pesticide directorate is set to shrink from 613 to 423 positions. The same bill also lets cabinet exempt companies from food-safety laws.

When Canadians have asked a minister to overrule the regulator, it was to demand more caution, as when scientists sought an independent glyphosate review in 2019, which Health Canada refused. C-30 runs the other way, and its orders need only be published after the fact.

Economic considerations should never override science when public health is at stake. Before the Senate passes C-30, these provisions deserve the study this timetable denies them. A change this consequential deserves daylight, not a deadline

Rosa Galvez is a civil-environmental engineer and an Independent Senator for the province of Quebec.

The Hill Times