Canadian product safety pledge: Annual report 2023-2024
Executive summary
Health Canada's Consumer Product Safety Program prevents, detects and responds to health or safety risks posed by consumer products and cosmetics. The Program carries out its mandate by administering and enforcing the authorities of the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act and its Regulations, in addition to the Food and Drugs Act and its Cosmetic Regulations.
The continued growth of online marketplaces, which are online platforms that facilitate the sale of products by third-party sellers to consumers, may bring with it an increase in the availability of unsafe products and potentially serious risks to users. Indeed, the proportion of people shopping online in CanadaFootnote 1 increased from 77% in 2018 to 82% in 2020; over this same period, the amount of money spent online by people in Canada increased from $57.4 billion to $84.4 billion.
The Canadian Product Safety Pledge is a voluntary commitment made by online marketplaces to Health Canada that reflects the intention to strengthen and improve product safety online through a combination of preventative and corrective actions. Signatories also commit to reporting annually on the outcomes and effectiveness of their product safety initiatives.
This is the first annual report for the Pledge. The report compiles anonymized qualitative and quantitative information from the two signatories that helped launch the Pledge, Amazon Canada and eBay Canada, covering the reporting period from September 29, 2023 to September 28, 2024.
Highlights
- A signatory reported the creation of a new machine learning model designed to scan product images uploaded to its site. This model identifies the product label in the images and checks whether the label includes both English and French text. The Consumer Product Safety Program supports and encourages the use of image detection technologies to help meet Canadian legislative and regulatory requirements for consumer products and cosmetics.
- The Program requested 78 product listings be removed from sale between the signatories. All 78 product listings were removed from sale within two business days. As a result, signatories took action within the requested period 100% of the time.
- Signatories generally provided the name and contact information of third-party sellers of recalled, prohibited, or non-compliant products within five business days. However, 11 of 123 requests for a signatory took longer to process. These instances of delay indicate areas of future improvement.
- Signatories collaborated with the Program to verify sales data in Canada when foreign third-party sellers were unresponsive. Their support enabled Health Canada to develop and publish consumer alert notices regarding potential product safety issues.
- Signatories contacted consumers who purchased recalled products via email, internal messaging systems or customer accounts, informing them of the recall and advising them to follow the steps outlined in the public recall notice. This direct approach helped enhance the overall effectiveness of product recalls.
- The Pledge is focused on consumer products and cosmetics. However, both signatories expanded their actions beyond these products to include other product categories that appear on the Government of Canada Recalls and safety alerts website, such as medical devices, drugs, natural health products, pesticides and food. This broader approach would seem to prevent a wider scope of unsafe products from being available on online marketplaces to consumers in Canada.
While the first year of the Consumer Product Safety Pledge was broadly successful, this report reveals that there is more work to be done. For example, some products that must not be sold to people in Canada were found on the signatories' online marketplaces. In many instances, some third-party sellers bypassed existing online marketplace filters and other blocking mechanisms by altering the names of their products. The Program supports signatories' enhanced oversight, the use of advanced technologies, and ongoing monitoring to prevent the sale of unsafe products. Additionally, when unsafe products are identified, similar product listings should also be removed.
The Program encourages the screening of third-party sellers combined with robust online marketplace education systems, to ensure that sellers clearly understand the expectations when selling products in Canada.
In addition, the Program will continue collaborating with signatories to strengthen the Pledge commitments and practices. It will review and update the Guidance for signatories to incorporate best practices and enhance the consistency and comparability of reporting.
The Consumer Product Safety Program encourages other online marketplaces to join the Pledge, using the Pledge commitments and its associated guidance document (Canadian product safety pledge for consumer products and cosmetics - Canada.ca) to help increase the safety of products sold online.
Background
With many consumers opting for its convenience and flexibility, the availability of unsafe consumer products and cosmetics (including prohibited, non-compliant and recalled products) through online marketplaces continues to present serious risks to consumers, both in Canada and globally. When consumer products or cosmetics from third-party sellers pose risks to health or safety, the Program seeks to mitigate them by taking action under the authority of the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act and its Regulations, or the Food and Drugs Act and its Cosmetic Regulations. However, the Department can face jurisdictional challenges working with third-party sellers that are located outside of Canada.
The challenges associated with regulating the health and safety of products listed by third-party sellers of online marketplaces are not unique to Canada. Several jurisdictions around the world face the same issues presented by online marketplaces offering, selling and advertising unsafe products. A number of regulatory and non-regulatory policy approaches, including product safety pledges, are being developed to address them.
The Canadian Product Safety Pledge is one step of many taken by Health Canada to address online marketplace product safety. The aim of the Pledge is to develop a clear framework that encourages online marketplaces operating in Canada to take steps to ensure that all products listed by third-party sellers respect Canadian product safety requirements, where commitment expectations are public, and results are measurable. It empowers owners and operators of online marketplaces to help keep consumers safe.
The Pledge launched on September 28, 2023 and requires signatories to agree to 14 commitments that are grouped into four parts:
- Detecting and preventing the sale of unsafe products
- Co-operating with Health Canada
- Raising product safety awareness amongst sellers
- Empowering consumers on product safety issues
The commitments, when actioned together, work to efficiently recognize, prevent, take action against and inform the assessment of serious risks to the health and safety of consumers.
Each year, the Program intends to publish a Canadian Product Safety Pledge annual report. This is the first annual report, covering the reporting period of September 29, 2023 to September 28, 2024. During this timeframe, Amazon Canada and eBay Canada were the signatories participating in the Pledge.
The report aggregates anonymous information from the signatories' self-assessments of their adherence to the Pledge commitments and the outcomes and effectiveness of their product safety initiatives using a mix of qualitative and quantitative key performance indicators. Note that the Consumer Product Safety Program has not independently verified the accuracy of the signatories' self-reported data and information. The report also provides the Program's own summary commentary, highlights where improvements may be required, and outlines future steps for advancing the Pledge in Canada.
Product safety is a shared responsibility, and online businesses play an important role in shaping and enhancing product safety compliance in the digital economy to help keep Canadian consumers safe. As such, the Program encourages online marketplaces that are not Pledge signatories to find out more about the commitments and how to become a signatory by visiting the Canadian Product Safety Pledge. Signatories' participation and fulfilment of the commitments of this voluntary pledge do not automatically imply or demonstrate that the products listed on a their online marketplaces meet applicable Canadian laws and regulations.
Key Performance Indicators for Commitments
Through qualitative and quantitative key performance indicators, the following sections describe the ways that the signatories are meeting the 14 commitments.
Part 1: Improving the detection and preventing the sale of unsafe products
These commitments enable signatories to take timely and preventative action on unsafe products.
Summary and areas for improvement:
- Many of the systems the signatories have in place make it possible for them to take timely and preventative action on unsafe products.
- The Consumer Product Safety Program supports the ongoing commitment of signatories to explore new ways to improve their online marketplaces by embracing innovative technologies and learning from other authorities and online marketplaces.
- The Program recognizes new and emerging challenges, such as evolving product names/descriptions (which may bypass existing filters signatories have designed to identify unsafe products) and ensuring foreign third-party sellers exclude unsafe products that cannot be sold to people in Canada due to legislative requirements. Signatories continue to remind third-party sellers of their obligations regarding product safety.
- The Program encourages signatories to develop additional or improved monitoring techniques to detect unsafe products that still appear on their sites.
- The Consumer Product Safety Program appreciates comments from signatories about the specificity in the published recall notices that they use to identify products of concern. As such, the Program will continue to review the language and product details in these notices, so they are as complete as possible.
Read more below about the actions taken by signatories to meet each specific commitment.
Commitment 1
- Signatories automatically/manually search for new consumer product and cosmetic recall notices, alerts and advisories from the Government of Canada'sFootnote 2 Recalls and safety alerts website.
- A signatory reported manually monitoring and reviewing the following Health Canada pages for consumer product and cosmetic safety regulation resources in order to update systems and information for sellers:
Taking it a step further
- A signatory reported using an automated process to identify global recalls on the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Global portal on product recalls website to identify foreign product listings for removal that may impact Canada.
- Signatories searching the Government of Canada's Recalls and safety alerts website were also applying actions to products on their sites outside the scope of the Pledge and the Consumer Product Safety Program. For example, these product categories include medical devices, drugs, natural health products, pesticides, car seats and food.
Commitment 2
Signatories use artificial intelligence, technical rules, keyword-based logic, image detection technology and filters to identify and deter the sale of products of concern and prevent their future listing.
Recalled products
- A signatory indicated their customer service teams conduct daily, proactive site sweeps for prohibited items to identify new listings and/or trends that can help improve their automated detection methods.
- A signatory uses recall teams to prevent relisting of recalled products. They use rules to automatically identify any new listings of a recalled product. If a listing is identified, a recall team manually reviews the listing to confirm that it is subject to a recall. If it is, the team removes the listing and quarantines the product inventory to prevent further distribution.
- A signatory has a dedicated email address for manufacturers and retailers to report recalls to them which can help them address recall related product safety issues more quickly.
Prohibited and non-compliant products
- A signatory uses algorithms to evaluate items during the listing creation process to identify prohibited items, including those related to product safety. These algorithms flag listings for review by investigators, or in some cases, automatically block the item from being published entirely. If an item is determined to violate the site's product safety policy, it is blocked or removed, and the third-party seller and buyer are notified with an explanation as to why.
- A signatory combines keyword-based logic and product images to identify product listings that can be classified as a specific type of product. Following that:
- for prohibited products, they can suppress the product listing from appearing online.
- for regulated products, they can suppress the product listing from appearing online until the seller provides evidence of compliance.
- A signatory requires third-party sellers to have evidence that their product meets applicable Canadian requirements. Examples of evidence include:
- a test report showing that a product complies with a specific Canadian requirement (e.g., a test report that confirms a children's product complies with the Phthalates Regulations);
- a regulatory identification number demonstrating that a product has been issued a pre-market authorization by Health Canada, if applicable; or
- product images showing that a product has bilingual (English and French) labelling.
Commitment 3
- A signatory uses technical rules that are automatically audited at designated frequencies. They also conduct manual audits which replicate the manual keyword searching that a customer might perform for the purpose of identifying potentially unsafe products listed for sale which may have been missed by their compliance controls. These audits are conducted daily.
- Any unsafe products identified as part of these audit processes are investigated and compliance controls are updated to correct any issues.
- A signatory monitors their site for listings that potentially violate their product safety policy. They proactively monitor global recall announcements and use automated algorithms that leverage AI, image detection and various keyword combinations to identify listings that may include recalled products. This is supplemented by daily manual sweeps of their worldwide online marketplaces aimed at identifying and removing listings offering newly recalled products. Product listings are either blocked at the listing stage or flagged and referred to a customer service agent for review and potential removal.
- As an example, during this reporting period, this signatory flagged 268 Government of Canada recallsFootnote 2 that affected product listings across all of their worldwide sites. This resulted in 186 product listings being removed from their Canadian online marketplace.
Commitment 4
- Signatories subject third-party sellers to the following:
- investigation,
- communication to request a plan of action or correct a violation, and
- if necessary, a temporary and/or permanent suspension of the third-party seller from the online marketplace.
- A signatory has systems to identify and remove accounts associated with previously suspended third-party sellers.
Commitment 5
- Signatories evaluate customer reported incidents and concerns to assess the severity of the risk to health or safety, including trend analysis over time for lower severity incidents that on their own may not rise to a reportable level under section 14 of the CCPSA.
- Where appropriate, medium and high severity events, as well as identified trends for lower severity events, are further investigated by the signatory.
Signatories determine if a specific product violates one of their policies or otherwise presents a potential risk to health or safety, and they:
- remove the product from the site,
- advise the vendor or third-party seller of the removal, and
- for consumer products, file an incident report with Health Canada when required under section 14 of the CCSPA.
Commitment 6
Signatories have implemented several ways to meet this commitment:
- Recall and safety alert page: Created a page to make it easier for customers to learn about recalled products they may have purchased through a signatories' online marketplace.
- Validate bilingual (English/French) labels: Built and trained a new machine learning model that can scan all the product images uploaded to the site's systems for a given product, identify the product label in the images and determine whether the label contains both English and French text.
- Monitoring improvements: Developing processes to enhance detection technologies to automatically monitor the Government of Canada Recalls and safety alerts website along with government recall databases globally and apply that information to identify potential listings for removal and prevent new listings.
- Blocking mechanisms: Implemented additional controls to block buyers from Canada from being able to purchase certain prohibited products from non-Canadian online marketplaces.
- Education materials: Regularly update seller guidance, including information specifically related to requirements in Canada.
- Signatory on other global product safety pledges: Participation allows for best practices with other regulators to be explored and implemented across all jurisdictions.
Part 2: Co-operating with Health Canada
These commitments strengthen the partnership between signatories and the Program and facilitate swift and effective action when a product safety issue poses a risk to the health or safety to the people in Canada.
Summary and areas for improvement:
- The processes implemented over the past year have streamlined collaboration between the Consumer Product Safety Program and the signatories. This has facilitated smoother workflows and enabled both parties to promptly inform consumers about product safety and cosmetic issues.
- In all instances, signatories have cooperated to address product safety concerns and have removed product listings within two business days upon request.
- The Consumer Product Safety Program encourages signatories to address internal processing constraints and technical issues with the systems storing third-party seller information so responses to requests for contact information are not delayed.
- The Program would like to explore with signatories the relationship and contractual obligations they have with third-party sellers, so the sellers directly respond to requests on a consistent basis, so compliance and enforcement determinations and actions are done more quickly.
Read more below about the actions taken by signatories to meet each specific commitment.
Commitment 7
Establish and provide a clear contact point(s) to be responsive to Health Canada
Signatories established direct points of contact with the Program with the use of email addresses and/or an online regulatory portal to facilitate consistent and effective interactions.
Commitment 8
Combined from both signatories, 78 product listings were requested to be removed from sale. All 78 product listings were removed from sale within two business days of receipt of a stop sale request. As a result, actions were taken within the requested period 100% of the time. Signatories responding quickly to remove unsafe products leads to improved health and safety for people in Canada.
Taking it a step further
- A signatory indicated that when the Program contacts them, they generally remove the listing within two hours.
- A signatory indicated that their online marketplace enables a third-party seller to offer products worldwide. Third-party sellers can apply a shipping exclusion filter to prevent a product from being available for shipping to specific countries. When the third-party seller does not use the shipping exclusion filter for Canada, people in Canada may see the product listing and may purchase the product. As a result, the signatory has reminded foreign third-party sellers to use the shipping exclusion filter to prevent advertising of products that are not allowed to be sold in Canada.
Commitment 9
Signatories generally provided the Program with the name and contact information of the third-party seller of a recalled, prohibited or non-compliant product within five business days of receiving a request. A signatory indicated that 11 requests out of 123 took longer than five business days to process because of internal processing constraints or technical errors with the systems that store third-party seller information. Additionally, one request was processed over a longer time period because the request involved more than five third-party sellers. The Pledge Guidance offers longer timelines to online marketplaces for action in such cases.
Commitment 10
- Signatories assisted the Consumer Product Safety Program when third-party sellers were not responsive to requests for information.
- Upon receiving a request, a signatory sent an email to the third-party seller advising them that:
- Health Canada had attempted to contact them regarding a safety or compliance issue,
- they must communicate with Health Canada until the issue is fully resolved, and
- if they fail to do so, their products may be restricted from sale and/or their selling account may be suspended or terminated.
- In one instance, the signatory contacted a third-party seller about an inactive email address on their listing and shared the updated information with the Program for follow-up.
- Signatories collaborated with the Program to verify whether products were sold in Canada when foreign third-party sellers were unresponsive. Their support enabled the development and publication of consumer alert notices regarding potential product safety issues.
Part 3: Raising product safety awareness amongst sellers
This commitment enhances third-party sellers' awareness of Canadian product safety laws regardless of the geographical location(s) of the third-party seller's operations.
Summary and areas for improvement:
- Signatories are committed to providing a variety of tools, such as product policies and safety guidelines, to educate third-party sellers on what they must do for products to meet Canadian legislative requirements. To encourage the use of these tools, the signatories use direct messaging to promote them to the third-party sellers who are listing products on their online marketplace.
- The Program encourages the screening of third-party sellers combined with robust online marketplace education systems, to ensure that sellers clearly understand the expectations when selling products in Canada.
Read more below about the actions taken by signatories to meet this commitment.
Commitment 11
Implement measures to facilitate sellers' compliance to Canadian product safety laws
Signatories have implemented several ways to meet this commitment:
- Contracts: Compel third-party sellers to ensure that they and their products comply with applicable laws.
- Product policies/safety guidelines: Publish policies that identify which product types are prohibited from sale or must meet specific requirements or standards to be sold on the online marketplace.
- These policies include detailed information about how a specific product type is regulated in Canada and links to applicable Canadian laws and governmental guidance regarding those laws.
- Education: Communicate the requirements of the new or updated online marketplace policy to their sellers via popup notifications on their third-party seller websites and via emails.
- In some circumstances, they also telephone third-party sellers, publish educational videos, and host webinars in which third-party sellers can ask questions about the new or updated policy.
Part 4: Empowering consumers on product safety issues
These commitments ensure that consumers have the information and tools they need to make informed product purchase decisions related to their health or safety and to facilitate the reporting of product safety issues.
Summary and areas for improvement:
- Signatories have made changes to help improve consumer interactions with their online marketplace, including:
- making the listings more accurate so consumers can make informed choices about the products they are buying;
- providing easy access for consumers to report product issues to the online marketplace and Health Canada; and,
- delivering recall information directly to consumers through email, internal messaging systems or customer accounts, enhancing overall recall effectiveness.
- With signatories, the Program will explore ways to make reporting on the numbers of recalls communicated to consumers consistent in the future.
Read more below about the actions taken by signatories to meet each specific commitment.
Commitment 12
Signatories have developed specific links within product safety policy pages and product safety and recall webpages that include information on how consumers can report product concerns or issues to the signatory and the Consumer Product Safety Program.
Commitment 13
Inform consumers about recalls on products they purchased in the signatory's online marketplace.
The Consumer Product Safety Program of Health Canada published a total of 290 consumer product and cosmetic recalls and alerts during this reporting time frame.
- For this report, signatories reviewed all notices on the Government of Canada'sFootnote 2 Recalls and safety alerts website, not just those limited to consumer products and cosmetics. For future reports, signatories are evaluating ways to focus reporting more specifically on recalls related to consumer products and cosmetics. However, signatories remain committed to taking action on all notices on the Government of Canada's Recalls and safety alerts website.
- Signatories identified 432Footnote 3 recall notices posted to the Government of Canada's Recalls and safety alerts website that impacted product listings on their sites.
- Signatories emailed consumers who purchased the recalled products about the recall and advised them to take steps outlined in the public recall notice. Specifically, a signatory contacted 12,438 global consumers regarding product listings removed due to notices seen on the Government of Canada Recalls and safety alerts website. Of these global consumers, 345 were registered in Canada.
- Signatories also contacted consumers via internal messaging systems or via their customer accounts.
- A signatory also posted the recalls and alerts to their internal recalls and safety alerts page.
Commitment 14
- Signatories require third-party sellers to follow policies regarding product descriptions and product listings. These policies ensure that:
- product descriptions are accurate and include identifiers such as product name, brand, description, model, SKU, UPC, condition, pricing, keywords, search terms, shipping information and images
- products that are legally prohibited from sale are not offered for sale.
- A signatory has a tool function to create a new product listing or add a new offer to an existing product listing. Depending on the path taken, third-party sellers are prompted to provide specific product details so consumers get accurate information.
- Signatories publish the business name or username of the third-party seller of every third-party product offered for sale in the signatory's online marketplace.
- In addition to the username of the third-party seller, a signatory also provides the option for the seller to include additional business information, such as contact information so consumers can directly engage with them.
Moving Forward
Health Canada appreciates and acknowledges the commitment and efforts by both Amazon Canada and eBay Canada to protect people in Canada from unsafe consumer products and cosmetics sold online during this first year of the Pledge. Engagement with these two online marketplaces has been positive and formative across the reporting period.
The Consumer Product Safety Program will continue to discuss the commitments and reporting requirements with signatories to identify where improvements may be beneficial. The Program encourages signatories to invest more in improving pre-listing screening, so that unsafe products are not made available to consumers to purchase. The Program will also work to revise the Guidelines for signatories to include additional best practices. In this way, online marketplaces can learn about actions they can take to improve the safety of products available to consumers and improve reporting consistency.
The Consumer Product Safety Program continues to monitor the overall effectiveness of the Pledge in strengthening product safety online and protecting consumers from unsafe products.
To improve the overall safety of products sold in these online marketplaces, the Program will continue to engage with other marketplaces and encourage them to use the Pledge commitments to help increase the safety of products sold on their online marketplaces. Those engagements will also include discussions about their suitability for onboarding as new pledge signatories, where appropriate.
As an example, the Consumer Product Safety Program secured Temu as a new signatory and are looking forward to reflecting the Program's work with them in the next annual report.
Read more:
- About the Canadian product safety pledge for consumer products and cosmetics
- Information for online marketplaces and online sellers
Contact ps.pledge-engagement.sp@hc-sc.gc.ca if you have any questions.