Re-evaluation Note REV2020-01, Pest Management Regulatory Agency Re-evaluation and Special Review Work Plan 2020-2025

Pest Management Regulatory Agency
30 September 2020
ISSN: 1925-0649 (PDF version)
Catalogue number: H113-5/2020-1E-PDF (PDF version)

Table of Contents

• Background
• Current re-evaluations and special reviews
• Re-evaluations initiated between 1 April 2019 and 31 March 2020
• New re-evaluation initiations

Background

The purpose of this document is to inform registrants, pesticide regulatory officials and the Canadian public of the re-evaluation and special review work planned by Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) from 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2025. The work plan is normally published every spring. However, its publication was delayed due to the measures taken for COVID-19 pandemic.

This work plan includes the proposed and final decisions published since 1 April 2020, all ongoing re-evaluations and special reviews, as well as new re-evaluations expected to be initiated in this time frame. This document replaces the previously published Re-evaluation Note REV2019-05, Pest Management Regulatory Agency Re-evaluation and Special Review Work Plan 2019-2024.

Health Canada regulates pesticides in Canada, with the primary objective of protecting the health of Canadians and the environment. A pesticide may only be sold or used in Canada if it has been registered or otherwise authorized under the authority of the Pest Control Products Act. Health Canada uses a rigorous science-based risk assessment approach to ensure that the product meets health and environmental protection standards and has value.

As part of the post-market program, registered pesticides are re-evaluated on a cyclical basis using modern assessment techniques and current scientific information. In addition, pesticides may also be re-evaluated as a result of changes in the information required or the procedures used by Health Canada to determine that the pesticide meets current health, environment and value standards. A special review may also be initiated at any time if there are reasonable grounds to believe that the health or environmental risks, or the value of a pesticide are no longer acceptable. Special reviews differ from re-evaluation in that a special review is intended to examine only specific aspects of a pesticide.

Health Canada publishes all post-market proposed decisions for public consultation. Following consultation, comments and information submitted by the public and other stakeholders are considered before Health Canada issues a final decision. Stakeholders are encouraged to become aware of upcoming consultations, as well as new initiations, for active ingredients by visiting the Pesticides section of Canada.ca.

This five-year work plan may change in response to workload and to emerging issues that require priority action; thus, while this work plan will be updated annually, during the course of the year interested stakeholders can monitor the PMRA’s Public Registry to view the announcement of new re-evaluations and special reviews, as well as the publication of proposed and final decisions.

Current re-evaluations and special reviews

The post-market review program workload is significant and increasing. In response, Health Canada is developing new approaches for pesticide evaluations that will support a sustainable program that makes timely science-based decisions. While program renewal is underway, Health Canada has taken a risk-based approach to prioritize re-evaluations and special reviews.

Re-evaluations of older pesticide active ingredients registered before 1995, older cyclical re-evaluations, certain neonicotinoid reviews as well as special reviews, have been prioritized for completion. As the number of re-evaluation initiations required by the Pest Control Products Act are high, Health Canada has implemented a risk based triaging and prioritization process for conducting the scoping and re-evaluation reviews of newer re-evaluation initiations to manage risks in a timely manner, and to manage workload in an efficient manner.

Under the current COVID-19 pandemic, Health Canada is making every effort to maintain operations. However, some ongoing scientific reviews and scoping reviews of new re-evaluation initiations are currently experiencing delays. Therefore, publication of certain decision documents are delayed.

The anticipated publication dates outlined in the work plan represent the most up-to-date information on the status of the re-evaluations or special reviews. The work plan for the post-market reviews related to pesticide active ingredients registered before 1995, cyclical active ingredients and special reviews are included in Tables 1–5. Actives to be initiated for re-evaluations in next 5 years are included in Table 6.

To direct resources for the work on priority actives, the re-evaluations of the following active ingredients are delayed. In addition, the measures taken related to the COVID19 pandemic contributed to their delay. Health Canada will include the expected timelines for their public consultation in the next updated work plan to be published in spring 2021:

Re-evaluations initiated between 1 April 2019 and 31 March 2020

The number of re-evaluation initiations currently required as per the 15-year legislative requirement is high. Therefore, a risk based approach is being considered for prioritization of active ingredients for scoping and review phases of re-evaluations based on various considerations such as nature and outcome of existing assessments and overall human health and environmental risk profile, other health and environmental concerns such as information from incident reports received by Health Canada, and status in other jurisdictions (for example, decisions from other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member countries), use pattern, sales and use information, knowledge of new information, new data requirements, and, possible clustering of reviews. Based on the above considerations, a weight of evidence approach is taken for prioritization, and, Health Canada has grouped the active ingredients into higher priority and lower priority actives for the scoping and review phases. The outcome of scoping reviews will further inform prioritization of active ingredients for review phase. All active ingredients initiated for re-evaluation will be subjected to scientific review, public consultation and final decision as per the Regulatory Directive DIR2016-04, Management of Pesticides Re-evaluation Policy. However, based on the available resources, the active ingredients identified as higher priority based on the above factors will be considered first.

Active ingredients in Table 5 are in the early phase of the re-evaluation, and the status will be updated in the next upcoming work plan (2021–2026) planned to be published in spring 2021.

New re-evaluation initiations

In general, the initiation date of the re-evaluation of a particular active ingredient is based on the date of its initial registration, or the date of the last completed re-evaluation. The re-evaluation process is described in Regulatory Directive DIR2016-04, Management of Pesticides Re-evaluation Policy. A complete list of all re-evaluation initiations anticipated between April 2020 and March 2025 is included in Table 6.

Information related to the re-evaluation initiation will be posted to the PMRA's Public Registry.