Product Saftey

Product safety has become a real issue for Canadians in light of some high profile cases where certain products were found to be dangerous or contaminated. It is timely, then, that the government released a discussion paper in January calling for the need for changes with respect to the regulation of food, health and consumer products. On April 8th, following the suggestions included in the discussion paper, amendments to the Food and Drugs Act, and a new piece of legislation called the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act, were introduced.

Highlights of the legislative changes include:

• improving the safety of manufactured or imported products through a blanket prohibition against selling any products in Canada which are dangerous to health and safety
• increasing fines for safety violations up to $5,000,000.00
• sellers or retailers must maintain records about where they obtained products and when the products were sold
• government now has the power to order recalls on unsafe products
• ongoing review of benefits & risks of health products even after they are on the market (a “product life cycle” approach)

If you want to read more details about the changes, you can find them here.