This month the government proposed changes to the Pest Control Products Act (PCPA), which regulates the way pesticides are used in Canada based on their health and environmental impacts.
But these changes are buried inside omnibus budget bill C-30, which bypassed traditional oversight and was pushed through the House of Commons with only three hours of debate and passed the House of Commons and Senate last week. Neither Health Canada's Science Advisory Group on Pesticide Regulation nor the Pest Management Advisory Committee were asked to review these proposals before they were embedded in budget legislation.
Are we really ready to accept the risk of more miscarriages, rising neurological disease, contaminated ecosystems and weaker protections for children, workers and Indigenous peoples? And to have these decisions be based on financial rather than health and environmental concerns? If not, then the proposed changes to Canada’s pesticide law need to be rejected.
As physicians and public health advocates, we know prevention is the most effective and least expensive way to improve the health of the public. Once exposure to toxic pollutants occurs (whether to air pollution, PFAS, or pesticides), the damage can persist for years, even generations.
Bill C-30 makes political and economic interests compete directly with health and environmental evidence. It would require Health Canada to consider vague concepts such as "national economic security," "regional economic security" and "national food security" when making pesticide decisions. These terms are not defined in the legislation. Public health protections should not be weakened through ambiguous economic tests that leave room for political interpretation. The purpose of pesticide regulation must remain clear: protecting human health and the environment from unacceptable risks.
Political Manoeuvering
Moreover, the way in which the Carney government plans to do this undermines long-standing public health and environmental protections.
The proposed PCPA amendments undermine the precautionary principle, a cornerstone of public health. When credible evidence points to harm, governments have a duty to act protectively, especially when children, workers, Indigenous communities and rural populations face disproportionate exposure burdens.
Instead, Bill C-30 would give cabinet sweeping powers to override Health Canada experts and permit pesticides deemed environmentally harmful to remain in use for years. The legislation provides no meaningful safeguards, transparency requirements or clear limits on political interference in science-based decisions.
Equally troubling, Bill C-31 would replace mandatory 15-year pesticide re-evaluations with narrower assessments that may never trigger comprehensive review. Yet these reviews are how regulators uncover new science, cumulative harms and previously underestimated risks. Weakening them means dangerous exposures may go undetected. This is not modernization; it is deregulation presented as efficiency — though it will prove more expensive in terms of the economic costs of the resulting health impacts.
Impacts on people’s health
Physicians already see the health consequences of pesticide use: cancers, reproductive harms, developmental disorders, neurological disease and chronic illnesses associated with environmental exposures.
Pesticides are not isolated agricultural tools. They are part of a broader fossil fuel-driven toxic exposure crisis linked to biodiversity loss, climate change and mounting human health harms.
Under the proposed changes, the cabinet could overturn decisions made because environmental risks are deemed unacceptable and instead authorize continued use of those pesticides for years. If scientific review concludes a pesticide poses unacceptable environmental harm, the appropriate response is to reduce exposure — not create a political mechanism to prolong it.
Canada’s responsibility
Healthy ecosystems are essential public health infrastructure and biodiversity is preventative medicine. Canada has already committed, through the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, to reducing pesticide risks by at least half by 2030. Weakening pesticide oversight directly contradicts those commitments, as well as a basic principle of environmental justice: Those most exposed should be protected first.
The real question is not whether Canada can afford stronger pesticide protections, but whether people in Canada can afford the long-term health, environmental and economic costs of dismantling them.
At minimum, the government should have removed these pesticide amendments from Bill C-30 and undertaken transparent public consultation before proposing changes that could affect the health of people and ecosystems across Canada.
Jane McArthur is toxics program director at the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE). Trevor Hancock is one of CAPE’s founders and a leading voice in public health for decades.
