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Chemicals policy in Canada

Chemicals regulation in Canada is mainly defined in the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. This act, which was passed in 1999, requires notification of 'New Chemicals', and outlines a process by which the regulator will review the properties of existing chemicals, which are listed in the 'Domestic Substance List':

• An initial categorization of all 23,000 substances must be carried out by Environment Canada by September 2006.
• Substances of particular concern will be selected and subject to a screening-level risk assessment.
• If required, substances will then be added to the Priority Substances List, which may lead to controls.

The Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA) has produced a detailed comparison between the CEPA and REACH systems, "Within REACH: An agenda for improving the Canadian Environmental Protection Act" .

For more information on the Canadian system, click to see a presentation from Environment Canada.

Canada is also involved in a number of trans-national agreements with relevance to chemicals. See the US page for more details.

In 2006 Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, announced the launch of a very ambitious national chemicals management program, and results of the domestic inventory of existing chemicals review. Click here for the press release.

Review of CEPA

The Canadian Environmental Protection Act is currently being reviewed - see the Canadian Government's CEPA Review web site for more information.

See CELA's web site to see the environmental NGO comment on this review. For the chemical industry position, see the Canadian Chemical Producers Association.