Bill C-31, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on November 4, 2025 (short title: Budget 2025 Implementation Act, No. 2), is before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. Its Division 13 of Part 4 (clauses 282 to 285) rewrites how Health Canada re-checks pesticides that are already on the market. The bill’s summary says the division replaces “the mandatory re-evaluation of registered pest control products with a requirement for the Minister of Health to initiate a re-evaluation if, after carrying out an assessment, that Minister has reasonable grounds to believe that the health or environmental risks of a product have increased significantly.”

Today the law says every pesticide must be re-evaluated about 15 years after its last major decision. C-31 would make a full re-evaluation conditional on the risks having “increased significantly.”
Citizen impact: Re-evaluations are how older products get restricted or pulled when science or use patterns change. Farmers and registrants gain fewer full reviews, less paperwork and more certainty about keeping products on the shelf. Neighbours, farm workers and consumers lose a fixed, guaranteed check-up date. The bill does not say how many products would skip a full review, and the government has published no estimate we could find.

What the law says now

Under subsection 16(2) of the Pest Control Products Act (current to 21 September 2026), the Minister “shall initiate a re-evaluation” of a pesticide no later than one year after 15 years have passed since its most recent registration or major amendment decision. Subsection 16(1) separately lets the Minister start a re-evaluation at any time if evaluation information or methods have changed.

What C-31 would change

  • Assessment instead of re-evaluation: new subsection 16(2) requires the Minister, within 15 years of the last decision or last assessment, to “initiate an assessment to determine, on the basis of available information, whether the health or environmental risks posed by a registered pest control product have increased significantly.”
  • Re-evaluation only on a finding: new subsection 16(2.1) requires a full re-evaluation only if the Minister then has “reasonable grounds to believe” the risks have “increased significantly.” The bill does not define “increased significantly.”
  • Special reviews: the Minister may delay an assessment while a special review is under way (new 16(2.2)), narrow the follow-on re-evaluation (16(2.3)), and end a special review if a re-evaluation covers the same issue (new 17.11).
  • Transparency: the Minister must publish, with reasons, any finding that risks have increased significantly, any delay, and any termination of a special review (amended section 17.2). The text does not require reasons to be published when an assessment finds no significant increase.
  • Re-evaluations already under way: they continue, but the Minister may run an assessment at any time and, if it finds no significant increase in risk since the last decision, the re-evaluation “is terminated” (transitional clause 285(4)).

What the committee heard

The finance committee held hearings on 6 and 8 October, according to LEGISinfo. As reported by The Hub, Ecojustice lawyer Bronwyn Roe told MPs on 8 October that Health Canada has started continuous oversight monitoring for only nine of more than 650 registered active ingredients, and that sales rose from 26 million kg of active ingredients in 2005 to more than 144 million kg in 2024. She asked MPs to remove the pesticide section. Pascal Priori of Victimes des pesticides du Québec asked for the section to be withdrawn or amended to define the trigger and keep mandatory re-evaluation for highly hazardous products. These figures are the witnesses’ own; we have not verified them against Health Canada data. The Hub also reported that CropLife representatives had appeared earlier in the week. Committee chair Karina Gould said ministers would appear on 19 and 20 October and that amendments to C-31 are due at noon on 22 October.

What this piece refuses

Do not write that C-31 “ends pesticide reviews”: every product still gets a 15-year assessment, and the Minister keeps the power to re-evaluate or order a special review. Do not write that it approves new pesticides or loosens approval of new products; Division 13 deals with products already registered. We do not repeat the witnesses’ health-cost estimates, which were not sourced in the record we saw.

Contested: The bill’s design would concentrate full re-evaluations on products whose risks appear to have changed, rather than re-running every file on a fixed clock; in the documents we reviewed the government has published no separate rationale or estimate of how many re-evaluations would be avoided. Critics say an undefined threshold, assessed on “available information,” replaces a guaranteed review with a discretionary one, and that health law does not belong in an omnibus budget bill.

Bottom line

Verified as of 13 October 2026 against the first-reading text of Bill C-31 and the current Pest Control Products Act: Division 13 would turn the automatic 15-year pesticide re-evaluation into a 15-year paper assessment, with a full re-evaluation only where the Minister finds the risks have “increased significantly.” The bill is in committee; watch for amendments by 22 October and clause-by-clause after that.