Mark Carney’s Liberals set records, in the final days of Parliament before the summer break, for number bills passed with minimal consideration or debate.
One of the most significant of those allows Cabinet to bypass existing law in order to permit the use of toxic, banned pesticides.
The government, through the voice of House Leader Steven McKinnon, says Cabinet would only use this new power with extreme care and in rare circumstances.
Neither McKinnon nor Health Minister Marjorie Michel say what those rare circumstances might be.
McKinnon at least spoke with reporters as the session ended. Michel ducked invitations to comment, and left it to officials to issue a statement.
McKinnon is a long-time Liberal operative, MP, and minister.
Michel is new to politics. She was elected for the first time in 2025, in Montreal’s Papineau riding, which Justin Trudeau had previously represented since 2008.
The new, and potentially dangerous, pesticide-ban-bypass is buried in what is called an implementation bill, C-30.
Bills such as C-30 put into effect policies previously presented to and considered by Parliament.
This implementation Bill gives effect to the government’s Spring Economic Update, which Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne tabled on April 28.
In the normal course of events, an implementation bill is a no-drama affair.
Parliament had its chance to debate the thrust of the 2026 Economic Update right after Champagne tabled it in April, and the Commons Finance Committee then had its look at the Update
That should have been scrutiny enough.
But there was a poison pill buried in C-30 that few noticed at first.
Scant details in C-30 give vast discretionary power to Cabinet
Buried at the very end of C-30 is Division 8, a section on the Pest Control Products Act.
Here, the government has slipped in a provision giving Cabinet power to allow the use of any pesticide federal law deems either dangerous to health or to the environment, or to both.
Cabinet can exercise this extraordinary power for the purpose of “emergency control of a seriously detrimental infestation, if [Cabinet] considers it necessary to do so to protect national economic security, regional economic security or national food security.”
There are no more details than that in C-30.
Cabinet has total discretion as to what tangibly and concretely constitutes “serious infestation” and in what circumstances there exists a need to “protect economic or food security.”
Carney’s government did not even bother to convene the media to announce this significant legislative change.
Nor did it offer the public any explanation as to why it is suddenly necessary to give politicians such arbitrary new power.
The current Liberal team obviously hoped nobody would notice this major change.
That’s why they hid it in the fine print of a routine bill.
Normally, such a modification of rules and regulations concerning heath and the environment would require significant public discussion.
Had it been presented properly, as stand-alone health and environment legislation, this matter would not have come before the Parliamentary Finance Committee, which does not have the expertise to deal with it.
It would, rather, come before the more appropriate Health or Environment Committee, or both of them.
And were the measure presented in that way, there would be ample opportunity to hear from interest groups, industry representatives, community groups, activists, and experts.
As well, there would be substantive debate in the House, allowing MPs on all sides to express their views.
There have been cases in the past when governments have proposed contentious new laws, but, after pushback from the public via the democratic, parliamentary process, corrected course.
In this case, there was no space, time, or opportunity for the public to intervene.
Eloquent opposition to a “regressive proposal”
Green Party leader Elizabeth May said of this measure: “In the 51 years I’ve worked on pesticides, this is the single most regressive proposal I’ve ever seen.”
Meg Sears of the health advocacy organization Prevent Cancer Now said:
“Ballooning use of diverse pesticides is clearly contributing to rapidly increasing cancers… Abandoning science-based pesticide regulation, with no substantive debate, must itself be abandoned…”
On the other hand, the pesticide industry lobby group CropLife Canada said:
“For many years, Canada’s agriculture sector has called for a regulatory system that … recognizes the critical role that crop protection tools and innovation play.”
The industry has evidently been intensely lobbying the government for relief from what corporate folks almost always consider to be excessive regulation.
But leaving aside the substantive issue at hand, using a process-y implementation bill to institute a major change in environmental and health regulation constitutes legislation by stealth.
In 2012, the Stephen Harper Conservative government used the same tactic with its budget implementation bill, C-45.
At that time, nearly 14 years ago, Harper slipped through major limitations to the federal environmental assessment process and cut legislated protections for Indigenous lands – all in the fine print of a follow-up, housekeeping bill to his government’s fall budget.
Since Harper’s C-45 was, notionally, a technical measure to implement what Parliament had previously considered and debated, there would be virtually no debate – nor witnesses – on what was, in effect, major new legislation.
The Opposition parties in Parliament, both the then-Official Opposition New Democrats and the third-party Liberals, were more than annoyed with this defiance of parliamentary democracy.
Indigenous peoples were even less happy. They were boiling mad at the flagrant lack of respect for their rights.
C-45 led to the Indigenous Idle No More movement, which many readers will remember.
That movement shook up the Canadian conscience, even if it did not achieve the fundamental reforms Indigenous peoples demanded.
Now Mark Carney has borrowed a page from the Harper book of tricks.
