Health Canada is investigating National Observer of Canada revealed that government officials supported the pesticide industry’s efforts to discredit a scientist’s findings and overturn a proposed ban on a class of pesticides harmful to bees, the environment and human health.

During Friday’s question period in Ottawa, Green Party leader Elizabeth May pressed the government to respond to the Observer’s story, which found officials colluded with pesticide maker Bayer Crop Science to discredit water quality data collected by University of Saskatchewan professor Christy Morrissey. Her research was part of the basis for a proposed neonicotinoid (neonic) ban in 2016.

In response to May’s question, Yasir Naqvi, parliamentary secretary to the health minister, said the ministry was taking the allegations seriously and that the department’s pest watchdog would investigate the concerns raised. Morrissey confirmed she has been called to a meeting with the director general of Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) next week.

“None of this is timely. It’s taken three years and a media story to get them to address it,” she told CNO in an email Friday. Morrissey filed a formal notice of objection when the proposed ban was lifted in 2021, noting that Canada’s pesticide laws require the regulator to process formal scientific objections to its decision within a reasonable time frame.

“It’s not fair,” she said. In her objection, she described how Bayer obtained its unpublished water sample data from the PMRA and then hired a team of scientists to write a report that argued most of it was not relevant to the agency’s neonic review.

Although they ostensibly tried to replicate her data, they did not ask her for detailed GPS coordinates and relied primarily on satellite imagery from Google Earth to make their assessment. They visited a “few places,” the report notes — but at the end of the drought-stricken summer when many of the wetlands Morrissey sampled were dry.

Neonicotinoid is a class of pesticides harmful to human brains and sperm and fatal to bees, insects and birds. They are banned in Europe because of the ecological damage they cause. Canada initially planned to follow suit, but relented after years of industry pressure.

The critics were not convinced by Naqvi’s response.

“For the past decade, Health Canada has repeated the line that it is examining the evidence of harm from neonics, while continuing to allow their widespread use,” said Lisa Gue, director of national policy for the David Suzuki Foundation.

“If the government is finally ready to take these concerns seriously, the health minister should immediately appoint an independent panel to review the flawed neonics evaluations, … ban neonics as the EU has done, and reform the PMRA to prevent this type of undue industry influence in future pesticide assessments,” Gue said.

“It seems this minister doesn’t know what’s going on in his department,” added Laura Bowman, a lawyer with Ecojustice who specializes in pesticides. “Health Canada is waiting years before requesting important health and environmental information for fast-tracked pesticides like neonics,” and has a pattern of ignoring bans proposed by its own scientists.

“These reversals tend to rely on junk science from pesticide registrants to sideline published peer-reviewed studies. I don’t think that’s the kind of process Canadians would call rigorous.”

Talking to National Observer of Canada On Thursday, NDP agriculture critic Richard Cannings said his party supports farmers and recognizes that some of their efforts to grow food may involve using pesticides.

“Canadians are okay with using pesticides as long as they are used responsibly and as long as they are properly regulated,” he said.

But the revelation that the regulator helped pesticide manufacturers undermine independent researchers to keep their products on the market “is not how we should be doing science — and certainly not how we should be doing science designed to protect the health of Canadians and the health of our ecosystems.”