Consumer Product Enforcement Summary Report: Cyclical Enforcement Project 2016-2017: Mandatory Incident Reporting

Fiscal year 2016-2017

Summary

The Consumer Product Safety Program (CPSP) administers and enforces the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act (CCPSA) and regulations.

The purpose of this Cyclical Enforcement (CE) project was to verify industry's compliance with the (CCPSA) section 14 requirements specific to incident reporting. Under section 14 of the CCPSA industry must report to Health Canada after becoming aware of a health or safety incident involving a consumer product that they manufacture, import or sell. If applicable, they must also inform the person from whom they received the product. Subsections 14(2) and 14(3) of the CCPSA outline the timelines for reporting an incident.

The CPSP used internal intelligence data to select establishments across Canada for this CE project and inspected them over the course of the fiscal year 2016-2017. The compliance of the selected establishments with the requirements of section 14 of the CCPSA was determined through a process by which Health Canada inspectors visited establishments and reviewed their documents. Inspectors reviewed product complaints received by the company for a specific period of time and determined if any of the consumer complaints should have been reported to Health Canada as incidents. Establishments were asked to report any un-submitted incidents that were identified during the inspection to Health Canada within the given timelines. Additionally, they were asked to provide Health Canada with an action plan of how they will ensure that reportable incidents are received, assessed and reported to Health Canada in a timely manner in the future.

Results

Overall, Health Canada determined that industry is not always assessing incidents appropriately against the section 14 requirements set out in the legislation and is not reporting within the section 14 timelines.

The inspected establishments committed to fulfilling their responsibility to report consumer product incidents to Health Canada within the required timelines and implementing their corrective actions as part of their action plans submitted during the project. In the event of an incident, establishments that have a well-established process for reviewing the safety of products, controlling products under review and reporting to Health Canada within the required timelines reduce the exposure of consumers to hazards.

Next steps

Health Canada will continue to work with industry so that incident reports relating to consumer products are properly assessed and reported in a timely manner. Health Canada will also be revising the current Industry Guide on Mandatory Reporting to include more guidance on the concept of becoming aware of an incident and clarity on what information should be included in a subsection 14(3) report.

Disclaimer: A systematic bias was applied during inspection targeting. Establishments were not randomly selected but were chosen because they were deemed by the inspector to meet the parameters of the project. The findings of this project may not reflect the overall compliance of establishments in Canada.