Federal health minister wants tougher product recall laws.

Federal health minister wants tougher product recall laws.

By Sarah Schmidt, Canwest News Service April 13, 2009

OTTAWA - When Health Canada wasn't satisfied with the way a Quebec company publicized its recall of baby slippers after a serious choking incident, a senior investigator in the consumer-products branch made some pointed suggestions.

The poster alerting customers about the defective product posted at stores was ``too vague, given the risk,'' he told executives at Souris Mini, which sold the slippers. He also ``suggested'' the company post the recall information on its website ``to reach as many people as possible.''

Souris Mini didn't take the advice and followed its own strategy to reach out to customers, according to internal documents released under the Access to Information Act.

Other Health Canada documents about consumer complaints and voluntary product recalls appear to reveal the dynamic in this case is more the norm than the exception. And in the absence of legislation empowering Health Canada to initiate recalls and to roll them out as the federal government sees fit, companies call the shots from start to finish.

When voluntary recalls are initiated, followup action on the part of the companies is optional.

This means Health Canada inspectors can't gauge the effectiveness of recalls because companies are not required to provide statistics about how many defective items have been returned.

Conceding government inspectors feel ``frustration'' by the current state of affairs, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq is banking on the quick passage of the Consumer Product Safety Act to give Health Canada the power to recall products. Debate on the bill could begin as early as next week, and the opposition parties have indicated they like the broad strokes.

Bill Huzar, president and founding member of the Consumers Council of Canada, says giving Health Canada this kind of clout is something that can't come soon enough.

``The fact that we've left to industry the sole ability to recall product is unacceptable. We need to have the ability for government, when they see that there's a threat to health or safety, that they need to have the authority to take action,'' he said, praising the government for identifying the need to act in the face of a growing number of dubious imports finding their way into store
shelves in Canada.

``That's the positive aspect (of) it. The government has responded to the number of incidents that have occurred in the last few years that have indicated that these products have gotten into the marketplace and are not controlled,'' said Huzar.

In the case last spring of a voluntary recall of a teether rattle manufactured in China, Health Canada's product-safety branch opened a file four months earlier after a mother complained about the structural integrity of the Manhattan Toy Company's Tumble Tower, internal documents show.

The Toronto mother of a six-month-old thought the newly purchased toy should have stayed intact after being dropped from approximately two-feet from the floor. She returned the rattle to her baby after wiping it clean, and that's when trouble began.

``A minute later, the child began gagging/choking and then vomited. The mother then found the rattle with a piece missing from it and then found the broken piece in the child's vomit,'' the product safety officer's report, dated Jan. 9, 2008, states.

After receiving confirmation from the company later in the month that it was ``investigating this complaint,'' the file at HealthCanada remained dormant until the end of April, according to internal records released to Canwest News Service.

FULL STORY: http://www.canada.com/Federal+health+minister+wants+tougher+product+recall+laws/1491960/story.html