Dr. Mike Moffatt, Ph.D. Director of Communications, Nexreg Compliance Inc. International Regulatory Influences GHS Finally Comes to Canada (at least, sort of) Comments to Health Canada deadline is Sept. 15 For the last six years, I have been asked at least once a week, “When will Health Canada release their draft GHS regulation?” To which I always responded “I don’t know. Soon, I hope.” After giving that answer for six straight years, I was starting to believe the rules were never going to arrive. I was wrong to give up hope. On June 29, Health Canada announced in the Canada Gazette that they will be scrapping the Controlled Products Regulations (CPR) and will replace them with a new Hazardous Products Regulations (HPR) based on the UN’s Globally Harmonized System (GHS). The CPR contains WHMIS (Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System), the system that governs labeling of workplace chemicals, material safety data sheets (MSDS) and workplace health and safety training. All of these will be changing drastically, so companies supplying chemical products to Canada will need to update all of their Canadian workplace labels and MSDS. Health Canada has set up the website—http://hc-sc.gc.ca/ ewh-semt/occup-travail/whmis-simdut/ghs-sgh/preparing-preparation/ index-eng.php—to provide further information on the new regulations. As we go to print, the proposed rule is not currently available online. If you wish to obtain a copy, please send me an e-mail and I would be delighted to send you the proposed rules. I will also be holding a number of free webinars on the topic, which are available at http://www.nexreg. com/webinars. Companies and individuals have until Sept.15, 2013 to provide written comment to Health Canada in preparation for the final regulation. They can be reached by mail: Health Canada, 427 Laurier Avenue W, 7th Floor, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 1M3, fax: 613-993-5016 or e-mail: whmis_simdut@ hc-sc.gc.ca. I highly recommend that everyone get their comments in concerning both what they like and do not like about the proposed rules. Health Canada has not yet issued a proposed timeline for compliance, so if your company has any preference for the final compliance date, be sure to include that in your submission. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised to see how similar the HPR proposal is to the U.S.’s Hazcom 2012 rules. This proposal is a fairly radical departure from the old WHMIS system, and much of what made WHMIS unique, including WHMIS concentration ranges, a three-year expiry date on MSDS, and the well-known hatched border on WHMIS labels, has been abandoned. As with Hazcom 2012, this change only applies to workplace/industrial/institutional labels, not labels for consumer products. The regulation governing consumer chemicals, (CCCR, 2001) may be updated in the future to accommodate GHS, but that will not likely be any time soon. The similarities between the proposed HPR and Hazcom 2012 are too numerous to mention. The most important ones include: • All the GHS categories omitted from Hazcom 2012, including Acute Toxicity Category 5, Skin Corrosion/Irritation Category 3 and Aspiration Hazard Category 2 and the entire Environmental Toxicity group have also been omitted from the proposed HPR. • The four classes in Hazcom 2012 not in GHS have also been adopted in HPR: Combustible Dust, Simple Asphyxiants, Pyrophoric Gases and the frustrating ‘Hazards Not Otherwise Classified’ class. • A 16-section MSDS is required in HPR, with the same headings and sub-headings as in Hazcom 2012. • The existing WHMIS exemption for flavors and fragrances has been abandoned, as to harmonize with the Hazcom 2012 rules. • Other than for biohazardous materials, all symbols are enclosed in a red diamond. Unfortunately there are a number of areas where the proposed HPR differs significantly from Hazcom 2012. This is frustrating, as it means that Hazcom 2012 compliant documents cannot simply be used “as-is” in Canada, as a number of steps must be taken to ensure Canadian compliance. Some of the bigger differences between Hazcom 2012 and the proposed HPR include the following: • The definition of combustible dust differs between Hazcom 2012 and HPR, leading to possible differences in how some products are classified in the two countries. • The labeling requirements for small container sizes dif- 32 Spray September 2013
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