{"id":447,"date":"2008-09-24T08:58:50","date_gmt":"2008-09-24T13:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/election08.cusjc.ca\/?p=447"},"modified":"2008-09-24T08:58:50","modified_gmt":"2008-09-24T13:58:50","slug":"recalling-the-recalls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/?p=447","title":{"rendered":"Recalling the recalls"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ryan Hicks<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last November, Michel Dumont discovered that his five-year-old son Sterling had been chewing on recalled Thomas the Tank toys covered in paint that contained high levels of lead. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Dumont says the public simply does not remember the magnitude of the problem.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cThe public has a short memory,\u201d said the stay-at-home dad from his home in Thunder Bay.\u00a0 \u201cThe average Canadian working family doesn\u2019t have enough time to sift through the recall list.\u00a0 It\u2019s the size of a text book.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Since the beginning of this year, Health Canada has recalled 84 children\u2019s products, including 10 since the beginning of September.\u00a0 The issue of toy safety exploded at this time last year when major toy manufacturers, such as Mattel and Fisher-Price, issued voluntary recalls on Thomas the Tank Engines, Dora the Explorers, Barbies, and Big Big World 6-in-1 Bongo Bands \u2013 to name a few.\u00a0 At the time, the issue was top of mind across the country.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But since the election was called, the alarm bells have been silent.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was last year\u2019s big story,\u201d said Kathleen Cooper, a senior researcher with the Canadian Environmental Law Association.\u00a0 \u201cI think people like to think that it\u2019s been dealt with. And they want it to be dealt with.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Harper government introduced the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act last April.\u00a0 This bill would have given more power to Health Canada to pull unsafe products off store shelves and to levy steeper fines against manufacturers who do not comply with safety regulations.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Cooper thinks that this led Canadians to believe that the problem was solved.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the announcements come out that legislation is going to be reformed, as they did last winter, people who aren\u2019t aware of the details of the legislative process might not necessarily realize that it was just an initial announcement and that there\u2019s a lot of work to do before anything is changed.\u00a0 And all we had was an initial announcement,\u201d said Cooper.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The legislation, which died when the election was called, \u201cmodernized product safety legislation up to a minimal point,\u201d added Copper,\u00a0 and it was, \u201cstill fundamentally reactive.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt wouldn\u2019t prevent toys with lead in them for example from being put on the shelf, it would only give them the power to get them off the shelf,\u201d said Cooper.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Back in Thunder Bay, Dumont says he was scared when he realized his son was playing with toys containing high lead levels. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I found out there was lead paint in my son\u2019s toys that he had been chewing since he was three years old, I just hit the roof. I know what lead does to growing brains. It lowers IQ points and lots of parents don\u2019t know that or they\u2019ve forgotten,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

He immediately took Sterling to get his blood tested for excess lead levels.\u00a0 Sterling\u2019s results came back normal.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe dodged a bullet,\u201d said Dumont, adding that he went through Sterling\u2019s toy box, removing all the toys that were covered in paint that contained lead.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Lead in paint coating children\u2019s toys has been the leading cause for issuing recall notices on children\u2019s products.\u00a0 Of the 84 children\u2019s products recalled in 2008, more than half contained high levels of lead. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Children and infants are most susceptible to the harmful effects of lead exposure because their brains are developing, making it easier for lead to be absorbed in the brain.\u00a0 Health Canada\u2019s website said lead \u201ccan have harmful effects on the behaviour and development of children even at very low levels of exposure.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span>Consumer safety has come up during the election campaign due to this summer\u2019s contaminated meat crisis.\u00a0 However, most of the attention has surrounded Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz\u2019s controversial jokes and off-colour comments about the crisis, which has claimed the lives of 18 people.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Bringing attention back to what was once the number one consumer safety issue in the minds of Canadians and the media is challenging right now says Cooper.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty hard to get attention from a public interest group\u2019s perspective from the media in the midst of a campaign when you have five different leaders to hear from.\u00a0 It also hasn\u2019t been in the news much,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Eighty per cent of toys sold in Canada come from China, where Cooper says manufacturing at the lowest cost is the bottom line and where there is little oversight into manufacturing processes.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Cooper says all non-essential use of lead should be banned. \u201cThe amount of evidence that we have to confirm that lead is a problem would fill a large ballroom, floor to ceiling.\u00a0 There\u2019s no doubt at all and yet we still aren\u2019t regulating it properly,\u201d said Cooper, who has been fighting for stronger chemical regulations for over 23 years.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

She said that whichever party forms the next government will have to prioritize the health of Canadians when dealing with product safety regulations.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Right now, \u201ctrade trumps health,\u201d said Cooper.\u00a0 \u201cThe most significant problems are with cheap imports.\u00a0 We are not willing to regulate in the way that we need to.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ryan Hicks is a student in the Master of Journalism program at the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ryan Hicks Last November, Michel Dumont discovered that his five-year-old son Sterling had been chewing on recalled Thomas the Tank toys covered in paint that contained high levels of lead. \u00a0 Dumont says the public simply does not remember the magnitude of the problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election2008","category-election-2008-student-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=447"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":451,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions\/451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}