Mid-2016 likely date for implementation of new system in Canada
The globally harmonized system (GHS) classification and labelling of chemicals is in place in the United States — and it’s coming north.
But don’t panic. There’s still plenty of time to prepare, as implementation of GHS isn’t expected to begin on this side of the border for at least three years.
“It’s going to be quite some time before we’re going to be fully implemented here and they’ve got lots of time to get ready,” said Jessie Callaghan, senior technical specialist with the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety in Hamilton.
Lots of training on horizon
That doesn’t mean it will be easy. The process of training all employees, who have already been trained in Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System (WHMIS), will be a busy one, said David Halton, owner of Ottawa-based David M. Halton and Associates, a company that develops training programs for GHS.
“It’s going to be quite intensive training for people who have senior level responsibility in the chemical responsibility and it will mean general training for everybody else who just deals with chemicals on a routine or not very frequent basis,” he said.
The new global classification system for chemicals was implemented in June 2012 in the U.S. and is already in place in New Zealand.
Other countries around the world are at different stages of implementation. The system was developed because having different systems in every country was an issue with the global economy, said Halton.
“The whole thing was a big mess,” he said.
GHS leaking into Canada
While Canadian firms may not yet have to deal with GHS head on, the huge volume of trade with the U.S. means some materials may already be coming across with GHS labelling.
“Chances are because they’re a heavy trading partner with us we’re going to start seeing GHS labels and GHS compliant data sheets filtering across the border into Canada, but the WHMIS laws, as they’ve been for many years, they are unchanged at this point in time,” she said. “Basically WHMIS is still the law in Canada even though the U.S. has implemented the GHS.”
Canadian legislation on the way
Federally, implementing the changes means first fixing the two pieces of legislation the change would affect — the Hazardous Products Act and the Controlled Products Regulations.
Draft changes on those two pieces of legislation are due to be out for comment in spring 2013, which could be as late as late June, said Callaghan.
The federal government is trying to get things in place for June 2015, so GHS labels and the new safety data sheets the GHS requires would be accepted in Canada by that time, said Callaghan.
This would be a starting point. There would be a transition period but no one knows how long that will take. After federal legislation is changed, provincial and territorial legislation dealing with hazardous products will need to be altered as well, she said.
It will likely be early to mid-2016 before the GHS is truly the standard in Canada.
Preparing for GHS
Safety professionals will have to look at the new criteria for what constitutes a hazardous chemical. Just because something was not captured by WHMIS doesn’t mean it won’t be captured by GHS, said Halton.
“The GHS tends to capture more materials than almost any other system in the past,” he said.
A good first step, even pre-implementation, is for health and safety professionals to go through old chemical supplies and get rid of things that aren’t being used anymore, said Callaghan.
“That is something they could start at any time and it’s never a bad thing to… get rid of products that you don’t use on the worksite anymore,” she said.
Safety managers should consider adding a module introducing GHS and its pictograms to their WHIMS training now, to get staff familiar with the program.
“Introducing a piece where they introduce people to what GHS pictograms look like in their WHMIS training programs wouldn’t be a bad start to making the transition,” she said. “You don’t want to confuse people so that they don’t understand the system that we’re using right now —which is WHMIS — but you might want to sensitize them a bit to the system that’s coming into place.”
Companies that don’t use electronic systems for safety data sheets might want to look into a system to see if business would benefit from that, she said.
The transition will be challenging but, since WHMIS is one of the systems GHS was based on, that should help, said Callaghan.
“I think we’re fortunate in Canada that WHMIS is one of the systems that the GHS was built upon, it doesn’t mirror any one system but the WHMIS system is a well-developed hazard communication system so it was one of the systems that was looked at really closely when the GHS was developed,” she said. “So there’s going to be a lot of familiarity.”
Melissa Mancini is a Halifax-based freelance writer.
