Canada: Food and Drugs Law

Parliament has enacted Bill C-30, introducing significant amendments to Canada's Pest Control Products Act and Canadian Food Inspection Agency Act that grant Cabinet unprecedented authority to issue emergency orders overriding pesticide safety decisions. These new powers allow the government to temporarily authorize pesticide use or reinstate cancelled registrations based on national economic security and food security considerations, even when environmental risks are deemed unacceptable. The legislative ch

Canada's federal government has finalized amendments to the Medical Devices Regulations, introducing significant changes to medical device establishment licensing requirements. These modernized regulations eliminate the need for foreign distributors to hold separate licenses when selling through licensed Canadian importers, mandate supplier list disclosure to Health Canada, and establish explicit documentation requirements for safety-management procedures.

In Canada, biosimilar products are approved by way of a new drug submission, following Health Canada guidance first released in 2010 and significantly revised in 2016. Such guidance had, in most cases, required comparative clinical efficacy and safety trials between the biosimilar and reference product. In 2025, Health Canada consulted on a revised draft guidance document for biosimilar submissions, which notably proposed removing the requirement for comparative clinical efficacy and safety trials.

Developments since then, including renewed U.S. attention to most‑favored‑nation (“MFN”) drug pricing have heightened the legal and policy concerns associated with that notice. In our view, those concerns merit renewed scrutiny.

Health Canada has finalized revised guidelines that fundamentally shift biosimilar drug approval away from comparative clinical efficacy studies toward an analytical-comparability-driven framework.

On May 15, 2026, Health Canada issued a Notice of Intent to publish a Ministerial Order that would exempt certain low-risk NPDs from the requirements of Division 8 of Part C (New Drugs) of the Food...

Recently, Ad Standards Canada published the updated Code for the Restriction of Food and Beverage Product Advertising to Children (the “Updated Code”), replacing the earlier Code for the Responsible Advertising of Food and Beverage Products to Children.

Recently, Ad Standards Canada published the updated Code for the Restriction of Food and Beverage Product Advertising to Children (the “Updated Code”), replacing the earlier Code for the Responsible Advertising of Food and Beverage Products to Children.

In January 2026, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (“CFIA”) released the What we heard report: Consultation on proposed guidance on how to label and represent plant-based alternatives to egg products (the “Report”)...