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Looking to the Future

The Commission’s core responsibilities relate to protecting the chemical industry’s trade secrets, while ensuring that this protection does not compromise worker health and safety. Workplace health and safety is not the domain of any one entity; it involves the efforts of workers, their employers, suppliers, and the federal and provincial/territorial governments. To maximize its program benefits, HMIRC will continue to develop and nurture partnerships, both with those who rely on our expertise, and those who share our goals under WHMIS.

Reduction of the claims backlog will remain a priority for some years to come, as will the issue of ensuring that the Commission has sufficient resources to deliver on its mandate. It is expected that the level of claim submissions will remain high, given the Commission’s new visibility and continuing efforts to identify unfiled claims with our OSH partners.

Based on our new communications strategic plan, we will implement various communications tactics as resources allow. In addition to our Web site, outreach has become an important focus: to educate chemical companies about the need to file claims if they wish to protect trade secrets, and to inform them about the Commission’s services and procedures. A particular need has been identified to extend information to U.S. companies who wish to export products to Canada. The U.S. market already makes up 40% of the Commission’s clients, with no outreach program in place; however, these companies are at least aware of the Canadian requirements and procedures. We have targeted a number of U.S. industry conferences next year for Commission participation.

We plan to continue improving our Web site with more information to assist claimants. We are also looking at the feasibility of introducing the e-payment and e-filing of claims, although these present some challenges in terms of security and currency conversion. Also on the drawing board are advanced security and search capabilities, Internet forums, and a list of common MSDS errors.

Finally, the Commission will continue to implement the remaining elements of its renewal agenda once these have progressed through the legislative and regulatory change process. We are, for instance, exploring attestation for claim validity, to make it easier for claimants to demonstrate that certain information pertaining to their products is a legitimate trade secret.