Canada Proposes Amendments to the Tents Regulations and Consequently to the Toys Regulations

Vol. 1055 | 05 Feb 2019

On January 22, 2019 Health Canada published a notice proposing amendments to the Tents Regulations, SOR/2016-185, to replace the flammability and labeling requirements. Consequently, the notice also proposes removing indoor play tents from the scope of the Tents Regulations and bringing them within the Toys Regulations, but continuing to set flammability and labeling requirements.

The notice is Health Canada’s approach to make the Tent Regulations more relevant to the products currently in the market, as the current regulations were written to address incidents concerning tents made of paraffin-coated (waxed) cotton canvas, whereas most tents today are made of synthetic, lighter-weight materials, such as polyester and nylon, which have different burn characteristics than cotton canvas.

Following is a summary of the proposed revisions:

• Adopting the new CAN/CGSB-182.1, Flammability and Labelling Requirements for Tents as the mandatory safety standard in the Tents Regulations.
  • Recognizing that the CPAI-84 flammability standard referenced in the Tent Regulations does not adequately address the tents on the market today, Health Canada has been working with the Canadian General Standards Board (CGSB) to develop a standard, CAN/CGSB-182.1, to accurately test the materials used in making tents today. Comment period on the draft standard closed on January 29, 2019, and expected date of publication of the standard is March 31, 2019.
  • There are many revisions proposed in the CAN/CGSB-182.1 method, some of the key revisions include: weathering procedure, assessment criteria, increasing number of specimens, and labeling.
• Aligning the scope of the Tent Regulations with the CAN/CGSB-182.1 standard, to include all outdoor tents including tent trailers and children’s outdoor tents, but excluding children’s play tents intended for indoor use only.
• The Toys Regulations to be expanded to include indoor play tents in the scope.
  • Instead of referring to these products as ‘play tents,’ they will be called ‘toys intended to be entered by a child’ to align with terminology in the ISO and EN toy safety standards.
  • Options are being considered for the flammability tests of play tents, which include the flammability requirements for soft toys in the Toys Regulations, or the flammability requirements for toys intended to be entered by a child in ISO 8124-2:2014 and EN 71-2:2011+A1:2014.
  • In addition, options are being considered for warnings to be displayed prominently on these products to help avoid consumer misuse and provide extra security.

The public comment period for this Health Canada notice outlining the proposed revisions to the Tents Regulations and Toys Regulations is open until March 23, 2019.

This notice can be viewed at: https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/programs/consultation-amend-tent-regulations/document.html

For questions, please contact Laxmi Ravikumar (laxmi.ravikumar@intertek.com, 630-209-9265) or Pratik Ichhaporia (pratik.ichhaporia@intertek.com, 312-906-7720).