Identical in their principles, but different in many aspects, the regulations governing cosmetics in Canada were presented by Frédéric Lebreux and Sébastien Pirson, of consulting and services firm Biorius at the International Days organized by Cosmed on June 10, 2016.
In the first part of this article , you can find the general framework of these regulations and the essential texts, the differences between cosmetics, drugs, and natural health products, the labelling rules…
Ingredient labelling
As specified in Art.21 of the Cosmetics Regulation, the list of ingredients must present the INCI names as labelled in the PCPC database (and not the CosIng database).
The rules
As for the rest, certain rules are quite similar to those laid down in the European Cosmetics Regulation:
• The ingredients are listed in the decreasing order of their percentage
• The order can be random for the ingredients contained in percentages lower than 1%
• The colourants can be indicated at the end of the list, whatever their percentages, and can be preceded by the symbol ‘+/-‘ or the indication ‘Peut contenir/May contain’ for makeup ranges
Here are the differences with Europe:
• As for plant-derived substances, the type and species will do: a tea extract that must be labelled as ‘Camellia sinensis leaf extract’ in Europe can be declared as ‘Camellia sinensis’ only in Canada
• The Fragrance (or Aroma) can be placed at the very end of the list, whatever its percentage, …
