A federal court rejected that phrase as a basis for regulatory decision-making in Canada. Here is what Health Canada did next.
This piece is a companion to The Shield, The Reviewer, and Not Your Mother’s Roundup -- The Old Guardian’s ongoing investigation into glyphosate, Roundup, and the regulatory architecture surrounding both. All pieces are available at theoldguardian.ca. This piece stands on its own and focuses entirely on the Canadian regulatory record.
One Sentence
On August 8, 2025, Jason Flint, Director General and Chief Registrar of Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency, sent an email. A federal court had ordered his agency to reassess its approval of a glyphosate-containing pesticide product called Mad Dog Plus, taking into account 61 new scientific studies identifying new or elevated risks. The court gave PMRA six months to deliver a scientifically justified response. The email was the response.
It contained one sentence.
“Overall, for the reasons articulated in Table 1, and taking into account global research findings from the additional studies referred to in Table 2, the existing reference values for glyphosate do not need to be revised, and the current risk assessment on file for the active ingredient glyphosate is valid.”
Two tables were attached. One addressed a single forest study. The other referenced the Global Glyphosate Study published by the Ramazzini Institute on June 10, 2025 -- a study that Safe Food Matters, one of the applicants who brought the original court case, believes demonstrates that glyphosate causes cancer. That study, published after Justice Zinn’s court order and before PMRA’s deadline, was handed to PMRA as new evidence requiring genuine consideration. It appears in Table 2. The current risk assessment remains valid.
This piece is about how Canada arrived at a moment where that sentence was considered an adequate response to a court order. It is a story that begins not in 2025, but in 2017. And it has been building, court case by court case, rejection by rejection, for eight years.
What the Court Actually Said
On February 18, 2025, Justice Russell Zinn of the Federal Court of Canada ruled in Friends of the Earth Canada et al. v. Attorney General of Canada et al., 2025 FC 300. The applicants -- Friends of the Earth Canada, the David Suzuki Foundation, Safe Food Matters, and Environmental Defence Canada -- had argued that PMRA was rubber-stamping renewals of glyphosate products without examining new science. Justice Zinn agreed, in part.
The ruling confirmed that product renewals, which occur every five years, are not mere formalities. They are, in Zinn’s words, “streamlined yet still substantive pulse checks that use newly available information to reassess the risk level of registered products up for renewal.” They are checkpoints. Not rubber stamps.
The problem was that PMRA could not demonstrate it had actually used those checkpoints. The court found no meaningful insight in the record into how Health Canada considered the 61 new scientific studies the applicants had submitted, if it gave them any consideration at all. The Minister of Health did not submit an affidavit. No explanation was provided for the absence of documented analysis. The agency’s position amounted to what Justice Zinn identified explicitly as a “trust us, we got it right” approach. The court rejected it.
The court sent the matter back to PMRA with a six-month deadline: by August 18, 2025, the agency had to redetermine the renewal of Mad Dog Plus in accordance with the court’s reasons. That meant genuine engagement with the new science. It meant showing its work.
Ten days before the deadline, Jason Flint sent his email. The current risk assessment is valid.
Canadian readers who followed the American glyphosate story through The Shield and The Reviewer will recognize the institutional posture immediately. In June 2022, the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found EPA’s glyphosate cancer methodology internally contradictory and legally unsupportable, and sent it back for a methodologically sound explanation. EPA’s withdrawal notice stated that its underlying scientific findings remained the same. Four years later, no corrected determination was finalized. The US Supreme Court used the unrevised conclusion as the foundation for a seven-to-two ruling closing the courthouse door on 100,000 plaintiffs. The posture is the same. The geography is different.
What PMRA’s Review Was Built On
To understand why the one-sentence response is insufficient, it helps to understand what PMRA’s 2017 re-evaluation -- the foundational document the current risk assessment rests on -- was actually built from.
The 2017 re-evaluation drew on six animal studies. Five were in PMRA’s own database. One was external. Three of the six were part of a review article published in the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology in April 2000 by Gary Williams, Robert Kroes, and Ian Munro. That paper concluded glyphosate does not pose a health risk to humans at typical exposure levels. It quickly became a cornerstone reference for regulators worldwide, cited by the EPA, Health Canada, and the European Food Safety Authority across multiple assessments spanning two decades.
In late November 2025, the journal retracted it.
Co-editor-in-chief Martin van den Berg issued the retraction notice after an investigation into longstanding concerns about the paper’s authorship, data sources, and undisclosed conflicts of interest. The notice documented that Monsanto employees substantially ghostwrote the manuscript, that the paper was based almost exclusively on unpublished studies from Monsanto, that multiple other long-term chronic toxicity and carcinogenicity studies available at the time were ignored, and that the named authors may have received undisclosed financial compensation from Monsanto. Van den Berg stated the journal had lost confidence in the results and conclusions of the article.
Alexander Kaurov of Victoria University of Wellington and Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University, had documented the paper’s extraordinary influence in a September 2025 analysis published in Environmental Science and Policy. The Williams paper ranked in the top 0.1 percent of glyphosate-related studies by citation count, appeared in more than 700 academic papers, EPA filings, and AI training datasets, and was referenced uncritically across the vast majority of policy and governance documents that cited it. A ghostwritten paper funded by Monsanto shaped two decades of global regulatory science.
Health Canada’s response to the retraction was immediate and direct. The retraction of this review, the agency stated, does not affect our previous review conclusions because the department also independently evaluated the primary data sources used in the 2000 review paper.
That claim of independent evaluation sits alongside a finding from PMRA’s own 2015 proposed re-evaluation decision document. In reviewing the six animal studies, PMRA found equivocal, meaning uncertain, evidence of oncogenicity in the Atkinson mouse study. PMRA decided not to conduct a substantive cancer risk assessment. Uncertain evidence of cancer was found and set aside. Three of the remaining six studies were part of the now-retracted Williams review. That leaves two studies supporting the Canadian conclusion without a direct ghostwriting concern. Two studies and a dismissed cancer finding are the evidentiary foundation that Health Canada says does not need revision.
There is a further dimension to the independence question. In November 2022, Safe Food Matters obtained through an Access to Information request documentation showing that PMRA and the EPA worked together very closely on their glyphosate assessments under a joint Re-evaluation Work Plan. The two agencies coordinated their reviews. The EPA’s assessment was found arbitrary and unsupportable by a federal appeals court. PMRA’s assessment mirrored it. The ATI record confirms the coordination was structural, not coincidental.
And then there are the 229 blank pages. When civil society group Vigilance OGM filed an Access to Information request asking for the studies supporting PMRA’s claim that glyphosate residues pose no unacceptable risk, PMRA sent, after one year, 229 totally blank pages. The studies that underpin the Canadian regulatory conclusion are, by the agency’s own production, invisible.
The Counter-Narrative and Its Authors
The retraction of the Williams paper has not gone uncontested. A paper published in EXCLI Journal in 2026, organized by pharmacologist and consultant Christopher Borgert and signed by more than 60 co-authors, argues the retraction was editorial overreach and should be reversed. The paper contends the ghostwriting evidence is not definitive, that the alleged omissions stemmed from proprietary data access limitations disclosed in the original paper, and that subsequent reviews by independent expert panels reached similar conclusions. It is a substantive argument that deserves engagement.
The conflict of interest profile of those making that argument is equally part of the record and belongs here.
Christopher Borgert is a self-employed consultant whose clients since 2018 have included Monsanto, CropLife America, and the American Chemistry Council. He organized the response to the retraction and told Undark he paid the $6,400 open-access publication fee himself and is hoping Bayer or another entity will reimburse him. Among the co-authors: Robert Budinsky, retired from Dow Chemical. Christopher Bates, employed at H.B. Fuller. Gio B. Gori, a former tobacco industry consultant who served as editor-in-chief of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology -- the journal that published the Williams paper -- during whose tenure 45 scientists wrote an open letter raising concerns about the journal receiving tobacco industry funding. Hans Marquardt, a member of Philip Morris’s external research programme in the early 2000s.
Reckoning Science, which analyzed the Borgert editorial in detail, found that it defends the ghostwritten Williams paper by citing additional papers that are themselves alleged to involve ghostwriting or undisclosed industry involvement. The editorial defending a compromised paper relies partly on other papers facing similar integrity questions.
The argument that the retraction was unjustified is a legitimate scientific position. The conflict of interest profile of those organizing that argument is a documented fact. Both are on the record. Readers can weigh them accordingly.
Eight Years of the Same Answer
The one-sentence August 2025 response did not emerge from nowhere. It is the latest entry in a documented pattern that stretches back eight years and has survived two federal court orders.
2019: Safe Food Matters sues PMRA over the 2017 re-registration of glyphosate, arguing the agency failed to properly consider objections. The Federal Court dismisses the case.
February 2022: The Federal Court of Appeal overturns that dismissal and orders PMRA to reconsider the objections, following the Court’s guidance on how to do so properly.
September 29, 2022: PMRA sends a 23-page response rejecting the objections again. Safe Food Matters says the agency ignored the Court’s guidance and produced new reasons and rehashed old ones rather than genuine reconsideration. Notably, PMRA’s response arrives just days after the US EPA withdrew its own glyphosate assessment -- the same assessment a US federal court had found arbitrary and unsupportable -- and PMRA and EPA had been working from a joint Re-evaluation Work Plan.
October 2022: Safe Food Matters sues PMRA again over the September rejection. January 2023: A second lawsuit is filed over the renewal of glyphosate products without consideration of new science.
February 18, 2025: Justice Zinn rules the Mad Dog Plus renewal unreasonable. The trust us, we got it right approach is explicitly named and rejected. Six months to show the work.
June 10, 2025: The Global Glyphosate Study from the Ramazzini Institute is published, finding that glyphosate causes cancer. PMRA receives it as new evidence.
August 8, 2025: Jason Flint emails one sentence. The current risk assessment is valid.
Late November 2025: The Williams paper is retracted.
December 2025: Health Canada says the retraction does not affect its previous review conclusions.
December 2025: Civil society groups formally request a special review of glyphosate including the Ramazzini study. As of mid-2026, PMRA has not responded.
There is also the matter of Bruce Lanphear. In July 2023, Lanphear resigned as co-president of Health Canada’s newly formed Science Advisory Committee on Pest Control Products. He resigned because the committee was unable to access product safety data and because he believed industry had too strong an influence over the regulatory process. This is not an outside critic making that assessment. This is the co-president of Health Canada’s own independent scientific advisory body, appointed to provide the independent check the system is supposed to contain, walking out because the system would not let him do his job.
The structural conditions are the same ones The Reviewer documented in the United States. Industry-submitted studies as the evidentiary foundation. Independent scientific review that is advisory and non-binding. No enforcement mechanism when timelines are missed. No consequence for institutional resistance to court orders beyond being sent back to produce another inadequate response. The system that produced the Williams paper as a cornerstone of regulatory science is the same system that produced the one-sentence response to a federal court order requiring genuine engagement with 61 new studies.
What Comes Next
The one-sentence response has not been accepted by the applicant coalition. Safe Food Matters’ main glyphosate registration case -- challenging the 2017 re-registration itself rather than a single product renewal -- remains before the courts. That case asks for something the Mad Dog Plus case did not: the establishment of a review panel independent of PMRA to formally examine whether the 2017 registration decision should be struck down or amended. If that panel is ever convened, it will examine the same evidentiary foundation -- the same six animal studies, the same equivocal oncogenicity finding that was set aside, the same retracted Williams review -- that the one-sentence response declared valid.
The Ramazzini study published in June 2025 has been formally submitted to PMRA as new evidence requiring special review. As of mid-2026, PMRA has not responded to that submission. The Government of Canada has also been moving to eliminate re-evaluations altogether, removing the procedural mechanism through which public comments on registered pesticides are currently possible. If that change proceeds, the courtroom door that remained open in Canada -- the one that produced Justice Zinn’s ruling -- may narrow significantly.
The Old Guardian has identified three ATI targets for this investigation. First: the Jason Flint email tables in full -- Table 1 and Table 2 -- and any internal PMRA analysis conducted between the court order and the August 8 response. Second: PMRA’s diquat dibromide registration file, specifically whether the agency conducted an independent assessment or relied on EPA’s approval, given that diquat is banned in the European Union and is now the primary active ingredient in new Roundup formulations. Third: any correspondence between PMRA and EPA under the joint Re-evaluation Work Plan documented in the 2022 ATI release, specifically correspondence related to the timing of their respective glyphosate assessment conclusions.
The global thread that runs through this entire investigation closes here. The United States, Canada, and the European Union all relied on the same ghostwritten, Monsanto-funded study retracted 25 years after publication for serious ethical concerns. Three of the world’s largest regulatory jurisdictions built their safety determinations on the same compromised foundation. In the United States, a Supreme Court ruling has now made that foundation legally unreviewable by state courts. In Canada, a federal court found the foundation inadequate and ordered reassessment. The reassessment arrived in one sentence.
Trust us, we got it right.
A federal court already told Health Canada that was not good enough. The investigation into whether it ever becomes good enough continues.
Editor’s Notes
Companion series: This piece is a companion to The Shield (four parts), The Reviewer, and Not Your Mother’s Roundup. All pieces are available at theoldguardian.ca.
Primary sources: Friends of the Earth Canada et al. v. Attorney General of Canada et al., 2025 FC 300 (Justice Russell Zinn, February 18, 2025); Jason Flint email and attached Tables 1 and 2, August 8, 2025 (published by Safe Food Matters at safefoodmatters.org/filings); Williams, Kroes and Munro, “Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans,” Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, April 2000 (retracted November/December 2025, retraction notice by co-editor-in-chief Martin van den Berg); Health Canada statement on retraction, December 2025 (as reported by The Canadian Press); PMRA Proposed Re-evaluation Decision PRVD2015-01 and Re-evaluation Decision RVD2017-01 (published PMRA documents); Safe Food Matters ATI disclosure on PMRA-EPA Re-evaluation Work Plan coordination, November 2022; Vigilance OGM ATI result, 229 blank pages (as reported in CMAJ and by Safe Food Matters); Bruce Lanphear resignation statement, July 2023 (as reported in CMAJ); Kaurov and Oreskes, “The afterlife of a ghost-written paper: How corporate authorship shaped two decades of glyphosate safety discourse,” Environmental Science and Policy, September 2025; Borgert et al., EXCLI Journal, 2026; Environmental Health News, Borgert conflict of interest documentation; Retraction Watch, December 2025 (retraction notice and van den Berg statement); C&EN, December 2025 (retraction reporting); Safe Food Matters, “Mad Dog Case on Glyphosate: PMRA Refuses Action on New Science,” August 18, 2025; Natural Resources Defense Council v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 38 F.4th 34 (9th Cir. 2022) (referenced for American parallel).
Confidence tier: All findings attributed to Justice Zinn’s ruling are drawn from the published decision at 2025 FC 300. The Jason Flint one-sentence response is quoted verbatim from the Safe Food Matters published email. Health Canada’s statement on the retraction is quoted as reported by The Canadian Press and confirmed consistent across multiple outlets. The PMRA-EPA coordination finding is drawn from the Safe Food Matters ATI disclosure, not from inference. The Borgert conflict of interest profile is drawn from Environmental Health News and confirmed by Borgert’s own statements to Undark regarding the publication fee. The counter-narrative paper is addressed with its full conflict of interest context stated. No claim in this piece asserts definitively that glyphosate causes cancer. The piece reports what primary documents show about PMRA’s methodology, the court’s findings, the retracted study, the coordination record, and the institutional pattern across eight years.
ATI targets identified: Jason Flint email tables in full and any internal PMRA analysis August 2025; PMRA diquat dibromide registration file; PMRA-EPA Re-evaluation Work Plan correspondence. The Old Guardian will file these requests and report on what is returned.
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