The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is responsible for the administration of the Seeds Act and Regulations to help ensure that seeds sold in, imported into and exported from Canada meet established standards for quality and are labelled so that they are properly represented in the marketplace, and are registered prior to sale in Canada (most agricultural crop varieties).
The CFIA’s Seed Section is the Registrar for both variety registration and registered seed establishment programs.
The CFIA regulates the import, export and sale of seed in Canada through the Seeds Act. The Weed Seeds Order (WSO) is a Ministerial Order made under the authority of the Act that regulates weed species with the aim of preventing new weed species from being introduced into Canada through seed.
CFIA has recently updated the Guide to the Evaluation of Candidate Seed Graders and Seed Import Conformity Assessors (Guide) which is posted to its website. The purpose of this Guide is to inform candidates of the general structure of the various parts of the evaluations and provide a list of species with which the candidates are expected to be familiar. It is not intended as a study guide; however, an overview of its structure should help candidates prepare for the evaluations. The updates bring the document in line with Weed Seeds Order, 2016.
More information and details on the importation of seeds into Canada is available on CFIA’s website.