Bill C-36 passes & The NHP Regulations to Come Into Full Force as of June 1, 2011

By John H. Biggs BSc, NCP - Owner Optimum Health Vitamins

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but unless Canadians stand up to their government, and say “NO”, they will have thousands less Natural Health Products to choose from after June 1, 2011. This is on top of the 37,000+ products that they have already lost since 2004. The huge majority of these products are/were effective, and given their history, no one is questioning their safety. But as per their classification as “DRUGS”, unless you can PROVE both safety and efficacy in humans, your license gets denied. Proving efficacy is very hard to do when a product was always classified as a “FOOD”, so no one bothered doing clinical trials, and Parsley capsules for example were just denied a license for failing to PROVE safety. Sounds ridiculous? Well, it’s all happening according to Health Canada’s plan…and it was predicted well before the regulations came into effect. So Canadians have a decision to make…either get active, or have your health be increasingly controlled.

We live in interesting times. For many in Canada 2011 brings with it great abundance. Abundance that we are so used to, we simply take it for granted. Yet, 2011 also brings great challenges…not only for the financial structure of the western world, but especially to our personal freedoms. With the passing of Bill C-36, and the full enforcement of the Natural Health Product Regulations, coming on June 1st of this year, our freedoms of choice, privacy, and small enterprise are threatened as never before.

Our police don’t create our laws for good reason…lest they be corrupted by undue influence from the bodies they are supposed to be policing. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Health Canada, who both creates and enforces their own legislation. Health Canada wrote Bill C-36, which passed on Dec 13/2010. It gives supreme powers to the bureaucracy, (namely Health Canada), where they don’t have to answer to the courts, and can simply shut down businesses by demanding sales records and recalls for as long as any product has been sold, with no court warrants or supervision. If their directives are not followed on the same day they are given, Health Canada can impose cumulative fines up to 5 million dollars.

And be very clear, whether any crime has been committed or not, there is no recourse…other than to plead with the Minister of Health, or to submit to the directive…or close-down. No lawyers, no court process, no reviews. There doesn’t even have to be any indication of a violation for Health Canada to initiate such a process. (For a summation of Bill C-36 that makes you shake your head in disbelief that such a Bill would ever pass in Canada – The Land of the Free - see Shawn Buckley’s discussion paper on it at www.nhppa.org.)

Bill C-36 was allowed to pass by a Conservative-dominated Senate who simply rubber-stamps whatever they are given by their party. This completely defeats the purpose of the Senate, which is to act as a safeguard against bad legislation.

True, Bill C-36 applies to consumer items not covered under the Food and Drugs Act, so it doesn’t apply to Natural Health Products….not yet anyway. But there are two very obscure natural substances already listed in its text, and this list could easily be added to. Or Bill-36 could simply be amended in the future so that it did include them. Yet, the most likely thing that will happen is that since a path has been now been paved by this bill, we will see the re-emergence of Bill C-51…an identical bill for the Food and Drugs Act, which does cover all foods, drugs, and cosmetics with all the same draconian measures.

Yet, we actually don’t need Bill C-51 to get rid of our Natural Health Products. The Natural Health Products Regulations are doing a fine job of that, cutting our choices by over 37,000 products since 2004. After eliminating over 20,000 documented American imports, Health Canada has since handed out over 17,000 product license refusals. Yet, less than 100 of the product license denials were for safety reasons. And the joke of it all was that one of the products refused for safety was parsley capsules! It wasn’t that parsley isn’t safe…it’s just that the company in its application failed to PROVE that it was safe. This is Health Canada’s game, and it all became possible when Health Canada ignored the protests of Canadians, and the directives from Parliament, and reclassified natural health products as “DRUGS”.

For the thousands of NHPs which had always been FOODS up until that point, Health Canada knew that they were essentially “hooped”. On one hand, adequate human studies had never been performed, because as FOODS, there was no reason or incentive to perform them. And on the other hand, to do these studies now is financially unfeasible, because NHPs are not patentable, and all of your competitors can simply copy your product and use your research. So such NHPs are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t…….between a regulatory rock and a hard place, with nowhere to go…except off the market.

And all of this is just going to keep happening in ever-incremental stages. When the next layer of fat is trimmed, they’ll simply tighten the screws…unless Canadians stand up and say “NO”.

You see, at an international level, with Free Trade deals and such, what is steadily being achieved by the trans-national business community is total domination of our markets. Where there is no small businesses competition, and Transnational Corporations reign supreme….just like in the European Union. And who is Canada in the process of setting up a free trade deal with? The European Union. And the demise of small business competition will be accomplished by over-regulation …by bureaucratic bodies like Health Canada, who in their own words are so very intent on “coming into line with international standards”.

This is all going to happen, unless Canadians say No.

It’s time to stand-up and do it…or have your life and choices be increasingly controlled in such a way as to make our Democracy and Bill of Rights a thing of the past.

With the challenges ahead, this year it is going to be even more important to commit random acts of KINDNESS for your neighbors, your community, and for those in need….and then to pay them forward multiple times. Know that for every death, murder, or gruesome event that the media tells us about, there are hundreds of hopeful, kind and compassionate acts carried out that we never hear about. Well, let’s start telling everyone about what we did to help out our fellow humans.

Thank-you for your continued support and interest in Optimum Health… for yourselves, and those around you. We look forward to serving you in 2011.
 

John