Bill C-51 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

This enactment amends the Food and Drugs Act to modernize the regulatory system for foods and therapeutic products, to strengthen the oversight of the benefits and risks of therapeutic products throughout their life cycle, to support effective compliance and enforcement actions and to enable a greater transparency and openness of the regulatory system.
It also amends other Acts in consequence and includes transitional provisions and coordinating amendments.

Food and Drugs Act

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Madam Speaker, I said earlier, in thanking the member of Parliament for Red Deer—Lacombe, that we support this legislation. We support Bill C-368 for a number of reasons.

I want to start by saying that, as are over 70% of Canadians, I am a consumer of natural health products. I use those products, as 70% of the population does. This includes vitamins and minerals, herbal remedies, homeopathic medicines and probiotics. Many Canadians use traditional medicines, such as traditional Chinese medicines or indigenous medicines, as well. There are a wide variety of products on the market.

As has already been stated, the reality is that we have a very robust natural health product sector that is carefully regulated in a way that ensures that the products are of good quality. That is why, when we look at the natural health product sector, we see so many Canadians consuming them and, at the same time, we see no side effects or downsides to the consumption of those products.

It is because the products are effective. If they are not, we stop using them. I have tried a number of products over the years. Some work really well; others, not so much. As consumers, we have that ability to distinguish and make sure we are choosing products that are appropriate for us.

This is not the pharmaceutical sector. These are not prescriptions that are given out. I have a family doctor who is very good at sometimes suggesting products that are not part of a prescription, but simply a suggestion. He has turned out to be right every single time about the kind of products we can take.

As an example, there is magnesium, which is a vitamin product. My friend from Red Deer—Lacombe mentioned it earlier as well. Some of us are on flights back and forth across the country, travelling 5,000 kilometres twice a week, every month. My colleague from North Island—Powell River is in the same situation. We are going around this planet every month in terms of the amount of time we spend on airplanes, getting back to our constituency to ensure that we are serving our constituents and then coming to Ottawa to do the important work we do here.

The reality is that, when we are doing this, we are in a cramped space. We need to ensure we take magnesium if we want to avoid leg cramps. My doctor was the one who suggested it, and ever since then, I have made sure that I take the appropriate product. It makes sense. I know you agree, Madam Speaker, even though you do not have as far to go when you go back to your constituents.

There is a wide range of products that are available and that make a difference. For consumers who find that their products just are not up to speed, they can change, try another product or simply decide they are not going to use something anymore.

What is already a flourishing and effective sector was diminished by the government incorporating into Bill C-47, an omnibus legislation, these clauses that simply put natural health products in a completely different situation. They are heavily regulated with costs, which a number of speakers have already indicated were absolutely inappropriate. Ever since I have been here, and certainly for years before that, the NDP caucus has decried omnibus legislation.

We saw this under the former Harper Conservative government. We see this under the current Liberal government. There are massive budget implementation acts that are 700 or 800 pages. Incorporated within them are really what I call poison pills. Certain clauses are put in there that ultimately serve as changes in legislation. However, then we can see they have regulations that are not part of Parliament's purview or the government's purview, and they can actually have detrimental impacts.

This was the case with Bill C-47. This was tried before with Bill C-51 under the Harper Conservative government.

The government tried to, very heavily and inappropriately, apply additional regulations to natural health products. That was pushed back on, but with Bill C-47, as omnibus legislation that led to the regulatory changes, we are in the situation that we find ourselves in now, and that has to change. That is why we are supportive of Bill C-368.

What it would do is provide for the kinds of hearings at the committee stage that would allow us to really determine the full extent of how the existing sector is regulated effectively and how detrimental these changes are, both those suggested in Bill C-51 a few years ago and those currently in Bill C-47, to the industry itself, which is a Canadian success story, as well as the impact on consumers who are using these vitamins, probiotics and homeopathic medicines effectively and potentially finding it more difficult to access these natural health products because of the actions of Health Canada and the actions of the government.

As such, it makes good sense to take Bill C-368, to put it in place, to have those hearings, and then to determine what is appropriate. It is very clear that those regulatory changes were absolutely excessive and have had a profound negative impact.

What we are saying is that the government, through Bill C‑47, is taking action with Health Canada without holding consultations and without conducting an impact study or a management fee study. As my colleague mentioned, this means that small businesses that market natural health products are now subject to a regulatory framework that is far better suited to the pharmaceutical industry.

The pharmaceutical industry is the most profitable industry in North America. It makes huge profits, which is why the NDP is pushing for pharmacare. In countries with pharmacare, pharmaceutical companies have been forced to lower their prices. The case of New Zealand, where the price of some pharmaceuticals has dropped by 90%, is often cited.

These pharmaceutical companies are extremely powerful. It makes no sense to establish a regulatory framework that puts small businesses, which are safely selling a whole line of products to smaller markets, on the same footing as big transnational pharmaceutical companies that are raking in huge profits. That is why the government's approach was inappropriate. It was inappropriate to include this small provision in omnibus legislation that is several hundred pages long. The consequences of this regulatory change are unclear, which has led to the outcome before us today.

It is clear to the NDP that this bill is important, because it was unacceptable for that provision to be included in an omnibus bill. It was unacceptable for the former Harper government to do that, and it is unacceptable for today's Liberal government to do the same.

Thanks to the bill introduced by my colleague from Red Deer—Lacombe, we have the opportunity to correct the mistake that was made and to really look at this provision's impact on the natural health product industry. We have the opportunity to determine the financial impact and the impact on consumers. We have the opportunity to see the full impact of the decision that was made last year to include this provision in an omnibus bill. The NDP has been very clear in this regard: We support the bill and we look forward to the important discussions that will take place in committee.

[Dr. Stephen Lucas]

I think it was initially advice provided in Bill C‑51 in 2008. It was not included in Vanessa's Law, which received royal assent in 2014. The department has been working and continues to work to see that these authorities—

[Dr. Joel Lexchin]

I certainly think we need more information about natural health products. I work in an emergency department. When people come in and they say they're taking various natural health products, I really have no idea of, one, the inherent risks associated with those products, and two, how those products interact with any prescription drugs that those people may be taking.

I'm not alone. I think most of my colleagues are in the same position. We definitely need more information about the safety of these products. But I think one of the things that killed Bill C-51 was the opposition from the natural health products community. I would hate to see Bill C-17 killed because of that same kind of opposition. I think we need to move forward with better regulation of natural health products. But I agree that I think it can be done at a later date.

[Sylvia Hyland]

I have just a comment on one of your questions.

The Food and Drugs Act hasn't been amended in, I think, about 50 years. If you are asking, are we lagging behind? We are lagging behind a little in the authorities for Health Canada.

My understanding is that there were more complex bills proposed, Bill C-51, Bill C-52. They were comprehensive, complex, and they weren't enacted. This is a more simplified, to-the-point bill to take a step forward in safety in Canada.

Thirdly, Canada is leading in some ways already. There are only a handful of countries worldwide that post their adverse drug reaction reports online, available to the public and practitioners. Two other countries that I know of are the Netherlands and the U.K., and then there's Canada. We have taken some steps to show leadership worldwide. In the United States they do make the device incidents available online, but not the adverse reaction reports.

I just wanted to share with you a little bit about where Canada sits worldwide.

Protecting Canadians from Unsafe Drugs Act (Vanessa's Law)

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I take special interest in federal policies, legislation, and the regulations that govern the pharmaceutical sector. The western part of Montreal, a great part of which falls in the riding of Lac-Saint-Louis, includes many brand-name pharmaceutical companies and medical equipment suppliers that together employ a great many of my constituents. As a result, I am fortunate to be regularly kept apprised of issues impacting this industry. Constituents also contact me to share their concerns about matters like the cost of drugs and drug safety.

Liberals support sending Bill C-17 to the health committee for review and improvement. Whether the government agrees to important amendments at committee will signal whether it truly takes the safety of Canadians with respect to pharmaceutical products seriously.

Incidentally, I applaud the member for Oakville who has been relentless in pressing for enhanced drug safety in Canada. I have been witness to his interventions at health committee and can attest to his tenacity and expertise on the issue.

Bill C-17 however is a delayed response to an issue that has demanded our focused attention going back to the very beginning of the Conservative government's mandate.

A key pillar in the national pharmaceutical strategy launched in 2004 was “Strengthening evaluation of real-world drug safety and effectiveness” to strengthen surveillance of prescription drugs.

An earlier attempt to address the issue, Bill C-51, languished on the order paper when the government, violating its own fixed date election law, triggered the 2008 election. That was six years ago. Canadians would like to know what has taken the government so long to address such a vital issue.

Let me get to the bill. What would Bill C-17 do? The bill applies to prescription and over-the-counter drugs, vaccines, gene therapies, and medical devices. The main features of Bill C-17 are as follows:

First, the bill would require mandatory reporting by health care institutions, presumably meaning hospitals, of adverse drug reactions in patients so that the government may know whether to re-evaluate a drug's safety.

Second, the bill would empower the government to order recalls of unsafe drugs without first entertaining representations from the manufacturer or being obliged to negotiate the recall with the manufacturer, provided the Minister of Health “believes that a therapeutic product presents a serious or imminent risk of injury to health...”. Astonishingly, the government does not already possess this authority when it comes to therapeutic products like drugs. On the other hand, the federal government currently has the power to recall bad toys, tools, cleaning supplies, clothing, and food, something it does with varying degrees of efficiency, but not unsafe drugs. Currently, drug recalls are at the discretion of the manufacturers and distributors. This is hard to believe but true.

Third, not only would Bill C-17 give the government the power to recall drugs, it would create stronger penalties for the marketing of unsafe pharmaceutical products, including jail time and new fines of up to $5 million per day instead of the current $5,000.

Fourth, the bill would authorize the Minister of Health to order a person to provide the minister with any information in the person's control regarding a therapeutic product that the minister believes “may present a serious risk of injury to human health” and that “the Minister believes is necessary to determine whether the product presents such a risk”.

Fifth, the bill would also authorize the Minister of Health to require label or packaging changes if the minister “believes that doing so is necessary to prevent injury to health...”.

Finally, the bill would allow the minister to order therapeutic authorization holders to conduct assessments and provide the results to the minister and in order to improve understanding about a product's effects on health and safety, compile information, conduct studies and tests, or monitor experience regarding a therapeutic product.

The bill is seen to have some important loopholes that compromise its ultimate effectiveness.

First, the definition of “therapeutic product” does not include a natural health product within the meaning of the National Health Products Regulations.

Furthermore, stakeholders are concerned about what constitutes a “prescribed health care institution” under the bill. Does this definition only mean hospitals or does it include clinics and doctors in family practice?

Also, the bill raises the real-life distinction between sellers of therapeutic products and holders of drug authorizations, underscoring the fact that in the complex modern marketplace, they may be different entities.

Incidentally, a therapeutic product authorization is:

....the authorization that permits the import, sale, advertisement, manufacture, preparation, preservation, packaging, labelling, storing and testing of a therapeutic product.

As an example of the distinction, and to quote an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal:

...the company holding the market authorization may...license distribution to another company.

An historic example shows us why the distinction is significant and why there is a need for the bill to cover both sellers and those with authorization. When, in the 1960s, thalidomide was suspected of being harmful, manufacturers eventually withdrew the drug after some negotiation with Health Canada, the kind of negotiation this bill would presumably no longer require. However, free samples, the primary form of the drug's distribution, were still sitting in doctors' offices across the country. Health Canada did not have the legal authority to control or contain this problem.

The power the bill gives to the minister to recall or suspend drugs appears limited to sellers only. According to the CMA Journal, the health minister:

...should be explicitly empowered to issue suspensions and recalls to both types of “persons”.

Another issue related to the question of the federal government's capacity to fully protect Canadians from unsafe drugs has to do with whether it has the financial and human resources to ensure that drugs important to Canada are manufactured under strict quality control standards, along with ensuring quality control in manufacturing facilities in Canada.

We know that the government has been cutting in areas related to environmental protection and health protection, whether at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency or Health Canada. For example, budget 2012 cut 275 positions from the health products division at Health Canada, the group responsible for monitoring the safety and efficacy of prescription drugs.

Constituents have spoken and written to me because they have been concerned about conditions abroad in plants that manufacture drugs, often generics. Their concerns have often followed news of recalls of drugs such as Ranbaxy's atorvastatin calcium, the generic version of Pfizer's Lipitor.

For example, a 20 milligram tablet was recently found in a sealed bottle marked for 10 milligram tablets of the drug, resulting in a 64,000 bottle recall. This situation followed another episode, where glass particles were found in other batches of this same generic Lipitor.

As a result of such incidents, the U.S. FDA has apparently increased its presence abroad with a view to auditing certain facilities. What is Health Canada doing? Does it have the resources, financial and human, to do anything? Is it working with the FDA?

Whether in the U.S. or Canada, we need drug monitoring systems that catch problems before unsafe products are in consumers' hands and bodies.

This bill is obviously a good step in the right direction, but we have to ensure that any loopholes that would compromise its efficacy are closed. This can be done at the health committee. We also have to ensure that the government, quite apart from this bill, commits the funding necessary to guarantee that we have a safe drug system in Canada. It obviously has to work with the FDA and other international partners in the process of doing so.

Again, I congratulate the member for Oakville for his assiduous efforts in this area. I look forward to seeing what happens to the bill in committee.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to support this bill, but to support sending it to committee. While this bill is a substantial improvement on the status quo, it has still taken the current government eight years, even though as Liberals we have pushed the government to change the way it regulates, the way it develops, and the way it looks at drug safety for Canadians.

However, the Conservatives have put the bill forward and there are some pieces of the bill that we like, but we think it falls short. There are other things we would like to see in this bill, and the minister herself has said in the House when she introduced the bill that she is open to amendments. So we are taking the minister at her word, and we are going to say we would like it to go to committee, and we hope the minister will be true to her word and will look at our amendments then.

Here are some things we like about the bill.

We think that the minister getting the power to recall drugs is a very important piece that has been a long time coming. The minister has to be able to do so without first getting the manufacturer's approval. Before this, the minister had to get the manufacturer's approval to recall a drug or to say that a drug has severe side effects. The new language says that “If the Minister believes that a therapeutic product may present a serious risk of injury to human health...”. That is good language, and we support the minister getting those powers.

The minister used to have to overcome the reluctance of the companies to want to give that information. Now the minister would have the ability to compel industry to provide the information about the drugs that the minister wishes to either seek a notice of compliance on or that are actually out there in the public, and be able to recall them. This is all common sense, but it is crucial because nobody but the company itself knows the background of the clinical trials, of how the company formulated the drug and how that innovation occurred. Therefore it is important that the company is made to be forthcoming with some of that information.

What we also like about this bill is that the minister would compel health care providers and pharmacists to mandatorially report at-risk drug reactions. As a physician, I can say that was a difficult thing to do because it meant that physicians, after a whole busy day of seeing patients, at the end of the day then had to report all these things. It can take sometimes two hours out of their day. Now that the minister would provide an electronic means by which this could be easily done, it would make it much easier for physicians to comply with this.

The minister's ability to enforce conditions on market authorization and to compel changes to product labels is also very important, and the ability to move that forward would ensure patient safety. We think that is important, but we also want the minister not to do so in a hurry so that it would stop due diligence in terms of the ability to get the kind of information we need.

The fines of up to $5 million a day for the failure to remove a drug or the failure to obey the enforcement measures by the minister is also a very positive area.

Members will notice that we are saying that there are some very positive things about this bill. However, before this bill came about, I was writing a bill on this very same thing because we got a little tired of waiting for the government to do this after eight years; so I had some round-table meetings with experts on the issue. Here are some of the major elements that these experts feel are missing from the bill, which would make the bill stronger: better implementation of the ability to ensure patient safety, to ensure that there are appropriate regulations, and to ensure pre- and post-market surveillance of drugs.

This is about the precautionary principle, which should give the minister the power to ensure that the first and foremost thing she or he is concerned about, wherever possible, is being sure that on reasonable grounds, to prevent potential injury to a person or a citizen, the minister has that power to recall or remove a drug or not allow for notice of compliance. “Reasonable grounds” is sufficient. The minister should be protected for her ability to do this, using the term “reasonable grounds”. The minister's power should not just be limited to those who sell the drugs, because we know that in some areas the people who manufacture the drugs are not the people who sell the drugs.

They have different production arms and different distribution arms that distribute their drugs under different names. Therefore, it is important for the minister to look at the whole chain of distribution not merely at the manufacturer when recalling a drug.

Right now I think that the definitive issue of injury or harm is up for interpretation. For instance, let us look at the birth control drugs that did not work recently. No one felt that this was an important reason not to allow the drug a notice of compliance or to recall it, because they felt that if women became pregnant when using a contraceptive that did not work, it was not an adverse reaction and it did not cause severe injury or harm, because pregnancy is a lifestyle choice. I think that was a bending of the interpretation of what harm is. If women are taking a contraceptive, it is because they do not want to get pregnant. If they get pregnant, that is an adverse reaction. I think the ability to define what is injury or harm should be more clearly spelled out for two reasons: one, to protect the patient; and, two, to protect the minister from any kind of reaction from the company because it is clear what she means and what the legislation means by injury or harm. That should be clearly spelled out. It should be based not on subjective but on objective criteria that are in keeping with what we know about risks and harms pertaining to drugs. That would provide the minister protection and give her broader powers.

As well, we know that we cannot tell the adverse effects of a drug purely from the clinical trials. When a drug is undergoing clinical trials, it is done with a cohort of people who have been chosen, and out of that cohort it can be decided what the negative and adverse reactions are to the drug. However, when the drug goes out into the main community, into the citizenry at large and the general public, individual reactions to drugs can differ. While people may not have had reactions during the clinical trial, others in the main community may show adverse reactions. Therefore, the minister must have the ability to say that, although the government gave the drug a notice of compliance, due to the new reporting requirements for physicians and pharmacists it has noticed that after a year or six months there are adverse reactions that were not intended and did not show up in the clinical trials and that the drug will be recalled temporarily while we check on these. Then, ensuring that the precautionary principle is in place, the government can look at the drug and either put it back on the market if changes have been made or permanently recall it before it does any further harm.

To clearly define what we are doing is in the best interests of the minister. It would protect her from any kind of legal suit and so forth. That is an important piece we would like to see included.

The Auditor General has spoken on many an occasion about the lack of transparency in Health Canada's decision-making process. For instance, Health Canada publishes only very limited information on drugs and high-risk medical devices for which a notice of compliance is applied for. However, it does not tell us why it did not allow a drug a notice of compliance. It does not tell us what its opinions are about the drug, even though it may give it a notice of compliance and say that it is generally safe. There may be other clinicians who have said there are some concerns about the drug. Health Canada should put that out there to the public, so that pharmacists, prescribers, and patients would know that there could be some conditions under which the drug was allowed to go out there. There may be some potential negative effects with which the minister and the department are concerned, but they are releasing the drug anyway. That was in the bill when it was put forward as Bill C-51. I noticed it has been removed. I wonder why, because it was a very good piece in that legislation that we agreed on and that the Auditor General wanted to happen. That enhances the transparency of Health Canada in terms of its regulations and looking at drug safety.

We cannot afford to use the fact that the manufacturer does not want us to give out trade secrets. We do not have to give out trade secrets when we are saying that we think there may or may not be a problem that we have in the back of our mind even though we have put the drug out there. It is an important thing to do. Europe is doing it. The European drug agency is putting out what the negative opinions are on a particular drug, even though it felt that the benefits outweighed the risks and that is why it put it forward.

There should be a legal requirement to register clinical trial data. This should be open to physicians, patients, and pharmacists so that they are able to know what clinical trial data shows. Now, I know that the government thinks that would let out trade secrets. However, the European drug agency is doing this.

The clinical data that is put out in terms of the clinical trial does not have to disclose proprietary issues regarding the drug itself or its trade secrets. It is about the ability to ensure patient safety, which is foremost in the mind of Health Canada, as it should be. Therefore, to release the full report of pre- and post-clinical trials and surveillance on an ongoing basis is an absolute necessity, but it is not in the bill. Not only is the European drug agency doing this, it is thinking of expanding it to bring in anonymous or non-nominal general patient responses to the drugs so that, again, there is full knowledge and full disclosure. Also, the FDA has just tabled its intention of doing the same thing.

Canada is way behind both Europe and the United States in terms of looking at patient safety, in terms of full disclosure, and in terms of acquiring full disclosure by the manufacturers, who do not seem to be worried about the proprietary issues of trade secrets because they know what to put in and what not to. Clinical information is not a proprietary trade secret. The formula of the drug and how the innovation occurred are proprietary trade secrets, but not clinical trials or data about them.

It is important for the minister to strengthen the bill by doing this and to do everything under the rubric of good independent research, and not just the companies' research. There should be an independent body that looks at those clinical trials, and not just Health Canada. Again, Europe is doing that, and the FDA has tabled its intention to do that. It has to be done in the name of public safety and good evidence-based information.

We would like to see more transparency from Health Canada on why it gives a drug a notice of compliance and why it does not. What are the reasons? Again, we need to know that about certain drugs. People read about drugs, and when they find out that other countries use certain drugs, they wonder why Canadians cannot get it. They want to know why they are not allowed access to drugs that could save their lives, et cetera.

Good information helps people understand why certain decisions are made. However, right now we do not know anything about why Health Canada approves a particular drug or not, why certain drugs are suspended, and why some drugs remain on the market in spite of adverse reactions in other countries. These are some things that we feel would strengthen the bill.

Disclosure in the name of public safety is always very good. We need to ensure that the first thing in the mind of Health Canada when it approves a drug, or not, is that people can trust Health Canada to make good decisions in their best interest, and be able to do so in an objective and clinical evidence-based response. I think that right now Health Canada faces a great deal of mistrust from the public and drug prescribers because it is not transparent in some of these things.

Why would the bill allow government and cabinet to impose stringent rules favouring data protection of manufacturers under the Food and Drugs Act? We do not think that should be able to stand alone.

We have seen issues where people have asked for drugs, but the government has said that the Food and Drugs Act is the reason it is not doing certain things. However, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled very clearly that the issues of right to life, liberty, and the security of the person trump any piece of legislation, which is under section 7 of the charter. Patient safety should be foremost in anything that the bill would bring forward.

We oppose the amendment to the Food and Drugs Act in the bill to protect manufacturers' data. It should only be for proprietary data protection and not for anything else. The government should be protecting the patient, and Canadians.

The Liberal Party thinks that the bill is long overdue. There are some good points in Bill C-17 that move forward, with some steps we approve of, to enhance patient safety and knowledge of drugs for therapeutic prescribers.

The minister said that the bill should be open to amendments. We have, as I said just now, about five amendments we would like to see that would strengthen the bill. We approve of big chunks of the bill, and we would like to see the bill go to committee. We hope that the minister will be true to her word and allow for amendments to come forward so that the bill can go to the House and be accepted by all of us unanimously, because it is in the best interest of patient safety.

Food and Drugs Act

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

moved that the bill be read the third time and passed.

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to stand among my fellow parliamentarians today as I speak in support of my private member's legislation advancing to third reading.

Bill C-313, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (non-corrective contact lenses), has received unanimous all-party support at every level of debate since its introduction in the House. Even at the committee review stage, all parliamentarians from the various parties have expressed their full support.

In the few months since my legislation was first introduced, there have been millions of non-corrective contact lenses recalled across the North American marketplace for quality control issues. Such stories have become more common, and Canadians are just beginning to open their eyes to the importance of their eye health. As we shed more light on this issue, we will continue to hear about such product recalls in the news. That is why Bill C-313 is supported across party lines and by virtually all Canadian eye health professionals. Canadian policy-makers are keenly aware of the impact my legislation would have across Canada, just as many of my colleagues have followed my legislation's progress.

Organizations like the Canadian Association of Optometrists have been key players in helping to spread the word on this important consumer health issue. The Canadian Association of Optometrists, the Opticians Association of Canada and the Canadian Ophthalmological Society have all come out in support of this legislation, and many more provincial bodies and their representatives have voiced their support as well. I will share some of their opinions with the House in due course.

I would like to thank the individual optometrists and ophthalmologists who have taken time from their busy practices right across Canada to write to me to voice their support. I realize that many of these same professionals took the time to write to their own MPs, asking them to support this private member's business, and for this I am grateful.

As we discuss the bill now at third reading, I intend to share medical evidence with the House that will provide clear reasons why we need my legislation. However, before we discuss Bill C-313 further, I want to take members back to the autumn of 2007 in the 39th Parliament of Canada.

One of my first responsibilities as a new member of Parliament was to be a member of the Standing Committee on Health. Looking back at my time on that specific committee, I was particularly seized by the concerns that were brought to me by professional eye care organizations from across Canada about the lack of regulatory oversight of what were called cosmetic contact lenses.

It is easy to break down the main concern brought forward to me all those years ago. A cosmetic contact lens is identical to a corrective lens in its impact on the human eyeball, with the only difference being that it does not correct a sight imbalance. However, despite the fact they are identical to a corrective lens, these cosmetic lenses have been free of regulatory oversight similar to the provisions in place for corrective lenses. It was with this in mind that I began to work in 2007 to further understand the risks of cosmetic contact lenses.

After extensive study, liaising with health researchers and eye care professions and meeting with our own experts from Health Canada and engaging with the opposition health critics, I developed a strategy that would go further toward protecting the eye health of Canadians everywhere. The result was private member's Motion No. 409, which proposed that cosmetic lenses should be classified as medical devices and be regulated accordingly under the Food and Drugs Act. The actual text of Motion No. 409 read as follows:

That, in the opinion of the House, the Minister of Health should regulate non-corrective, cosmetic contact lenses as medical devices under the Hazardous Product Act or the Food and Drugs Act.

This motion passed unanimously on March 7, 2008, in a fractured minority Parliament no less, which I believe is testament to the fact we are discussing an important health matter that could impact many Canadians, especially our youth. When faced with the facts on non-corrective contact lenses in 2008, we as a Parliament did the right thing by supporting Motion No. 409 and we stand to do so again with Bill C-313.

I was pleased that the government acted upon the unanimously passed motion. It was 2008 when the Government of Canada, upon advice from Health Canada, introduced my motion as an amendment to former Bill C-51, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act and to make consequential amendments to other acts. That act was introduced in April 2008 but also died on the order paper upon the election in the fall of 2008.

That was unfortunate. Having already used my private member's spot in the 39th Parliament, I found myself near the bottom of a long private members' business list. It can be a long wait before MPs have the opportunity to again bring forward legislative items once they have used their spot on that list.

Moving ahead to late 2010, in the 40th Parliament it became evident that I would be able to bring forward private members' business. Knowing that Canadians still had concerns about the existing policies in Canada surrounding non-corrective cosmetic lenses, I directed my research staff to determine what types of legislative remedies could be brought forward. In short order, they developed opinions to deal with my previously unfinished private members' business as a stand-alone piece of legislation.

More time passed. Subsequently, we had another election and I was re-elected by the good people of Sarnia—Lambton. With the return of the 41st Parliament, my name was near the top of the list for private members' business, meaning that months of research and efforts by my office were about to be realized and we would finally be able to bridge the regulatory gaps that exist for decorative non-corrective lenses.

This legislative process has taken place across three different sessions of Parliament and now stands at third reading before the House of Commons.

With this background on my bill before the House, I would like to speak directly to Bill C-313, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (non-corrective contact lenses).

Eye health professionals have been saying for a long time what we now know to be fact: National distribution of these products without professional oversight, fitting and training significantly increases the risk of public harm. This is the main finding captured by independent research reports. It is what Canadian eye health organizations have found. Now we see peer-reviewed science from reputable academics and institutions across the globe now fully supporting these findings.

To speak to the potential medical issues than can arise from the use of non-corrective contact lenses, stating that a decorative lens is potentially a harmful product may seem to some to be an overstatement, yet medical researchers have shown otherwise.

A list of the complications that could occur due to unsafe handling and the wearing of an improperly fitted lens in one's eye includes the following: conjunctivitis; corneal abrasions; giant papillary conjunctivitis; microbial keratitis; and other forms of bacterial, allergic, and microbial infection, as specified by the eye care industry.

Already, we know that these complications all occur with prescribed corrective lenses, which is exactly why Health Canada regulates the use of these products through opticians and regulatory bodies. Furthermore, it has been proven through peer-reviewed studies that non-corrective lenses are much more likely to cause complications to users because of a combination of factors, including lack of oversight of the product for the consumer, in particular how to use the product and issues with the potential quality of the product.

The Internet market for these products has grown immensely, even since 2006. We are talking about a market share in the millions and tens of millions of dollars. Much of this revenue is taken offshore. We need to ensure that Canadian consumer are protected when it comes to such operations.

To date, we have now seen several studies on the issue of decorative lenses and the harm they can cause to consumers. Perhaps the most well-known study in Canada is the human health risk assessment of cosmetic contact lenses conducted by Dillon Consulting Limited. Also known as the Dillon report, the final assessment was submitted to Health Canada in September of 2003 and outlined the scientific evidence, which at that point was still being debated by public health officials, namely that the level of risk associated with the use of cosmetic contact lenses is comparable to that associated with corrective lenses, and may potentially be higher. The main issue here is that corrective lenses are subject to professional monitoring and proper regulatory oversight. Cosmetic lenses are not.

The Dillon report also called for the following risk management strategies: individual screening should take place before a cosmetic lens is sold to a customer; proper fitting should be ensured; adequate instruction on cleaning and sterilization should occur; and consumers should be made familiar with potential symptoms related to the condition of the eye; and regular aftercare is needed.

To date, not one of the suggested risk management strategies called for in this report has been adopted, while corrective lenses are strictly defined by Health Canada. My legislation would address this problem.

Whereas the long list of issues associated with non-corrective contact lens use was once viewed somewhat contentiously by policy-makers, such health concerns are now considered an accepted fact of non-corrective contact lens use, due to a recent study that appeared in Acta Ophthalmologica, the official medical journal for optometrists and ophthalmologists in Europe. In this study, research conducted by the department of opthalmology at Strasbourg University Hospital in France clearly indicated the following:

Patients who acquire CosCL [cosmetic contact lenses] are less likely to be instructed on appropriate lenses use and basic hygiene rules. Consequently, CosCL wearers are experiencing acute vision-threatening infections.

The study in question focused on a bacterial infection known as microbial keratitis, a common yet preventable infection that can occur in wearers of contact lenses, both the corrective and non-corrective, cosmetic varieties. This study showed that wearers of cosmetic lenses were indeed at higher risk, with 79% of the control group of cosmetic contact lens wearers suffering from corneal scraping. However, the study showed that only 51% of the corrective contact lens wearers suffered similar effects. Meanwhile, more than half of the cosmetic lens wearers who were shown to have suffered corneal scraping were also shown to have serious microbial infection in the eye.

The study concluded that the increasingly documented risks of easily accessible cosmetic contact lenses were a serious concern in the country of France, where the study took place. In this regard, there is no reason to believe that the situation is any different in Canada, and in fact the Dillon report of 2003, which in many ways served as a ground-breaker on this issue, also came to the same conclusions as the French study in 2011.

Considering the medical evidence that clearly shows the need for the provisions contained in Bill C-313, it is important to note that Canada is at least a decade behind other jurisdictions, such as the United States and Europe, in achieving proper regulations for non-corrective cosmetic lenses.

In 2008, M-409 was able to obtain the full support of all opposition parties and their health critics, in addition to the support of the government and the Minister of Health.

Today, with Bill C-313, I ask hon. members to stand with me once again as we deal with this important issue. Listen to what some of our leading eye care experts from across Canada have had to say about this piece of legislation.

An optometrist from Newfoundland has stated, “In my province there are novelty shops and drugstores that are selling these lenses without regard for the possible health implications to eyesight. All our opticians want to stop this activity of unregulated dispensing”. Moreover, Clearlycontacts.ca, a Canadian ebusiness provider of vision-care products, has also stated on the record that, “At Clearlycontacts, we support regulatory oversight in the sale of non-corrective contact lenses and fully support Bill C-313”.

Dana Cooper of the Canadian Association of Optometrists has said that:

Bill C-313 is a commonsense initiative that aligns all contact lenses in the same federal regulatory environment. Bill C-313 makes sense from a vision health perspective, a consumer protection perspective, and is justified based on the concerns and actions already taken and being pursued by governments around the world.

In addition, I have also received strong endorsements from the Opticians of Manitoba, the Saskatchewan College of Opticians and also the School of Optometry and Vision Science in Waterloo, Ontario.

Internationally, Bill C-313 has the support of esteemed groups, such as the Contact Lens Institute of Florida and the American Optometric Association of Virginia.

The need for this legislation has never been greater than it is today. The Internet marketplace has opened doors for international buyers and sellers of these products like never before, and as policy-makers we have a duty to ensure that the eye health of Canadian consumers is protected as much as possible.

I believe that Bill C-313 is the first step in this direction, and today I call on all esteemed members of this House to stand in support of my private member's legislation.

[Glenda Yeates]

Thank you for the question.

My understanding is that in 2004 there was a recommendation from the committee, and in fact, the department took a number of steps at that time. It had some expert witnesses, I understand. It looked into the question of what was feasible, and what was reasonable in terms of clinical trials.

As was noted, for example, there was a bill that was introduced at that point, Bill C-51, which addressed some of that, so a lot of energy went into understanding whether we should do things as part of the legislation. When that legislation did not go forward, the department made a number of changes. It increased the transparency by focusing.... It actually encouraged, as we write a letter to a clinical trial site, that we ask them to put their posting on one of the WHO international sites. So we have a number of clinical trials that are now doing that.

[Paul Glover]

Mr. Chair, I thank the member for her question.

It's true that our powers are somewhat limited with respect to our ability to request a change on…

the monograph, the labels. We do have limited powers to demand or impose label updates on products as we see them. We end up working in collaboration with the companies in order to negotiate the sorts of changes we would like to see.

The process to obtain an update on instructions for a drug is now being negotiated with the industry.

We find that this works for us. Obviously we exert a fair amount of influence over industry to comply with our requests.

We have the power, if we feel that industry is not complying, to simply issue a warning saying we've asked the industry to do x and they've declined. Oftentimes that's enough to have industry come into compliance with our recommendations. We do have powers beyond just the negotiation.

In Bill C-51, a previous piece of legislation, there were some proposals that would have allowed us to go beyond simply working in a collaborative nature with industry, to one that would be imposing our direction upon them. Given what happened with that piece of legislation, we are taking a look at what other steps we can take to ensure the regulatory framework we have allows us to move as quickly as possible.

The one problem I would acknowledge with the current process is that it does take a bit of time in terms of negotiating rather than simply directing.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-313. This bill would have non-corrective cosmetic contact lenses covered by the same regulations as medical devices, under the Food and Drug Act and the Medical Devices Regulations.

Cosmetic contact lenses are also known as theatrical, decorative or non-corrective contact lenses. These products are sold in a wide range of colours and styles and are easy to purchase. Consumers can buy them in stores and on the Internet. Research reports show that the use of these products is growing, especially among adolescents and young adults.

There is every indication that the use of cosmetic lenses will increase and that they will be worn for all types of occasions. These contact lenses are called cosmetic because they do not correct vision. They change the colour or the appearance of eyes purely for aesthetic reasons.

You may be asking why we are considering such a frivolous item as a costume or fashion accessory. In response, I will say that they are not just costume or fashion accessories. As the sponsor of the bill, the member for Sarnia—Lambton, has said, this is about people's eyesight.

Users of cosmetic contact lenses place them directly on the cornea. I am convinced that you will agree with me that placing a contact lens directly on the cornea poses health risks, even though the product is especially designed and manufactured for the eye.

The consumer who buys this product over the counter is not always aware of the risks. We are interested in introducing simple and practical measures to mitigate this very real risk to health.

There are real differences between cosmetic and corrective contact lenses. Corrective contact lenses improve eyesight; cosmetic contact lenses only change the appearance of the eye. In Canada, the authority to determine whether a medical device is distributed by prescription rests with the provinces and the territories. At present, Canadian consumers who want to purchase corrective contact lenses must have a prescription.

However, non-corrective contact lenses can be purchased without a prescription in retail outlets, such as costume shops, or on the Internet. In fact, cosmetic lenses and corrective lenses are similar in many respects. Both are made with the same materials using similar production methods. Both are applied directly to the eye and both pose health and safety risks to those who wear them.

Some of the health and safety risks associated with wearing contact lenses include lacrimation, tingling and dry eyes. In extreme cases, these problems can lead to blindness.

For a number of years now, we have heard warnings about wearing contact lenses. As far back as 2000, Health Canada warned the public of the potential risks associated with wearing cosmetic contact lenses and recommended that these products be used only under the supervision of an eye care professional.

In addition to the information published by Health Canada, there have been many public communications regarding cosmetic contact lenses. Many Canadian associations for eye care professionals provide consumers with information on the risks associated with wearing cosmetic and corrective contact lenses and how to prevent these problems.

These professional associations adopted the position that the potential risks associated with wearing cosmetic contact lenses are equal to or greater than those associated with wearing corrective contact lenses.

The United States Food and Drug Administration also issued consumer warnings about the risks associated with wearing cosmetic contact lenses.

In 2008, our government introduced Bill C-51, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, under which all contact lenses would be regulated as medical devices. However, Bill C-51 died on the order paper when Parliament was dissolved and the election was called.

Cosmetic contact lenses are currently not classified as a medical device since they do not provide any therapeutic benefits. That means that cosmetic contact lenses fall under the general prohibitions of the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act, which was passed in this House and came into effect in 2011.

This act is a solid piece of legislation that requires suppliers of consumer goods to report any safety-related incidents, recalls or other regulatory action in other jurisdictions.

The Canada Consumer Product Safety Act gives the government broad powers to take corrective measures, such as recalls and product corrections. It therefore authorizes the government to adopt corrective measures in all cases where a consumer product presents an unreasonable danger to people’s health and safety. Under this legislation, products must be assessed one by one in order to determine whether they represent an unreasonable danger, but only once they have been put on the market.

I would now like to reassure Canadian consumers that the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act provides greater protection than before when it comes to cosmetic contact lenses. As medical devices, cosmetic contact lenses fall under the Food and Drugs Act and the medical devices regulations. Companies would be obligated to ensure that their cosmetic contact lenses meet safety and quality requirements in order to be able to sell their products in Canada.

Health Canada may also request additional information regarding safety and quality before or after a decision concerning their sale in Canada. Therefore, as medical devices, cosmetic contact lenses would be subject to the same labelling requirements and consumer information standards as corrective contact lenses, before they are put on the market.

Moreover, the medical devices regulations contain permit issuance and inspection requirements to which importers and distributors are subject, in addition to a mandatory declaration by companies concerning any serious incidents that may have occurred. Many contact lenses are sold directly to consumers over the Internet and are subject to minimal or no safety and quality oversight measures. It is not mandatory to consult an eye care professional.

Bill C-313 does not address any obligation to obtain a prescription in order to purchase cosmetic contact lenses, nor any obligation on the part of consumers to consult an eye care professional to obtain a prescription. The regulatory authority of the medical devices regulations does not address these concerns. The onus would be on the provinces and territories to make decisions and implement measures, since the authority to set regulations forcing consumers to obtain a prescription to purchase this kind of contact lens falls under provincial jurisdiction.

I am, however, firmly convinced that Bill C-313 is better for Canadians because it will mandate greater oversight over the safety and quality of these products than is currently the case both before and after they are put on the market.

As a regulatory body, Health Canada will continue to provide health care professionals and the public with product safety information, and will continue to promote industry compliance with rules and regulations. Industry will be obliged to meet the requirements of the Medical Devices Regulations. A large number of companies that sell contact lenses in Canada also sell them in the United States where all contact lenses, whether corrective or cosmetic, have been regulated as medical devices since 2005.

It is our government's priority to harmonize these regulations with those of its foreign counterparts and to promote Canada-American co-operation in the regulatory sphere. Bill C-313 is an important step in this process. Support for Bill C-313 will also enable our government to meet its commitment to ensure Canadians' safety. This bill gives us the opportunity to address an important health risk. It comes in response to the concerns expressed by health care professionals.

In closing, Bill C-313 will make two similar products with comparable risks subject to a single regulatory mechanism.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Cooperation]

Madam Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to commend and express appreciation to the member for tabling this bill and drawing attention to this important issue.

The member has been advocating for this issue since 2008, first by tabling a private member's motion and now with the introduction of this private member's bill. Bill C-313 proposes an amendment to the Food and Drugs Act, which would see cosmetic contact lenses classified and regulated as medical devices.

In Canada the authority to determine whether a medical device is subject to dispensing by prescription rests with the provinces and territories. Currently Canadian consumers wishing to purchase corrective contact lenses require a prescription, however, non-corrective contact lenses can be purchases without a prescription at retail establishments such as costume and party stores or over the Internet.

Cosmetic contact lenses are coloured lenses that, like corrective contact lenses, are inserted directly into the eye. However, unlike corrective lenses, cosmetic contact lenses are used only to change the normal appearance of the eye. They are not used to correct vision.

These lenses, which are sometimes referred as theatrical contact lenses, are often worn by actors in movies or TV shows. For example, in July 2010, CTV reported that Lady Gaga used cosmetic contacts to enlarge her eyes during the filming of her video Bad Romance.

Members will be interested to learn that the same news report cites Dr. Desmond Fonn of the Centre for Contact Lens Research at the University of Waterloo, saying that he finds it worrying that the lenses are so very cheap:

We don't know what these lenses are made of. We assume they're regular soft contact lenses, but because of the way in which they're sold, they must be made less expensively to make them marketable.

CTV reported that the doctor's biggest concern was that “the majority of the young kids who use these lenses buy them but have no education about them”.

Today, on special occasions like Halloween, many young people wear dramatic cosmetic contact lenses to go with their costumes. What many Canadian consumers may not be aware of are the risks associated with wearing these lenses.

Wearing cosmetic contact lenses can pose all of the same risks as wearing corrective contact lenses. This can include eye irritation, itching and burning, sensitivity to light, dryness, blurry vision and infections. In the most serious cases, these infections can lead to blindness.

In the case of cosmetic contact lenses, these risks are escalated due to the fact that there is no labelling requirement to warn consumers about potential risks and safety issues associated with wearing cosmetic contact lenses. There is also no requirement to include information or instructions relating to the proper use and care of these lenses. This means that after buying cosmetic contact lenses in stores or on the Internet, a consumer may not be well-informed about the potential risks and how to use and care for these products safely.

Unlike cosmetic contact lenses, corrective contact lenses are medical devices under the Food and Drugs Act and must comply with the medical devices regulations.

Cosmetic contact lenses are not considered medical devices because they are only used to alter appearance. As a result, they are not subject to the same level of regulatory oversight for safety and quality. Bill C-313 would help us address this discrepancy.

In the U.S. cosmetic contact lenses have been regulated as medical devices since 2005. Bill C-313 would enable us to align our regulatory approach on these products with our neighbours south of the border. It would also contribute to Canada's commitment to regulatory co-operation to better align the regulatory approaches on both sides of the border.

The use of cosmetic contact lenses is not a new issue. Eye care professionals have been concerned for a long time about the health risks of cosmetic contact lenses. They have called on our government to increase regulatory oversight of these products. In fact, on October 5, 2011, the Canadian Association of Optometrists, the Opticians Association of Canada and the Canadian Ophthalmological Society issued a joint press release welcoming the introduction of this bill.

That press release quoted Dr. Lillian Linton, president of the Canadian Association of Optometrists, as stating the following about the regulation of cosmetic contact lenses:

[It is] an important vision health issue and the optometrists, opticians and ophthalmologists of Canada are asking for unanimous support from the House, Senate and Health Canada to adopt this amendment and enact it with haste.

Health Canada has long acknowledged the risks associated with the use of cosmetic contact lenses. Over the past decade, Health Canada has communicated the risks of cosmetic contact lenses and has provided safety information for contact lens wearers. In 2000, Health Canada issued a public notice warning of the dangers of wearing cosmetic contact lenses.

Health Canada has in the past and continues to recommend that cosmetic lenses be used only under the supervision of an eye care professional. In addition, the wear time should be limited to the shortest duration possible. Cosmetic contact lenses must never be worn while asleep and should not be shared with others.

Our government's support for this private member's bill is not our first attempt to strengthen oversight. In 2008, there were two opportunities to enhance the safety and quality of cosmetic contact lenses. First, this House supported a motion by the member for Sarnia—Lambton calling for cosmetic contact lenses to be regulated as medical devices. Later that same year, this government tabled Bill C-51, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act, which would have resulted in cosmetic contact lenses being defined as medical devices. When the election was called, Bill C-51 died on the order paper.

This government moved to help protect the health and safety of Canadians with modernized consumer product legislation through the Canada Consumer Products Safety Act, which came into force in June of this year. While the act may provide protection for Canadians who use cosmetic contact lenses, we feel that cosmetic contact lenses would be more appropriately regulated as medical devices under the Food and Drugs Act. It would be clearer for consumers and industry alike.

With the exception of the respective functions of corrective and cosmetic contact lenses, the two products are essentially identical. They have similar manufacturing processes, they are used in the same manner and they pose the same health risks. When put this way, it only makes sense that both products be subject to the same level of regulatory oversight for safety and quality.

If cosmetic contact lenses were regulated by medical devices regulations, manufacturers would be required to attest to the safety and quality of their products before they were sold in Canada. Cosmetic contact lenses would also be subject to the same labelling, consumer instruction, licensing and inspection requirements as corrective contact lenses.

Bill C-313 would permit the pre-market safety and quality requirements for medical devices to be applied to cosmetic contact lenses. This would mean that Canadians would have access to clear consumer information about the risks associated with wearing cosmetic contact lenses and the proper and safe use and care of the product.

I will conclude by saying that Bill C-313 would allow for a consistent regulatory approach for similar products with comparable risks.

It is clear to Canadians that the risks associated with wearing cosmetic contact lenses are no lower than the risks associated with wearing corrective lenses and that it is important to be familiar with and follow the directions for using and maintaining both products. One of the most important measures that consumers can take is to consult an eye care professional before wearing either corrective or cosmetic contact lenses.

The government is committed to protecting the health and safety of Canadians. We should support Bill C-313 to help us attain this goal.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this is an issue I brought forward in 2007. It was a private member's motion that was supported unanimously by the House. It was not only supported by the House, it was also supported by the government and Health Canada. That motion was put into Bill C-51 that was before the House. If it had not been for the fact that the bill died on the order paper because of an election, this would already be in legislation.

The government does support it. It has tried to bring it forward. It is not a case of the government not supporting it, or being negligent by not doing this. There has been support all the way through on this bill and on this issue from Health Canada and the government.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

moved that Bill C-313, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (non-corrective cosmetic contact lenses), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, today, I am honoured to speak in support of my private member's bill, Bill C-313, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (non-corrective cosmetic contact lenses), in order cosmetic or decorative contact lenses under the same medical device regulations as corrective contact lenses.

I thank the professionals within the eye care community who have contacted my office in recent weeks with their kind words of support for my private member's bill.

Each member in the House today has representatives of the eye care industry in their riding, and I hope members will heed their warnings about the dangers of the incorrect use of decorative contact lenses that we are hearing more about each day in news reports and medical studies.

Bill C-313 has gained the support of three eye care organizations representing various professionals from the eye care industry. The Canadian Association of Optometrists, the Opticians Association of Canada and the Canada Opthalmological Society are important stakeholders in any discussion on eye care related to their profession.

Today, I intend to share medical evidence with hon. members that will show the clear need for the provision sought after by Bill C-313.

Before we discuss Bill C-313 further, I want to take members back to a different time and place, to the autumn of 2007 in the 39th Parliament of Canada. It was during that period that the concerns of eye care professionals from across Canada were first brought to my attention. At the time, I was an active member of the Standing Committee on Health.

There were many concerns that were brought forward to the parliamentarians on that committee, and while all the concerns were important, I was particularly seized by the concerns that were brought to me by the professional eye care organizations in relation to the lack of regulatory oversight on what were called non-corrective cosmetic contact lenses.

It is very easy to break down the main concern brought forward to me all those years ago. A cosmetic contact lens is identical to a corrective lens in terms of its impact on the human eyeball, with the only difference being that it does not correct a sight imbalance.

However, despite the fact that they are identical to a corrective lens, these cosmetic lenses were and, to this day, continue to be free of regulatory oversight similar to the provisions in place for corrective lenses.

It was with this simple fact in mind that I began work in 2007 to further understand the risks of cosmetic contact lenses. We must remember that cosmetic, decorative and plano contact lenses are all referring to the same product. I will use all three terms in my discussion today.

After extensive study, liaising with health researchers and eye care professionals, meeting with our own experts from Health Canada and engaging with the opposition health critics, I developed a strategy that would ensure that Canadians' eye health would be protected. The result was private member's Motion No. 409, which proposed that cosmetic lenses should be classified as medical devices and be regulated accordingly under the Food and Drugs Act.

The actual text of Motion No. 409 read as follows:

That, in the opinion of the House, the Minister of Health should regulate non-corrective, cosmetic contact lenses as medical devices under the Hazardous Product Act or the Food and Drugs Act.

The motion passed unanimously on March 7, 2008, in a fractured minority Parliament, no less, which I believe is a testament to the fact that this is not a political issue. Rather, we are discussing a human health issue that could impact many Canadians, especially our youth, which I will speak to shortly.

Due to the importance of the motion to Canadians' health, I was able to obtain the full support of all the opposition parties and their health critics, in addition to the support of the government and the Minister of Health. Today, I seek that same support from across the aisle.

I was pleased that the government acted upon the unanimously passed motion. It was in 2008 that the Government of Canada, upon advice from Health Canada, introduced my motion as an amendment to the omnibus Food and Drugs Act amendment in the former Bill C-51, which was introduced in April 2008, but which also died on the order paper upon the election in the fall of 2008.

It was unfortunate that having already had my private member's spot used in the 39th Parliament, I found myself near the bottom of the long private members' business list. This meant I would not have the ability to bring this legislative change forward for some time.

Moving ahead to late 2010, now in the 40th Parliament, it became evident that I would possibly have the ability to bring forward private members' business. Knowing that I had unfinished business, I reached out to the professional eye care organizations to begin discussions on the types of legislative remedies that could be brought forward.

My main concern was to ensure that my private member's bill would adequately and fully address the concerns held by myself, other parliamentarians and thousands of eye care professionals across Canada.

Of course, we have had another election since then and, upon being re-elected by the citizens of Sarnia—Lambton, I found myself returning to a new House of Commons in the 41st Parliament. I also found myself near the top of the list for private member's business, meaning that months of research and effort through my office were about to be realized in terms of finally bridging the regulatory gaps that exist for decorative non-corrective lenses.

The culmination of this long process now stands before the House of Commons for debate. With this brief background on my bill now before the House, I would like to discuss Bill C-313, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (non-corrective cosmetic contact lenses), with everyone today.

I can sum up the situation regarding the need for my legislation in one sentence regarding non-corrective cosmetic lenses. National distribution of these products without professional oversight, fitting and training significantly increases the risk of public harm.

The difference between 2007, when I first brought my private member's motion forward, and 2011, is that I now have the peer reviewed medical evidence to back up my claim. Today, we now know that the warnings on cosmetic lenses dating back to October 23, 2000 by Health Canada are, in fact, quite well warranted and now demand a legislative recourse to alleviate the potential harm that could be done to consumers of these products.

To some, it may seem that to deem a decorative lens as a harmful product is somewhat overreaching, yet eye care professionals and medical researchers have shown otherwise. A short list of the complications that could occur due to unsafe handling and wearing an improperly fitted lens in one's eye, along with the lack of professional oversight when these products are initially obtained by the consumer, includes the following: conjunctivitis, corneal abrasions, giant papillary conjunctivitis, microbial keratitis and other forms of bacterial, allergic and microbial infection as specified by the eye care industry.

Already we know that these complications all occur with prescribed corrective lenses, which is exactly why Health Canada regulates the use of these product through opticians and regulatory bodies. What has now been shown as fact through peer reviewed studies is that non-prescribed decorative or cosmetic lenses are much more likely to cause complications to users for a combination of factors, including lack of oversight on the product for the consumer in terms of how to use the product and in terms of the potential quality of the product.

It should be noted that some businesses import cosmetic lenses from parts of the world where production of the device to be fitted into a human eye does not necessarily take the best precautions in terms of the quality of their product, leading to the rise of bacterial infections and microbial issues. These companies make large profits off a consumer base that is woefully unaware of the potential harm they are causing to their own eye sight.

A recent search on the Internet for cosmetic contact lenses Canada brought up over one million hits. The top hits on the search were for several large marketing and distributing companies that sell cosmetic lenses made in certain regions not as well-known as Canada for having strong consumer protection measures. This is extremely concerning and we can be sure that the regulatory oversight that Bill C-313 would provide should help to shed some light on the businesses that are importing and providing these products to consumers with little to no oversight or concern for the consumer of their product.

To date, we have now seen several studies on the issue of decorative lenses and the harm they can cause to consumers. Perhaps the most well-known study in Canada is the human health risk assessment of cosmetic contact lenses conducted by Dillon Consulting Limited, also known as the Dillon report. The final assessment was submitted to Health Canada in September 2003 and it outlined the scientific evidence, which at that point was still being debated by public health officials, that the level of risk associated with the use of cosmetic contact lenses was comparable to that associated with corrective lenses and maybe potentially higher. The main issue here is that corrective lenses are subject to professional monitoring and proper regulatory oversight. Cosmetic lenses are not.

The Dillon report also called for the following risk management strategies: individual screening should take place before a cosmetic lens is sold to a customer; proper fitting should be ensured; adequate instruction on cleaning and sterilization should occur; familiarization with recognition of potential symptoms related to the condition of the eye; and, regular aftercare.

To date, not one of the suggested risk management strategies called for in this report have been adopted, while corrective lenses are strictly defined by Health Canada. With this in mind, we must all ask the question why this has been allowed to occur for so long despite the long-standing pleas of the eye care industry and medical researchers.

To recap our discussions thus far, the main concerns Bill C-313 seeks to redress is that cosmetic or decorative cosmetic lenses are being dispensed without a prescription or fitting from unlicensed vendors. Consequently, uninformed lens wearers are experiencing acute, vision threatening infections and inflammation.

This has now become an accepted fact due to a recent study that appeared in Acta Ophthalmologica, the official medical journal for optometrists and ophthalmologists in Europe. In this study, research conducted at the Department of Opthalmology at Strasbourg University Hospital in Strasbourg, France, clearly indicated that:

Patients who acquire CosCL are less likely to be instructed on appropriate lenses use and basic hygiene rules. Consequently, CosCL wearers are experiencing acute vision-threatening infections.

The study in question focused on a bacterial infection known as microbial keratitis, a common yet preventable infection that can occur in wearers of contact lenses, both corrective and non-corrective cosmetic varieties. This study has shown that wearers of cosmetic lenses were at higher risk, with 79% of the controlled group of cosmetic contact lens wearers suffering from corneal scraping. However, the study showed that only 51% of corrective contact lens wearers suffered similar affects. Meanwhile, more than half of the cosmetic lens wearers who were shown to have suffered corneal scraping were also shown to have serious microbial infection as well in the eye.

The study concludes that the increasingly documented risks of easily accessible cosmetic contact lenses were a serious concern in France where the study took place.

There is no reason to believe that the situation is any different in Canada. The Dillon report of 2003, which, in many ways, served as a groundbreaker on this issue, also came to the same conclusions as the French study in 2011.

Considering the medical evidence that clearly shows the need for the provisions contained in Bill C-313, it is important to note that Canada is at least a decade behind other jurisdictions such as the United States and Europe in achieving proper regulations for cosmetic, decorative or plano lenses.

No matter what we want to call them, it is scientific fact that there are issues with these lenses being improperly sold and used in our nation. The risk was sufficient enough that, in 2000, Health Canada issued a public health warning. In 2003, a human health risk assessment was conducted. In 2008, this House of Commons unanimously agreed with the viewpoint that cosmetic lenses were indeed a risk to Canadian consumers and that we must take action.

Although I have spoken at great length as to the risks of cosmetic contact lenses and, therefore, the need for the provisions of Bill C-313, I will share with the House a quote from Dr. Lillian Linton, president of the Canadian Association of Optometrists, who stated:

This is about people’s eyesight…and in most cases young people’s eyesight! There are daily news stories from around the world about the complications that can arise due to ill-fitting cosmetic lenses or improper use and handling. It is an important vision health issue and the optometrists, opticians and ophthalmologists of Canada are asking for unanimous support from the House, Senate and Health Canada to adopt this amendment and enact it with haste.

I could not agree more with Dr. Linton.

The time has come for us as parliamentarians to join together to support Bill C-313 so that we can ensure that much needed oversight is finally brought forward. In doing so, Canada can reclaim the proper regulatory powers over the importers of these products who so callously flood the Canadian market while doing untold damage to hundreds of thousands of young Canadians' eyes, completely unbeknown to most consumers, unfortunately.

With this in mind, I call on parliamentarians in the House today to stand in support of Bill C-313.

Seeds Regulation Act

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to rise in the House this evening to participate in the debate on Bill C-474, An Act respecting the Seeds Regulations (analysis of potential harm), which was brought forward by my NDP colleague, the member for British Columbia Southern Interior.

I will be the first to admit that as a member of Parliament from Hamilton, which is nationally known as Steeltown, I am more familiar with the manufacturing sector than I am with the agricultural sector. It was not that long ago that over half of my riding was in fact prime agricultural land, with successful family farms like the Youngs, the Bethunes, the Ryckmans, the Burkholders and the Marshalls, to name but a few. Sadly, as Joni Mitchell would scold us, we paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

That is simply to say that many of the people in my riding of Hamilton Mountain may be urbanites, but they feel a deep, personal connection to agriculture and bring those values to bear in thinking about Canada's future.

Similarly, we have a thriving environmental movement in Hamilton that led the “eat local” campaign in our community, and has done much to raise awareness of organic foods and, more generally, healthy eating.

Also, a great many Hamiltonians are keenly interested in food and product safety, as well as proper labelling. I do not think there is single piece of legislation outside of the Conservative government's reviled decision to impose the HST on Ontarians that generated more petitions, letters or phone calls than Bill C-51, which sought to amend the Food and Drugs Act in the last Parliament. That bill purported to modernize our food and drug provisions bringing us into the 21st century and bringing our rules and our regulations in line with modern day science. It did not take too long for Canadians to figure out that this was a ruse. It was an attempt to make Canadians believe the government would be on their side when in fact it was loosening its regulatory control.

What Canadians wanted was legislation that operated on the basis of the do no harm principle, the precautionary principle, which means that we do not allow products on the market unless there is evidence that they are safe beyond a reasonable doubt. Unfortunately, this is not the risk management model that we saw with the Liberals before and with the Conservatives today.

There is a marked difference between the do no harm principle and the risk management model. Do no harm means that we put people and safety first. The risk management model means that we can only go so far in ensuring the safety of Canadians so we will allow the products on the market, cross our fingers and then see what happens. It will be up to individual Canadians to determine whether it is worth taking the risk. It will be up to the corporations that produce the products to regulate themselves and decide if they are in line with the standards on paper.

The risk management model is not a proactive regulatory model that puts the needs and concerns of Canadians first. It is a model that puts the needs of big pharma, large corporations and global capital forces ahead of ordinary citizens. It is a model that makes guinea pigs out of Canadians.

We have had our share of offering up people as guinea pigs for large corporations. I do not need to remind people who may be watching us on TV right now about the incidents in our past, especially when women were treated as guinea pigs. Thalidomide and breast implants are just two of the examples that come to mind right away.

What does that have to do with the bill that we are debating today? It is relevant for two reasons.

First, it is because many of the people who were concerned about Bill C-51, and in particular about its impact on natural health products, are also deeply concerned about the issues related to the genetic engineering of our food supply. They have strong views on Frankenfoods and they understand the importance of ensuring that a robust framework is put in place when it comes to genetically modified organisms or GMOs.

Frankly, at the moment Canada's framework is inadequate. Canada is currently the fifth largest producer of genetically modified crops in the world, after the United States, Brazil, Argentina and India.

Canada could learn a lot from Argentina. It has legislation which ensures that the release of GMOs first requires an assessment of the safety of food and livestock feed, of the bio-security of the environment and an assessment confirming that its exports will not be negatively impacted. In Argentina, therefore, the analysis of the impact on exports in the GMO approval process is an integral part of the analysis that determines whether the sale of any new genetically engineered seed is permitted. In Canada, that is not currently the case and Canadian farmers are suffering the consequences.

It is this deficiency that Bill C-474 seeks to redress.

However, as I said earlier, there is also a second reason why this issue is being followed so closely by many of the same people who were engaged in the debate around Bill C-51, and that is because Bill C-474 also pits a tenacious advocate who represents hundreds of thousands of Canadians against an entire industry. It is David versus Goliath. In this case, David is the member for British Columbia Southern Interior who is battling the Goliath of the Monsantos of this world. There is absolutely no doubt that the hope of the biotech industry is that over time the market is flooded with genetically-modified organisms and that at that point there will be nothing anyone could do about it except quietly surrender. In fact, that is exactly what Don Westfall, the vice-president of Promar International and a biotech consultant, was quoted as saying in the Toronto Star in January 2001.

However, the member for British Columbia Southern Interior is not about to surrender and neither are his colleagues in the NDP. We understand what a disastrous impact the absence of an analysis of potential harm would have on Canadian farmers and therefore on Canadians as a whole.

We have long been convinced that big biotech companies, such as Monsanto, have been running a scam with regard to their genetically-engineered crops. Despite 15 years of failed promises to feed the world's hungry and, more recent, to save humankind from climate change, the Canadian and U.S. governments inexplicably continue to write all the rules completely in big biotech's favour. As was recently revealed in WikiLeaks cables, U.S. ambassadors were even going so far as to advise Washington to start military-style trade wars against any European country that dare stood in opposition to GE crops.

Despite lengthy court challenges which, for a time, kept the decision at bay, the USDA has just authorized the nationwide and unrestricted commercial release of Monsanto's genetically-engineered seed. After acknowledging that GE alfalfa poses many risks to organic and conventional farmers, USDA secretary Tom Vilsack, whose ties to Monsanto are well known, has just imposed the impossible burden of keeping alfalfa seed free from GE contamination entirely on farmers. The Center for Food Safety in the U.S. has already announced that it will again challenge this decision in another round of expensive court action.

One way or another, and regardless of the imminent threat this poses to all farmers, especially to our lucrative domestic and export organic markets, it is only a matter of time before U.S. Roundup Ready Alfalfa will be found contaminating our fields in Canada.

The silence from the Canadian government has been deafening. Monsanto could decide to go ahead and register its GE varieties in Canada, as it has already been awarded the necessary health and environmental approvals by the current government.

It was in order to prevent that very scenario that my colleague, the member for British Columbia Southern Interior, moved forward with Bill C-474. His bill would require that the government conduct an analysis of potential harm to our export markets prior to approving new genetically-engineered seeds.

The Conservative Party has sided completely with Monsanto and the rest of the biotech industry since the debate first began. Although the Liberals initially supported our bill, they have since succumbed to pressure from the biotech lobbyists and now say they, too, will vote against it at the final reading. I know, another flip-flop from the Liberals is hardly even worth noticing any more.

However, just as it is in the States, the one-sided mantra from both of these parties is now to preach coexistence with non-GE farmers and to keep Canada's regulations science-based and entirely free of any political or market considerations.

What did witnesses actually say when they testified about Bill C-474 in front of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food?

Let me just quote Kurt Shmon, president of Imperial Seed. He said:

Canada's science-based approach works very well for the domestic marketers of seed, the Monsantos, the Syngentas, and the Bayer CropSciences, but what does it do for the producer? This approach does not take into consideration what the producers want, nor does it address what the market wants. These are the two most important issues and they are absent from the registration process.

That powerful theme was then reiterated by several other presenters to the committee, yet both the Conservative government and the Liberals are wilfully ignoring it.

We cannot just ignore what is happening to farmers in our country. Farmers feed cities, and that is more than just a catchy slogan. It underscores an important reality that is crucial to our economic future.

Yes, we need to acknowledge advances in science. However, we must also acknowledge the economic reality of farmers.

In short, we must pass Bill C-474. Let us do it now.

Canada Consumer Product Safety Act

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-6, an act respecting the safety of consumer products, which I support. This bill is long overdue. Last year and the year before I stood in the House and asked the minister a question about toxic toys. I mentioned how a lot of the toys available for children contained lead and other kinds of very dangerous chemicals in them. Therefore, it is a great pleasure to see a bill that begins to make consumer products safer.

I want to focus particularly on several of the chemicals. We note that the U.S. has tested some of the popular toys and have found that a third of them have medium to high levels of lead, cadmium, mercury and other dangerous chemicals. Why are these chemicals particularly hard on children? We know their brains and their bodies develop the most during that first six years. Children under the age of two tend to put whatever their hands can grab into their mouths. Imagine what would happen if the products they put in their mouths contained dangerous chemicals. The impact is hardest on kids are under six, especially children two years old or under.

Two or three years ago in the U.S., a four-year-old child swallowed a heart-shaped charm and subsequently died. That charm was made almost entirely out of lead. Therefore, last year the U.S. took action and passed a bill similar to this one, which takes effect this year.

When there are high levels of lead, it causes brain damage, learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders, behavioural problems, stunted growth, impaired hearing and kidney damage. Some of the symptoms could be vomiting and, if severe, as I said earlier, even death. Therefore, parents desperately want to know that the toys and the products around their children are safe.

We have seen that it is not just lead, it is also cadmium. Cadmium can have an impact on children and pregnant women. It can cause bone losses, increased blood pressure, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting and, if serious, even death. It could even cause lung and prostate cancer.

Another kind of chemical, phthalates, especially DIMP, which is most often found in rubber ducks and bath toys, has an impact on the kidneys, liver and blood. There are all kinds of chemicals. In fact, 80,000 of them are used in the products that surround us. The European Union has banned phthalates since 1999 because of their impact.

The United Steelworkers, for example, has been asking parents to go around and check products, especially toys, to see whether they are safe for children and household use. For a while last year and the year before, before this act was finally in front of us for approval, I told my constituents to go leadcheck.com where they could purchase a pen that they could use to test products.

I will be splitting my time, Mr. Speaker, with the member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River. I forgot to mention that earlier on.

The United Steelworkers have this campaign. If the government is not checking these things, it is encouraging ordinary Canadians to do it.

I am glad we are finally seeing some aggressive regulations. For regulations to be successful, they require three elements. They require legislation, enforcement and education. We need to carefully ensure there are enough funds in the budget for enforcement. We know that 65% of consumer products are imported into Canada. We need to ensure the products are safe and importers should be required to prove they are.

In the past everything has been voluntary. The checking, enforcement and recall were voluntary. We did not know if a product is off the shelf. The item could be recalled by Health Canada, yet some of the product could still be on the shelves. We need to have mandatory recall and the kind of enforcement to ensure the item is off the shelf if it is dangerous.

Finally, an element of the bill includes natural health products, which has caused us some concern. However, I am glad it has now clarified. Last year we had Bill C-51 and Bill C-52. Bill C-51 especially dealt with natural health products. At that time, there was a great deal of concern over that kind of legislation because natural health products were lumped into the Food and Drugs Act. I am glad the bill did not pass. People who sold natural health products were extremely concerned that if the bill had passed, they would have been thrown in jail.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have this opportunity to speak at third reading on a very important bill that has seen a very thorough process throughout the House.

I would like to thank my colleagues from the Bloc Québécois for their work on the amendments. I would also like to point out that all the parties were able to work together on this very important bill. It has truly been a process of cooperation and we have made many important changes to this bill.

Bill C-6 has been identified as a key concern over a number of parliamentary sessions and a number of governments. Promises were made to change the Hazardous Products Act and other related legislation to bring them up to the 21st century, so that we would be truly in line with consumers' thinking about what is appropriate when it comes to consumer safety and health protection. This legislation has been a long time coming.

This legislation is not perfect. We wish it had much more in terms of teeth and much more emphasis on the precautionary principle. We in the NDP believe that the most significant thing government can do in this day and age is to bring in legislation that follows the do no harm principle, that ensures that all products, whether children's toys or household cleaners or consumer gadgets, are safe beyond a reasonable doubt.

That is quite different than the risk management model which says consumers should be warned that a product is not necessarily safe, and if they run into problems and that information is brought forward to government, it might deal with it.

The bill moves a bit toward the precautionary principle but only with baby steps. It could have gone a lot further. The precautionary principle stops in the whereas' of the bill.

I am not going to dismiss this legislation because we in the NDP are going to support it. We are going to support it because we think it is important, it is long overdue, and we have made some changes to make it better. Unfortunately, we did not get all of our changes.

Many of the groups that worked so hard on the bill were disappointed. I am thinking in particular of the Environmental Defence, the David Suzuki Foundation, and the Canadian Cancer Society, three groups that worked tirelessly on the bill and worked with all members of health committee. These groups informed us, taught us, proposed amendments, made suggestions, and educated us. We learned a great deal from them. I am very grateful for the major role that they played throughout the legislative process.

In the end we were forced to concede to changes that were fairly small in nature, but significant at least in terms of finding some way down the road to protect Canadians, even if they do no harm principle was not firmly entrenched in every aspect of the bill.

We did that by ensuring, and this is where I want to take some credit on behalf of the New Democratic Party caucus, an amendment in the bill that requires the bill, once it is passed, to come back to both the House of Commons and the Senate for scrutiny in terms of regulations.

There will be a chance to provide some kind of oversight once the government begins to find ways to implement a legislative initiative that is so vital and so important in terms of the health and well-being of Canadians.

We are also pleased to support an amendment proposed by the Liberals which would add an advisory committee to the gambit of tools available to the government. With the assistance of the government, members of the committee, and the whole House, we saw that the amendment was included with a royal recommendation and is now part of the bill. That was another indication of co-operative work on the part of all of us.

That means there will be a body of experts who will devote themselves to furthering the broad principles of the bill and will try to apply the precautionary principle, the do no harm principle, in more ways than is apparent at present.

The bill has certainly been noted for many significant reasons. It has very substantive recall provisions with significant punishments attached. I do not want to underestimate the significance of those provisions.

Over the last number of years we on this side of the House have raised numerous concerns with the present government and the Liberal government before it about unsafe products on the market.

For years we have been dealing with lead in children's toys and phyllates in plastics that are put in the mouths of babies and children, which are toxic, dangerous and cause very serious life-threatening debilitating problems.

We are pleased that the government has provided for a way to ensure that once we have identified serious problems, action can be taken. I think we will all agree that the problem with this bill is that it is not readily apparent how action will be taken and products that are problematic in the first place are identified.

We did not get an amendment in this legislation that lists hazardous products. We did not get, as the Environmental Defence, the David Suzuki Foundation and the Canadian Cancer Society wanted, a provision in this bill that would ensure that all products with hazardous substances would be listed in this legislation, and they would be labelled accordingly.

In that way there would be some certainty for all Canadians that even if the government did not take steps to ban a product, remove a product, or recall a product, at least consumers would know what substances were in that particular product. If they believed that there was enough science to be of concern for usage of that product, then they could at least take personal responsibility.

That was a very important contribution to the process throughout this bill. All of the organizations I have mentioned, time and time again, pointed out just how important it would be for us to take those lists of carcinogens and hormone-disrupting and endocrine-disrupting substances, toxins and chemicals and list them, and have them denoted and labelled, including the labelling of all products.

We did not get those amendments, and there was certainly major disappointment. Now, our job is to ensure that the government lives up to its commitment to say that if we can prove that something is a problem in terms of health and safety then the government will take action. Well, we will hold it to that, and we will try every step of the way to remind it of those obligations.

I hope that through the advisory committee and through the reporting back to this House, we will have some extra checks in place.

Suffice it to say, this bill falls short of where some of the international community is at with respect to very dangerous chemicals and substances. The European Union has in fact taken the steps of listing all such carcinogens, hormone disrupters, and dangerous chemicals and toxins, and is moving toward a phased-in process of labelling.

That is something this country cannot avoid. In the long run we will have to do the same. It is too bad because this bill should have been the ultimate, having waited for 40 or 50 or 60 years, in improving the Hazardous Products Act. This should have been the moment when we actually did a perfect job and produced legislation that was the best in the world. We fall short of that objective and we will now have to play some catch up.

I want members to know that I believe the obligation will be on this House and all members of Parliament to push that envelope, to advance that agenda. We have to make sure that in the end we have in fact delineated all such toxic substances and provided consumers with the information that they need to make responsible decisions.

We have to follow the right to know principle. There is no way around it in this complex world with so many dangerous substances and so much technological development. With such rapid change all around us, at the bare minimum we have to at least ensure that consumers are made aware of the necessary information.

It came as a shock to us to have some witnesses come before our committee and say that this would be too complicated, too much, that consumers would be overloaded, not able to choose, and would end up making the wrong decisions and would be too confused.

As we said back to those witnesses, consumers are on top of the ball. They are certainly advanced in terms of understanding and are looking to government to provide them with the information so they can make responsible decisions.

Consumers are looking for safe food, drugs, water, products, toys, pharmaceuticals and medical interventions. They expect the government to ensure that all of the products we have to take and need for our health and well-being are safe beyond a reasonable doubt.

I must say that we did accomplish something that was important in terms of the natural health community. Early on, the forces in this community, those people who produce, manufacture or use natural health products, rose up and said that they felt that there was no place in this legislation for those products. They said that we had to differentiate between consumer products and natural health products. The government listened and we certainly pressured it to do so. It agreed to amend the bill so that nothing about the bill would have any bearing on natural health products.

However, it did raise an interesting dilemma for the government. It showed that we have a third regulatory mechanism by which we deal with natural health products in this country that is failing. Small businesses that produce and sell these natural health products are coming to the government on a constant basis, demanding some action to improve the process and reduce the backlog.

The government itself has suggested that there is a deadline of 2010 by which all consumer and natural health products must be through the process, receive their DIN number, and be licensed or else sent back for further research. As things now stand, there are something like 36,000 applications before the government and no sign of that diminishing. Never mind the backlog. With the number of applications that have come in on a daily basis, a significant number have not been dealt with and have been added to the backlog.

The problem is only getting worse. Many of the groups, including the Canadian Health Food Association, have called on the government to start to get a handle on this and live up to its promise to end the backlog and to say whether or not this 2010 deadline means anything. If the government is not anywhere close to meeting its obligations to deal with all products by that time, they would prefer that the deadline be changed.

They would prefer more cooperative work to be done between the natural health food industry, retailers, consumers and the government to ensure that proper regulatory measures are taken to approve products and not simply to deal with the backlog by getting rid of and denying applications, which seems to be the pattern.

The government seems to be saying that it is going to deal with the backlog and it is doing it by denying more applications than not. It thereby reduces the backlog in a most unfortunate way, without the science, evidence of effectiveness or the true test of whether or not any of these products are falsified or not accurate in terms of their description and identification.

That is a problem that emerged from these discussions. It must be dealt with and it must be dealt with before the government even begins to think about reintroducing Bill C-51, which had amendments to the Food and Drug Act. We know the uproar that happened last year and the year before about natural health products. We know that there were hundreds and thousands of letters, emails, meetings, faxes, individuals speaking up, rallies and demonstrations about the government's inappropriate approach with respect to natural health products.

The message for the government is to get its act together on this because it is only going to come back and be haunted if it does not. We have to find a way to treat natural health products as a separate category, not as a food, drug or consumer product, but as a unique product that is important for Canadians and contributes a great deal to the health and well-being of Canadians.

I have said enough on that. Let me now go to the question of a government that introduces legislation that says it is concerned about consumer products and safety and yet, at the same time, cuts back in its latest budget a heck of a lot of money that is supposed to ensure a national office for workplace hazardous materials information systems, otherwise known as WHMIS.

This is an important office, which ensures there is a centre in government, a focal point for assessing and providing information around health and safety in terms of materials that are dealt with in the workplace and ensuring that all workers are given the benefit of information about hazardous materials they work with, that there is active international right-to-know legislation before them, that there is a global classification system that includes all the previously identified dangerous chemicals, not leaving some out because of pressure from the industry.

This cutback amounts to about $2.6 million over two years. The Canadian Labour Congress and other national labour organizations have clearly indicated that this cutback will eliminate the national office. It will totally cut back the focal point within Health Canada to ensure that WHMIS has an active national office. It is a serious cutback and it flies in the face of all the government's talk about wanting the best possible legislation for ensuring consumer safety and protection for all Canadians, no matter where they work or what kinds of jobs they are doing for our economy.

I urge the government to reconsider that cutback and to sit down with some of the trade unions and labour movements and talk about what is needed to ensure workplace health and safety and to ensure that there is active right-to-know legislation and a regulatory process in this country. Otherwise, we will have done a great disservice to workers. We will have denied their right to work in safe conditions and ensure the risks they take are minimized as much as possible.

In response to a question I asked in the House, the government announced last week that it was finally going to eliminate all lead and phthalate products beyond certain trace levels from the market. We applaud that move, but that has come about 12 years after we started raising this issue.

In almost the first year that I was elected as a member of Parliament to this place, we started raising the question of phthalates. I remember holding press conferences with samples of baby toys, teething rings, rubber ducks, plastic knapsacks and umbrellas, which kids put in their mouths, that are made of phthalates and that were then demonstrated to be dangerous in terms of the health and well-being of babies and children.

Some 12 years later, we finally have a government that is acting. Good for it for finally doing so, but what the heck took so long? Why did it take so long with lead as well? I raise these issues because if that is the pattern, it does not bode well for the application of Bill C-6, the very legislation we are dealing with at this moment. It very much depends on the will of government, the intentions of politicians and the acceptance of scientific data.

The government continues to drag its feet and ignore the science, as it is doing right now with bisphenol A. It bans bisphenol A when it comes to baby bottles but not other products. A lot more must be done to ensure that substances are identified so that products can be banned if they are dangerous beyond a reasonable doubt, so that Canadians can live with the notion that everything on the market is safe beyond a reasonable doubt.

[Andrew King, Department Leader, Health, Safety and Environment, United Steelworkers]

Thank you very much for the opportunity to present today.

I have provided a copy of my comments. I apologize to you that they are not also available in French, but I should let you know that I found out yesterday about noon that I would be here this afternoon.

I appreciate the amount of work you've been involved in with regard to this very important legislation and have taken the time to review the comments of people who have come before you.

By way of background, the United Steelworkers is an international union, with members across Canada and the United States. In Canada our union is very diverse, with members in almost every sector of the economy.

As our name implies, we have a long history in mining, steelmaking, metalworking, and manufacturing. From that history, we have a lot of experience with toxic chemicals and the diseases they cause. We were involved in bringing WHMIS, the Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System, into Canada in the 1980s, and to this day we are still dealing with the impacts of chemical exposures on our members and their communities. Recent occupational disease clinics in Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury attracted hundreds of people. We are supporters of the recent Ontario Toxic Chemicals Reduction Act, currently in third reading, as well as community right to know at the municipal level.

The toxicity of many of the chemicals we are concerned about in the environment and consumer products today was originally demonstrated in the lives of workers and the damage it did to their health. Many of the strategies that speak of controlling exposures, limiting risk instead of advising hazards, and personal protection responsibility were tried and failed in the occupational setting. Years ago we were told there were safe limits of exposures to most chemicals. Since then exposure limits have become lower and lower, as studies continue to show there is no safe level of exposure to toxic chemicals, especially if the exposure is repeated and over a lifetime.

We need to talk about the total burden of chemicals in our bodies from all sources, including the environment. This government's and the Ontario government's investment in green chemistry innovation at Queen's University in Kingston is recognition that we have to find a better way to produce the chemicals we need.

Our membership was deeply moved in 2007 when a wave of toxic toys hit Canada, many of which were contaminated by lead. After a decade of fighting in North America to have lead removed from paints and gasoline, after decades of controlling the exposure in smelters, mills, and other industries, something is wrong when the system allows lead to be used in consumer products.

Some of us still remember that it was the impact of our children originally being exposed to lead in communities in Canada in the 1960s that gave impetus to the regular reform that reduced those exposures and gave us the legislation we're reviewing now.

It did not seem right to us that such a well-known hazard should be allowed back into Canada by trade. Our activists became involved in a Get the Lead Out campaign across Canada and the U.S., adding our voice to others who felt that something had to be done. Product safety must not be left to voluntary systems and the luck of the draw.

I might say in parenthesis here that we were quite astounded at the response we got from our members. We have a long history and involvement in occupational health and safety and activists who are trained to deal with those issues, but it wasn't those activists who responded to the problem of toxic toys. It was the average member, the member who had children, particularly women, who were at the forefront of making this an issue for our organization and making it a key point in a campaign that led us to distributing information and becoming part of what was originally the movement toward Bill C-51 and Bill C-52, and now Bill C-6.

We are also encouraged to be here by our environmental partner, Environmental Defence. Aaron Freeman, the research director, has already addressed you. Our alliance with Environmental Defence focuses on the impacts of toxic chemicals and climate change. Environmental Defence's “Toxic Nation” campaign has shown that the challenge we face is much bigger than we think. It confirms the experiences of workers that the chemicals are in our bodies now. We are here to support their efforts and their position--and of many of the other environmental groups that I note have already spoken to you--that we need to reduce exposures through consumer products.

To quote the title of the book that Environmental Defence's chair and executive director recently co-authored, we must prevent Death by Rubber Duck,, a book that I highly recommend to each of you if you have not had a chance to review it.

To the point of our remarks regarding Bill C-6, like many others who have appeared before you, and most of the people here this evening, we support the goal and objectives of the bill. It is important that there be a mandatory reporting system for toxins and hazards in consumer products and a clear system for enforcement. While the bill has a number of these important features, it needs to be strengthened in order to achieve its goals as described in the preamble.

In particular, we support amendments suggested by Environmental Defence. Strengthening the bill now will benefit us all in the long run. The bill provides strong language regarding prohibition, but is weak in identifying the problems proactively and sets the bar for action too high.

The bill needs a proactive system of inspection and verification. In this regard, I note the previous evidence that was given by Mr. Glover on behalf of the government in regard to this bill. He in fact spoke about the bill having a proactive nature to it. I must confess to being surprised that he characterized it that way, because it seems to me the system, with all the improvements proposed, is still fundamentally reactive. Until someone discovers a problem--inadvertently, if something has happened, or if a group of doctors notice it in their patients--nothing is done. There is no system through which to go and get proactive information. And that, particularly when you're dealing with imports, which, as was previously noted, are a key part of this problem, needs to be part of the system.

What is needed is an administrative system to ensure that manufacturers and importers--and I emphasize them in particular--are testing their supply chain to make sure toxic chemicals are not getting into the products. The government needs a system of independent verification through random reviews. A testing protocol is required to protect consumers and to raise the bar for company testing. Without that protection, the legislation is at risk of encouraging "Don't ask, don't tell".

We strongly believe that there needs to be the policing function as outlined in the act. In addition, however, we believe there needs to be an administrative review program to ensure that the highest levels of performance and protection are being followed.

[David Skinner, President, Consumer Health Products Canada]

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee, for allowing me the opportunity to speak on behalf of the consumer health products industry on Bill C-6. My name is David Skinner, and I'm president of Consumer Health Products Canada, formerly known as NDMAC.

Consumer Health Products Canada is the national industry association representing manufacturers, marketers, and distributors of consumer health products. The association’s members, who range from small businesses to large corporations, account for the vast majority of sales in Canada’s $4.7-billion market for these products. Our members’ sales are equally proportioned between natural health products and other consumer health products, including sunscreens, allergy medicines, upset stomach remedies, and so forth. Our association has been the leading advocate for consumer health products for over 110 years.

Bill C-6, the Canada consumer product safety act, is, along with expected amendments to the Food and Drugs Act, a key legislative component of the government’s food and consumer safety action plan. Consumer health products are exempt from Bill C-6 by virtue of falling under the current Food and Drugs Act definition of “drug”. Nevertheless, we have identified two issues with respect to Bill C-6 that relate to consumer health products within the broader consumer safety action plan.

The first of these issues is the need to ensure that the intent to exempt those products regulated under the Food and Drugs Act is indeed carried out effectively. The second relates to the release of confidential business information to third parties, a provision found in both Bill C-6 and in the former Bill C-51 the Food and Drugs Act amendments that were introduced in the last Parliament and that died on the order paper when the 39th Parliament was dissolved.

The stated intention of the government is to exempt all therapeutic products, including consumer health products, from the provisions of this particular bill. This is to be accomplished by referencing the current definition of “drug” in the Food and Drugs Act. However, there has been much confusion around the need to specify a number of consumer health products to ensure they are adequately excluded through Schedule 1 to Bill C-6. The minister has indicated that an amendment to clarify the scope of the act will be proposed.

A concern has been expressed that if specific subcategories of products broadly defined in Section 2 of the Food and Drugs Act are not set out specifically, they may be subject to the provisions of Bill C-6 in addition to the Food and Drugs Act. It stands to reason, however, that if one subcategory of natural health product is to be specifically identified as exempt, then all subcategories of products captured by Section 2 of the Food and Drugs Act must be set out in Schedule 1 to Bill C-6. Classes of product that must be recognized in addition to NHPs would include personal care products—for example, antiperspirants—and other consumer health products such as sunscreens.

A further concern that we have identified is that while Schedule 1 identifies substances that would be exempt from the provisions of the bill, it is unclear whether this exemption would extend to other elements of the products regulated under the Food and Drugs Act, specifically their packaging and labelling. Discussions with departmental officials thus far have not been able to rule out the possibility that any subcategory of product could wind up being subject to both pieces of legislation in this way. In addition to the complexities and the unwarranted burden of being subject to two pieces of legislation, this possibly also creates the potential for situations in which the two regimes could come into conflict with each other.

Regulations and guidance documents under the Food and Drugs Act set out many specific requirements for the packaging of consumer health products, including child-resistant packaging, tamper-evident packaging, packaging material specifications, dose delivery mechanisms—for example, metered inhalers—and, of course, labelling.

We recognize that an attempt to list all possible classes of product could fail to cover all potentially relevant products. Since new classes of products arise from time to time under the Food and Drugs Act—for example, nutraceuticals—the list could be out of date rather quickly. To ensure that Bill C-6 clearly exempts products regulated under the Food and Drugs Act and to provide for flexibility so that every time a new class is added under the Food and Drugs Act there is no need for consequential amendments to Bill C-6, we recommend that schedule 1 be amended to delete articles 2 to 5 and replace them with a broad exemption for all products regulated within the scope of the Food and Drugs Act.

Our second key concern relates to the confidential business information provisions. The consumer health products industry understands the need, in rare emergency circumstances, for Health Canada to be able to release confidential business information to foreign regulatory authorities and other third parties to mitigate against potential serious and imminent public health risks. However, given the extent of vital proprietary information shared with Health Canada, industry believes that Health Canada must also notify the proprietor of the confidential information at the time such information is disclosed. Since consent to disclose is not required in the circumstances laid out in the act, timely notification would not in any way impact the government's ability to act or to act in a timely manner.

Thank you for your time and consideration of our industry's perspective on this important legislative proposal. My colleague and I look forward to answering questions you may have.

[Shannon Coombs]

The provision that was included in Bill C-51 was that “No person shall--knowing information to be false or being reckless as to its truth--communicate or cause to be communicated that information with the intent to cause a reasonable apprehension in others” that a consumer product presents a danger to human health or safety.

Clearly, the department feels that's necessary to have with respect to food, therapeutic products, or cosmetics. We felt that the same could be extended to Bill C-6 with the covering of consumer products.

[Shannon Coombs, President, Canadian Consumer Specialty Products Association]

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and honourable members of the committee. It is a pleasure to be here today to provide an overview of CCSPA's suggestions to improve Bill C-6, the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act. I have to say that it's a bit of a tongue twister for me, as our acronym is CCSPA.

My name is Shannon Coombs and I am the president of the CCSPA. I have proudly represented this industry for 10 years. Our accomplishments as a proactive and responsible industry will be clearly visible as I make my presentation.

We are a national trade association that represents 45 member companies across Canada. Collectively, we are a $20-billion industry employing 12,000 people in over 100 facilities. Our companies manufacture, process, package, and distribute consumer, industrial, and institutional specialty products such as soaps, detergents, domestic pest control products, aerosols, hard-surface disinfectants, deodorizers, and automotive chemicals. I have provided the clerk with copies of our one-pager, which has a picture of our products, and I'm sure many of you use them every day.

Why are we here? The health and safety of Canadians is a priority for all CCSPA members and we support this legislation. Our member companies are leaders in the responsible use of chemicals for consumer and institutional products in this country. We are committed to the appropriate and safe use of our products.

Over the past year, we have announced various exciting initiatives, such as the “William, Won't You Wash Your Hands?” initiative, which all of you would have received a copy of a few weeks ago and which we asked you to donate to your local day care or child care facility. That was a partnership with the Public Health Agency of Canada as well as the Canadian Institute of Child Health.

We also announced the voluntary lowering of phosphorus in automatic dishwasher detergent. As well, we have a “Concentrate on the Future” initiative, which is a communication initiative for consumers. I'm sure many of you have seen the 2X or 3X that is now on your laundry or bleach products.

As well, last April, we announced a voluntary ingredient communication initiative that is going to allow companies the ability to disclose all of their ingredients on product labels or members' websites. The great feature of the program is the ability to do this on the website, as it allows companies to explain the benefits and the chemistry behind the products. The program is effective January 1, 2010, and it will cover air care products, automotive and cleaning products, and polishes and floor maintenance products.

Are our member companies' ingredients in products regulated? Yes, they are. Canadians can be confident that the products are safe and that the products they purchase have had various levels of government review and oversight. That oversight depends on the type of product.

In Canada, all substances and products such as laundry powder and liquids, fabric softeners, and dishwashing liquids have had either a new substance notification review or an existing substance review under CEPA and under the chemicals management plan. If any of those consumer products make a claim such as “kills 99.9% of germs”, for example, they're also regulated under the Food and Drugs Act.

As well, the labels on our products are regulated by the consumer chemicals and containers regulations, based under the Hazardous Products Act, which now will fall under Bill C-6. The foundation of that regulation is science. It's a hazard classification, but it provides risk communication to consumers. It has provided precautionary labelling for consumers for the last 39 years. It was just modernized, in 2001, and continues to be an excellent regulatory tool for communicating to Canadians. Elements of CCCR-2001 extend to other products such as food and domestic pest control products.

Our disinfectants are regulated by Health Canada. They have a pre-market assessment and, as with any kind of new substance, review under CEPA as well.

Given the diversity of products, we are subject to various laws and regulations such as CEPA, the Pest Control Products Act, and the Food and Drugs Act. Therefore, we believe that our experience is most beneficial to the committee, as we have been actively involved in the modernization of all these pieces of legislation.

We are seeking two additional clauses for Bill C-6, which include provisions for hoaxes and a provision for a ministerial advisory council. Both amendments would enhance the legislation.

Why? In our experience, a minister's advisory council, such as the one that exists currently under the Pest Control Products Act, and which I'm a member of, is a valuable tool for exchanging information and providing constructive feedback to the minister and the department to help shape and form current and future policies and regulations.

Given the three-pronged approach outlined by the officials--active prevention, targeted oversight, and rapid response--an advisory council could be only another effective tool to the minister and the department for implementing Bill C-6. We believe it would enhance outcomes and actions of Health Canada.

Why a provision for hoaxes? We believe that people should be accountable for information or misinformation they provide about consumer products and their ingredients. The provision for hoaxes is borrowed from the legislation that was tabled last April in Bill C-51, the amendments to the Food and Drugs Act.

Clearly the government believes there is a problem and they need the authority to take action on Food and Drugs Act products, as it was included in this proposed legislation. Therefore, in the spirit of consistency with other Health Canada legislation, Bill C-6 would be strengthened by providing the government with the authority to deal with people who deliberately seek to mislead consumers on these products as well. The goal should be that consumers have the information they need to make balanced and well-informed choices. Fear should not be allowed to be a marketing tool.

We respectfully request that the committee consider these two additions to the proposed law. We have provided some other minor amendments, such as a consistent precautionary statement in the preamble that would be consistent with CEPA and the Pest Control Products Act, plus some other housekeeping items.

I would like to touch on the issue of labelling, as it was raised here at committee during testimony today. I don't believe there has been enough information, or enough factual information, provided to the honourable members from the department on current regulatory authorities for labelling in this country; nor do I believe the information provided in previous testimony to be complete.

Is additional precautionary labelling warranted, and does it need to be included in this bill? As I stated in my opening remarks, labels on consumer products that contain substances are regulated by CCCR. The regulations are science-based, and they include risk communication. Canadians have been using this system for 39 years. Children are even taught to identify the symbols as early as junior kindergarten. What would be achieved by adding another labelling provision to this act?

Canadians are protected by CCCR. Including an amendment in this legislation for labelling of carcinogens; offering up a California Proposition 65 system; using a straight list-based system, such as using substances listed on schedule 1 of CEPA or IARC; even using the building blocks of GHS--we do not believe these meet the needs of Canadians.

CCSPA supports the consumer's right to know, the right to meaningful information, and the right to accurate information. Do any of those systems provide balanced information to the consumer? How would the government even enforce such a law?

In our opinion, by having parliamentarians amend Bill C-6 to include additional labelling, it would effectively be creating a loophole that would have two negative outcomes--one, the sale of unsafe products; and two, misleading claims on safe products.

Why would there be unsafe products? If a product bears a warning statement or a symbol, then consumers have been duly warned; therefore, where is the accountability? Canadians have public policy and legislative frameworks based on risk. This is not the American system of buyer beware. If a product is unsafe, the Canadian government should take it off the market--period. Why would we put forward an act that allows the government to take action via the general prohibition on unsafe products but allows unsafe products on the market to be sold as long as they're labelled?

Why would there be misleading claims? A system that penalizes ethical companies—my member companies—whose businesses are founded on consumer product confidence, and whose products are safe and do not cause cancer.... They will be forced to be put on their products a misleading claim, because a symbol of “C” on sunscreen or hand sanitizers is not accurate, as the end product is safe, even though they contain IARC-listed substances.

Right now Health Canada does not allow companies to make a claim unless it's true--for example, the level of calcium or vitamin C in products. Therefore, why would government force companies to put a “C” on a label for a product that is not a carcinogen?

If a new labelling amendment does go forward, what will we end up with? We'll end up with chaos in the marketplace and consumer confusion, asking moms to make decisions and do their own risk assessments at the retail level; an ineffective law that can't be enforced; flourishing allegations and lawsuits that waste taxpayers' dollars, exactly as has happened in California; companies forced to overlabel; and barriers to trade. I think we would agree that this is not where we want to be.

I offer these comments to you today as a way of continuing and informing this important debate. If the honourable members are contemplating a substantial change to our risk-based society, then the facts all need to be on the table.

In our opinion, Bill C-6 is a modern piece of legislation that allows this government to take an aggressive and responsive approach to protecting Canadians. It has mandatory recall provisions, incident reporting, a general prohibition to take action on products, and fines. The labelling discussion should not detract us from our collective goal, which is to pass this piece of legislation.

I would be most pleased to answer any questions that the committee has.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, this is a very important piece of legislation and I am happy we are having a thorough debate in the House. While I appreciate the urgency of the situation, I also believe, as my colleagues do, that we have to get it right this time around.

Addressing this debate in the middle of an outbreak of an influenza that is circling the globe gives us reason to pause and consider the impact of legislation like this in all of its ramifications. The swine influenza reminds us just how much we live in a global context and that an incident in one part of this world can never remain isolated and contained completely. Because of travel around this globe and the way in which people are able to move around so quickly, it is clear that what we do in one part of the country, one part of the world, can affect people all around the globe.

The swine influenza incident also reminds us just how interconnected everything is. Human health directly connected to animal health, directly connected to the health of our environment. We cannot separate them. We have to look at them as a package and understand just how much government is responsible for protecting health based on that kind of global situation in the way in which everything is so connected.

I have mentioned the swine influenza and although it is not specifically related to Bill C-6 I think the Government of Canada has learned the lessons that we all experienced following the SARS outbreak and has put in place a proactive, precautionary approach to containing and mitigating in the case of the swine influenza.

I have said so publicly and I want to say so again now. I commend the Minister of Health for being so forthright with Canadian people and for ensuring that all members of Parliament are in the loop. We have had regular briefings on a daily basis. Members of Parliament will have opportunity to be briefly regularly as well. The members of the Public Health Agency of Canada and the virology lab located in Winnipeg have given up some of their valuable time to ensure that we are aware of all the facts.

I just want to give credit where credit is due because it is so important for Canadians to know that we do work together on a non-partisan basis. There are times when we disagree, but when something as serious as the swine influenza starts to circle the globe and the numbers increase daily, we have to acknowledge when government is acting appropriately, and we have to reiterate the fact that all of us are concerned and vigilant. We will continue to monitor the situation and provide the necessary information to our constituents and Canadians everywhere.

The other issue, of course, that has grabbed our attention recently that has connections to this bill is the question of listeriosis and the contamination of our food. Although this bill does not deal with food, the principle we are applying, whether it is in terms of food, drugs, natural health products or consumer products, is the same. The principle is that in fact products should be allowed on the markets, on the shelves in our stores, when they are proven to be safe.

That is a fundamental notion that is entrenched in the old legislation that we are now updating. The old legislation of the Hazardous Products Act and the old Food and Drugs Act are pieces of legislation that over the years have tried to embody the principle of do no harm, to say that it is the job of government and it is a responsibility that is enclosed within the Criminal Code because a dereliction of duty is seen as a criminal abrogation or a criminal offence.

It is that do no harm principle that requires government to ensure that all programs and measures are in place so that the products on the market, whether it is the food we eat, the drugs we have to take because of a particular illness or chronic disease, or the products that we buy for household use or for our enjoyment, are safe beyond a reasonable doubt.

It is true that the bill we are now dealing with updates legislation that is 40 years old. It is time to modernize that legislation. It is time to bring our current laws into the 21st century to ensure that we are prepared for today and for many decades to come.

By all accounts, this legislation would make some significant improvements. There are parts to the bill that are overdue and many Canadians have been clamouring for changes for many years. I commend the government for bringing forward some changes and some important legislative provisions that would help ensure the safety of Canadians.

I want to say very clearly that the bill is far from perfect and I am not even looking for perfect today. I am looking for a bill that would hold us in good stead for many years to come.

It has been acknowledged by Canadians and organizations involved in the area of environmental health and product safety that the bill takes important steps, but it is far from the kind of legislation we think is necessary for this day and age. I want to put that clearly on the record.

We are prepared to see the bill go to committee for further discussion, but we are not happy with the bill as it now exists. We have many concerns and we will be proposing some amendments that we hope the government will look at seriously.

We have been talking this morning about one area that pertains to natural health products. It has been pointed out that the minister has taken the unusual step of sending a letter to our committee indicating that there will be an amendment to Bill C-6 that would separate out natural health products from any aspect of this legislation. That is fine and good, and I know that the member for Mississauga South has raised some concerns about that whole process.

However, I think it is the government's way of trying to catch up to a rather messy situation that it still has not quite sorted through, and that is the whole melding and meshing of natural health products into both the legislation pertaining to consumer products and the legislation pertaining to food and drugs.

The furor that erupted after the introduction of Bill C-51 and Bill C-52 last year was a result of the fact that the government failed to consider the need to clearly differentiate natural health products from current drug legislation, and by implication, from other legislation that actually puts in place recalls, bans and prohibitions.

After many years of debate, it is clear that Canadians have accepted the fact that natural health products are a separate category from food and drugs, but there are some groups that would still prefer natural products to be part of food and to be faced with minimal regulation. Our view is that natural products have to be accessible to Canadians, but they have to be safe as well. We are not prepared to minimize safety requirements in order to speed up accessibility.

However, we believe that the previous Liberal government and the present Conservative government have failed to ensure a proper regulatory system for natural health products that would speed up the licensing of those products and would ensure that any concerns about false advertising or altered products or side effects with foods and drugs are taken into account.

We are anxious to see the government speed up the whole process around natural health products regulatory procedures to take away that concern from Canadians, so that they have faith and confidence that the government is not putting up any unnecessary roadblocks in terms of access to those products. There have been some signs that this is happening.

It is important that the bill be amended to exclude any reference to natural health products just as we anticipated that Bill C-51 would do as well.

Whenever the government brings forward new legislation that deals with food and drugs, we expect that it will have learned the lessons of the past sorry chapter of history, when Canadians had to rally in the thousands, when they had to send hundreds of thousands of signatures in petitions and call and fax members of Parliament on a regular basis. We hope the government has learned from this and will realize that, under no circumstances, should natural health products be lumped in with pharmaceuticals and put through the same kinds of requirements. There has to be a separate category with its own unique set of regulations.

This keeps coming up in debate because we are looking for the government to give us an agenda. How will it deal with natural health products? Will there be a report to Parliament about the licensing process and how it is changing? Will there be legislation that regulates this area so it is not lumped in with either consumer products or drugs? That would be in the best interest of Canadians.

As members know, we all continue to receive mail from people concerned about natural health products and accessibility to them with respect to Bill C-6. The sooner we can clear up this matter, the better. My view is we should have a system in place that deals with the backlog and ensures there is a separate regulatory framework, with provisions for safety and product authenticity built into that process.

It is important to focus on the major parts of the bill that ensure consumer products are safe beyond a reasonable doubt. At least that is my assumption. This is why I am somewhat critical of the bill. I do not believe the precautionary principle is deeply rooted and entrenched in the bill.

My view is that while the bill has very strong recall provisions and all groups have acknowledged this, it begs this question. What happens before a product is recalled? How many people have to get sick? What steps are being taken by the government to ensure consumers are aware of any problems with a product and if there is a serious toxic substance in a product, that the product is taken completely off the market?

The bill may require recalls and prohibit some products being on the market, but there is nothing that requires the minister and the government to inform the public the minute there is a suspicion that a product could be hazardous to one's health. We leave products on the market until someone gets sick, then we act. Is that not backwards?

Should we not try to ensure that products on the market are safe beyond a reasonable doubt? Should we not therefore ensure that the proper analysis, inspection and enforcement of regulations are done to make that happen? Why do we wait for people to get sick or die before we act? I am afraid the bill reinforces that notion. Products are recalled after something horrible happens and that does not give Canadians confidence.

The other problem in terms of recall that is without teeth is the principle of a right to know is not entrenched in this bill. If the government is reluctant to prohibit, or ban or recall on a very stringent basis, then at least it must ensure that the principle of right to know is built into the bill, and I do not see it.

I do not see a requirement for labelling in every instance. I do not see the recommendations by the Cancer Society being taken into account. I do not see the private member's bill proposed by my colleague from Burnaby—New Westminster being included in this legislation. This would ensure, as a bare minimum, that Canadians would know a product may have ingredients that are toxic and dangerous to the health and well-being of humans.

We see examples of this every day. Look at bisphenol A. It is a substance that has been identified as being harmful to human hormones, reproductive capacity and the development of children. There is a clear link between bisphenol A and very serious health concerns. Yet the government has approached it on a hit and miss basis. Baby bottles were banned because it was believed they would be cleaned with scalding water, which would bring out the toxic substance that would cause problems to the health of humans.

However, we allow it in pop and fruit juice cans because the government says that people have to drink 900 cans of pop a year before they will be exposed. This does not take into account that some kids drink a lot of soft drinks. It also does not take into account that it is a cumulative effect. What about the fact that there is a little bisphenol A in this product or that product to which one is exposed? Eventually, it accumulates and causes a serious problem.

In that instance, should we not follow the do no harm principle? Should we not say that we know the links? Why not take the action? Why does the Minister of Health stand in the House and say that the government does not have all the evidence of a direct link between the amount in these pop cans and human health? Canadians want their government to be firm and tough when there is that kind of knowledge and understanding.

This is why so many groups, from the Cancer Society to the Environmental Defence league to the David Suzuki Foundation, have all recommended that the bill do a much better job in not just prohibiting a product because it, as a whole, is dangerous, but also because there are environmental toxins in the product that are on a list under CEPA as being dangerous and could possibly cause human health problems. Why not prohibit those kinds of dangerous toxins? Why not go the extra route of saying that if there is a possibility of danger to human health, we are going to take some actions?

The government does not have to worry so much about industry getting up in arms because industry adapts. When the government banned baby bottles made out of bisphenol A, the industry came up with another product that was safe. If the government would ban pop cans that use bisphenol A, the industry would come up with another option that would be safe. In fact, we would have a double whammy out of this. First, we would be taking extra precaution to ensure human health and safety. Second, we could be spurring a new made in Canada industry that would create jobs, that would be based on the green economy and that would help Canadians from the point of view of both their future health and the future of this planet.

Think about the government having the gumption, guts and courage to do something about the products we know are dangerous and could be prohibited from store shelves. The bill does not do that. However, I hope the government will listen to some very serious amendments as proposed by some of the organizations I have mentioned and that will be proposed by us at committee. I hope they will be taken seriously.

If the government cannot accept that notion, I would hope it would at least agree with the question about labelling and the need to ensure these toxic substances and potentially dangerous ingredients are clearly labelled on all such packages. Surely, we can start to use the skull and crossbones on a regular basis whenever there is scientific evidence of a particular ingredient causing harm to human health and well-being. Surely, we can do that much.

Before my time runs out, let me get to a couple of other issues. One of them is with respect to tobacco. We cannot accept a bill that includes the permanent exclusion for tobacco products. We do not believe tobacco products should be exempted from any of the provisions of the bill. We know there is other legislation dealing with tobacco, but there is nothing wrong with ensuring it is protected at all ends. It must be included in Bill C-6, and we will make that amendment.

Finally, we have come some distance, but we have a long way to go to make this ideal legislation. We do not simply want to get us up to 2009. I do not think the bill even gets us up to that level. We have made some distance from 1969, but we have not put in place the right kind of legislation or the laws that will ensure human health is put first beyond all profit and commercial interests. That is the objective and role of government and that is the work of our health committee in the weeks and months ahead.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in fairness, my first-blush reaction would be that the member may have gone beyond the scope of the current bill and it would gut the bill.

Having said that, I want to reiterate one point. In that last Parliament, Bill C-51 dealt with natural health products. That bill was in the middle of second reading. It came out that the minister had written to the chair of the health committee indicating there were going to be some changes proposed to address the concerns of the natural health products industry.

My argument at the time, which remains today, is that at committee substantive changes cannot be made to legislation that has received passage at second reading. If there is anything like that being contemplated right now, I would ask the chair of the health committee that if such a letter is written with regard to this or any other bill, that the chair send it back to the minister with instructions to withdraw the bill and reissue it, or indicate another manner in which to amend or correct the bill, because it cannot be done at committee.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would refer the hon. members to subclause 36(1) of the bill, entitled “Regulations”. Much of my speech will relate to my concerns about this item. This subclause says that the cabinet, the government, can exempt, “with or without conditions, a consumer product or class of consumer products from the application of this Act”, and it goes on.

Think about it. The government can, through cabinet decision, exempt or not exempt, with or without conditions, any product or class. That is a concern to me because it is so broad and so fundamental. How would anyone understand the scope or intent of this bill unless they knew what was covered? To me, this is a serious flaw in the bill and I hope the committee is going to look at it.

However, let me put on the record some of my thoughts with regard to the bill overall. First, as we know, Bill C-6 is the latest effort with regard to a bill from the last Parliament: Bill C-52. Bill C-52 had a companion bill, Bill C-51, which had to do with natural health products. I know hon. members learned an awful lot about that from the lobby and their constituents, because there are millions of people who rely on the availability of natural health products. Their argument is not whether there are proven health benefits; the fact is that they want the choice, they are comfortable with it, and as long as those products are safe they should be available.

So I am rising to remind all the nice people who have written to me over the last months and in the last Parliament and asked me to help in doing something about this that I am going to stay involved in this bill. I will support it to go to committee. However, I do want to make it crystal clear to all Canadians that there will be no implications with regard to natural health products in regard to Bill C-6. I expect there is going to be another bill coming to deal with natural health products, to the extent that there were two companion bills in the last Parliament. I certainly do expect that to happen and we will have to be very vigilant at that time.

Bill C-6, respecting the safety of consumer products, is referred to as the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act. Thus, members will often be referring to it as the CCPSA. It is very similar to Bill C-52 from the last Parliament. Bill C-52 did pass at second reading and was referred to committee. However, it died on the order paper because of the dissolution of Parliament and the call of the 40th general election.

To remind members of what Bill C-6 is doing, it is repealing and replacing part I of the current Hazardous Products Act. It is creating a new system to regulate consumer products that pose or might reasonably be expected to pose a danger to human health and safety. I do not think anybody is going to argue about the necessity.

Specifically, the bill has a number of key impacts. First, it prohibits the sale, manufacture, import and advertising of certain listed products and provides for testing and evaluation of consumer products. Second, it makes it mandatory for manufacturers, importers and sellers of consumer products to report dangerous incidents associated with these products to the Minister of Health. It also obliges manufacturers, importers and sellers of consumer products to report product or labelling defects that result, might result, or are reasonably expected to result in death or serious adverse health impacts, including serious injury, and report that to the Minister of Health.

It requires the same group to report recalls of consumer products initiated by governments and government institutions in Canada or elsewhere to the Minister of Health. It provides for the inspection and seizure of consumer products for the purpose of verifying compliance or non-compliance with the bill's provisions.

It empowers the federal government to institute interim and permanent recalls of products that pose or might reasonably be expected to pose a danger to human health and safety, and it establishes both criminal and administrative penalties for those who violate the CCPSA or orders made under it.

Under the current act, the Hazardous Products Act, if a consumer product that is not regulated or prohibited poses a health or safety risk, it is up to the industry to voluntarily issue and manage a product recall. So it is a voluntary system of sorts. It is not as robust, obviously, as Bill C-6 is proposing to be. The federal government is limited to issuing only a public warning in that regard under the current legislation.

Obviously this is a very serious step, given the changes in the way that products move, the technology, and their production and distribution. This is basically a bill to modernize our approach to product safety.

To give members an idea in terms of these voluntary product recalls, in 2006, there were 32 product recalls; and in 2007, there were 90. The number went up to 165 recalls in 2008, and 27 recalls already in 2009.

So the number of product recalls by even the manufacturers or distributors of these has been going up. Clearly it is urgent that the bill be dealt with expeditiously. There are problems out there. There is a risk posed to Canadians, and I know all hon. members will want to work diligently to make sure that Bill C-6 gets urgent attention at the rest of its stages.

This bill and the former bill, Bill C-51, was described as having a three-pronged approach to food, health and consumer safety. I do not have any specific comments to make on the approach. I think the approach is sound.

That said, I do have some concerns with regard to the regulations. For a long time I have been a member of the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations, between the House of Commons and the Senate. By way of background, the committee has a mandate to ensure that regulations made to statutes after they are passed by Parliament have been properly enabled in the legislation.

The reason we want to review that is that there is a history of where governments, and they refer to order in council but that is basically cabinet, where cabinet makes regulations that do much more than was contemplated in the bill or requested or required by the bill. It is referred to often as being backdoor legislation. It is where we do not see it.

In the bill that is before us, members will see in clause 36, the clause that I referred to concerning the regulations, 16 paragraphs listed that require regulations to be made.

When we have a bill to deal with, we know the areas in which regulations may be promulgated by the government, drafted, gazetted and issued. In our case, we operate under the presumption that the full intent of the bill is transparent in the bill itself and that nothing happening after that will change our understanding of what the bill really wanted to do.

We have to rely on that because at the end of second reading, we are going to have a vote to approve this bill in principle, which will pretty well lock in what the bill is intended to do. At committee, members may fix some errors and fine-tune the bill here and there, and perhaps do a few other things. We will be able to move report stage motions later, but at second reading, we are going to approve it in principle. The bill will go to committee and we will do some fine tuning and hear from the experts to see if there is a problem. As long as there is no major fundamental problem in the understanding of the bill or no errors have occurred, the bill is going to pass at committee. It is going to pass at report stage. It is going to pass at third reading. It is going to go to the other place where it will go through a very similar process. Then the bill is going to get royal assent, but it is not going to be proclaimed until the regulations are drafted, gazetted and promulgated. We will not even see the regulations until after the bill gets royal assent and we will not be able to do anything with it.

That is why the Standing Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations exists. There has to be a mechanism in which we can look at the regulations once they come out to ensure they are properly enabled in the legislation and that they are not doing things beyond what would reasonably be contemplated in the bill.

I started off my speech and read clause 36(1)(a), which basically says that the government, the cabinet, may make regulations exempting, with or without conditions, a consumer product or class of consumer products from the application of this act. It gives extraordinary power to the cabinet about what is in and what is not. It poses an extraordinary risk because now it is cabinet members, who may be lobbied not to put an item in there, who can say they are out.

I would much prefer, and I know there are precedents in other legislation, that it state that these are the things that are there and these are the things that are not there. We have seen it, for instance, in the reproductive technologies legislation. There was a royal commission on reproductive technologies I think 15 years ago. We passed a bill at all stages in 2004 I think it was. We were told at the time it was going to take about two years to draft the regulations and for them to be put in place, gazetted and promulgated.

I said earlier that it is extremely important, given the product recalls, that there be some velocity to this bill. I do not see that there is a sense of urgency. I do see there are 16 areas in which regulations have to be drafted. These will not be drafted probably until after the bill goes through all stages. Even then there is no obligation for any scrutiny before those regulations are done and issued. That concerns me because another important act, the reproductive technologies act, also had many regulations to be made. We were told it was going to take two years. On top of that, the health committee got the concession that all of those regulations must be passed by the health committee. It was important to ensure there was not any backdoor legislation being made, that the intent of the bill was not modified substantively through regulations which would not be caught by the scrutiny regulations committee until after there was a complaint or we did a review of them which may be too late.

I am very concerned about the velocity of the bill. I am concerned about the fact that there are so many regulations here. I am concerned that even the first one tells me there maybe is going to be too much discretion by order in council or by the cabinet, i.e. the government, unilaterally to say what is not included. It puts a lot of risk and onus there and I do not know whether or not that can be dealt with.

People have been asking me about the health products aspect and, because there is no companion bill, whether there is something in this bill. In fact, there is.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health responded to a question expressing that concern. I might as well read the response into the record. This was at the beginning of second reading. He said:

In the original writing of the bill and in the past version, Bill C-52, there was some confusion in the language and stakeholders from the natural health products community required some clarification of it. The minister has written--

I want to emphasize this. The parliamentary secretary said:

The minister has written to the chair of the health committee. We will be putting forward an amendment to clarify that exactly so that the stakeholders from the natural health products community know that this bill excludes natural health products and food and drugs under the Food and Drugs Act.

It basically says that the Minister of Health has written to the chair of the health committee to give notice that a little change is going to be made to say that natural health products are excluded from the bill. That is wonderful, but we have a regulation. The regulation says that the governor in council may exempt, and I stress the word “may”.

What kind of amendment is the parliamentary secretary referring to? Are we going to say that now the bill is going to include some sort of a clause providing a specific amendment for natural health products and then everything else is going to be subject to a cabinet decision about exemptions? Some classes are obvious on their face. It should be in the bill. If the case is that they are going to say that regulation 36(1)(a) is where we will give the exemption, but it is not specifically in the bill, we will never know. How long is this going to take? How long is it going to take before those regulations are drafted? How long is it going to take before they are gazetted and promulgated and they become part of the law and the provisions in the bill become law?

If the reproductive technologies legislation is any indication, it could be months or maybe years. We are already four years past the drafting stage of regulations on the reproductive technologies legislation.

This causes me concern. I have seen this time and time again from Health Canada. Health Canada has a track record of patterning these bills in the way it wants to handle them, in a way which allows it a lot of latitude to change things or to move forward with things, or in fact to delay things.

I can say right now that the fact that those 200 regulations on reproductive technologies have not been drafted and presented to the health committee yet, a bill which received royal assent back in 2004, means that all of those provisions, all of the work and all of the things that we were doing in the areas that require regulations are not in force right now. They are not the law. In other words, all of the things that we approved and we accepted in Parliament to be the law of Canada are not the law of Canada today, four or five years later, because the regulations have not been done. What does that mean? It reverts to the law and continues as it was.

In that particular case, it is the Canadian Institutes of Health Research that unilaterally decides what is going to happen on reproductive technologies, about sperm donations, about the buying and selling of gametes and the like. What is even worse is that the Canadian Institutes of Health Research is not even subject to parliamentary review. It is the largest organization of the Government of Canada that provides funding for research. It is the one that decides and it is not even subject to any review by the Parliament of Canada.

I know this because I put forward a report stage motion to put in the bill that created the CIHR that it be subject to a three year review so that parliamentarians knew what the CIHR was doing and could ask its officials questions about how they were doing it and make sure they did not have pet projects, which is the reason the CIHR was created in the first place. The body it was replacing was found to have some problems. There was too much bias within the system. It is going to happen again.

I hope I have raised some questions. I want to encourage members of the committee certainly not to just listen. I do not know why the health minister is writing to the chair of a committee before second reading is over. I am not sure why the government did not anticipate that the health product industry was going to have some problems with the legislation. We have some things to correct but I want those things to be corrected quickly. I want the bill to be dealt with quickly because the health and safety of Canadians is at stake.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I had an opportunity to work with the hon. member on the health committee in a number of areas.

My question has to do with the natural health products issue and former Bill C-51. In the last Parliament there were companion bills, Bill C-51 and Bill C-52. Bill C-6 is the replacement for Bill C-52, but there were companion bills in the last Parliament, and now the natural health products industry and the users of natural health products are expressing some concern.

It would appear there are some implications with regard to natural health products in the current bill or they will be coming forward. I am a little confused. The member may have some insight as to whether another bill will be coming along, which would make it a little difficult to fit into the regime set up under former Bill C-52. I would have thought there would be some clarity with regard to the applicability of Bill C-6 to Bill C-52 on the natural health products issue.

I wonder if the member has some concerns or if her constituents have expressed concerns about the regulatory framework being proposed with regard to health products.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his attention to safe products. I totally agree that Canadians are quite worried about that, especially in light of recent events. I certainly would not agree with moves to decrease inspectors' presence on the floor, such as with listeriosis or in proposals related to grain.

In the last iteration of this bill, which was Bill C-51, there were some concerns from natural food producers and retailers. I wonder if the member believes that those concerns have been taken care of or if those concerns have been moved forward into this bill.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today on Bill C-6, An Act respecting the safety of consumer products.

This enactment modernizes the regulatory regime for consumer products in Canada. It creates prohibitions with respect to the manufacturing, and especially the advertising, selling, importing, packaging and labelling of consumer products that are a danger to human health or safety.

The purpose of this bill is to make it easier to identify a consumer product that may be a danger and to more effectively prevent or address the danger.

The Liberal Party has always had a commitment to improving the health and safety of Canadians. We will continue to support measures which reinforce the regulatory process in order to be sure that Canadians are consuming healthy products.

The purpose of Bill C-6 is to protect the public by addressing or preventing dangers posed to human health or safety by consumer products that are circulated within Canada and those that are imported.

The bill was first introduced as Bill C-52 in the 39th Parliament and was part of the package that also included Bill C-51, which dealt specifically with natural health products. While Bill C-51 was considered contentious legislation, Bill C-52, now Bill C-6, was generally more accepted by stakeholders, but I do not have to tell the government that this is still hugely problematic to many stakeholders.

An analysis of the bill makes evident that the current consumer products safety system functions on a voluntary basis. If a product is dangerous or poses a health threat, the corporations can issue a recall. The new would bill prohibit the sale, import, manufacturing, packaging, labelling and advertising of consumer products that might pose a risk to consumers. While voluntary recalls will continue to happen, inspectors named under the act or by the minister will now be able to order the recall of a consumer product.

The proposed bill will give substantial regulating powers to the minister. It will be necessary to further study these powers to ensure transparency, effectiveness and accountability. It also requires further study to ensure that it can be implemented effectively.

Increased numbers of inspectors will have to be named by the minister and we need to ensure that the human resources and funding are available to do the job properly.

As with Bill C-11, I will be proposing an amendment at the committee stage, instructing the Minister of Health to consult with an expert advisory committee with a mandate to give public advice before the minister can restrict access to a product.

We have been hearing from many stakeholders who are concerned that C-6 will negatively affect access to natural health products.

The Liberal Party has a deep conviction that Canadians have a fundamental right to make their own choices as far as looking after themselves and remaining in good health are concerned, and that we must guarantee them access to those choices. We have no intention of limiting the consumption, sale and distribution of safe natural products. On the contrary, we wish to promote and protect the health and safety of Canadians and improve our regulations so that they may have access to the foods, remedies and consumer products that are the healthiest and most effective.

That is why we asked the minister to submit Bill C-6 to the appropriate committee of the House of Commons before second reading. This would have provided answers to most of the questions raised in your letter. Unfortunately, the minister refused to do so.

I am concerned, yet again, that the proper stakeholder consultations did not take place with regard to Bill C-6 as with Bill C-11. It was clear during the Bill C-11 hearings that the key stakeholders were not consulted properly during the drafting of the bill. As we know information sessions are very different to meaningful consultations.

We have already heard concerns from key stakeholders that Bill C-6 needs an amendment to deal with tobacco manufacturers and another amendment regarding hazardous substances and toxic chemicals, as the member for Etobicoke North so eloquently put forward.

We have been transparent with the Department of Health and provided it with copies of these proposed amendments and will insist that they are included in a future bill.

If this was to be a repeat of Bill C-11, where information sessions were substituted for meaningful consultation, I hope the government has learned its lesson and will make the appropriate government amendments and bring back the witnesses with the most serious concerns and ensure the bill, as amended, would be acceptable to them.

In any bill we need to ensure that Parliament is able to do its job to develop the best pieces of legislation possible, which requires thorough stakeholder dialogue and input.

As I said, the Liberal caucus has asked that the bill be brought to the committee before second reading so it would be possible to make substantial changes as asked for by the stakeholders. We will reluctantly support the bill going to committee after second reading, but we want Canadians to be assured that we will be continuing to be vigilant in the study of Bill C-6 as it enters the health committee, as we had successful changes with Bill C-11.

It is very important that politicians do the politics, that scientists do the science and that the transmission of information from the scientists to the politician is done in a way in which citizens of Canada are included in the decision.

Motions in Amendment

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to make comments on Bill C-11, having been part of the committee and the process of reviewing the bill, identifying the strengths and weaknesses of it and taking action, as my Liberal colleagues and other committee members did, in what was, in the end, a very co-operative process.

Everyone in the committee was in accord about the importance of ensuring that the handling of pathogens and toxins in laboratory work and transportation of these goods protect the individual safety and public safety.

We did ascertain that there were risks with some of those products, greater risks with some than with others, and that the public good was best served by laws addressing that. Therefore, there was a common view that this was the right thing and a good thing to do.

My experience as a legislator tells me that the public good is sometimes served by laws addressing a problem, but government always needs to be very aware that there are risks arising from possible unintended consequences of the legislation being proposed.

Pretty classic risks of unintended consequences include things as: stepping into the jurisdiction of another level of government; duplicating existing work and licensing and processes already in place to protect the public; placing a regulatory burden that would be onerous given the benefits; the impacts on the delivery of a public good that we are trying to promote may reduce the delivery of that public good; stepping into information privacy terrain and risking the disclosure of personal and private information that is inappropriate or against the law; or even using, in effect, a sledgehammer to crush a flea by having very onerous provisions and penalties in situations where they are simply not warranted.

Those are classic potential downsides or pitfalls to making laws. I think all legislators would agree that we need to be mindful that we are not over-regulating and we are not creating more problems than we are solving just for the pure joy of addressing problems and making laws.

When the bill was first presented to the committee, there were very severe concerns and, in fact, those concerns fit into that whole range of unintended negative consequences, which I outlined as theoretical ones. They were in fact present in Bill C-11.

Why was a bill, which had so many problems, being pushed through for fast approval at committee? What was clear was the consultation the government should have done with respect to writing the bill to address the risks around the handling of toxins and pathogens had been completely inadequate. Although the committee members were assured that there had been extensive and adequate consultation, when the list of those activities was reviewed, it was clear that there was minimal consultation with the decision-makers in the province of British Columbia. I know some of the other provincial health officers had the same concerns.

A letter from the minister of healthy living and sport in British Columbia, for example, had very strong language of concern about Bill C-11 as it was first presented to the committee, words such as, “The schedules are over-reaching”, “The administrative burden of regulation is felt to be onerous”, and “it is our strong preference that a new bill be considered which is collaboratively developed through consultations with the provinces and territories”.

This is a strong indication that adequate consultation did not occur. The absolute foundation of good legislation, legislation that previews and corrects unintended consequences, is to talk to the very organizations and individuals affected by it. This has been consistent problem with the Conservative government.

I was very involved when Bill C-51 on natural products was brought forward last year. It infuriated organizations because they had been completely left out of the consultation process. Had they been involved, they would have made very constructive representations as to how to improve the bill. The bill was killed when the House, when the Conservative government called an election last September. We will see whether the necessary improvements have been made.

With Bill C-11, several provincial governments felt it was completely inappropriate to step into their jurisdiction, clearly duplicating activities that were already taking place in many of the provincially regulated laboratories, which are already under a very constructive and thorough system of regulation and licensing.

On the regulatory burden, the committee heard from some of the university labs and others. They said that this regulatory burden would be very costly and that there were no provisions to assist with those costs. In fact, we heard that similar legislation in the United States had caused research to stop at some university research facilities. This is an unintended consequence that we do not want in Canada. We know how important primary basic research is. We know the important research these laboratories do on pathogens and toxins. Shutting down a source of research is definitely counterproductive to the goals of the bill.

Concerns were expressed by information and privacy commissioners. There were major concerns with the penalties and the criminalization of what could be an inadvertent misstep on the part of a laboratory staff person, resulting in an action that under that bill could have called for criminal penalties. There were serious concerns about the bill. Opposition members argued very vigorously that the government should take the bill back and redo it, make the necessary amendments and bring it back to the committee with the key concerns solved. At first we were being asked to accept a “trust us” message, that these things would be corrected in committee later in the process. We were not willing to do that, notwithstanding the importance of the issues and the risk that the bill was attempting to address.

After having given that context to the situation, I am pleased to say the committee members from all parties worked very constructively together. The government and the agency that was the author of the bill had the wisdom to make amendments to address some of the grave concerns raised, and those amendments were outlined in some detail by the previous speaker.

The bill that came back to the committee addressed some of those concerns, but not all of them. That is why further amendments were proposed to ensure the regulations would go to Parliament and that an advisory committee would be brought into the process of regulation making. Those were absolutely necessary amendments. I am pleased to say they are part of the bill as it goes forward. This was an occasion where the unintended consequences were serious, but they were addressed. The committee did its work. I want to congratulate all the committee members for the work on this occasion. I look forward to seeing the bill in its next iteration.

Natural Health Products

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the next petition deals with former Bill C-51. The petitioners are calling on Parliament to vote against this bill if it comes up again, in order to protect their rights as consumers of natural health products. Given that 70% of the Canadian population already uses natural health products, the petitioners do not wish to have natural health products in the same category as pharmaceuticals.

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to present a petition signed by some of my constituents regarding what was Bill C-51, the natural health products bill. They express concern that if the bill goes ahead, 60% to 70% of natural health products may be taken from Canadian stores. They call on the government to stop the bill.

Food and Drugs Act

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I already presented dozens of petitions regarding Bill C-51, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts. Today I have a petition on the same theme signed by 1,650 Canadians who are very concerned about the government's intentions to reintroduce legislation, supposedly in the name of protecting consumers from unsafe drugs and products, while in fact decreasing accessibility to natural health products.

The petitioners call on the government to reassess this legislation in light of serious flaws identified with this bill, particularly when it comes to natural health products, but also considering the fact that the bill may not do the job that is required with respect to pharmaceuticals that are now on the market or being considered for the marketplace. There are serious concerns by the petitioners that the bill may actually reintroduce a system of progressive licensing which may deny serious surveillance at the post-market end of the process.

The petitioners urge the government to prevent anyone in the government from reintroducing Bill C-51 and bringing forward a much more sensible package that will protect consumers.

Health

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, natural health products are under attack. The Conservatives have made a mess of the approval process with unreachable deadlines to regulate a massive number of critical health products.

Canada has over 10,000 natural health stores, with over 25,000 people employed directly. Countless families rely on these products. The approval process is hopelessly backlogged and there is fear Bill C-51 is coming back. Small businesses will fail and consumers will suffer.

When will the government work with, and not against, the natural health community?

Health Protection

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition signed by a good number of Canadians. This petition follows on the heels of other petitions tabled in the House pertaining to the direction of the government with respect to health protection.

The petitioners call upon the government to think twice before reintroducing the legislation formerly numbered Bill C-51 which dealt with health protection in areas of food and drugs.

The petitioners are very concerned that the present direction of the government will actually hamper access to natural health products and will not do the kind of job that is necessary when it comes to protecting Canadians from adverse reactions when it comes to drugs, medical devices and food.

The petitioners call upon the government to think twice before going down this path. They call on the government to do something that is right and fair for all Canadians.

RESUMPTION OF DEBATE ON ADDRESS IN REPLY

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Madam Speaker, since you are presiding this evening, let me offer my congratulations to you on joining the Speaker's team and being appointed to assist members of the House not just in this important debate but in managing our House affairs. It is great to see members from Vancouver Island playing a bigger role in the House.

It is a great privilege to take part in the debate in response to the Speech from the Throne, the first debate in Canada's 40th Parliament.

I begin by thanking the voters of the great riding of Nanaimo—Alberni for returning me as their MP for the fourth consecutive term. I am very mindful of the great honour and of the great responsibility that I have to them and so I would begin by thanking them.

I would like to acknowledge my supporters and campaign team who put a lot of effort into our re-election effort. I acknowledge the leadership of my campaign manager, Paula Peterson, who co-ordinated a great effort and ensured that we had a great time working together, and my financial agent, John Ward, who ensured we not only got the job done but given the complexities of financial obligations, that we did it right.

I know the families of every member here make a sacrifice so that we can come from our ridings across this great diverse country to participate in this House. I certainly have to acknowledge the great encouragement, and constant never ending support above and beyond the call that my wife Helen makes in order to make it possible for me to serve as the member for Nanaimo—Alberni.

The Speaker, the member for Kingston and the Islands, has done a remarkable job of not only being re-elected but for the fourth time being elected as the Speaker of the House. I certainly want to extend my congratulations to him. I think one of our members made reference to this today. It is certainly a historic event, being elected as Speaker for the fourth time and with the different sides of the House it is quite a remarkable achievement that is worthy of recognition.

It falls to each and every member, to our respective parties, to our leaders, to participate in this 40th Parliament at a time when our country is facing the challenges of a very troubled world economy and uncertainties unprecedented in modern times.

My riding is one of the most beautiful in the country. It covers both the east and west coasts of mid-Vancouver Island. From the rugged majestic heights of Mount Moriarty or Mount Arrowsmith in the Beaufort Range, one can look down across the oceanside communities to the east with their shallow, sandy warm water beaches, or west to Port Alberni and beyond to the world renowned Pacific Rim National Park with its famous Long Beach, favoured by surfers, and surf and storm watchers. This majestic place we call home is recognized by being the only federal riding to encompass not one but two federally recognized and UNESCO recognized biospheres, the Clayoquot Sound reserve on the west and Mount Arrowsmith biosphere reserve on the east, where we live.

That said, like other regions, the west coast is caught in a time of transition that has engulfed the forest sector, the fishing industry and greatly impacted our resource based economy.

The Speech from the Throne delivered in this chamber just a few days ago, on November 19, is very different from any I have heard or debated in the past four parliaments. The government has laid out its intentions to manage the economy in this challenging time.

The Speech from the Throne is entitled, “Protecting Canada's Future”. The government is committed to ensuring Canada's continued economic success at this time of global economic instability. Under the leadership of the Prime Minister, the Government of Canada has laid out a five-pronged plan to protect Canada's economic security. I shall briefly summarize those points.

First, there is reform of global finance by working with our allies and trading partners to re-examine and renew the rules that underpin the global financial system. This process has already begun with Canada's participation in the G-20 meetings on November 15 and the recently concluded APEC meetings in Lima, Peru.

It is probably appropriate at this time to mention that the World Economic Forum rated Canada's banking system as the best in the world.

I hear someone applauding. That is worthy of note and applause. I appreciate that enthusiastic response.

However, at a time when the world itself is reeling, it is good to know that while we face challenges we have some strong attributes to bring into these unstable times.

Measures taken to allow the Bank of Canada greater latitude in responding to world shifts and economic shifts allowed the Bank of Canada to respond quickly with nearly $20 billion to improve liquidity at a time when the credit crunch was having a devastating effect elsewhere and certainly challenging our economy here at home.

Further measures to protect our mortgage system, with shorter terms and mandatory down payments, helped to prevent the type of meltdown that precipitated the current U.S. and worldwide financial crises.

We want to ensure sound budgeting so that Canada does not return to ongoing unsustainable structural deficits while putting all federal expenditures under the microscope of responsible spending.

I think the operative word there is “all” government spending. It is a time when we need to examine how we are spending. As any family would when times get tough, we need to look at how we are managing our finances and determine that we are making the best investments and strategic investments at a time when times are leaner.

We need to secure jobs for families and communities by encouraging the skilled trades and apprenticeships, supporting workers facing transition and providing further support to the automotive and aerospace industries.

On that point, I was asked to respond to criticisms from the forestry CEOs in my own community objecting to this commitment. Of course they are facing a crisis of their own with an industry in transition. I will return to this point shortly to address their concerns.

Further, we need to expand investment in trade by modernizing investment, competition and copyright laws while working with the United States to address shared challenges and pursing trade agreements in Europe, Asia and the Americas.

Canada just recently signed a trade agreement with Colombia that will need to be ratified. Negotiations continue with other countries in Europe, Asia and the Americas, but we must expand our markets beyond our dependence on one large market south of the border. About 85% of our trade is currently going south and, as we know, at a time when our largest trading partner is in big trouble. It is a good time to be looking to other markets to diversify, stabilize and share our financial opportunities with other nations and to reduce our dependence on one factor. It seems a very appropriate thing to do and I think it is absolutely essential that we do this.

Further, we need to make government more effective by reducing red tape, fixing procurement, improving program and service delivery and improving the management of federal agencies, boards, commissions and crown corporations.

Again, I think “efficiency” is the key word in tough economic times. It will be appropriate for all levels of the Canadian economy to examine their efficiency in delivering services and ensure we are doing so without waste.

Returning to the issue of assistance to industry, I think it is fair to say that while details of any assistance to the auto and aerospace sectors are in the process of being worked out, it is important to mention that many steps have already been taken to help all sectors of industry and business. It is a very competitive and challenging time, which is why, in addition to measures to help all taxpayers, measures were brought in to help students, seniors and, indeed, to lower taxes for every Canadian.

However, the government acted in the previous budget and in the previous economic update to lower small business and corporate taxes.

We acted earlier to resolve the softwood lumber dispute with the U.S., bringing more than $4 billion back to Canadian forest companies. I think it is a very good thing we did that. Given the challenge that we face now with the U.S. caught up in its own challenges, it is a very good thing that we had that resolved when we did. Even though it is not perfect and there are still challenges for sectors in transition, the fact that we made those provisions beforehand was very helpful to the current economic status of those industries going through transition.

We provided a billion dollar community development trust to help communities with economies in transition and incentives for companies to purchase new machinery and to upgrade equipment.

For the mining industry, the government will extend the mineral exploration tax credit. Further, for the forest and fishing sectors the government has o acted to extend support for international marketing efforts and to provide incentives for creating energy from biomass.

I can assure persons concerned from the coast, particularly those in the forest industry, that there will be no blank cheque to any industrial sector. I am sure that any support offered by taxpayers through the government to the aerospace or the auto sector will only come after all stakeholders also contribute in the transition to a sustainable future. I think an example of that might be the $82 million commitment to Ford to develop an energy efficient engine.

This is not about helping industries that are not producing something that will be of value in a competitive and changing market. It is about creating sustainable opportunities for the future and creating a sustainable auto industry.

An example in my own riding of a company that has made heroic efforts in transition to a cost effective and sustainable future is the Nanaimo Forest Products Ltd. that took over the Harmac pulp mill in south Nanaimo. This company bid on a court ordered sale of the mill. It as an ownership structure that is quite unique in the industry. It has 200-plus employees, each of whom made significant personal investments in the mill to the tune of $25,000 each for a 25% stake in the business, partnering with other business interests. Pioneer Log Homes is a tremendous corporate citizen. Totzauer Holdings and the Sampson Group are successful private companies. They each took 25% shares in the company.

With both employees and management having a stake in the success of the business has led to a very collaborative approach to labour relations. No labour contracts will need to be renegotiated until well into the future.

This mill is in a great location. It has a deep sea port, water resources and water treatment facilities. It has the potential to diversify into energy production. I use this as an example of all the stakeholders collaborating in a tough competitive market to make something happen and to sustain an industry that was in big trouble. We might have lost the mill. I think the community is extremely proud of its effort and we certainly want to see heroic efforts like these rewarded with success.

In a time of transition, we do need to collaborate and work together to ensure opportunities for success emerge from challenging times.

The Speech from the Throne addresses a whole range of other issues. We have a commitment to Canada's environment. We will continue with our process to reduce greenhouse emissions 20% by 2020. I am pleased to see that we are working toward continuing with alternative energy incentives to develop alternative energies.

We will be recommitting the ban on bulk water exports, which I know is an important issue to many people in my riding, and I am glad to see that mentioned in the Speech from the Throne.

Further, our government will be helping all Canadians participate by improving the universal child care benefit, increasing access to maternity and parental benefits under employment insurance and helping Canadians who care for loved ones with disabilities. That is a very important step the government can make, even in difficult times, to help those families who are working with a disabled child or a disabled adult at home and who are giving up other economic opportunities to look after a loved one in challenging circumstances.

We will be continuing to work on keeping Canadians safe by strengthening the sentences for serious criminal offences. We will be putting in place new rules for food and product safety and we will be introducing a new national security statement. We are also continuing to contribute to global security.

I will come back and talk about food and product safety in just a moment but perhaps I will go on to talk a little bit about sovereignty in the Arctic.

I am personally very pleased to see Canada's commitment to the Arctic moving ahead. It is a time when there are unprecedented not only changes in the Arctic but also challenges to our sovereignty and to the wealth and economic opportunities that northern Canada represents.

I am glad to see the commitment to assert our jurisdiction over lands and waters in the Arctic archipelago under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and to further expand our jurisdiction over the region under the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act requiring mandatory notification of any foreign vessels entering Canadian territorial waters. That will be asserting our control over a 200 mile limit into the Arctic.

I am glad to see that we are also proceeding with a new polar class icebreaker named in honour of the late great Prime Minister John G. Diefenbaker.

I have already mentioned the bulk water exports and that is important.

I will now return to efficiencies. It will be important for us to visit every sector of the economy to ensure we are actually producing the best product in the most efficient manner. One of my big concerns is in the area of health care. If we look back to the 1990s, British Columbia's budget for health was about 30% of its expenditures. When I first ran for office it was 40% of the provincial budget. It is currently about 44% or 45% of the provincial budget. Even though we are spending more and more of the provincial budgets on health care, it seems the demand is unceasing and the perception is that somehow the government is not delivering on health care.

We have been encouraging innovation in every sector but health care has been slow to embrace innovation. About 30% of our health care is already delivered outside of the public system. I am not talking necessarily about parallel systems. I am talking about efficiencies. I am talking about services that are currently available but perhaps underutilized and not funded by provincial plans under section 2 of the Canada Health Act, extended services.

There are tremendous opportunities. However, in our zeal to regulate I hope we do not become overzealous to the point where we take opportunities away from advancing health care opportunities for Canadians. I would suggest that perhaps status quo forces have been slow to pick up advances in low cost alternatives like vitamins, minerals, amino acids and the way we regulate our natural health products. I think we need to take a very good look at that.

I know a lot of concerns have been expressed in the House not only in the last Parliament but going back to the 37th Parliament when I introduced Bill C-420 addressing issues on how we regulate natural health products. Those concerns were discussed early in the 38th Parliament with the aid of the member for Oshawa and I know there were lots of discussions in the last Parliament under Bill C-51 about how we regulate these products.

I am concerned that opportunities for Canadians to purchase low cost, low risk, non-patentable products are currently being restricted by regulatory practices. I imagine legislation will be coming forward to address a whole range of health product safety issues. I hope that in this Parliament, when we review these issues, that we will get this right and that we will deliver an outcome that will ensure Canadians have access to low cost, low risk and non-patentable forms of medicines that promote wellness and address the prevention of illness and disease in the first place.

Those are some of my concerns and they are in the Speech from the Throne. I know members have been debating issues for several days now and a lot of ideas have come forward. I am pleased with the Speech from the Throne. It gives us the opportunity to move ahead on a whole range of issues that are of concern to Canadians. We will have efficient spending in our government. We will be addressing safety concerns and crime issues. We want ensure we create safe communities so Canadians can live safely.

Food and Drugs Act

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Minister of Health and Minister for the Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario]

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I wish to table, in both official languages, copies of a letter I have sent to the chair of the Standing Committee on Health setting out proposals for amendments to Bill C-51, which the government will invite the committee to consider.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-51. I have received a ton of emails both in my riding in east Vancouver and here in Ottawa. I have hear from constituents every day because the word is out in the community about the impact of the bill. I hope either we can defeat the bill, or if it does go to committee, that we can get it significantly changed so we can respond to the overwhelming concerns put forward by the public about the impact on the availability, accessibility and licensing of natural health products.

First, I thank my colleague, our health critic, the member for Winnipeg North. She has very valiantly stayed on this file and kept our caucus updated as to the progress of the bill. I know she will be very active at the committee, if it goes to committee, working with community interests and practitioners to ensure it does not become a big stone wall that denies access for people. Therefore, I thank her for the work she has done and the work she probably will do in the future. There will be a lot of interest in the bill, and a lot of people will follow it.

Very briefly I want to go back to 1997, when I first ran for the NDP in Vancouver East as a member of Parliament. I remember at that time there must have been a proposal in the House, under the Liberal government, to try to regulate natural health products. During the election campaign in May 1997, all hell broke loose in the community because of that. The government was completely caught off guard. It had no idea that it would get the reaction it did. It tried to do what the government today has tried to do, and that is to put natural health products in a box with drugs and to give the nod to the big pharmaceutical companies.

People in communities across the country cottoned on to what was going on and a massive campaign took place. It was a fairly quiet federal election campaign in 1997, but this issue kept on coming to the surface. It was a grassroots issue because people were so outraged, particularly in a place in east Vancouver. The heart and soul of Vancouver is Chinatown, the very origins of our city. A lot of the Chinese traditional medicine practitioners were very concerned about how it would impact them. Therefore, it became very much a cross cultural campaign as well.

After the federal election, the federal government of the day had to back off on what it wanted to do. As we know, since then we have had various machinations in terms of attempts for a regulatory approach. Suffice it to say, all credit goes to well-informed citizens who pay attention to legislation that sometimes creeps in, and they get the word out there about it. As a result, we get all these emails from people who are alerted to what the government has tried to do.

I am very thankful our caucus, with our health critic, the member for Winnipeg North, has monitored the bill very closely. We cannot support it in its present form. We are very concerned that it will lump natural health products in with drugs under a category called “therapeutic products”, which reverses a long-standing practice and position of a separate regulatory framework.

When I read some of the concerns listed in the emails I receive, one of them is the change of the categorization of natural health products. To treat these products the same as drugs is very inappropriate and is much too rigorous.

There are other concerns as well. We know right now there is a huge backlog of applications for the marketing approval of natural health products. How will that be dealt with under the bill? How will we ensure that the backlog is dealt with?

We are very concerned that the fines and penalties within the bill are incredibly excessive. It will mean that practitioners, producers and people who retail or market these products will hang on with their fingernails for their livelihood, and that is a very serious concern.

Why would there be such excessive fines and penalties for these products? In fact, the enforcement provisions are very heavy. They even allow inspectors to enter private property without a warrant. What is going on here?

We are very concerned that in the bill, as we have seen in other bills, so much discretion is left in the hands of the minister and the fact that regulatory requirements can be overridden within the department. Why would that be allowed to happen? This sets off alarm bells for people, especially when they go through the fine print and look at what is taking place.

I am very thankful we have had so much response on the bill. I have had more response on this bill than any bill for a very long time. I gather that other members of the House are getting the same kind of response.

I will read some of the responses I received. Jennifer, from east Vancouver, said:

Bill C-51 undermines the civil rights of Canadians to take control of our own health and well being. It goes against all logic and intuitive common sense and in no way serves the interests of your electorate....

Millions of alternative health practitioners that are certified through Canadian educational institutions who have dedicated their life to studying the healing effects of herbs would not be able to stay in practice.

I have another email from Anne, who lives in east Vancouver. She says:

—categorizing Natural Health Products as therapeutic products, together with drugs, medical devices, cells, tissues, organs, and veterinary drugs, Bill C-51 is viewing these exclusively to the lens of pharmaceutical drugs.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to speak on Bill C-51, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act.

When we lay the grounds for legislation, it is important that we have confidence in the regulatory process and the ability to ensure that we are going to have accountability with this change to the act.

There has been a lot of discussion today about Bill C-51 and a good debate about its consequences. There is one thing I want to remind the House about, which creates the insecurity I wrestle with. I certainly am not going to be supporting this bill any further. I believe that the arguments have been well laid out as to why we cannot continue to move this forward. The legislation needs some fundamental changes.

I do not have any confidence that the drug industry is going to be subdued in this process. Let us look, for example, at the direct marketing that is going to happen with this bill. It goes back to an experience that I had here on the Hill in 2004 when we started looking at what I believe was Bill C-9 at that time, the Jean Chrétien Pledge to Africa Act, to provide help for AIDS in Africa. It was the precursor bill of Canada's Access to Medicines Regime.

The bill's purpose was to provide drugs to those developing countries that might be facing issues related to HIV-AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other types of diseases that were affecting civil society. The contemplation of the bill came through an international treaty that allowed the generic production of different types of medicines to proceed, medicines that may have already had a patent restriction on them, if the actual pharmaceutical company would not provide them at a low cost to those nations.

We went through a whole series of processes and lobbying at that time. There was a very powerful lobby by big pharma to stop that bill dead in its tracks. There was some political support to try to move it forward. What ended up happening is that big pharma got a provision in the bill that was not even part of the internationally signed agreement with the TRIPS and the Doha.

Where we actually could have provided any available drug to go forward, we created this artificial list of what drugs would be available to be sent overseas and which ones would not be. The danger behind this was that it allowed for lobbying to keep certain drugs off the market.

Many people said not to worry. They said that would not happen, that it would not be ethical and that the companies would not do this. We were told that the companies would behave themselves.

To make sure this would not happen, there was a provision in the legislation to make sure big pharma would not be doing it. Lo and behold, even as we were doing that, big pharma was caught lobbying, including by me. It was exposed. It made headline news that the pharmaceutical companies were already lobbying to keep some of the drugs off the market. This plan fell flat on its face.

This is what I am concerned about with regard to this bill and how we go forward. I am concerned about the active lobbying and also the prescriptive behaviour that can take place with drugs. This could actually affect everything from safety to health care costs. Also, we kind of have a self-prescriptive society. The commercials have hit the Canadian airwaves already. They are very clever. They have been done very well. Probably they should win awards, because everyone knows what is happening but they get around the technicalities.

At the same time, these commercials lead people to go to their doctors. The doctor may prescribe some type of medication or may want to provide some type of generic alternative. Then the patients perhaps insist that they know the actual effects better. It can create longer wait times, make people potentially consider changing doctors, or other types of behaviour.

This concerns us, because I certainly would hate to see the cost of drugs rise, some of which have already skyrocketed, based on marketing and advertising campaigns and influence from the drug companies. That is important to note, because we already know that women generally suffer the consequences from prescription errors. This problem actually could expand. We believe what the experts have said. They have noted this vulnerability in the system that is being proposed.

One of the other things that we have identified as very important with regard to this case is the issue related to the lack of parliamentary oversight. The fact of the matter is that this bill is going to give more provisions for the government to be able to override the parliamentary process and for the minister to have expanded powers.

That is a concern because what we have seen with this administration is very much a centralized ideology. That has been its choice of how it wants to govern and that is fine, but at the same time, it opens up the probabilities for greater control. And it may not even be necessarily this administration that does it in the future.

I am suggesting that in the future we could once again have these types of control elements that really change the nature of how we actually have drugs administered in our society. This is another reason that New Democrats are saying at this point that we do not want to change the law right now.

Another thing I wanted to connect to right now is that we seem to be moving to a less regulatory society in some respects. Some of that is of great concern. I can tell members about it based on my background in the transportation sector. For example, in rail and air when we have been moving to safety management systems and letting the industry police itself, and there is going to be more of that with this type of bill, we have seen what is really very much a falling out of safety in many respects.

For example, there is the transportation sector. We just did a complete study. There was a panel. We talked about a culture of fear and intimidation that prevents the actual workplace from operating the SMS properly. What we have actually seen is a step back in rail safety over the last number of years as we have had increased problems.

We are really worried about having the regulatory body become more involved with regard to policing itself. What we would say is that we need to have a stronger involvement by Health Canada.

We have seen these actual situations in the past in our society. It is not just Canada that has this problem. It is in the United States as well, where active lobbying has put drugs on the market that do not necessarily meet the tests of the day and have to be recalled. That includes everything from a series of drugs related to heart medications to others such as breast implants. There are the tragic circumstances with thalidomide. These have had consequences. I think we are going to witness greater problems there.

There is a legitimate problem that we have in this country with regard to getting some of the drugs and medications to market. The hope for this bill is that it will expand those opportunities, but it is very much based upon a risk management cycle. Once again, that risk management, left in the hands of the industry for the most part, is something that gives us some trouble because of the influence.

I have witnessed it myself, as I mentioned, with Bayer doing the actual lobbying to keep some of its drugs off Canada's Access to Medicines Regime. That was even at a time when there was heightened awareness and there were actual hearings going on in Ottawa. There was discussion about that bill. There were a lot of politics around it and active lobbying on behalf of NGOs, the generics and the pharmaceutical companies. The spotlight of the nation was on this and they broke the rules at that particular time with no hesitation. They were not apologetic about it.

So when we move into this type of system, we have a lot of concerns, because it will not just be the attention that is being provided right now. It will also be later on, as the politics about the bill wind down, where the regulatory regime and the oversight are so necessary, because then what we will probably be faced with, unfortunately, is a clawing back of decisions that caused problems for Canadian consumers and their health.

With regard to health products, I know that the Natural Health Product Protection Association has been very adamant about changing the way the system is being done here. Unfortunately, this is a regressive step. I have seen a lot of emails and letters and have had phone calls come in, not only just to my office but also in the Windsor and Essex County region. They are from people expressing disappointment with the government for not adequately fixing their situation. This bill is going to compound their situation so they certainly are not supporting this.

Therefore, with the way this is right now, what we are calling for is to make sure that we actually have a new bill. I know that the government is intending to table some amendments and it is positive that the government is actually looking at some of the weaknesses of the bill, but we believe the bill is far too weak in many respects. We should be re-entering a debate and forming a bill that is going to work.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-51.

There are many Canadians who have an intense interest in issues related to prescription drugs and natural health products. Their use has skyrocketed over the last number of years. I think Canadians can rest assured that when the bill is sent to committee, the committee is going to give due diligence in a very professional and consultative way. I am convinced of that.

My colleague from Oak Ridges—Markham is the vice-chair of the committee. On behalf of the committee and the chair he invites those who have a wide interest to make their concerns known to the committee. To use a clinical analogy, after the kind of analysis that will go into this legislation the prognosis for action is going to come to grips with some of the more modern issues that have evolved over the last three or four decades.

It is amazing to me that the Food and Drugs Act has not been updated since 1953. When we think of it, traditionally the debate centred around generic and brand name pharmaceutical companies. At one time the brand name pharmaceutical companies did most of the research and the generic companies picked up some of their patents after they had expired and brought cheap drugs to Canadians. The debate was always about achieving the right balance between the pharmaceutical companies in terms of serving the best and higher interests of Canadians. The debate has evolved far past that now, not that that debate is not still going on.

Natural health products are being used now by a large spectrum of Canadians. These products are supported by research and development by many companies that are Canadian and that are part of the health care system.

I would like to add one element that has not been touched on by any of the members that I am aware of to this point. Not too long ago in Maclean's magazine it was indicated that in fact megadoses of vitamins and nutrients taken in combination with certain prescribed drugs could have a deleterious effect with respect to the very objectives of the regime that had been entered into either on the advice of a physician or in a haphazard way by the consumer. Sometimes people will take megadoses because they have concluded they could not be harmful. Taken on their own the publication indicates that they probably are not, but taken in combination without appropriate advice, they can have a very disastrous effect.

I do not intend to pass any judgment on those conclusions because I am not qualified to do so, but those particular conclusions were picked up by several research based publications in the medical field. They in turn have said that this is a very important health risk, that the legislative regime should start to come to grips with.

For example, selenium taken on its own has certain advantages, but taken with warfarin, which is a blood thinner, the medical research documents and Maclean's magazine indicate it could have a very bad effect. I just use that as an illustration.

What is our responsibility with respect to the legislation that would take all of that into consideration?

The government has said that there should be elements of what is called a life cycle risk management system. In other words, the onus is not on the companies that all of a sudden see something in terms of research to say to Mr. and Mrs. Consumer that they had better not take that product in combination with the prescription they are taking, and the company will withdraw that from the market.

The onus is voluntary on the producer of the particular vitamin or whatever it may be, and it could be a prescription drug. We have had examples of that before. The life cycle risk management places the onus on the sector, be it pharmaceutical or natural health products. When they have, on the basis of the best available research, even an inclination that there is a problem, they have the responsibility to come forward. That is as it should be. I do not think anyone on this side or the government side should be arguing about those components to give the minister more authority, either through an injunctive mechanism or whatever it may be, to react in keeping with the seriousness of the medical implications of pharmaceutical drugs or naturopathic or natural health products. That is something we do in terms of serving the higher interest of consumers. As representatives of Canadians, we have a responsibility to make sure that the regime that is in place will do that.

It is interesting to note from the documentation I have read that for the first time the generic and non-generic pharmaceutical companies are in agreement with respect to consumer advertising. There are some consumer groups that take exception, but the generics and non-generics have said that they think there is a higher interest to be served by allowing consumers to see the full picture of a pharmaceutical product before them.

I have seen those truncated ads on television that do not give any background. They give a name but they say that people should go to their doctor. That is fine, but people should go to their doctor anyway. If it is on the basis of a little more information to talk to a doctor, why should we be saying to consumers that they should not have that information?

The generics and the non-generics in fact are agreeing with those provisions of the proposed legislation that really attempt to give more information.

I am not going to come down on either side of that issue, other than to say to my colleagues that I have been impressed with their understanding of these issues. When the bill comes to the committee those issues will be well debated. The committee will be hearing from a broad spectrum of interests and I am convinced that the public interest will be considered.

I have concentrated mainly on the implications with respect to the therapeutic category. I do believe that the natural products portion of the bill needs to receive more intense consideration. The reason is that Canadians generally see that as an opportunity for them to participate in their health care. The more we can help them to do that, the more we will be invigorating our health care system and bringing Canadians into the health care equation as active and informed participants.

If this legislation does those things, it will serve Canadians well. I am convinced, having listened to this debate, that in submitting this bill to committee, the broad spectrum of interests will be considered in a balanced and fair-minded way.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-51. We know the overhaul of the Food and Drugs Act in Canada has been years in the making and successive governments have attempted and failed. Canadians rely on their government to ensure safety standards are in place to protect their food, drugs and the natural health products they might want to take.

Over many years, we have seen far too many scares. There have been some serious consequences. Drugs and other products have ended up on the market and the health of Canadians has suffered. We certainly can point to Thalidomide as one of those drugs, as is Vioxx. Silicone gel breast implants had consequences that people did not anticipate.

It is very important that a legislative and regulatory process be in place to protect the health and welfare of Canadians. However, we do not see Bill C-51 as being that legislation. Although some aspects of the bill have merit, other aspects of the bill warrant additional attention. Because I only have 10 minutes to talk about this, I will talk only about a couple of aspects of it.

Before I get into this, governments in the past have made the lives of scientists very difficult. We only have to turn to the BSE crisis. Scientists were fired under the previous Liberal government for highlighting the problems with BSE. The case went on for years for those scientists who dared stand up and talk about the fact that some of the products in Canada simply were not safe. We also want to ensure there is adequate protection for employees who dare to blow the whistle on current government practice that affect the health and welfare of Canadians.

The couple of pieces I want to touch on are progressive licensing and direct-to-consumer advertising in the natural health products. I also want to highlight the fact that first nations traditional healers are not protected under the bill. Many of the first nations traditional healers have sacred medicines, which they have used for centuries. However, because they are sacred, they also are not in the public domain in the way that other products are. There needs to be a way to ensure first nations traditional healers are not impacted by the bill as well.

Under the progressive licensing aspect of it, one of the things the bill talks about is setting up an ongoing life cycle approach to drug safety. However, it does not have the needed improvements for pre-market testing and there will be heavy reliance on industry-led post-market follow-up. One of the things we want to see is improved pre-market safety. Any post-market oversight must be done independently. If we turn it strictly over to industry, it is like the fox in the henhouse. Any oversight must be done at arm's length so industry is held accountable both for its pre-market and post-market testing.

In the past we have called for a system to record adverse reactions. I know there has been some movement on recording adverse reactions, but more work needs to be done in this area as well. Largely one of the ways post-market problems show up is in adverse reaction. There needs to be much more work done on ensuring there is a national system in place to look at adverse reaction.

I want to touch on direct-to-consumer advertising. This is a very small piece in the bill, but it opens the doors to look at banning the current act's straightforward ban on direct-to-consumer advertising for health conditions, as outlined in a schedule in the act. The way the new legislation is written this prohibition could be exempted through regulation. This would allow pharmaceutical companies, with an order in cabinet, to bypass the regulations that are in place.

I want to turn to an article that was written by Barbara Mintzes called “Disease Mongering in Drug Promotion: Do Governments Have a Regulatory Role?”. It is an extensive article, so I will not have time to read the whole thing, but I want to touch on two pieces. She starts the article by saying:

Ray Moynihan and colleagues describe disease mongering as, “widening the boundaries of treatable illness in order to expand markets for those who sell and deliver treatments”. In this article, I examine one aspect of disease mongering: activities financed by drug companies to promote sales by expanding the pool of patients potentially treated by their products, when no benefit in terms of reduced morbidity is likely.

Then she goes on and talks about the fact that often these are very emotional responses and cites a couple of ads from pharmaceutical companies that say if people do not take their produce, they will end up dead. That is kind of the short form on it. That kind of fearmongering to encourage patients to use a particular pharmaceutical company's product is not the most reasonable way to make decisions on particular treatments.

In her conclusion, she says “Is a More Robust Regulatory Response Needed?”

She says:

The rationale for regulation of drug promotion is health protection, encouragement of appropriate medicine use, and prevention of deceptive advertising.

She goes on to say:

Canada's Food and Drugs Act prohibits advertising a drug that is “false, misleading or deceptive or is likely to create an erroneous impression regarding its character, value, quantity, merit or safety”.

I think many Canadians would be very uncomfortable with anything that would allow pharmaceutical companies to do more direct-to-consumer advertising than they already do. There is a way they can circumvent the regulations currently, and many Canadians are very uncomfortable with that. We are strongly opposed to anything that would open up the door to allow that to happen. We are opposed to that one aspect of the bill.

I know other members in the House have talked about the hundreds of letters they have received from their constituents, and certainly Nanaimo—Cowichan is no different, around the concerns about how this may impact on their ability to use natural health products. People in Nanaimo—Cowichan like the option of being able to access natural health products without facing some of the same costs involved with pharmaceuticals. They like to have that access through their local health food store. Many are raising concerns around whether this will impact on their access.

The Canadian Health Food Association has written a letter to the Minister of Health, on June 9, outlining many of its concerns around the natural health products aspects of the bill. I will touch on a few of them, but the association has quite accurately outlines.

The association talks about the fact that in the preamble to the bill there is no identification of the importance of health promotion or disease prevention. We know health promotion and disease prevention are very important aspects. If we want to talk about impact on our health care dollars being spent, we know health promotion and disease prevention need far more emphasis than they current get.

The association talks about categories, that the proposed amendments to the act include a new term called “therapeutic product” under which NHPs, as a subset of drugs, fall. It says, “The term “NHPs” does not appear anywhere in C-51 until page 40 when transition provisions are discussed.

It talks about authorization and licensing, that the applicant is required to establish that the risks of the product are outweighed by the benefits. Its comment on that is:

There is nothing in the Bill that indicates in what manner the applicant is to satisfy the risk-benefit ratio. No parameters or definitions have been included, that recognize the inherent differences between NHPs and pharmaceuticals, in particular new drugs.

It goes on, as well, to talk about the fact that, in many cases, the minister would have far more powers through the regulatory process and that it would not be an open and transparent process.

The association's brief to the minister talks about the fact that there needs to be accountability, openness and transparency around how decisions are made, that we do not need a regulatory process. In fact, we know that most regulations do not need to come to the House of Commons for approval.

We have heard the Conservatives say, “trust us”, that the regulatory will be in place to ensure that everything will lineup the way the bill says it will, but that is not true. The regulatory process happens outside the House of Commons, outside the legislation, so there is not that openness and transparency.

I encourage members of the House to take a look at the very concerns that have been raised by constituents in our ridings and across the country and ensure that natural health products and the safety of consumers is protected by the bill.

[Lui Temelkovski, Liberal, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will comment on the process, but I will mention a couple of things with regard to the doctor shortages.

The immigration bill has passed, without our support. If the parliamentary secretary is thinking the bill will solve the problems he has as the parliamentary secretary, and Canadians endure, he is dreaming in Technicolor.

In terms of the process, it is such that we will now move the bill to the committee and the committee will do an intensive study. We will hear from the brightest minds and most of the shareholders who are involved with the bill. We have looked at our agenda and we will bring Bill C-51 to the committee's agenda upon our return in the fall. At that time, we will discuss and hear witnesses from across the country. If people are watching and would like to be witnesses, they should get in touch with our clerk and she will ensure they are added to the list of witnesses. We like to hear from everyone.

This morning my assistant opened over 100 envelopes with the same message inside. The names of different people were added on to the letter of request or comments that people had made. Therefore, I believe there is a movement, in terms of Bill C-51, looking to stop the bill dead in its tracks right now.

However, we will send it committee, work on it and come up, hopefully, with an improved plan than the one with which the parliamentary secretary gave us to work, which is not enough.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary for Health]

Mr. Speaker, the member is very able in his capacity as vice-chair of the committee. I look forward to working with him in committee on Bill C-51.

With respect to the issue of the physicians, I would like to remind the member that it was under the previous government that positions were cut and $25 billion was removed from the transfers to the provinces. We are dealing with it now and we are dealing with it well. The minister has done a remarkable job in attracting new professionals through working with colleges.

As well, just last night we passed an immigration bill that will fast track health care professionals such as doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and the like. We are making substantial progress.

On the issue of Bill C-51, we have heard from the NDP accusations that are not correct. I wonder if the member, as vice-chair of the committee, could explain how the committee process works. The fact is that once we go through second reading the committee will have the opportunity to amend the legislation, listen to witnesses and so on. It also gives the government the opportunity to incorporate into the bill suggestions that it has heard from across the country, because of course the government is listening to Canadians. Can the member explain the process a little?

[Lui Temelkovski, Liberal, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I rise today to speak on Bill C-51, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

First and foremost, as vice-chair of the health committee, I would like to say that we have looked at some of these issues and it is a pleasure to see the parliamentary secretary here to support this bill and to debate it.

First, the bill looks at modernizing the regulatory system. What does that mean? It means that because the act was introduced in 1953 and is a little bit older than I am, we can see that it needs some improvement, just as I do on a regular basis.

Second, it looks to improve the surveillance of benefits and risks of therapeutic products throughout their life cycles. At the committee, we have been looking at licensing or surveillance of medication.

At this time, what happens with medication is that some pre-market tests are done, but we all understand that pre-market tests cannot be done on young children or on elderly people, pregnant women and so on. At the same time, when products are introduced into the market, they are taken by those people as well, so we have been doing a study on post-market surveillance to see what can be done and how to improve the system of post-market surveillance.

The post-market surveillance assessment will be done soon and I believe the report should be hitting the House either this week or next week, hopefully before we rise. The report will have some recommendations about which I am not at liberty to speak at this time.

The other issue this bill looks at is improved compliance in reporting adverse reactions. As for adverse reactions when someone takes a medication, the medication is either reported back to their doctor or not reported at all. So far, our information tells us that only 10% of adverse reactions are reported.

We have been wondering about that. We have been consulting with stakeholders from across the country, the people who really do this work, such as the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian pharmaceutical associations, the Canadian Nurses Association and so on. We will be coming up with some recommendations on those issues before the House rises, but what is important is that the issue of human resources for health professionals is not being dealt with.

When the Minister of Health appeared in front of the committee, we asked if he was aware of how many Canadians did not have a doctor, a health professional. At that time, which was about three months ago, he was not aware. Further, when we asked if he was aware of what the doctor shortages were in Canada, he was unaware. The third question was the clincher and that was about whether he had a plan. He obviously had a plan, but having a plan for improving the situation of health care professionals in Canada and not being aware of the first two questions begs the question of how he could be fixing a problem without being aware that it exists.

The minister came up very short in front of the committee. I was very surprised when he did not know that three million to five million Canadians do not have a doctor and that in Canada there is a doctor shortage of about 26,000 physicians. They were needed yesterday, not tomorrow, not next year, not 10 years from now, but yesterday.

Because the minister said he had a plan, we asked him what his plans were in the health department to fix the human resources situation. He told us that residency spots in Ontario were available. When we asked how many, he said they had been increased by roughly 100.

I was born in a very small village and my math may not be so good, but when three to five million Canadians do not have a physician and we are told that 24,000 to 26,000 physicians are needed to make sure that Canadians are looked after, it does not take a genius to figure out that we need an aggressive plan for human resources in the health care system. The minister's aggressive plan was to increase the number of residency spots in Ontario by 100.

Twenty-six thousand doctors are needed, yet we are increasing that number by only 100. It will take a zillion years, let me note for the parliamentary secretary, to solve this huge problem. It is a problem in the beautiful riding of Oak Ridges--Markham, the largest riding in Canada when it comes to eligible voters. We need more health care professionals in our riding.

I would like to go back to Bill C-51 and put on the record a number of emails that I have received from people in my riding.

Linda wrote to me and said:

If I prepare apple cider vinegar steeped with a few herbs like sage and lemon balm in my garden for a general winter tonic to ward off flu or colds, or to give in case of sore throat, I could find myself in jail if I give this to my children or husband or give a jar to my neighbour or a friend. Or if I make some skin cream for my son's eczyma from beeswax from some herbs growing in my garden I could be thrown in jail....

She went on to say:

I don't trust Health Canada to keep my family safe. I don't trust the health minister to keep my family safe...

If this bill does pass, and I pray it does not, I will be contacting you and your colleagues....

Another email is from Angela, who says:

I wanted to write to you to see if there is anything you can do to help out with Bill C-51, which the government is trying to pass as law. If passed, Bill C-51 will ban our access to all vitamins, herbs and alternative therapies.

I would like to read a couple more, with the House's indulgence. The next email is from Rosie, who says:

You might remember chatting with Jeff and myself...a few weeks ago...I am writing to protest the passing of Bill C-51 in its current version.

She says that we should take it out of here, pass it on to the committee and have a look at it at committee. That is a great idea. That is what our party is suggesting.

With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I will finish with an email from Marjorie, one of the many that we have received. She says:

By now, many people in the Natural Health Product (NHP) community are pulling their hair out over Bill C-51, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act.

I end my speech with that.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think the member is betraying the Conservative approach on health care. Rather than addressing any of the concerns that have been raised by the thousands of Canadians who have written to his office, as they have to every other member of Parliament here, he denigrates them. He attacks them, he insults them and he calls them names. That is exactly the Conservative approach. It is a kind of thuggish approach on health care.

To put it quite simply, the Conservatives have not made the case for Bill C-51. Quite simply, when we look at the American style of approach that they are attempting to use through Bill C-51, the evidence is there in the United States from The New England Journal of Medicine, which he is calling loony leftist. The New England Journal of Medicine has a lot more credibility than the hon. member does when it comes to health care issues.

When The New England Journal of Medicine says that 56,000 person-years were “lost to the harmful effects of drugs approved but later withdrawn for safety reasons” because of fast-tracking of pharmaceutical drugs in the United States, one would expect that the Conservatives, in the public interest, would actually say, “Hold on, let us take a step back on this. We have put together this legislation. Obviously there are some negative impacts on this legislation so we are going to have to--

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to follow my colleague from Winnipeg North on Bill C-51. She has been very eloquent on this bill and has been, I think, by far the best speaker thus far in terms of exposing what really seems to be at work here regarding the agenda that the government has put forward. I am pleased to speak in opposition to Bill C-51.

As with a number of other initiatives from this Conservative government, what it says it is trying to do is quite different from what it actually tries to do when it is seen in legislation. We have seen this time and time again, that essentially what the Conservatives try to use is a smokescreen, political spin. It takes scrutiny, particularly from the NDP corner of the House, to scrutinize very carefully the actual legislation to find out what indeed is the intent of the Conservative government.

Here again is a case where the Conservatives announced, with a great deal of political spin and marketing, that somehow they were trying to add to safety in our health care system with health care products and pharmaceutical drugs.

But the devil is in the details. When we carefully read through this bill, as our health critic the member for Winnipeg North has done and other members of the NDP caucus, we find the intent is quite different than the actual wording of the bill itself.

I would like to touch on two of the most egregious aspects of what is contained within Bill C-51, which essentially, in a very bizarre way, is an attempt to push a very strict regime around natural health products and at the same time, there appears to be an attempt to lessen any sort of regulatory oversight around pharmaceutical drugs.

On natural health products, we have seen over the past few years a growing waiting list for approval of natural health products in Canada. A little bit like the immigration system and a little bit like our health care system, that is the result of both successive Liberal and Conservative governments essentially giving away the public management and the public trust that Canadians have entrusted to Parliament.

What we have seen over the past 20 years is very much a right wing agenda that puts the emphasis on corporate tax cuts above all other things. The result of that is underfunding of our health care system. The result of that is underfunding of our immigration system and the result of that as well is underfunding of the approval process to actually ensure that natural health products are not subject to these long wait lists.

The solution the Conservatives offer up is to simply lump in pharmaceutical drugs with natural health products. I have received far more letters and emails from my constituents in Burnaby—New Westminster on this issue than I have on practically any other. I am going to read into the record a few of the comments that my constituents in Burnaby--New Westminster have written to me on this particular issue.

Mr. Thuot writes: “We all recognize that the pharmaceutical industry has been waging a relentless war internationally on vitamin and alternative natural health supplements for quite some time”.

We have Dr. Chan from Burnaby who writes: “I definitely do not support legislation that treats natural health products in the same manner as pharmaceutical products. Now would be an excellent time for the government to implement a third category for natural health products as was recommended by the Standing Committee on Health in 1998”.

We have Mr. Johrden in New Westminster who writes: “I am opposed to Bill C-51 which has been set in motion to amend the Food and Drugs Act, a bill with worrisome implications for the natural health products industry and consumers”.

We have Ms. Balabanov who writes: “Vitamins and minerals are very important for health and prevention. They cause no deaths as opposed to pharmaceutical drugs that do cause many deaths”.

We have Ms. Lum from Burnaby who writes: “I dare say the only industry being helped will be the pharmaceutical industry who can rake in even more profits once all health foods have been banned or made into prescription drugs”.

We have Mr. Hollenstein from New Westminster who says: “I do not wish this manipulation of the term therapeutic drugs to be an umbrella for all pharmaceutical drugs, to include vitamins and herbal remedies and food in general”.

We have Mr. Robertson who writes, referring to me as his member of Parliament. He said: “I ask you to take a strong stand on this and I for one would like to state that I am vehemently opposed to the passing of such a bill”.

Ms. Bredburn from Burnaby writes: “I am a woman who has greatly benefited by natural health products after years and years of unsuccessful mainstream doctor prescribed drugs”.

The constituents in Burnaby and New Westminster have written time and time again about this foolhardy notion that the solution to the waiting list, that has been caused by government underfunding, will actually ensure that the system works effectively and that new natural food products that are brought on the market will be subject to the appropriate scrutiny and then brought on to the market.

Instead of providing the adequate funding, in a bizarre world that only Picasso could have imagined, we have the Conservatives making the situation worse. However, there is another element to Bill C-51 that I would like to address.

As the government seems to be putting the thumbs to the natural food products industry and most Canadians who rely on herbal remedies and natural food products to maintain their health and well-being, we are seeing, at the same time, an American style approach to the approval of pharmaceutical drugs. What sense is that when in the United States we have seen huge problems with its fast tracking of approval of pharmaceutical drugs?

Progressive licensing simply ensures that drugs are brought onto the market without appropriate scrutiny. We have seen this from other Conservative initiatives in transportation, where it wants to hand over safety management to the airlines themselves. It did not work for railways, as we saw an escalating accident rate, but the government wants to try it for airlines. This type of approach simply does not make sense.

We have seen in the United States drug after drug after drug that has provoked deaths because it was fast tracked. We know that the Conservatives, like the Liberals before them, in these behind closed doors negotiations, the so-called security and prosperity partnership, are trying to harmonize all of our regulations, standards and safety protections that we put into place to lower American standards.

We saw that with transportation safety. We have seen it with the attempt by the Conservative government to raise the pesticide residue permitted in Canadian food. We see this through the SPP process that essentially copying what has not worked in the United States is not in the interests of Canadians.

I would like to read a couple of excerpts from news articles that came out last year around this issue of progressive licensing and how it worked in the United States. I will read a couple of paragraphs from the Washington Post:

Three drugs--Vioxx, Ketek and Avandia--are casting long shadows over the congressional debate on how to update and revise the 15-year-old system that has dramatically sped up the process of bringing prescription medicines to American consumers. All three ran into problems after the Food and Drug Administration approved them for use. The problems ranged from thousands of heart attacks partly attributable to the painkiller Vioxx to a few cases of liver failure caused by the antibiotic Ketek. And the hazards of the diabetes drug Avandia are only now emerging.

The New England Journal of Medicine did a study around cases of these fast tracked drugs, such as the Conservatives are proposing, and these are the comments that came out of that study:

It is incredible that the Agency charged with protecting the public health has such a poor record when it comes to post market drug safety. Regrettably it is incidents like this that demand legislative changes in the way FDA deals with drug safety.

That particular study indicated that 56,000 Americans died as a result of drugs being fast tracked onto the market. This is the danger with this kind of foolhardy Conservative initiative that may mesh with its right wing ideology that government and safety is bad, let us do away with all of that, and let the company CEOs decide what degree of safety or risk Canadians should have.

Very clearly, all the emails and letters that have come from my constituents say the contrary. Canadians believe the government should ensure a higher standard of safety, a more secure process of approving pharmaceutical drugs.

Bill C-51, the thin edge of the wedge, does exactly the opposite, moving toward a kind of progressive licensing, the fast tracking of drugs that did not work in the United States. That is why in this corner of the House we are saying no to Bill C-51.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary for Health]

Mr. Speaker, in this circumstance, the question is sometimes more important than the answer.

I am a little disappointed that the member did not use his full time to talk about the issue at hand, which is Bill C-51. The member talked about the doctor shortage, and I will just address that for a moment.

The doctor shortage is due to cutbacks in the mid-1990s, when the brain trusts of the governing party, the Liberal Party at the time, thought it would be a good idea to reduce the number of family doctors graduating from medical schools. So, we now have, 10 years later, not surprisingly, a doctor shortage.

We have an immigration bill that will allow the fast-tracking of medical professionals, which the opposition party railed against, but yet let pass, very hypocritically. It will address the medical crisis that the Liberal Party initiated and now we, as Conservatives, have to do what we always do; that is, clean up after the Liberals.

With regard to Bill C-51, the member, I think, being a doctor, understands the importance of natural health products. I am pleased to see that he is willing to let it go to committee where the appropriate amendments can be brought forward and so on.

I wonder if the member would agree with the government that the health and safety of Canadians needs to be balanced with the ability of Canadians to have the freedom of choice in dealing with their care needs?

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak to Bill C-51. All of us in the House have received a lot of correspondence from very concerned Canadians. They believe that the bill will impede their access to substances that they have freely bought over the counter for many years, products that are used by naturopaths and herbalists across our country and products that are used by first nations healers in Canada. Those groups are concerned.

The government has done a very poor job of describing what the bill is about. That the government will be putting forth amendments which it is not willing to share with us speaks to the fact that it is proceeding in a way that is less than organized with respect to the bill. The government is hearing about it from Canadians and from members of the House of Commons.

The crux of the concerns of most Canadians is whether the bill impedes a person's ability to access those products. The bill touches on a lot of things that are very important. It covers many substances. It covers pharmaceutical products and medical equipment. It enables the minister to more rapidly assess whether a product is good or bad for the public. It enables him to remove products more quickly.

Right now product removal is voluntary in nature and it is up to the private sector companies to remove them. The bill would give Health Canada the ability to better monitor products that come on the market and to remove them if there are problems that are identified. In fact, the Food and Drugs Act, which this bill amends, has not to my knowledge been significantly amended since 1953. Obviously we need to do a better job of that.

Penelope Marrett, president of the Toronto based Canadian Health Food Association, said:

People need to remember that we're an already regulated industry....Herbalists and naturopaths will still be able to provide the products and the compounds that they do under the current situation.

I hope that allays some concerns. However, the proof of the pudding is in the bill. We want to make sure that the bill goes to committee, which is the next stage after this one, and that members on the health committee have ample time to dissect the bill from stem to stern. Members of the naturopathic groups in Canada, the aboriginal groups and other groups that are concerned will be able to appear as witnesses in front of the health committee. We are hoping this will happen in a very public fashion. I hope that the government sees fit to televise the hearings of this investigation. It is very important for all Canadians to witness the people who come in front of the committee so that all sides can be heard. I know that the concerns of Canadians about the bill will be expressed in that committee and will be heard and understood.

If the bill compromises the ability of Canadians to access the naturopathic products that are safe and to which they have traditionally had access, then we will not support the bill. We will not compromise people's ability to access these products, but we are obviously in favour of ensuring that whatever products come down the line are safe for Canadians.

I would ask why on earth the government has not taken it upon itself to deal with what is arguably one of the two most important issues affecting Canadians, and that is health care in Canada. The government has been missing in action. Why have we not seen a plan to deal with the health care human resources catastrophe that we will be facing in the coming years? Physicians, specialists and general practitioners, nurses, technicians and other health care workers, there is a huge aging out of the population taking place. The average age of many physicians and specialist groups is in the fifties and for nurses it is in the low forties. This is a problem that cannot be rectified overnight. The government has not done anything about this. It has to work with the provinces.

Here is one easy solution. There are some 1,800 Canadian students who could not get into medical school in Canada who are studying abroad in places like Australia. Those Canadians would dearly love to come back to this country, but it is exceedingly difficult for Canadians working abroad to come back. They even have to write a test to determine whether or not they can speak English or French. Can anyone believe that?

The system makes it very difficult for Canadians abroad to come back. Why do we not make it easier? Why do we not enable Canadians to be quickly assessed and to either have extra training or be allowed to practice in Canada if they are Canadians who are studying abroad? That would potentially introduce 1,800 doctors into Canada in a very short period of time at a very low cost.

Where is the government on other issues? Where is it on home care? This is a serious issue given our aging population. Where is it on a national mental health care strategy? The government is moving slowly in that direction. It is a positive direction and we continue to encourage that. Where is it on modernizing the Canada Health Act? There is silence from the government.

Where is it on information technology? This is something that could radically and dramatically improve our ability to care for our patients. Where is it on the head start program for children? That was passed in the House in 1998. It would be the simplest, least expensive and most effective preventive measure we could possibly have in our country.

Where is the government on research and development? Where is the government on its science and technology strategy? I can say where it is. The government's science and technology strategy is to fire the science adviser to the Prime Minister and eliminate his office. Firing Dr. Arthur Carty, one of Canada's finest scientists, and eliminating the post of science adviser to the Prime Minister is the government's science and technology strategy. What kind of strategy is that?

What is the government doing to facilitate the connection between bench discoveries and putting them into clinical practice? Where is its ability to move forward on the scientific discoveries that we have and commercialize them? Why is it not connecting up groups like the MaRS centre in Toronto and the 27 science and technology parks from coast to coast in our country? Why is it not working with them to connect them and maximize their possibilities. That is the future economic ability of our country to compete.

China and India are building dozens and dozens of these parks. They know that the future does not lie in petrodollars. The future does not lie in resource extraction. The future lies in our ability to maximize technological advances in science and research and to commercialize an operationalize them.

Our fine scientists are some of the best in the world, but they are being left to drift by the government. There is no plan whatsoever from the government. Why? Because in part everything is controlled by the Prime Minister's office and it chooses to deal with only a few things.

I would strongly advise the government that there are members in the Liberal Party who would very much like to work with the government to advance ideas and solutions to enable Canadians, particularly those who are sick, to access the care they require.

Most Canadians would be fascinated to know that with respect to modernizing our health care system in Canada, it is not a binary question. It is not our system or the U.S. system. What about all those systems in Europe where for a lower price and less cost there are better health care outcomes? There are no, or small, waiting lines. There is better access to new technologies.

Canadians would be interested to know that we fall somewhere in the lower third of OECD countries in our ability to access modern technologies. Technologies and medicine are out there. Can Canadians get them? No. Why is the government not working with the provinces to look at best practices in Europe and bring them here to Canada?

Why do we not have a centre for best health care practices in our country? This is something for which I have been calling for a few years. The government could organize a centre for best health care practices, take the best ideas from around the world, bring them here to Canada and push those out.

One particular area that is important to my riding of Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, as it is to the country, is the health care of our Canadian Forces members and their families. They are suffering in silence, in part because of the situation in Afghanistan. We could set up a centre of excellence for health care for our Canadian Forces members and their families. In doing so, we would be more effective in addressing PTSD, preventing PTSD, dealing with the anxiety issues and psychological problems and other physical problems they have.

We look forward to having a strong debate in committee regarding Bill C-51.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today and participate in the debate on Bill C-51, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

At the outset, that I will be voting against the bill at second reading. I am taking this position for a number of reasons, including the view that it may open the door to direct-to-consumer advertising for pharmaceuticals, that it gives an inordinate discretion to the minister on a number of fronts and that it may be a thinly veiled attempt to bring natural health products under the rubric of drugs.

It is particularly the latter concern that I want to focus on in the limited time I have in the debate today.

No bill in this sitting of Parliament has generated as much public interest in my riding as Bill C-51. Both producers and consumers of natural health products have expressed serious misgivings about the bill. It is no wonder that Canadians are expressing a healthy dose of skepticism about the government's agenda in bringing the bill forward.

This is the fifth attempt in just a decade by successive Liberal and Conservative governments to overhaul the Food and Drugs Act. The Liberals made four of these attempts and each time they failed. Why? They failed because each time the community spoke up.

Producers and consumers both demanded more accountability from government and wanted much clearer answers with respect to the new regulatory authority that government was assigning to itself. This time some of the same misgivings persist. Will the bill maintain regulation that is distinct from that of pharmaceuticals? Is the enforcement appropriate, with checks and balances against abuse? Is the process free from the minister's arbitrary intervention? These concerns are legitimate and must be addressed by the government.

The NDP has always believed that natural health products are a fundamental element in disease prevention and treatment. They are an element with distinct characteristics that distinguish it from both food and drugs, a distinction that merits a separate regulatory framework in ensuring its safety and efficacy. This is the position that I continue to advocate as we scrutinize Bill C-51.

My constituents in Mountain have said loud and clear that the bill, as it stands now, is unacceptable. Significant and necessary changes cannot and will not be made before the second reading. Therefore, the bill will not have my vote or I believe the votes of any of my NDP colleagues at second reading. Furthermore, I cannot accept a bill that undermines Canadians access to safe, reliable natural health products and one that favours multinational corporate drug interests.

To be fair to the government, there is a misperception that Bill C-51 would require consumers to get a prescription to access natural health products. I have studied the bill closely and I do not believe that is the case. Bill C-51 would not affect prescribing requirements.

The public's concern about this aspect speaks volumes about the unease that this legislation is creating about the government's true intent with respect to natural health products and it speaks volumes about the need for the government to clarify its intentions so there is no room for doubt with respect to any of the sections that apply to natural health products.

Proper consultations may have been able to alleviate some of those concerns, but those consultations did not happen. That is why there is such a huge disconnect between the government's rhetoric on the purported intent of the bill and the community's understanding of what is really at stake.

At a cursory level, the provisions of the bill purport to enhance consumer and product safety protections, a goal which we all share. In fact, as hundreds of emails and letters from people in my riding of Hamilton Mountain made clear, they simply want to ensure and I quote “that natural health products are treated fairly”.

In fact, allow me to share with members of the House a lengthier quote from correspondence that I have received from one of my constituents, whose sentiment is shared by literally dozens of others. The constituent writes:

I am writing you to express my growing concern about the impact of Bill C-51.

This proposed new law has major ramifications for the natural health products I depend on. I am very worried about potential impact this bill could have on the future of natural health products. Bill C-51 restricts the choices Canadian people have when it comes to their health.

As my Member of Parliament, I need your help in ensuring that natural health products are treated fairly. What is needed is a legislative framework that treats natural health products as a third category for Health Canada. This is something promised by previous Ministers of Health but never delivered.

Please review Bill C-51 and fight to make sure natural health products are not eliminated as a viable consumer choice in Canada. Did you know that more than 70% of the Canadian population uses natural health products? This bill opposes the desires of most Canadians and restricts our freedom of choice.

Members will have noticed that the concerns expressed by these constituents are entirely reasonable. My constituents are simply asking that natural health products be treated fairly. Their concerns are measured, balanced and they deserve to be resolved, but the only way to have them resolved is through dialogue and meaningful consultations. However, here we are in the last few days of the session before the House rises for the summer and the government is trying to rush the bill through to a vote. Why not slow things down?

This chamber is supposed to deliberate on legislation that is brought here by the government. Deliberation suggests thoughtful debate, with give and take in shaping the final product. That means that we need to have enough time to hear the concerns of our constituents, reflect on them and give voice to them in the House. That is what representation is all about. Yet with the government's rushed timetable, I am one of the few MPs who will get an opportunity to represent my constituents here.

Thankfully, natural health product consumers in my riding are well informed and know that they can get in touch with me any time if they have concerns about what happens in the House of Commons. And they have. However, thousands of other Canadians share their concerns and their members of Parliament either cannot or will not represent them in this chamber. That is a bitter pill to swallow.

If the government is so certain that Bill C-51 is benign, why would it not allow all interested parties to participate in the careful scrutiny of this bill? The mere fact that the government is unwilling to engage in this kind of dialogue just serves to increase further the concerns in the community.

I have already said that not all provisions of the bill are flawed. It deals with a broad range of issues, aside from natural health products. In many respects, the government has moved a significant distance from the days of the Liberals. However, that does not change the fact that the bill still has many problems.

Greater consultation might have been able to resolve these problems and allay community fears, but because that input was not sought and because of the potentially dangerous ramifications and provisions of the bill, I now have no choice but to oppose the legislation as tabled. Yes, I am voting that way because of the concerns around natural health products. I am also doing it because I have serious concerns about advertising, adverse reactions and life cycle licensing. Above all, I am concerned that the bill, as a whole, is premised on the Conservatives' risk management approach to safety rather than the do no harm principle.

For all of those reasons, I will be voting against Bill C-51 in the upcoming vote. I am happy to do so on behalf of my constituents of Hamilton Mountain. Their concerns will be represented in the House. I just hope the members of the other parties will do the same so, together, we can go back to the drawing board.

The government has already signalled that it will need to introduce numerous amendments to fix the bill. In other words, it agrees that the current bill, as drafted, is flawed. Therefore, let us do the right thing. Let us vote it down at second reading, allow the health committee to do full public consultations and then introduce a new bill that addresses the concerns of hard-working Canadians. Our constituents deserve nothing less.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Wascana, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I have just a few remarks to address in this debate. They take the form of certain questions which I would be grateful if the Minister of Health would take the opportunity to address before this debate comes to an end.

Bill C-51 amends the Food and Drugs Act to modernize the regulatory system for foods and therapeutic products, such as contact lenses, breast implants, pharmaceuticals, and so forth. The bill seeks to improve the surveillance of benefits and risks of therapeutic products through their life cycle. It is intended to improve the compliance and enforcement measures by corporations to encourage them to report adverse reactions or potential health threats associated with market products. To this end, the bill proposes to give very substantial regulatory powers to the minister. That is the type, broadly, of legislation we are dealing with in Bill C-51.

We in the Liberal Party obviously are committed, as we always have been, to improving the health and safety of Canadians and to making sure that we have an appropriate legislative framework to that end. We obviously support measures which strengthen the regulatory process to ensure that Canadians are able to have access to the safest and most effective food and therapeutic products.

However, members will have noticed as this debate has gone on that a number of problems have been brought to the attention of the House which need to be addressed. I would like to highlight a couple of those and ask the government for its considered response.

I am sure that all members of Parliament have received letters from a variety of people across the country with respect to the professional services of naturopathic doctors. The statement has been made by those who defend this legislation that the bill actually has nothing to do with that broad category of activity.

I would like to read briefly into the record one of these letters that I have received from a constituent in Regina. I would ask the minister or the parliamentary secretary to be kind enough to provide responses to the questions that this individual has raised. I will read portions of the letter as follows:

I am writing to you as one of your constituents to express my concerns about Bill C-51 and the impact it will have on the ability of my naturopathic doctor (ND) to treat my health concerns safely and effectively....

As an informed patient I have chosen to be treated by a naturopathic doctor utilizing natural therapies and substances to ensure optimal health. I would like some assurances that my choice to see a naturopathic doctor...will not be negatively impacted by Bill C-51.

I have the following questions:

1. Will Bill C-51 exclude my ND [naturopathic doctor] from having access to all the products that he/she needs to treat all my health concerns?

2. Will Bill C-51 result in fewer natural health products being available in the Canadian marketplace?

3. Will inspectors have the ability to enter premises under the search and seizure provisions without a warrant or a judge's approval?

That is the end of the bulk of the letter. I am sure the tone of that letter is familiar to many members in the House who would have received similar letters. It is important for the government to put on the record the official response to those concerns so that Canadians who have those kinds of concerns can be reassured about the impact of this legislation.

Finally, I have a suggestion to offer to the Minister of Health. It has been said in parliamentary circles in the last several days that when this bill gets to the committee stage, the government intends to bring forward what are considered to be significant amendments. We do not know if that is in fact the case, but the rumour that seems to be circulating in the Standing Committee on Health is that when Bill C-51 arrives in the committee officially, there will be significant amendments to the bill brought forward by the government itself.

That presents a problem for the House. We are now coming near the end, I suspect, of the debate at second reading and very shortly we will be called upon to vote on approval in principle of this legislation before it goes to the Standing Committee on Health for detailed consideration clause by clause. I would suggest that before the House is asked to vote at second reading on approval in principle of the bill, the House needs to know what amendments the minister has in mind. Are there amendments that are likely to be forthcoming at the committee stage? Are they significant amendments as they have been portrayed? If they are significant amendments, they may well affect the principle of the bill.

Second reading, as we all know, is approval in principle. Once we vote on approval in principle at second reading, a lot of water has gone under the bridge. It is important for the House to know exactly on what it is voting.

How can the House approve in principle Bill C-51 now if we are not told specifically what that principle is? Will that principle change? Are these amendments that the minister proposes to introduce in the committee so fundamental that they might take this bill in a new or different direction that is not contemplated by the scheme of the bill that is presently before the House?

There are two alternatives. First, before this debate comes to an end, it would be very helpful if the Minister of Health or the parliamentary secretary or someone on behalf of the government would simply inform the House now of the type of amendments the government may have in mind when the bill gets to the committee stage. They have been portrayed generally as significant, but we have not yet been told the detail.

If we are to vote on approval in principle of this bill which at a later stage is going to be amended, we are being asked now to buy a pig in a poke. I would simply ask the parliamentary secretary or the minister to tell us what the amendments are so we can make a considered judgment about Bill C-51 when we are asked to vote on it in principle at second reading.

The other alternative is if the government is not in a position to publish its amendments now or to inform the House about what those amendments might be eventually, the government could choose to simply suspend the debate at second reading. Instead of forcing the House now to vote in principle on something that may change at a subsequent date, the government could change its tactic and adopt the procedure that is set out in Standing Order 73(1), which is to send Bill C-51 to the Standing Committee on Health before the vote at second reading.

If that course of action were adopted, it would then be possible for members of Parliament to consider all dimensions of what is contained in Bill C-51, both the substance of the bill as it now exists and any proposed amendments the government might have in mind, without first having to vote on a principle, the substance of which we are not sure because it might change when it gets to the committee.

Either give us the amendments now so that we can know what the government has in mind or send the bill to committee before second reading so that members of Parliament will have more scope to change the bill if the principles contained in the amendments the government has in mind are not consistent with what the House would prefer.

Those are the points, briefly, that I wish to make on Bill C-51. They are offered in a spirit of trying to be constructive in this debate and bringing forward the concerns that people in my constituency, at least some of them, have expressed. I would ask the government if not now then at some other time in the debate to make an effort to respond to those points in the constructive spirit in which they are offered.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-51, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I stand today in opposition to Bill C-51 because it fails to address the fundamental health concerns of Canadians.

I have received overwhelming amounts of correspondence from constituents, including health practitioners, who are deeply opposed to the dangerous loopholes and ministerial power grab, which will impact the production and availability of about 60% of the natural health products, which most Canadians use to stay healthier.

As currently drafted, Bill C-51 would limit access to many health products and allow the fast-tracking of new drugs that have not been proven safe. Bill C-51 blends in with the SPP agenda, which is about harmonizing regulations across the board with the United States, resulting in lower standards. For example, the drugs Vioxx and Avandia were accelerated irresponsibly into the American market, causing the deaths of thousands.

These examples show the dangerous effects of fast-tracking drug approvals. I call on all Canadians to join us in this fight against Bill C-51, to maintain the highest standards of health, safety and accessibility.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

Order. I regret that I must interrupt the hon. member for Burnaby—Douglas. When we return to the study of Bill C-51, there will be eight minutes left.

We will now have statements by members under Standing Order 31. The hon. member for Lethbridge has the floor.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to at least begin to address the issue of Bill C-51, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act.

There are very important issues raised in this legislation. It is not the first time a government in Canada in recent years has tried to change this legislation. In fact, this is about the fifth time in recent years and there has never been great success in overhauling this legislation.

It appears that the current government is facing the same kinds of problems. We now hear that even the Conservatives are proposing major amendments to their own legislation given the public outcry about it.

There are many serious problems with this legislation, things like the provision for direct to consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals. We have seen that this bill may open that door. We also know the American experience that many of us have some exposure to. We are concerned that that might increase costs to consumers. How will this affect the appropriate proscribing of drugs in Canada and how will it really contribute to the skyrocketing cost of drugs in Canada in our medical system?

There is also concern about progressive licensing and changes to the drug approval process. We have seen this aspect of our drug safety measures chipped away at over the years. In fact, the disappearance almost 10 years ago of the only drug lab that did the necessary kinds of testing, and post-market testing and surveillance is important to any drug and therapeutic product regime. That is another problem.

While we are concerned in this corner that the changes in this legislation may open the door to the kind of harmonization that is taking place under the security and prosperity partnership agenda, we are also concerned that there is too much ministerial discretion and too much regulatory discretion provided for in this legislation. We do not see that as appropriate either.

Like most members, I have heard from many--

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise as a member of the Standing Committee on Health, and also as a consumer, to speak to Bill C-51.

The Bloc Québécois has been saying for a long time that there is a lack of surveillance over foods from countries other than Canada. We ask that importers of such products meet standards similar to the ones we have here for products manufactured in Quebec and Canada. The Bloc Québécois also wonders whether these importers should not also be subject to a number of criteria to ensure that public health is not threatened by products manufactured elsewhere.

Of course, Bill C-51 would introduce innovations such as a tracing system, a register of adverse effects especially for drugs, a recall management system, a new measure to eliminate damaging effects on public health. However, the bill also contains slightly vaguer measures that, according to the bill, would be clarified by regulations.

It is because of this vagueness that we must meet in committee with the Minister of Health, in order to find out why the bill leaves so much room for regulations. It is also important that the committee hear experts from various associations and even members of the public. Once the committee has done its work on Bill C-51, we expect the minister to be extremely open to amendments that will improve the bill.

At this point, I would like to mention a few vague provisions that will require clarification when the bill is studied in greater detail in committee. We know that Bill C-51 makes changes regarding drug advertising. Subclause 15.1(2) of the bill prohibits advertising of prescription therapeutic products. I quote:

No person shall advertise a prescription therapeutic product to a person other than a practitioner unless they are authorized by the regulations to do so.

Here, once again, the bill mentions regulations yet to come.

Nonetheless, this regulation would allow prescription drugs to be advertised. It is possible to do so under paragraph 30(1)(h).

The Governor in Council may make regulations for carrying the purposes and provisions of this Act into effect, including regulations... respecting: (i) the labelling, packaging or advertising—or the offering or exposing for sale—of foods, therapeutic products or cosmetics.

Current legislation at least bans the advertising of prescription drugs. However, as we know, it is possible to get around the legislation. There are two choices for advertising drugs: the product can be named but not described and the ad can show people enjoying themselves living a better life, or the problem can be described but not the treatment and people can be told to consult their physician.

We know that the bill appears to be going in precisely the same direction. Consumer associations in Quebec and Canada have asked the government a number of times to plug this loophole.

Perhaps this should be cleared up in committee.

There is also the marketing and approval of drugs. Currently Health Canada is assessing the possibility of setting up a new type of drug licensing called progressive licensing. Bill C-51 includes some of the concepts involved in this progressive licensing approach. It would allow information to be collected and analyzed on an ongoing basis after the drug is marketed. It is only after the drug is marketed that a greater number of people will be exposed to it and that other important data on the drug could be established.

It is good to look at the entire life cycle of a drug to see whether it works. Quite often when clinical trials are done, the number of guinea pigs, as they could be called, is relatively limited, which sometimes prevents us from seeing in detail the possible interaction a drug may have with other drugs the patient is already taking. What is more, as Professor Carleton from British Columbia told us in committee, genetics can also come into play when assessing drugs.

However, considering this approach, we need to ask questions. Will the process be rushed? Will drugs end up on the market before they have been carefully examined? Another question we should ask is whether drugs will be put on the market before they are fully ready to be put on store shelves and in pharmacies.

Subclause 18.7(1) of the bill seems to open the door to that possibility. It states:

Subject to the regulations, the Minister may, on application, issue a market authorization to a person in respect of a therapeutic product other than a designated therapeutic product if the Minister is of the opinion that the person has established that the benefits that are associated with the therapeutic product outweigh the risks.

(2) The market authorization is deemed to be subject to the terms and conditions that are prescribed from time to time.

(3) The Minister may issue the market authorization subject to the additional terms and conditions that he or she considers appropriate.

We would like to speak to the minister to find out, for example, what are the criteria he will use to evaluate and make that decision in accordance with proposed subclause 18.7.

The bill also states that the minister will establish a register where information on adverse effects will be available. Subclause 20.8 of the bill says:

The Minister is to establish and maintain a publicly accessible register in which is to be kept the prescribed information about therapeutic products.

However, we also read in the bill that the information in the register will come only from health care institutions. No register will be set up to gather complaints from consumers or patient associations, for example. Only health care institutions will be able to contribute. What is the reason for this? It would be interesting to hear the minister's response to this as well.

This register raises another question. We currently have the MedEffect register. What will happen to it? Does this mean that this register is ineffective? Once again, it would be interesting to come back to these questions in committee.

The bill also talks about inspectors. This is important. Currently, there are many inspectors who work within the Quebec Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Agri-Food performing the same duties as this bill proposes. These people play an important role in food inspection. We wonder how Bill C-51 would affect these people and if the federal government would be interfering in Quebec's jurisdiction with this bill.

There is also the question of natural health, which—

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-51. This bill has caused great concern among my constituents and other Canadians. Many of them are seniors and ailing citizens.

For several months I have been receiving letter after letter from my constituents regarding their concerns about this bill. They are ordinary Canadians who are worried that they will not be able to get the natural health products that they have been using successfully for years. They are worried that Health Canada will be given police state powers. I have had the opportunity to meet with many of them as well. The bill is alarming people who are not political. A constituent of mine, Johan Ghazali, wrote:

While I don't also get involved in politics, I am concerned about a new Bill that will affect many Canadians including myself. The Bill in question is Bill C-51 that is being ramped through Parliament without much debate.

On the surface, C-51 appears to be about protecting the public health, but has many profound and perturbing implications.

Yesterday we learned in a regular government member's speech that this bill is incomplete. The government will be proposing major amendments to the bill. This proves that the concerns of my constituents are justified.

I am greatly concerned about the issues raised by my constituents. I am committed to improving the safety and health of Canadians. I support measures which will strengthen the regulatory process to ensure that Canadians are able to access the safest and most effective therapeutic products.

I firmly believe that Canadians have a fundamental right to have access and choice in treatment options regarding their health. Time after time, the government's policy has been to bring the message from Ottawa to Canadians. The Conservatives are tight-lipped about the information, never saying anything but the Prime Minister's talking points.

That is not my way of doing things. That is not what my constituents want me to do. My constituents elected me to bring their message to Ottawa. That is what I am doing and it is what I will keep doing.

We should ensure that this legislation does not further restrict the use, sale and distribution of safe natural health products. We need to balance the controls with the danger. My constituents are telling me that the drugs on the market are not a great risk to the health of Canadians.

One of my constituents, Ms. Emoke Szijarto, wrote:

--I have been using “natural remedies” since my childhood instead of taking harmful chemicals. My father who is a doctor has prescribed us natural remedies when we were sick and he is a great advocate of using natural things in healing. I learnt from him, and wish to follow it.

Many more of my constituents use natural health products to improve their well-being, as do many other Canadians. Last Friday I met with a couple in their seventies, Adella and Richard Matthew, who are in good health. They say their vitality comes from the use of these products for the past 30 years, but they are worried. They are worried that they will not be able to get those products anymore. They are worried that they will need prescriptions which would involve a doctor's appointment which is hard to get. They are worried that they will be punished for recommending products to their friends. They are not alone.

My constituents Randy and Terri Pope wrote that this bill:

—goes against everything that the average Canadian citizen believes in, such as freedom of choice and freedom of speech. My mother and father were born and raised in this great Country, and I'm sure my mother would roll over in her grave in disgust if she heard of this outrageous proposal. How dare this Government try to control how I decide to care for my health.

There are many legitimate reasons to use these products. Some of my constituents want to lower the costs of their medication. Others want to avoid unpleasant side effects. Some believe that alternative therapies are simply more effective.

Another one of my constituents wrote:

I am a 31 year old male suffering from sever Sudden Onset Arthritis. At it's worst this disease has totally handicapped my mobility. Not satisfied with the solutions offered to me by mainstream North American medication I turned to the recently provincially acknowledged Traditional Chinese Medicine profession and have been receiving treatment...for the past two years. The success of the treatments has been phenomenal in that I am now mobile again....The TCM treatments I have been involved with have none where as the Mainstream solution had many side effects that I was unwilling to live with.

I support the right to meet these needs with natural drug products.

There is a great concern that the bill will lump natural health products into the same regulatory regime as drugs and be subject to a higher burden of regulation. It would move them and several others into the same heading and not differentiate between drugs and natural health products.

I support the rights of consumers to fair and accurate product information. The claims about health benefits made on the packages and in the marketing of these products must be truthful and honest. They must not mislead Canadians. I support efforts to improve enforcement of these principles.

The government says that it has no intention to permit direct-to-consumer advertising, yet the bill leaves a loophole that could allow pharmaceutical companies to directly advertise drugs to consumers through television, radio and print, as they do in the neighbouring United States of America. This could drive up the health care costs and influence which drugs people take. It would take advertising out of the hands of Parliament. That is a serious concern.

Finally, my constituents are concerned that tighter regulations would benefit drug companies. Natural health products are one of the few competitors to that large, well-financed industry. Undermining them would benefit their bottom line.

My constituent, W.R. Blair, is very concerned about these changes. He wrote:

The language of the Bill is a true reflection of slippery and slimy corporate tactics which should be viewed as criminal conspiracy in my view....

This dirty stinking backroom deal furthers my belief that corporations have bought and paid for legislative compliance...

The government needs to assure Canadians that big pharma is not the driving force behind the bill.

There is work to be done on the existing act. Recent incidents of unsafe food, health and consumer products have underscored the need to modernize the Food and Drugs Act. It was introduced back in the 1950s. I support modernizing the regulatory system. We need to improve the surveillance of these products throughout their life cycle.

Yesterday we learned that the government would propose three major amendments in committee to address these serious concerns. To the best of my knowledge, the Conservatives intend to separate natural health products into their own legislative category, make it clear that the regulation of natural health products is separate, clarify the powers of inspectors and set up an advisory committee.

These are significant amendments, which will dramatically change the treatment of natural health products. This means Health Canada does not have the confidence of any of the government members.

The government is proposing major changes that are outlined in nothing but a speech. It reminds me of the documentation-free unveiling of its defence strategy all over again.

It is my understanding that some of the Conservative MPs wrote a letter to the health committee chair outlining the changes. Yet no members from my party have it. This is shocking. All members were elected to represent the interest of their constituents in Parliament. Does the government think some MPs are more equal than others? That is no way to govern in a minority Parliament situation.

How am I supposed to comment on these improvements when they have not even been drafted yet? We should be debating the real bill. I agree with the member for Mississauga South. If the government is serious, the bill can be withdrawn now, amendments can made and re-submitted to the House so Canadians can have the real bill and we can all have a real debate. I welcome the direction of these amendments and look forward to studying them when they are finished.

I see some of the members on the Conservative bench laughing about this. In fact, it is a laughing stock. The Minister of Health has written a letter to the health committee and it is not available to all 308 members in the House who have equal representation. It is very important from that perspective.

Again, I still welcome the direction of these amendments and look forward to studying them when they are finished, or are made public.

Judy LeBeau, one of my constituents, would welcome them as well. She writes:

The debate surrounding C-51 is an excellent opportunity for the Government to make good on previous commitments to create a third category for natural health products, which are low risk and have demonstrated benefits for the health and wellbeing of Canadians.

From the beginning, the government has failed to reach out to the grassroots. It has been clear for months that ordinary Canadians care about the bill. Yet the government ignored their concerns and refused to have a dialogue with regular people. When the government finally put out answers their questions, it did not make it easy to access that information. Even the elderly couple I met with last week could not find it. Even if people find it, these major amendments, which the minister will propose to the committee, will change the intent of the bill and change all the questions and answers on that website. This failure has worsened confusion in the public and scared ailing and wonderful Canadians.

I support the right of my constituents to have choice in health treatments. Part of that choice is having access to honest and safe natural products.

The House resumed from June 9 consideration of the motion that Bill C-51, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Agriculture and Agri-Food

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, today the ordinary proceedings of the House were interrupted during motions in which members have an opportunity to move what is called a concurrence motion in a committee report, and indeed, the member for Brant did move concurrence in the sixth report of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food.

I am on duty today. I had come here prepared to debate Bill C-51 on the naturopathic health products, which is a bill that I have a lot of problems with and I hope to get an opportunity debate it later today.

However, as the member on duty, one of my responsibilities is to participate in debate if I have something to offer. I want to suggest to members and just offer to them that the first issue I ever dealt with as a parliamentarian was when I became a member of the health committee back in 1994 and tobacco labelling was the study we were dealing with. Following that, there was a significant project on aboriginal issues, not only aboriginal health but other aboriginal activities, and of course this whole issue of contraband came up. So, these issues about tobacco cessation, about the implications to the community, et cetera, have been with us for 15 years, as far as I can see.

The motion, in fact, is that the committee considered an exit strategy for tobacco producers and agreed to report the following, and what it reported was that the committee calls on the federal government to immediately implement an exit strategy for tobacco producers consistent with the most recent proposal they have submitted. This came from its 29th meeting, which was held in May.

The testimony actually came back from, I understand, as far back as November 2006. It does not surprise me because this continues to be a challenge not only for the federal government but the provincial government, municipalities, the policing authorities, and the health authorities. It permeates virtually every jurisdiction and probably every aspect of Canadian society. So, it is a pretty important issue.

I was a little distracted by the argument that the motion the committee had passed and had reported to the House was being criticized because it was not comprehensive.

As I said earlier in a question, that for every complex problem there is a simple solution, and it is wrong. If we have a complex problem, we do have to have a comprehensive strategy. Quite frankly, it may involve social as well as economic solutions. Sometimes we have factors which influence the things that are going on within our communities, within our agriculture community, our business, no matter what it is, urban, rural or whatever. There are a blend of social and economic factors involved here. It depends on what one's value system is.

The motion here happens to be a representation on behalf of the tobacco producers. The motion on behalf of the tobacco producers is one that we hope the government understands that without a proper exit strategy for tobacco producers, there could be very significant implications, not only to them but to their communities, municipalities, the province, et cetera, and I will get into that a little bit.

The concurrence motion in itself is very clear, and that is what we are debating, and I think it is important. It is also relevant that the members would raise that notwithstanding what the producers want, we have to balance that with the other needs, and that is what government is all about. It is about making decisions, and often they are tough decisions. The members know we have had a number of difficulties.

On Friday, a private member's bill was debated in this place which had to do with providing tax credits to recent graduates who could go into certain designated regions of the country.

From a value standpoint, where there is a stress in terms of regional economic development, for example, a financial condition or economic health, we have on many occasions looked to some sort of assistance, whether it be subsidies, grants, or other inducements to facilitate good things to happen. For example, a tax credit would be given to a graduate to allow him or her to go to a community where there was a good job and where they could develop their skills because the employer perhaps could not compete with the salaries of a large urban centre.

If the proper skill sets are not attracted to some of the communities that are facing a financial crisis or economic duress, those businesses will go down and that will have a ripple effect throughout the community.

Chances are communities are going to experience things like population decline or higher unemployment. People will start losing their investments because the community will no longer be vibrant and it will not be able to meet all the needs of today's families.

There is a ripple effect to everything we do. It is almost like a Newton's law in government. For every action there could very well be an equal or opposite reaction. It could be much like the children's game of pick up sticks. Not often, but periodically, if we touch something we move everything and everything in between. We have to take this into account.

In listening to the debate on this issue, there seems to be one position suggesting that all we need is an exit strategy for tobacco producers and the problem will be solved. That is not the case.

The motion before us was passed by the agriculture and agri-food committee. The consensus of the committee was that it was important to bring the motion to the House to remind the government of this particular crisis. It is a regional crisis and it has to do with the kinds of things that we would talk about when we talk about regional economic development.

It is important that we respond and that we be sensitive to the ebbs and flows when we consider what is happening nationally. Resource rich provinces are doing extremely well in the Canadian economy, whereas those provinces with a large manufacturing sector are hurting terribly. This means that Newfoundland has become a have province and Ontario is getting close to being a have not province. This is a very significant change.

This means that a lot of people are moving to the oil producing provinces like Saskatchewan, Alberta and Newfoundland, which are doing extremely well. Their economies are vibrant. If we take that on a smaller scale and look at the communities with tobacco industries, we will find that there is a crisis there. Tobacco producers are feeling the impact. There is not enough work and they are going to have to get out of the business.

I understand the average age of a tobacco producer right now is something like 58 years, which is fairly deep into one's vibrant working career. It may be difficult for these individuals to find other gainful employment in their community simply because of the nature of the work.

I also understand that the average debt load of tobacco producers is somewhere around $400,000. When we consider this and the unlikelihood of producers getting another job, it means they may lose their farm. Even worse, they may lose their home. That is the reality of the situation. A lot of investment was made not only in the basic farm equipment but within the industry specific requirements of manufacturers in terms of the burner equipment.

This is a real crisis situation. I do not believe the committee would have reported it to the House nor would it have been brought forward for debate today for up to three hours if it did not affect people in a number of regions across Canada. To Quebec, this is certainly an important issue as it is in Ontario.

As things move on, I have a feeling that there should be a comprehensive strategy. Concurrence motions are not binding on the government. They are to indicate the mood of the House and a sense of the importance of the issue. Members will have a chance to vote on this motion.

It will tell the stakeholders that the standing committee reported on it. It will tell stakeholders that their intervention was heard, discussed in Parliament, and there was a position taken by one party that was different from another. It tells them where we are on this thing. It gives the government an opportunity to respond. The government may very well respond and maybe we will look to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food to make some commentary on the crisis we face.

An example that has been debated a bit here and an area that I spend a fair bit of time on not only on the health committee but on the finance committee is the issue of contraband, tobacco smuggling and its implications. It is a serious problem and has been going on for a very long period of time. I remember debating the price elasticity and whether, by increasing the price of cigarettes, we could move the problem away. All that would do is cause tobacco to be sold more cheaply through the contraband distribution channels. It would get out there.

I remember visiting the Micmac reserve. It has a beautiful recreation and social building. Committee members had a tour of that when we were travelling on aboriginal health issues. I was really surprised to go downstairs and see a big lineup of persons in front of someone with a cash box in an enormous room in the basement that was filled with cartons of tobacco in large cardboard boxes.

The people were there to buy big boxes of cigarettes for distribution. It was pretty clear that this was contraband material. This is probably a way of life, but it is causing difficulty in getting a resolution on some of the issues that the agriculture and agri-food committee have raised.

I hear members say, “We don't totally disagree. In fact, what we will say is that the motion is kind of silly because it only deals with part of the problem”. That motion was passed by a standing committee and brought to the House. At least the consensus of the committee thought it was important enough to report to the House. As a consequence, that is why we are here.

This is an important aspect, notwithstanding as I had indicated earlier, that the scheduled business of the day was to continue debate on Bill C-51, the naturopathic health products bill. The surprising revelation yesterday, as a matter of fact, was that the health minister has written to the chair of the health committee to outline seven substantive amendments to that bill even though we are in the middle of second reading. I do not know how that will go. I have a feeling that is a problem to be dealt with.

In the health committee meetings, when we dealt with the plain packaging of tobacco and putting warning labels on the tobacco products, one of the witnesses was a provincial minister who came before the committee on behalf of his community, I believe it was the area of Smiths Falls. This shows an example of a ripple effect of doing something to change or deal with a health objective and there being a consequence that we were not aware of.

This consequence was that in his community there was a major print shop that provided a significant number of jobs in the community. If the recommendations of Health Canada and the Standing Committee on Health were adopted, the printing on tobacco packages would have to be done by a very specialized type of printing called rotogravure, which is a very high end printing process. It requires much different machinery than one would typically be aware of because it has to produce in certain colours and all the range for all of these cigarette packages, et cetera.

That former provincial minister in Ontario came to fight on behalf of his community. He said he did not really have a problem with the tobacco requirements, but he did not want the requirement for specialized printing because it would have negative consequences for his community.

We can see, then, that we have to look at the producers. I am not so sure that I am very concerned about what the manufacturers are concerned about. Most of the manufacturers are multinational conglomerates that are in broad-based businesses. I think it would be very difficult to see the implications for them if a region of farmers had to convert their products or get out of the business. They are going to find it somewhere. There is always someone. For that matter, it could be China.

There are other things that I have not heard yet. We were discussing the tobacco producing side and the alternative crops that could come in. That was also a very important part.

I know that at the time canola was one of the big ones that was coming forward, because in fact it takes less acreage to produce canola than it does a comparable product. That is one of which I am aware. I am not sure on the science and how things have moved since then, but I know that canola is a very important agricultural crop for Canada. It has a wide variety of uses.

As the previous speaker said, I think the members have at least a consensus that this is a complex problem. I think they believe that we have to keep our eye on the implications, but not only for the producers, who may have significant debt and who may be of an age where they may not be able to find alternative employment if they lose their farms. We also have to look at the implications for the rest of the community and the municipality.

What is the municipal impact? What is the economic impact if we lose farms and workers? What are the conditions there? What are the criteria? How do we determine whether there is a significant economic impact? How do we determine whether the principles of regional economic development should kick in? How do we determine what the filter is through which we can determine who can get assistance? What are the criteria for application?

How do we make sure that all of the stakeholders have a part to play, not just the federal government and not just the provincial government, but the municipalities as well? They have a vested interest in seeing a good outcome.

I think that is what this debate is about. I think that is the message the government should get, notwithstanding that the motion in itself only deals with the producers. That is why this concurrence motion and debate for a little under three hours are so important. We have these often. We have these debates on very important issues. They are not important to every riding across the country, and we know that, but there are parallels.

I do not have tobacco producers in my riding. I live in the suburban area of Mississauga, but when I come here, I learn from my committee work, from debate on bills and from my exposure to the debate in the House when the motion comes up. I then see the parallels. I see that these are problems that we need to approach in a consistent fashion, so that all of the stakeholders, no matter what their positions are, will fully understand and accept the wisdom of parliamentarians and how to approach a matter for which it is probably in the best interests of all Canadians to find an appropriate resolution.

Food and Drugs Act

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

When we next return to the study of Bill C-51, there will be eight minutes left for the hon. member for Parkdale—High Park.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-51. My constituents have deluged my office with emails, letters and campaign materials. The community has huge concerns about the bill. It is a key bill for the future of the health of Canadians. Therefore, it needs careful deliberation and study.

While the bill has been introduced by the government with the goal of improving the health and well-being of Canadians, there are serious concerns that it will have the opposite effect. We want the products and the medications we use to do no harm. That has not been the case in the past, where everything from children's toys to food to pharmaceutical products have done great harm to Canadians because of the lack of government vigilance and regulation.

We want our products to be safe and effective, but many people use natural health products. They are very concerned about the legislation. They are concerned that somehow by using the term therapeutic in Bill C-51, natural products and the practice of natural medicine will be lumped in with the pharmaceutical products to which people want to exercise choice to choose an alternative.

We have heard in the House before that in previous hearings in the 1990s, the Standing Committee on Health recommended a separate special definition and separate regulations for dealing with natural products. To me, that makes very good sense, but that is not what is contemplated with this legislation.

I believe the people who have raised this alarm across the country have absolute validity in raising their concerns. They do not want to use natural products that are not good for them, but they understand natural health products are not the same as pharmaceutical products. Chemical compounds are required to have very rigorous testing before they are allowed on the market, and even then not with always universal success.

I want to read a couple of the letters I have received. They have been send by very many eloquent, well-informed people who are very concerned about the legislation. I will only read a couple of letters.

The first one is from a woman in my riding. She is a community leader and works in health care. She says:

“I'm writing to express my concerns about Bill C-51 and the impact it will have on the ability of my naturopathic doctor to treat my health concerns safely and effectively. As an informed patient, I have chosen to be treated by a naturopathic doctor utilizing natural therapies and substances to ensure optimal health. I'd like some assurances that my choice to see a naturopathic doctor will not be negatively affected by Bill C-51.

I have the following questions: Will Bill C-51 exclude my naturopathic doctor from having access to all the products that they need to treat all my health concerns? Will Bill C-51 result in fewer natural health products being available in the Canadian marketplace? Will inspectors have the ability to enter premises under the search and seizure provisions without a warrant or a judge's approval?

I support the need for regulation that ensures that the products recommended by my naturopathic doctor are safe and effective, but I do not support legislation that treats natural health products in the same manner as pharmaceutical products.

Now would be an excellent time for the government to implement a third strategy for natural health products as was recommended by the Standing Committee on Health in 1998”.

I have one other letter. This is from a person who signs it F.P. Jr. It says:

“I'm writing to express my disapproval and disagreement with Bill C-51. It's something to make every democratic person's blood run cold. The bill proposes significant changes to the current Food and Drugs Act that will have wide-ranging negative implications for Canadians.

I'm a paraplegic and with what Bill C-51 entails it would totally eradicate my essential needs of natural products due to my debilitating condition.

Further on it states, “I intensely disagree with Bill C-51 and its aim to remove parliamentary decision making and oversight from national legislation. Bill C-51 is intended to replace democratic representative government with unelected closed door decision making which will bind all citizens”.

There is real concern about the wording which would lump natural products and all kinds of alternative health remedies in with pharmaceutical drugs. There is also concern about the process that would take place for the approval of these remedies. There are estimates that up to 70% of natural health products would fail to meet the more stringent testing requirements that are in place for pharmaceuticals.

One writer stated, “There is concern that Health Canada inspectors would create an equivalent of a police state in terms of their powers to search private property for illegal natural health products. It makes me want to lock up the vitamin C I take in the morning. It is very troubling for people who believe that this is the best thing for their health”.

There is also concern that Bill C-51 describes a practitioner as someone who is authorized under the law of a province to prescribe or dispense prescription therapeutic drugs. Since naturopathic doctors do not have prescribing rights, they would be prevented from making recommendations to their patients.

These are some of the major concerns I have been contacted about. It seems that if there were a third category created and if there were regulations for these natural products, that would go some way to alleviating the concerns that people have. However, these are not the only concerns about this bill.

Certainly there is concern about direct to consumer advertising. Under the current law there is a very clearcut, straightforward ban on advertising for health products and pharmaceuticals. This bill would allow that ban to be bypassed at the cabinet table. That the cabinet could be subject to phenomenal pressure by lobbyists from the pharmaceutical industry, I believe, is not in the best interests of Canadians. Therefore, I am also very concerned about the weakening of the ban on advertising. Already there are loopholes in the ban and companies are advertising. We see tongue in cheek, cheeky ads on television, where it is hide and seek about the product that is being advertised. This is a loophole and, in fact, that loophole should be closed, not opened up, which it well could be by this legislation.

There is concern about the role of the pharmaceutical industry in influencing this legislation. There are many people who choose natural products because they have a mistrust of the role of the pharmaceutical industry, sometimes justified. We have seen cases such as Vioxx and others that have created terrible problems for people. There are some perhaps that are not justified, where the pharmaceuticals that are available to us have been of great assistance to people. What is of concern is the power the pharmaceutical industry has in terms of influencing legislators in terms of public policy.

As the industry critic for my party, I was very concerned about the proposed changes to the drug patent laws that will allow the pharmaceutical industry to continue to evergreen or extend the patent protection for certain drugs and to deny generic drug manufacturers the opportunity to offer their products in the marketplace. There will be a huge cost to the public. This will cost public health plans, private health plans and individuals hundreds of millions of dollars. It is a huge change. The proposed changes were put out without prior notification, without consultation, except to the pharmaceutical industry. There are real concerns about what this continued evergreening and continued patent protection will mean.

There are real concerns about the role of the pharmaceutical industry. There are many people who choose another path, that of naturopathic medicine and naturopathic doctors. We need to reassure them that they will be able to continue to use the products that they believe are assisting with their health and that they know are essential to their well-being.

I just want to say with all the clarity I can that I oppose Bill C-51 as it now stands. Not only could it open the door to direct consumer advertising, with which I strongly disagree, but it gives too much discretion to the minister. It is a thinly veiled attempt to bring in natural health products under the rubric of pharmaceuticals.

Natural health products are a vital component to our health care system. They should be a separate category with separate regulations. We should be operating not on a risk management approach but on a do no harm approach. This bill does not achieve that.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, a document on the Health Canada website talks about Bill C-51 and natural health products. There are 42 questions and each one of them basically pooh-poohs all the concerns raised by Canadians.

Now the member has laid out that significant amendments have been proposed. It means this document is not worth the paper on which it is written. It means Health Canada does not have the confidence of that member or any other member across the way. It also means the bill should be withdrawn now, amendments made and re-submitted to the House so Canadians can have a bill with which they can work. To send it to committee without these amendments will complicate the process.

Why will the bill not be withdrawn now?

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is fair to say that Bill C-51 has attracted a fair bit of attention. We have been debating it again today.

Bill C-51 is an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act and to make consequential amendments to other acts. Needless to say, the Food and Drugs Act definitely needs updating. It is an old act. It goes back to about 1934. It has had a few tweaks along the way, but certainly it is time for some updates to the Food and Drugs Act.

There are some good provisions in the bill, that is for sure, including life cycle monitoring of pharmaceutical drugs and mandatory reporting of adverse events. These are very positive things that need to be done because there are serious concerns about these products.

The public response overwhelmingly on the negative side has been over concerns about what will happen to the natural health products industry under the regulations.

In illustrating some of those concerns, I wish to make reference to a letter that I received recently from a number of very distinguished and concerned scientists, which illustrates the concerns that are out there. I received this letter on May 4. It is a copy of a letter to the minister and states:

We, the undersigned, are physicians, scientists and practitioners of international origin with considerable experience in the use of natural health products. We are gathered in Vancouver at the Fairmont Hotel to attend the 37th Annual International Conference on Orthomolecular Medicine...

We are most concerned that the Bill will lead to loss of access to valuable food supplements and other nutritional products for our patients and for many others, who have often found such products to be essential in maintaining their health.

Another point they make is this:

Nutritional products are qualitatively different from pharmaceutical products and carry an undetectably small risk of harm....

They provide a reference from the journals about that. They continue:

There are therefore no grounds to impose on them the same risk-benefit analysis structure that is proposed for all therapeutic products under this bill.

The majority of organizations and commercial bodies operating in the natural product field are run by individuals or are small businesses. The regulatory hurdles proposed will be too high for many of them to achieve, and the penalties proposed for infringements of this bill are grossly disproportionate and unnecessarily severe.

They go on to state:

We are also concerned at the potential impact on the regulatory climate in our own countries, given the international trend to harmonization.

We encourage your department to open dialogue with our Canadian colleagues in the hope we can find a workable solution.

This letter is signed by scientists from around the world. They are from the Netherlands, Japan, the United States, Finland and Norway. There is a PhD neurochemist from the U.S.A. Others are from Switzerland, Spain, Mexico, and other countries. There is Professor Harold Foster, PhD, from Victoria.

I use this only by way of illustration. This discussion we are having in Canada about Bill C-51 to amend the Food and Drugs Act is being noticed by health care practitioners from other countries. They are concerned about the impact it will have on regulations in their own countries.

One of the points they raised at the end is that they encourage the department to “open dialogue with our Canadian colleagues in the hope we can find a workable solution”.

I know that since the bill has been introduced most of my colleagues here in the House have had a fair bit of representation from concerned citizens. I am sure that most members have heard from constituents. At the latest count in my office, I have had 380 responses raising concerns about the bill. I am sure that others have had dozens if not hundreds of representations and I know there has been a fair bit of concern and discussion.

In response to that, the Minister of Health has launched some consultations with industry across the country. The minister and his team were out in Vancouver for consultations and in Toronto and other major centres as they consulted with industry leaders about how to remedy the concerns that are out there. I know that he is working on some amendments and I look forward to seeing them presented in the House shortly.

At this second reading stage of the bill, it is certainly not possible for the minister to introduce amendments, but I understand that there will be a forthcoming indication of some amendments that our government members will bring forward at the health committee if and when the legislation passes second reading.

Therefore, I welcome those amendments. I look forward to what I understand will include an attempt to create a legislative third category. That is something that people have been interested in. That is one of the major concerns that have been expressed and there will be other substantial amendments to alleviate the way the bill would be applied as well as to clarify concerns that have been raised. We look forward to those amendments coming forward and being able to go over in detail what those changes mean.

The minister stated that it is not his nor the government's intention to restrict natural health product availability in Canada. I am sure and I have every reason to believe that he is very sincere in making those statements. I have no reason not to believe him or the government in their intentions.

The problem is that, given the history of actions by Health Canada over the past several years, the increased powers and the changes proposed by Bill C-51 give informed Canadians a very great cause for concern. In that regard, I would like to review some of the history and illustrate a couple of the concerns related to the bill as it stands.

Going back over at least four previous health ministers, there was an effort to regulate natural health products as drugs under the Food and Drugs Act. By the way, I think everyone recognized that there was a need to bring in regulations for natural health products. Everyone wants to make sure that we have good manufacturing practices, we need office inspections and some quality control measures there, and we certainly want to make sure that what is on the label is actually in the bottle.

So, certainly regulation is necessary. Everyone is in support of regulation. It is the type of regulation that is being considered here and the concerns about whether those regulations are appropriate for the low risk and the natural character of these products. By nature they are low risk, they are low cost, they are non-patentable items, they are more akin to food, concentrated food items, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, which are components of protein, and that is the stuff we are made out of, and therefore by nature it is low risk and well tolerated in biological systems.

Going back through a bit of the history, there was a huge public response out of the attempt by former minister David Dingwall to regulate natural health products as drugs. It was followed up by Allan Rock. Allan Rock, as minister, put the brakes on the process and commissioned the health committee to investigate and produce a report. There were widespread consultations and a report was tabled in 1998, making some 53 recommendations.

That was followed by the creation of a transition team of experts. Some 17 experts came together to try to organize how would this new office of natural health products come together and what form it would take. They made recommendations that were published in a report in the year 2000.

I note that the transition team, in their report, had a vision that they articulated there. They hoped that the minister would be a champion for a new era for NHPs, natural health products; that vitamins and minerals would take their place in improving the health of Canadians and the health care system in Canada, that the minister would be a champion for helping natural health products find their way to taking their rightful place in strengthening Canadians, improving prevention of disease, promoting wellness, and helping keep people off the waiting lists that are so troubling to anyone trying to access health services for serious health failures.

In the 37th Parliament I introduced Bill C-420 which was to move the natural health products department office, which changed names from the office of the ONHP to the natural health product directorate, under the food side of regulations. So we had food and drugs, and we would take it from the drug side and move it under the food side because it was more akin to foods than it was to drugs.

That bill died when the election of June 2004 was called and it reappeared in the 38th Parliament with the help of my colleague, the member for Oshawa, who tabled the bill and we got agreement to keep the name.

The outcome of that was that NHPs were placed not where we wanted them under food, but they remained as a subclass under the drug side of the regulations. So, this is where are we since that day.

Currently, natural health products are regulated as a subclass of drugs for regulatory purposes, although they have their own regulations. That has been the status since 2006. When we started this process there were some 50,000 to 60,000 products on the market. What has been happening in the interim is that there are about 6,000 products that have been approved.

I notice the member for Yukon, who is still with us in the debate, in his speech earlier mentioned there were some 33,000 to 40,000 products backlogged and that is probably accurate. There are about 6,000 that have gone through the approval process of that huge number that were out there a few years ago.

About half of the products applying do not make it through the regulatory process. A lot of good products are dropping off the shelves in Canada under the current regulatory regime. Those that are approved are the simple ones. They are single monograph products, not the combined products. Many of the more effective well-known and popular remedies that are out there are multi-ingredient products. Most of those have not even started into the process yet. So a lot of products are not making it through.

Complicating it further is the fact that many good products that come from outside the country from the United States, for example, are not being shipped into Canada because the producers find the regulatory regime is too onerous and the market is too small. They have just stopped shipping their product to Canada, so we are losing products that way. That is the current situation.

People in the industry are frustrated at the lengthy delays in receiving an NPN and lengthy requests for more information. It seems products like Red Bull or an energy drink gets an NPN fairly readily. They will never have a hope of impacting anybody's health, but they might give people a kick or a little better high, or keep them awake if they are mixed, as some young people do, with alcohol which we would not recommend. We would end up with a drunk who is a little more alert.

Those products seem to make it through the regulatory process in a flash, but natural health products that could have a real impact on serious illnesses seem to be having a hard time getting through.

I want to return to the letter from the scientist. Speaking at a conference just a month ago, so we are not talking ancient history, Dr. Bonnie Kaplan from the University of Calgary spoke about her experience with the product Empowerplus. I know others in the House have mentioned this product already and probably most members have some knowledge of this vitamin and mineral product produced in Alberta. It had a profound impact on people with bipolar disease.

This product attracted some attention in Alberta. The government of Alberta said whoa, there is a huge problem, a lot of people seem to be taking this. It had the Alberta Science and Research Authority examine the product and it commissioned a study at the University of Calgary with some $544,000 in funding. The initial results were very promising. In fact, there were some four peer review articles published.

About this time, Health Canada moved in to shut down the study under the regulations of the day. It called on the RCMP to raid the company and contact 3,000 Canadians, and order them back on their psychiatric drugs even though many of them were taking the product with the knowledge of their physician and many of them had been well for years by simply taking vitamins and minerals.

I want to use that as an illustration of why people are alarmed at the regulations in Bill C-51. It is not simply what is in the bill, it is the behaviour of the department in the last number of years that has people alarmed. Given the tools that are in Bill C-51, it is concerns that with the wrong attitude this could ensure that a lot of very good products will never see the light of day in our country given this response. I mentioned: thousands of Canadians were taking the product, the Alberta response, the early results, and that Health Canada shut down the study, and sent in the RCMP.

Just to go on with Empowerplus for a minute, there was a researcher from Harvard, Dr. Charles Popper, a world renowned psychopharmacologist. He testified at a court case just after the last election. I unfortunately missed it, but I did read his testimony. He testified that he learned how to help people get off drugs from the lay people in this company who have accumulated a lot of experience trying to help people with their condition by taking these vitamins, minerals and amino-acids, and improving their mental health.

I wish members could have been there to hear testimony from a woman named Sabina from Renfrew. She had been on psychiatric drugs for 18 years and in spite of that, in and out of hospital.

Sadly, with the condition she was afflicted with, when she was not trying to take her own life, she was trying to take her husband's life. She had been on vitamins a year and a half, when I met her, and had not had a single failure. That is something that, I think, would attract some attention. Some people may say this is helping, although it is anecdotal evidence, but she was one of about 3,000 Canadians who had improved.

By the time I met her, a year and a half after taking these products, she was no longer trying to kill herself. She was working and paying taxes. I have to admit as a Conservative, I like that. She is also volunteering. She is not on the high needs list but back out in society and producing. When I saw her at the court case, where she testified for this company against Health Canada, she had lost 60 pounds, was off all her medication, and taking nothing but vitamins.

The company she worked for was so impressed with her that it sent her to get a university degree and she is volunteering to train horses on the side. She is a tremendously productive lady, a lady with a tremendous sense of humour. I wish everyone could meet her.

I wish everyone could have met no less than the former deputy prime minister of Norway when he was in Ottawa. He came to meet with Health Canada officials about this product because he had a child that was out of control and nobody in Norway had been able to help him. He heard about this product and ordered it for his child. His child improved so much that he wanted to import this product to help other people in Norway, but he could not because there was a warning on the Health Canada website, which is still there to this day, that says this is an untested and dangerous product. Therefore, even with his connections, he was not able to import the product.

When I had lunch with him, he was later scheduled to meet with Health Canada officials. When they found out why he was here, they cancelled his appointment. It seems, sadly, that no one at Health Canada was willing to meet with Sabina or with this gentleman or with thousands of Canadians. The minister of the day was not willing to meet with them.

Everyone taking the product was concerned when Health Canada was trying to shut down this product at the border because the minister of the day had the attitude or the approach that this was an untested. The minister said, “It could be thalidomide”.

That is disappointing, but that kind of attitude seems to be what is prevailing at Health Canada, even to this day, and that is why people are concerned about the implications in the bill. This is the same Health Canada that could be handed extraordinary and, some might say, draconian provisions by the bill.

There are some concerns. People would like to know that the vision of the transition team would come to pass and that the regulatory regime would be a friendly one that helps natural health products, which by nature are low risk, become more available.

One of the concerns is subsection 15.1(4), which says simply that the minister has the power to put any product or class of products under prescription only status. The challenge is simply that vitamins and minerals, nutritional products, amino-acids are what we are made of. They have always been in the public domain, but under the powers in the bill the minister could simply move something from the natural health product class over to a drug class in certain potencies. The minister has those powers. That is one concern.

Another concern is in regard to clinical trials. The bill says that clinical trials must be approved for designated therapeutic products. We depend on most of the research on natural health products to understand how they work. We found out a little while ago that vitamin D has a big impact on people with multiple sclerosis and now the recommendation is that we should be taking vitamin D to reduce a whole host of other conditions, including many cancers.

We are concerned about the availability of these products. University research could be put at risk. Some would argue that universities could be asked if they applied for a clinical trial for basic research.

Finally, the definition of government has people concerned. I will finish with this simple remark. The government, under this definition, could be another international government or agency that could bring in regulations from the World Health Organization or Codex, for example, and impose them on the Canadian public without due consideration or consultation here at home. Those are some of the concerns.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-51, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Natural Health Products

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this petition in regard to Bill C-51 is from about 100 residents of the West Kootenays. Their petition says that 70% of Canadians currently use natural health products, that they do not wish to have natural health products in the same category as pharmaceuticals, and that they want to use their right to free choice as to whether they use natural health products or drugs to maintain wellness.

Therefore, they call upon Parliament to vote against Bill C-51 as it is written and to protect their rights as consumers of natural health products.

Extension of Sitting Hours

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will start off by saying that the Bloc Québécois, like the official opposition, and like—I believe—the NDP, will opposed the motion by the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons to extend the sitting hours, for a number of reasons.

First, it is important to remember—and this was mentioned by the House leader of the official opposition—that the government and the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons have been completely unwilling to negotiate and cooperate. Usually, when Parliament is running smoothly, the leaders meet and agree on some priorities, some items and some ways of getting them done. But since the start of this session, or at least since September, House leaders' meetings on Tuesday afternoons have simply been meetings where we hear about a legislative agenda, which, within hours after we leave the meeting, is completely changed.

That is not how we move forward. Now the government can see that its way of doing things does not produce results. In fact, I think that this is what the government wanted in recent weeks, to prevent Parliament, the House of Commons and the various committees from working efficiently and effectively.

As I was saying, usually such motions are born out of cooperation, and are negotiated in good faith between the government and the opposition parties. But we were simply told that today a motion would be moved to extend the sitting hours, but with no information forthcoming about what the government's priorities would be through the end of this session, until June 20.

This was a very cavalier way to treat the opposition parties. And today, the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and the Conservative government are reaping the consequences of their haughty attitude. As the saying goes, he who sows the wind, reaps the whirlwind. That is exactly what has happened to the Conservatives after many weeks of acting in bad faith and failing to cooperate with the opposition parties.

In this case, the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons—and earlier I mentioned his arrogance, which, to me, has reached its peak today with the way the motion was moved—gave us no indication as to his government's priorities from now until the end of the session, despite the fact that he was pointedly questioned about that matter. What we did receive was a grocery list with no order, no priorities. As the leader of the official opposition said earlier, when everything is a priority, it means that nothing is.

That is the current situation: they gave us a list of bills which, in fact, included almost all of the bills on the order paper. Not only were things not prioritized, but in addition, as I mentioned before, it showed a disregard for the opposition parties. There is a price to pay for that today—we do not see why the government needs to extend the sitting hours.

Not only was the grocery list not realistic, but also it showed that the government has absolutely no priorities set. The list includes almost all of the bills, but week after week, despite what was said during the leaders' meetings, the order of business changed. If the order of business changes at the drop of a hat, with no rhyme or reason, it means that the government does not really have priorities.

I am thinking about Bill C-50, a bill to implement the budget, which we waited on for a long time. The government is surprised that we are coming up to the end of the session and that it will be adopted in the coming hours. However, we have to remember that between the budget speech and the introduction of Bill C-50, many weeks passed that could have been spent working on the bill.

As I mentioned, the list presented to us is unrealistic. It shows the arrogance of this government, and furthermore, the order of the bills on the list is constantly changing. We feel this is a clear demonstration of this government's lack of priority.

In light of that, we can reach only one conclusion: if the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform cannot present us with his government's legislative priorities as we near the end of this session, in effect, it means that his government has no legislative priorities. It has no long-term vision. Its management is short sighted, very short sighted indeed. I would even say it is managing from one day to the next. From my perspective, this can mean only one thing: it has no legislative agenda. When we have before us bills dealing with only minor issues, this is what that means.

Proof of this lack of legislative agenda is easy to see, considering the current state of this government's agenda. An abnormally small number of bills for this time of year are currently before the House at the report stage and at third reading. Usually, if the government had planned, if it had been working in good faith and had cooperated with the opposition parties, in these last two weeks remaining before the summer recess, we should have been completing the work on any number of bills.

Overall, as we speak there are just five government bills that are ready to be debated at these stages, in other words, report stage or third reading stage. Among those, we note that Bill C-7, which is now at third reading stage, reached report stage during the first session of the 39th Parliament, in other words in June 2007. It has been brought back to us a year later. And that is a priority? What happened between June 2007 and June 2008 to prevent Bill C-7 from getting through third reading stage? In my opinion, we should indeed finish the work on Bill C-7, but this truly illustrates the government's lack of planning and organization.

As far as Bill C-5 is concerned, it was reported on by the Standing Committee on Natural Resources on December 12, 2007, and voted on at report stage on May 6, 2008. Again, a great deal of time, nearly six months, went by between the tabling of the report and the vote at this stage, which was held on May 6, 2008, while the report was tabled on December 12, 2007.

Finally, Bills C-29 and C-16 were both reported on by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs roughly six months ago.

All these delays of six months to a year force us to conclude that these bills are not legislative priorities to this government.

It would be great to finish the work on these four or five bills, but let us admit that we could have finished it much sooner.

This lack of legislative priority was even more apparent before question period when the House was debating second reading of Bill C-51 on food and drugs. Next on the agenda is second reading of Bill C-53 on auto theft.

If these five bills were a priority, we would finish the work. But no, what we are being presented with are bills that are only at second reading stage. This only delays further the report stage or third reading of the bills I have already mentioned. If we were serious about this, we would finish the work on bills at third reading and then move on to bills that are at second reading.

Furthermore, if its legislative agenda has moved forward at a snail's pace, the government is responsible for that and has only itself to blame, since it paralyzed the work of important committees, including the justice committee and the procedure and House affairs committee, to which several bills had been referred. And then they dare make some sort of bogus Conservative moral claim, saying that we are refusing to extend sitting hours because we do not want to work. For months and months now, opposition members, especially the Bloc Québécois, have been trying to work in committee, but the government, for partisan reasons, in order to avoid talking about the Conservative Party's problems, has been obstructing committee work.

Earlier, the NDP whip spoke about take note debates.

Once again, it is not the opposition that is refusing to work on issues that are important to Canadians and Quebeckers. Rather, it is the government that refuses to allow take note debates, because of partisan obstinacy. In that regard, we clearly see that the argument presented by the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform is mere tautology or a false argument. In fact, it was the Conservative Party, the Conservative government, that slowed down the work of the House and obstructed the work of several committees.

Not only is the government incapable of planning, vision, cooperation and good faith, but furthermore, its legislative agenda is very meagre and does not in any way warrant extending the sitting hours. In addition, the Bloc Québécois sees many of the bills that are now at the bottom of the list as problematic, but if we extend the sitting hours, we will end up having to examine them.

Take Bill C-14, for example, which would permit the privatization of certain Canada Post activities. Do they really think that sitting hours will be extended to hasten debate on a bill that threatens jobs and the quality of a public service as essential as that provided by the Canada Post Corporation? That demonstrates just how detrimental the Conservatives' right-wing ideology is, not just to public services but to the economy. Everyone knows very well—there are a large number of very convincing examples globally—that privatizing postal services leads to significant price increases for consumers and a deterioration in service, particularly in rural areas.

I will give another example, that of Bill C-24, which would abolish the long gun registry even though police forces want to keep it. Once again, we have an utter contradiction. Although the government boasts of an agenda that will increase security, they are dismantling a preventtive tool welcomed by all stakeholders. They are indirectly contributing to an increase in the crime rate.

These are two examples of matters that are not in step with the government's message. It is quite clear that we are not interested in extending sitting hours to move more quickly to a debate on Bill C-24.

I must also mention bills concerning democratic reform—or pseudo-reform. In my opinion, they are the best example of the hypocrisy of this government, which introduces bills and then, in the end, makes proposals that run counter to the interests of Quebec in particular.

Take Bill C-20, for example, on the consultation of voters with respect to the pool of candidates from which the Prime Minister should choose senators. Almost all the constitutional experts who appeared before the committee currently studying Bill C-20 said that the bill would do indirectly what cannot be done directly. We know that the basic characteristics of the Senate cannot be changed without the agreement of the provinces or, at the very least, without following the rule of the majority for constitutional amendments, which requires approval by seven provinces representing 50% of the population.

Since the government knows very well that it cannot move forward with its Senate reforms, it introduced a bill that would change the essential characteristics of the Senate, something prohibited by the Constitution, on the basis of some technicalities.

It is interesting to note that even a constitutional expert who told the committee that he did not think the way the government had manipulated the bill was unconstitutional admitted that the bill would indirectly allow the government to do what it could not do directly.

They are playing with the most important democratic institutions.

A country's Constitution—and we want Quebec to have its own Constitution soon—is the fundamental text. We currently have a government, a Prime Minister and a Leader of the Government in the House of Commons who are manipulating this fundamental text— the Canadian Constitution—in favour of reforms that would satisfy their supporters in western Canada.

We do not want to rush this bill through the House by extending the sitting hours. It is the same thing for Bill C-19, which, I remind members, limits a Senator's tenure to eight years.

These two bills, Bill C-19 and Bill C-20, in their previous form, meaning before the session was prorogued in the summer of 2007, were unanimously denounced by the Quebec National Assembly, which asked that they be withdrawn. It is rather ironic that the federal government recognized the Quebec nation and then decided to introduce two bills that were denounced by the Quebec National Assembly.

I must say that the two opposition parties are opposed to Bill C-20, albeit for different reasons. Thus, I do not think it would be in the best interests of the House to rush these bills through, since we are far from reaching a consensus on them.

I have one last example, that is, Bill C-22, which aims to change the make-up of the House of Commons. If passed, it would increase the number of members in Ontario and in western Canada, which would reduce the political weight of the 75 members from Quebec, since their representation in this House would drop from 24.4% to 22.7%. It is not that we are against changing the distribution of seats based on the changing demographics of the various regions of Canada. We would like to ensure, however, that the Quebec nation, which was recognized by the House of Commons, has a voice that is strong enough to be heard.

The way things are going today, it is clear that in 10, 15 or 20 years, Quebec will no longer be able to make its voice heard in this House. We therefore believe we must guarantee the Quebec nation a percentage of the members in this House. We propose that it be 25%. If people want more members in Ontario and in the west, that is not a problem. We will simply have to increase the number of members from Quebec to maintain a proportion of 25%. There are a number of possible solutions to this.

Once again, I would like to point out that we introduced a whole series of bills to formalize the recognition of the Quebec nation, including Bill C-482, sponsored by my colleague from Drummond. That bill sought to apply the Charter of the French Language to federally regulated organizations working in Quebec. That was for organizations working in Quebec, of course. At no time did we seek to control what happens elsewhere in Canada. The bill would have given employees of federally regulated organizations the same rights as all employees in Quebec, that is, the right to work in French.

Unfortunately, the bill was defeated, but we will try again. Once again, the fact that Bill C-482 was defeated does not mean we are about to throw in the towel and let Bills C-22, C-19, and C-20 pass just like that. As I said earlier, we will certainly not make things easy for the government by rushing debate on these bills here.

And now to my fourth point. I started out talking about the government's lack of cooperation, vision and planning, not to mention its bad faith. Next, I talked about its poor excuse for a legislative agenda. Then I talked about the fact that we find certain bills extremely problematic. We will certainly not be giving the government carte blanche to bring those bills back here in a big hurry before the end of the session on June 20. Our fourth reason is the government's hypocrisy, in a general sense.

This has been apparent in many ways, such as the government's attitude to certain bills. I would like to mention some of them, such as Bill C-20. I cannot help but mention Bills C-50 and C-10 as well.

Bill C-50, the budget implementation bill, makes changes to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration's powers, but that is not what the debate is about. Bill C-10, which introduces elements that allow the Conservative government—

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, I would like at this time to move the standard motion that can be made only today. I move:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 27(1), commencing on Monday, June 9, 2008, and concluding on Thursday, June 19, 2008, the House shall continue to sit until 11:00 p.m.

Mr. Speaker, as I indicated last week in answer to the Thursday statement, this is we have work to do week. To kick off the week, we are introducing the customary motion to extend the daily sitting hours of the House for the final two weeks of the spring session. This is a motion which is so significant there is actually a specific Standing Order contemplating it, because it is the normal practice of this House, come this point in the parliamentary cycle, that we work additional hours and sit late to conduct business.

In fact, since 1982, when the House adopted a fixed calendar, such a motion has never been defeated. I underline that since a fixed calendar was adopted, such a motion has never been defeated. As a consequence, we know that today when we deal with this motion, we will discover whether the opposition parties are interested in doing the work that they have been sent here to do, or whether they are simply here to collect paycheques, take it easy and head off on a three month vacation.

On 11 of those occasions, sitting hours were extended using this motion. On six other occasions, the House used a different motion to extend the sitting hours in June. This includes the last three years of minority government.

This is not surprising. Canadians expect their members of Parliament to work hard to advance their priorities. They would not look kindly on any party that was too lazy to work a few extra hours to get as much done as possible before the three month summer break. There is a lot to get done.

In the October 2007 Speech from the Throne, we laid out our legislative agenda. It set out an agenda of clear goals focusing on five priorities to: rigorously defend Canada's sovereignty and place in the world; strengthen the federation and modernize our democratic institutions; provide effective, competitive economic leadership to maintain a competitive economy; tackle crime and strengthen the security of Canadians; and improve the environment and the health of Canadians. In the subsequent months, we made substantial progress on these priorities.

We passed the Speech from the Throne which laid out our legislative agenda including our environmental policy. Parliament passed Bill C-2, the Tackling Violent Crime Act, to make our streets and communities safer by tackling violent crime. Parliament passed Bill C-28, which implemented the 2007 economic statement. That bill reduced taxes for all Canadians, including reductions in personal income and business taxes, and the reduction of the GST to 5%.

I would like to point out that since coming into office, this government has reduced the overall tax burden for Canadians and businesses by about $190 billion, bringing taxes to their lowest level in 50 years.

We have moved forward on our food and consumer safety action plan by introducing a new Canada consumer product safety act and amendments to the Food and Drugs Act.

We have taken important steps to improve the living conditions of first nations. For example, first nations will hopefully soon have long overdue protection under the Canadian Human Rights Act, and Bill C-30 has been passed by the House to accelerate the resolution of specific land claims.

Parliament also passed the 2008 budget. This was a balanced, focused and prudent budget to strengthen Canada amid global economic uncertainty. Budget 2008 continues to reduce debt, focuses government spending and provides additional support for sectors of the economy that are struggling in this period of uncertainty.

As well, the House adopted a motion to endorse the extension of Canada's mission in Afghanistan, with a renewed focus on reconstruction and development to help the people of Afghanistan rebuild their country.

These are significant achievements and they illustrate a record of real results. All parliamentarians should be proud of the work we have accomplished so far in this session. However, there is a lot of work that still needs to be done.

As I have stated in previous weekly statements, our top priority is to secure passage of Bill C-50, the 2008 budget implementation bill.

This bill proposes a balanced budget, controlled spending, investments in priority areas and lower taxes, all without forcing Canadian families to pay a tax on carbon, gas and heating. Furthermore, the budget implementation bill proposes much-needed changes to the immigration system.

These measures will help keep our economy competitive.

Through the budget implementation bill, we are investing in the priorities of Canadians.

These priorities include: $500 million to help improve public transit, $400 million to help recruit front line police officers, nearly $250 million for carbon capture and storage projects in Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia, and $100 million for the Mental Health Commission of Canada to help Canadians facing mental health and homelessness challenges.

These investments, however, could be threatened if the bill does not pass before the summer. That is why I am hopeful that the bill will be passed by the House later today.

The budget bill is not our only priority. Today the House completed debate at report stage on Bill C-29, which would create a modern, transparent, accountable process for the reporting of political loans. We will vote on this bill tomorrow and debate at third reading will begin shortly thereafter.

We also wish to pass Bill C-55, which implements our free trade agreement with the European Free Trade Association.

This free trade agreement, the first in six years, reflects our desire to find new markets for Canadian products and services.

Given that the international trade committee endorsed the agreement earlier this year, I am optimistic that the House will be able to pass this bill before we adjourn.

On Friday we introduced Bill C-60, which responds to recent decisions relating to courts martial. That is an important bill that must be passed on a time line. Quick passage is necessary to ensure the effectiveness of our military justice system.

Last week the aboriginal affairs committee reported Bill C-34, which implements the Tsawwassen First Nation final agreement. This bill has all-party support in the House. Passage of the bill this week would complement our other achievements for first nations, including the apology on Wednesday to the survivors of residential schools.

These are important bills that we think should be given an opportunity to pass. That is why we need to continue to work hard, as our rules contemplate.

The government would also like to take advantage of extended hours to advance important crime and security measures. Important justice measures are still before the House, such as: Bill S-3, the anti-terrorism act; Bill C-53, the auto theft bill; Bill C-45 to modernize the military justice system; and Bill C-60, which responds to recent court martial decisions.

There are a number of other bills that we would like to see advanced in order to improve the management of the economy. There are other economic bills we would like to advance.

These include Bill C-7, to modernize our aeronautics sector, Bill C-5, dealing with nuclear liability, Bill C-43, to modernize our customs rules, Bill C-39, to modernize the Canada Grain Act for farmers, Bill C-46, to give farmers more choice in marketing grain, Bill C-57, to modernize the election process for the Canadian Wheat Board, Bill C-14, to allow enterprises choice for communicating with customers, and Bill C-32, to modernize our fisheries sector.

If time permits, there are numerous other bills that we would like to advance.

These include Bill C-51, to ensure that food and products available in Canada are safe for consumers, Bill C-54, to ensure safety and security with respect to pathogens and toxins, Bill C-56, to ensure public protection with respect to the transportation of dangerous goods, Bill C-19, to limit the terms of senators to 8 years from a current maximum of 45, and Bill C-22, to provide fairness in representation in the House of Commons.

It is clear a lot of work remains before the House. Unfortunately, a number of bills have been delayed by the opposition through hoist amendments. Given these delays, it is only fair that the House extend its sitting hours to complete the bills on the order paper. As I have indicated, we still have to deal with a lot of bills.

We have seen a pattern in this Parliament where the opposition parties have decided to tie up committees to prevent the work of the people being done. They have done delay and obstruction as they did most dramatically on our crime agenda. They do not bother to come and vote one-third of time in the House of Commons. Their voting records has shown that. All of this is part of a pattern of people who are reluctant to work hard.

The government is prepared to work hard and the rules contemplate that it work hard. In fact, on every occasion, when permission has been sought at this point in the parliamentary calendar to sit extended hours, the House has granted permission, including in minority Parliaments.

If that does not happen, it will be clear to Canadians that the opposition parties do not want to work hard and are not interested in debating the important policy issues facing our country. Is it any wonder that we have had a question period dominated not by public policy questions, but dominated entirely by trivia and issues that do not matter to ordinary Canadians.

The government has been working hard to advance its agenda, to advance the agenda that we talked about with Canadians in the last election, to work on the priorities that matter to ordinary Canadians, and we are seeking the consent of the House to do this.

Before concluding, I point out, once again, that extending the daily sitting hours for the last two weeks of June is a common practice. Marleau and Montpetit, at page 346, state this is:

—a long-standing practice whereby, prior to the prorogation of the Parliament or the start of the summer recess, the House would arrange for longer hours of sitting in order to complete or advance its business.

As I stated earlier, it was first formalized in the Standing Orders in 1982 when the House adopted a fixed calendar. Before then, the House often met on the weekend or continued its sittings into July to complete its work. Since 1982, the House has agreed on 11 occasions to extend the hours of sitting in the last two weeks of June.

Therefore, the motion is a routine motion designed to facilitate the business of the House and I expect it will be supported by all members. We are sent here to engage in very important business for the people of Canada. Frankly, the members in the House are paid very generously to do that work. Canadians expect them to do that work and expect them to put in the time that the rules contemplate.

All member of the House, if they seek that privilege from Canadian voters, should be prepared to do the work the rules contemplate. They should be prepared to come here to vote, to come here to debate the issues, to come here for the hours that the rules contemplate. If they are not prepared to do that work, they should step aside and turnover their obligations to people who are willing to do that work.

There is important work to be done on the commitments we made in the Speech from the Throne. I am therefore seeking the support of all members to extend our sitting hours, so we can complete work on our priorities before we adjourn for the summer. This will allow members to demonstrate results to Canadians when we return to our constituencies in two weeks.

Not very many Canadians have the privilege of the time that we have at home in our ridings, away from our work. People do not begrudge us those privileges. They think it is important for us to connect with them. However, what they expect in return is for us to work hard. They expect us to put in the hours. They expect us to carry on business in a professional fashion. The motion is all about that. It is about doing what the rules have contemplated, what has always been authorized by the House any time it has been asked, since the rule was instituted in 1982. That is why I would ask the House to support the motion to extend the hours.

Food and Drugs Act

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-51.

First off, I want to say that the Bloc Québécois has been demanding for a number of years already that we look at that issue further. It seems to me that Canadians and Quebeckers are somewhat tired of occasionally being the victims of products that adversely affect their health and that of their children. There have been scandals recently. Just think of the toy scandal, for instance, involving children who suffered lead poisoning.

Quebeckers and Canadians are aware of some degree of deceit in the department stores where they buy everyday consumer items, among other things. Everyone knows that when we pick up a jar of pickles from China, the label sometimes shows that the product was made in Canada. There is false representation every step of the way. The Bloc Québécois raised that issue many years ago, calling on the government to clean up this whole area of drugs, agricultural products and cosmetics. We are pleased in that sense that the issue is being brought before the House today.

The Bloc Québécois will make sure that what I just talked about is reflected in the legislation. We have seen before obligations, everyday things, come into force under a bill, which did not reflect reality at all. That is what we want to pay attention to. It is not because the bill's title refers to tidying up the area of drugs, cosmetics and agricultural products, because the intention is stated in the title, that we should be lax.

In fact, let me say outright that the position of the Bloc Québécois is to vote yes at second reading stage, but there will surely an opportunity to take a very serious look at the bill at the Standing Committee on Health to ensure that reality is defined properly and reflected in the bill.

I have seen governments—and this one is no exception—come up with bills that they claimed would fix some social problem or other, bills that included various guidelines, amendments and new restrictions or that made laws more permissive. We need to sort out exactly what we want this bill to achieve. Naturally, the parties, including the opposition parties, will each have their way of seeing things. All I want to say is that the Standing Committee on Health will study the bill thoroughly.

For now, I will try to communicate the Bloc Québécois' opinion of what is before us now as faithfully as possible.

We also have to talk about how the government reacts and what it is doing to make sure that all products available to consumers are safe.

A number of interesting things have happened over the past few years. I certainly remember how people practically called the Bloc Québécois heretical because it wanted labelling on products. Back then, we were told, “No, no, no.” That was probably 10 years ago now.

We thought we had made some progress, but just last week, one of our colleagues introduced a bill on labelling, and the government worked with the Liberal Party to defeat it. Such things make us wonder about this government's true intentions.

I hope that we will be able to put together a good bill here, and I hope that when it becomes law, the government will actually enforce it. It is easy enough to say, “Here's the law”. It is something else entirely to enforce it, a process that is sometimes not taken seriously.

For example, take what we were told not that long ago, maybe seven or eight years ago when the labelling issue was up for discussion. People were talking about genetically modified organisms. There should have been thorough studies, and, like the United States' Food and Drug Administration, Health Canada should have studied the repercussions and the ins and outs of this issue. But the minister at the time, who is now rector of the University of Ottawa, said, “Oh no, we don't need that”.

Monsanto, a global company specializing in genetically modified products, has conducted all the studies and concluded that it was perfectly safe. In my opinion, that is a serious mistake. It is like asking a Ford dealer if Ford products are any good. What do you think his answer will be? He will say that Ford makes the best products. GM, Chrysler and Toyota representatives would say the same thing about their products.

Government organizations have to ensure that these companies comply with standards. Because of globalization and international competition, standards often vary from one country to the next. That is how we end up with Chinese pickles sold in jars made in Canada. When we are aware of that, we start noticing that the standards are different as well. Therein lies the danger.

Agriculture is affected the most by that. There are many producers in my riding. It saddens me to think that, in the U.S. and Europe among others, the agricultural industry is financed and subsidized, because in Canada we are more catholic than the Pope, so to speak, not subsidizing our agricultural industry in order to comply with the WTO. Yet, there is irrefutable evidence that the United States and the European countries are not complying.

As I said earlier, environmental standards and quality assurance standards for agricultural products in countries like China are different from ours. It is therefore easy for the Conservative government to suggest that we may not be competitive enough. Competitiveness is one factor, but when countries are permitted to subsidize their agriculture and products are allowed into Canada to which standards different from ours, much lower standards, are applied, that does not help our economy and it also puts the health and safety of Canadians et Quebeckers at risk. Attention will have to be paid to this in connection with the bill before us today.

Another interesting aspect of the bill is the tracing system. This is extremely important. When an agricultural product is recalled, we need to know where and in what conditions it was made. Until now, there has been nothing—or almost nothing—like this in place. We are happy to see that Bill C-51 contains provisions on traceability. The bill may also include the register of adverse drug reactions, at least we hope so.

Regarding the recall management system—I just mentioned recalls—if a product is found to be faulty or hazardous, there has to be a way of determining how it will be recalled. Often, hazardous products are recalled in a rush, and there is no way of knowing whether all the products have been taken off the shelf in all shopping centres. This also applies to drugs and cosmetics. We will therefore pay attention to the recall management system.

There is one thing in the bill that we will pay close attention to: regulations. This is a flaw in the House of Commons and Parliament, not just Canada's Parliament, but parliaments in general: often, bills will give responsibility for regulations to the governor in council, in other words, the cabinet, and the minister will make recommendations to the governor in council.

I experienced that myself with a bill concerning veterans that would have seen money paid annually to widows of veterans so that they could remain in their home. In the regulations, three or four months later, we noticed that the governor in council had chosen a date on which the law would be enforced, and before which anyone else involved would be left out. We made our strong opposition known.

It is the same thing with these bills. As soon as the minister and the governor in council, meaning cabinet, get too much leeway, there are surprises. If I have time, I will speak about our concerns with this bill if the minister and the governor in council are given too much leeway in regard to the regulations.

I want to issue a caution right now. The Bloc Québécois absolutely does not want natural food products to be considered drugs or cosmetics, meaning that they would be bound by this bill.

My colleague from Quebec City explained that officials had told the committee not to worry, but we are worrying nonetheless. Just because something is raised in committee does not mean that one day—maybe because of the regulations—there will not be a problem.

Many people obtain these products without a prescription, and I think that they are still in a position to do so. These people should not fall directly under this legislation; it must not apply directly to natural food products.

As I was saying earlier, the Bloc Québécois will pay close attention to this in committee, to ensure that natural food products are not affected by this bill. Earlier I heard statistics that nearly 50% of the population uses complementary or alternative medicine, and these people should not end up being victims of this bill.

We are also concerned about encroachment because it is well known that the Bloc Québécois is very protective of Quebec's areas of jurisdiction. A certain number of inspector positions will be established pursuant to the bill. However, we notice that there will be duplication in certain areas. Therefore, we have to be careful because, at present, several duties have been delegated to Quebec inspectors. In my opinion, if more federal inspection positions are created, it is important that there not be a duplication of services in general. That runs the risk of being very expensive for taxpayers and of causing friction also. We believe that it is important to try to avoid encroachment.

With respect to this bill, we also examined the famous ban on drug advertising. I find it interesting. I love American sports and often listen to football, hockey, baseball, or basketball games on American stations. But I also have time to work. Sometimes, I listen while ironing my shirts because I have to come to Ottawa on Monday and I have no one to wash my shirts. Believe it or not I listen to the football game while ironing my shirts or sometimes while reading documents. I can chew gum and walk at the same time.

However, on the topic of an advertising ban, there is a new American dream—drugs. It is incredible. Everyone knows the ads for Cialis and Viagra. We see a very healthy looking man with his girlfriend, wife or life partner and he is always bursting with energy. That is the new American dream: a fulfilling sex life. Yes. It should not surprise us; we see it on television. That is what the ads aim for. And a few minutes later, in another ad, they are selling Celebrex. If you have a bit of joint pain, you should hurry to your doctor to get a prescription for Celebrex. It is important because it not only solves the problem, but it also reduces your chances of arthritis in the future. We can see where this ad leads. There are many more. There is Lipitor—their ad says that if your cholesterol is the least bit elevated that it is dangerous and you should go to see your doctor.

In a few years, American advertising for drugs has gone from $50 million to $1.8 billion. Pharmaceutical companies are not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts and because of their generous spirit. Investing $1.8 billion in advertising ensures that people will stock up on drugs. This causes many things, including over-consumption.

The companies do not tell us this, but the person who wants to live the American dream today, the one who watches football and wants to become Adonis, will have to take Cialis or Viagra, Celebrex to avoid any aches and Lipitor to ensure low cholesterol. That is the new American dream.

We cannot allow this to happen in Canada or in Quebec. It is extremely important to ban the advertising of drugs. Advertising leads to excessive consumption. And what does excessive consumption lead to? It not only causes side effects in people, but it also causes the price of drugs to rise.

Today, almost 40 million Americans are unable to afford the drugs they need. I have even seen busloads of people, sponsored by U.S. senators, come to my riding to buy drugs because they were affordable. The ban on advertising of drugs should continue.

Another aspect of the bill before us is progressive licensing. This is something new. Previously, Health Canada conducted studies and if all the studies were conclusive and all the clinical trials were conclusive, the drug would be released. Now there will be a new approach that could be more progressive. The drug could be released before the experiments are completed.

There are some people who may need that. When people are truly desperate, they sometimes need to resort to extreme or innovative treatment. Even though some drugs have not yet been approved by Health Canada, it is possible under certain conditions that progressive licensing of those drugs will be allowed. Nonetheless, this cannot be used as an excuse to license a drug with great haste. That is the risk we run.

I have a minute or two left. I just want to come back to some of the regulations that could be risky. Clause 30, which addresses the regulations, very clearly states that the minister may make regulations for carrying the purposes and provisions of this act into effect. Potentially, the minister can act in various areas, including product labelling, purity standards, the way in which clinical trials are conducted and the exemption of products from the legislation.

If we open the door to concepts as basic as those and put them in the hands of the minister, we run the risk that the government will take advantage and that the provisions of a bill will go too far or not far enough at the discretion of the minister and the Governor in Council.

These questions are extremely important. I would like to reiterate the Bloc Québécois' position. The Bloc Québécois has been waiting for this bill. We have waited long enough for this bill, so we will take the time needed to study it carefully at the Standing Committee on Health. In that regard, I trust my colleagues on that committee. They will do an excellent job.

The position I just mentioned is the Bloc Québécois' position. We reserve the right to vote against it at third reading. At second reading, we will vote in favour of the bill. In committee, we will do our job and, depending on the gains we make, we will dispose of this bill at third reading.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to Bill C-51 today. This is an issue that deals with something of top concern to people across the country and certainly people in Vancouver Quadra, and that is the issue of health care. More importantly, health prevention and maintaining health is a critical part of what we do as people, families and mothers.

This bill speaks about not just protecting health from adverse issues through products that might be dangerous but also touches on how we can maintain our health and prevent health challenges by using natural products and complementary medicines, and using the medical system in a proactive and preventive way.

It is a very important bill which I am pleased to speak to. It touches on the protection of consumers from products that are tampered with or contaminated. It talks about protecting consumers. The products that they think they are buying and consuming need to be such products. There needs to be the ability to recall products that are problems and an important update to this legislation that is very out of date. From those perspectives, this is an important bill.

I will touch briefly on my background using complementary medicine. I, in fact, applied to become a naturopathic physician. Way back in my early career choices, I applied to the John Bastyr College of Naturopathic Medicine in Seattle having completed all of the prerequisite requirements to enter a college of naturopathic physicians. Since then, I have become a mother of three children and raised those children using almost exclusively complementary medicine.

Of course, the medicine provided by our MDs and hospitals has a very important role to play. When my daughter broke her leg, I was very grateful that there was an emergency department. I was able to take her in and she was given great care. She has healed properly and is able to climb mountains and plant trees without a problem.

The allopathic medical system also has an important place in our lives. However, so does complementary medicine. Using naturopathic physicians as primary physicians has been my family's choice. Using homeopathic remedies, traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture, and a variety of alternatives has been an important part of maintaining the health of my family members.

From that perspective, I have been very concerned about possibly infringing on the choice that people might make to use naturopathic, complementary and other alternative modalities, and the products that they use, many of which have been used in traditional medicines for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and are important to maintaining health, preventing problems, and managing chronic diseases.

An additional aspect about the complementary medical system is that it tends to be supportive of people taking self-responsibility for their health, changing some of the lifestyle aspects that may not be conducive to their health, stepping forward to take responsibility in preventing problems by eating well, and using nutritional and herbal supports before there are clinical problems.

That self-responsibility is increasingly important in our society. As demographics change, the allopathic medical system is over-burdened with the demand on it and the costs are escalating, and taking larger and larger percentages of provincial budgets.

I have been listening to the concerns of people in my community of Vancouver Quadra from the perspective of the fines and enforcement measures in the proposed bill. I appreciate the member for Cambridge mentioning some of the amendments that the government was considering. I have also been listening to people from the Canadian Association of Naturopathic Doctors, both in British Columbia and nationally.

While I recognize that there are real concerns with this bill, notwithstanding Health Canada's attempts to reassure people that it would essentially change very little with respect to natural products, I want to flag some other concerns.

One of the concerns, of course, has to do with the intent to lump natural products in with therapeutic drugs. An article in The Vancouver Sun points out how completely unacceptable that would be. The article reports on a study which took place at the Vancouver General Hospital. It essentially concluded that 12% of patients who were rushed to the emergency room were there because of adverse affects from medications. The study findings were published that day in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. The 11 international authors of the study said patients with medication related complaints were more likely to be admitted to hospital beds after they had been seen in the emergency room and occupied those beds far longer than others, a result the authors described as striking. The study estimated that 70% of such visits were preventable through better prescribing, dispensing, and monitoring of patients.

I would like to quote from lead investigator Dr. Peter Zed, who was working at Vancouver General Hospital during the study but is now at the Queen Elizabeth Health Sciences Centre in Halifax:

We've proven in this study that we've got a problem in the health care system with patients who experience bad effects from medications and we have to figure out how to reduce those problems.

Problems stem from a variety of issues, including patients being prescribed the wrong drugs, given wrong dosages, having allergic interactions with drugs, and patients not following instructions for how and when to take their medications.

The key that one can take away is the fact that essentially one in nine emergency room visits at Vancouver General Hospital relate to pharmaceutical medications. This is a very different category of product than natural products such as herbs and traditional Chinese medicines.

Some adverse affects have been put forward by Health Canada. Members across the aisle have suggested that natural products and herbal medicines also can have adverse affects. I am not going to argue that there may be cases where a product is not 100% what it is claimed to be in the container or that there may be a contraindication with other medications people might be taking.

However, one in nine emergency room visits are due to pharmaceutical drugs versus the record of natural products, herbal medications, homeopathics, organotherapy, and other kinds of products that would be lumped in with pharmaceutical drugs in the bill as it reads now.

I am pleased to hear that amendments to create a third category are being considered, given that until very recently Health Canada was denying that there would be negative impacts from the way the bill was structured. I am going to be very vigilant in following the debate as this goes forward.

I have a letter from a constituent. Brian says:

I am writing to you as one of your constituents to express my concerns about Bill C-51 and the impact it will have on the ability of my naturopathic doctor to treat my health concerns safely and effectively as well as my access to natural health products that I currently purchase. As an informed patient, I have chosen to be treated by a naturopathic physician utilizing natural therapies and substances to ensure optimal health. I would like some assurances that my choice to see a naturopathic doctor or purchase natural health products in the store will not be negatively affected by Bill C-51.

I am focused on the response of the naturopathic physician community because that is where my knowledge is strongest and those concerns remain.

I have a public posting from a naturopathic physician in Nelson, B.C., who is the current president of the College of Naturopathic Physicians of British Columbia, Dr. Lorne Swetlikoff. He acknowledges that:

--Bill C-51 appears well intended and seems to strengthen the manner in which all health products will be regulated. [However] as you delve into the details of the bill you discover the potential for disaster [that] it poses for the practice of naturopathic medicine in Canada.

A couple of the examples of the concern that is being raised by the naturopathic community is that:

The bill introduces a new term called “prescription therapeutic products” to refer to any product, including a natural product that is not included under the current natural health product regulations and states that they will be accessible only by a “practitioner”.

However, of great concern to Dr. Swetlikoff and other naturopathic physicians is that:

--under this bill, prescription therapeutic products require a prescription from a “practitioner”. Currently naturopathic doctors do not have prescribing authority and are not designated as a practitioner in Canada [under our federal laws].

So, essentially, that would mean that there would be many products that naturopathic physicians utilize to maintain the health, to protect and prevent problems, of their clients, and to manage chronic diseases, that would no longer be accessible to them. Of course, they could be prescribed by an MD, but medical doctors are actually not trained to utilize those kinds of herbal and non-pharmaceutical drug products. So, they could become inaccessible.

I think it is critical to understand that this does affect many patients because many people use the services of naturopathic physicians. They are physicians who have been trained seven-plus years in post-secondary institutions and to now say that a naturopathic physician can no longer prescribe a patient to use a herb like St. John's wort is completely outrageous. That area needs to be addressed as the bill moves forward.

I had the privilege of having worked with the provincial government when I was in cabinet between 2001 and 2005 to raise the profile of complementary medical modalities and the effectiveness of those modalities on prevention and chronic disease management, and the need of additional professionals to take care of patients who in my province of British Columbia have a shortage of family doctors available. So, it is very important to integrate complementary and alternative medicine into our health care system and not to isolate it and marginalize it.

So, in British Columbia I worked with the government and the naturopathic association to ensure that we in British in Columbia have a broader scope of practice for naturopathic physicians that better reflects the kinds of services that they are trained to provide. I am pleased that recently a law was passed that supports a scope of practice that will allow those physicians to prescribe, to have hospital privileges, to refer to specialists, and to request laboratory procedures for their patients.

That is a step toward integrating naturopathic and other alternative medical practitioners into our health care system, which is exactly what we need so that people can have choice, so they are not isolated, so that there is not a duplication where a patient needs to see a naturopathic physician and then has a whole different track to see an MD because of the historic separation between those practices.

Integrating them is very important. I have been pleased and privileged to be able to work toward that in British Columbia, but it is not the case in all provinces. In provinces where a naturopathic physician cannot prescribe, Bill C-51 would unfortunately and very negatively curtail the ability of naturopathic physicians and other complementary physicians to provide proper care, service and support to their patients.

I was also pleased to hear about the proposed amendments. The member for Cambridge described some of them.

We need to ensure as the bill moves forward that there is proper consultation, and not just consultation but incorporation of the views and the requirements of the different stakeholders that have an interest in this. I would contend that this has not happened adequately or we would not have had this great amount of concern and fear on the part of the public, a fear that to some degree I have shared.

I have been working with naturopathic physicians, as I have said, but also with people who represent the manufacturers, the importers, the distributors, the wholesalers and retailers of these health products, to make sure we understand which of these concerns are valid. Substantially, these concerns are valid. We should move forward in a way that fully addresses them, that does not just window dress this by hearing them and then moving forward with a bill that overregulates a sector whose products have demonstrated very little harm.

I will repeat what I said in my introductory remarks, which is that consumer safety is an important role of government. That is part of what we do. We regulate and legislate to protect consumers from demonstrated harms, but as a society we have to always balance between that kind of protection and an overregulation which would cast a net so broadly that it would bring in products and issues that really have not been demonstrated to be harmful to the people who choose to use them.

I would say that is what Bill C-51 does. By casting such a wide net, it actually risks doing more harm than it prevents, by frustrating people who are taking responsibility for their health, and by applying huge fines, which might be appropriate in the case of a billion dollar pharmaceutical firm but not in an industry in which the largest players are much smaller. That kind of draconian compliance and enforcement tool is simply not appropriate in the natural products category whereas it might be in the pharmaceutical drug category.

I am pleased to be able to participate in this debate. I will be taking an active interest and involvement at the caucus committee, where my colleagues will discuss this, and also at the parliamentary committee. I intend to be a visiting member and ensure that the naturopathic physicians' concerns, as well as the concerns of other stakeholders, are clearly articulated.

I will do what I can to ensure that they are incorporated so that as we move forward Bill C-51 does what it is intended to do, which is to be a positive and important tool in protecting the safety and well-being of the consumers of the products it covers without overregulating and creating barriers to the use of those natural products that are so important to so many of us.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to what the member had to say. I counted at least seven amendments, if not more, that would change the bill, whether it is the legislative or third category, definition of health product, traditional use, the recognition of, separate advisory committee, compliance, et cetera. The health critic for the NDP had a lot of concerns right from day one. It as if the way the bill is drafted now is not acceptable.

I hear many concerns. Rather than passing the bill as it is at second reading, why would the House not send it to the committee without recommendation and then have those amendments put in at the health committee after some hearings? If we say yes to Bill C-51 the way it is structured now, how can anyone blame the natural health product industry, or the herbal medicine practitioners and all those folks who are extremely fearful because of the way it is structured and written? There is a lot of fear out there and I do not blame them because of the history.

The hon. member also said that he understood because of the past history of this industry being attacked. There is a lot of misunderstanding out there. Would it not be a much better approach for the House to not say yes to the bill as it is drafted? The government is already proposing all these amendments? If we approve the bill as it is at second reading, then during the summer how will anyone understand and know for sure these amendments will be accepted at the health committee?

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise today and speak at second reading of Bill C-51, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts. This is an important bill with an important goal.

Many members in the House know, and most people in my riding of Cambridge know, that I was a chiropractor for 20 years. I prescribed natural health products to improve the health of my patients, to limit the time of their disablement or their disease, if I may call it that, or at least to ease some of their symptoms. I have not only prescribed these products or recommended many of them to my patients over many years, and still do to this day, but I have also recommended them to my children, my wife, my in-laws, and my mother. I take them myself.

I congratulate the Minister of Health and the government, whose goal, in the introduction of this bill to the House, is simply to better protect Canadians, to keep them safe, and to modernize the safety system within the existing act.

As a result of my background and my passion for these products, I would like to limit my comments today to the natural health products aspect of this bill.

In 2005, a Health Canada survey showed that 71% of Canadians regularly took vitamins and minerals, herbal remedies, homeopathic treatments, and naturopathic treatments. In fact, we have known for decades that a vast percentage of the Canadian population use non-traditional forms of medicine, whether they are chiropractors, naturopaths, homeopaths, or reflexologists, all of these being outside the traditional allopathic course of action. In fact, if we were to lump it all together, there would be a compelling argument that more people actually see non-medical doctors than medical doctors.

These products can decrease the cost to the public purse significantly. In saying that, it is the government's intention to keep access to these products open. There will be no changes in accessing these products by Canadians than there was a few years ago. Nothing technically is going to change. I am appreciative of the opportunity to explain more clearly exactly what is going to happen with respect to natural health products as a result of this legislation.

As a member whose past history is that of a chiropractor, I want to support the demand that Canadians have for a broader choice but for safe and effective natural health products. It is important that natural health products be regulated to protect Canadians, and no one argues that. There are clear examples where tainted products have been found not just among natural health products but even among prescription medication.

Sometimes it happens that products have something in them that makes them unsafe. Everyone will remember the Tylenol incident of a decade ago where some of those products had to be removed from the market very quickly because they had been tampered with.

The other issue is that Canadians deserve to know what is in the bottle. They deserve to be protected from poor quality production or from malicious tampering with a product. Canadians need to know that if they are buying vitamin C that they are actually getting vitamin C. This makes simple sense and there are many examples.

One example that the House is fully aware of is a product called black cohosh, which was found to contain a species of the plant different from what was stated on the label. Some people, of course, think that natural health products are very safe and of low impact, and generally speaking they are, but the fact is that in this particular product the presence of this other plant actually caused liver toxicity. It was a major health problem for the people who were taking it.

These people were innocent. They read the label. They took their advice from their chiropractor, their medical practitioner or their naturopath. They went to the natural health store and purchased the product, but it was not the product that they were led to believe.

As well, we have had instances where folks come along and make unfounded claims. They actually might stand up and say that if we take this product, this pond algae from some obscure place around the world, making it sound attractive and exotic, it will cure cancer. There have been examples of such claims being made in regard to a cure for SARS.

Not only is this misleading to the public, but let me explain the danger in doing something like that. We do know that there are proven aids for these types of conditions. There are treatments available to Canadians that will help certain conditions, such as terminal cancer, for example, treatments to extend the life of the patient or make the patient feel more comfortable.

Of course, a patient with one form of cancer also can have other conditions, not just the single terminal cancer. A lot of patients with these types of diseases have other problems. Those other problems need to be treated as well, but when someone comes along and says that all a patient needs to do to cure his or her cancer is take a particular product, that patient sometimes delays appropriate care. Through delaying appropriate care, the condition worsens.

In some cases, not cancer cases in particular, but SARS, as was the case in Toronto, there were claims by some manufacturers or suppliers of certain products that if people took their product it would cure SARS. That kind of claim is extremely dangerous, because it prevents Canadians from getting appropriate care and, in some cases, can lead to the death of the patient. It often leads to a delay in proper care, making the disease itself more chronic, more difficult to treat and significantly more dangerous for the patient.

Despite our good intentions as a government to come along and revamp a very old, outdated regulatory system, despite our good intentions as a government to have the simple intention of making these products safer for Canadians but still keep alive access for Canadians to health practitioners, complementary treatment professionals and manufacturers, despite those good intentions, as my friend opposite mentioned, there has been a campaign on the Internet and elsewhere that has led to a lot of misinformation and a lot of concerns for Canadians. Unfounded as all of this may be, it is out there and I believe we need to address it.

I, too, have received these types of emails. Not only am I the member of Parliament for Cambridge-North Dumfries, but I was a chiropractor for 20 years, so a lot of my old patients have been writing to me. They have expressed some of these concerns.

For example, they are concerned that the way natural health products will be regulated will change and they will lose access to these products. That is absolutely not true.

There is a concern that natural health products will need a prescription. Again, that is not true.

We use the word prescription probably a bit too loosely when we speak of things. I myself say that I prescribe these products for patients, but not in the way that one needs a prescription, where one goes to a medical doctor, costing the provincial health care system some $35 to $50 and gets a prescription written out, which means then going to a pharmacist and paying another $9, $10 or $12 dispensing fee.

None of that is true. It is another myth that for some reason is being propagated on the Internet. I want to assure Canadians that it is not true.

As well, there is a false belief that inspectors would be able to enter private homes without permission or a warrant. No one in this House would ever allow such a thing to happen. That is absolutely not true. In fact, as with any law in Canada, no one can enter a private home without a warrant, which would require a judge to review the case. The case would have to be extremely compelling.

I will mention a little later on in my speech that there are times when private property has to be walked upon to get to a manufacturing facility, but these are rare cases and I am here to say that this belief is absolutely not true.

I want to make this clear to members of the House, particularly my friends in the NDP, who seem to prefer to send out misinformation. I heard one of the hon. members this morning again using phrases like lumping NHPs, natural health products, together with foods and drugs. As for the phrase “lumping together”, that member either has not done her research at all or is actually trying scare Canadians on purpose into somehow supporting her misguided approach to this bill.

I am sure the member knows that this is a very complex piece of proposed legislation. It has been around for years. It has been modified somewhat. Perhaps the member has not read the new legislation that we have introduced and is relying, much like the misinformation campaign on the Internet, on outdated information.

It is very important that we not use these tactics to create fear in Canadians. What is important in this place of honour is that we try our hardest to find the absolute truth with respect to every piece of legislation. The bottom line is that we need to alleviate Canadians' concerns, not make them fearful by misinformation on those kinds of things.

I want to step back for a second on the issue of Health Canada officials. In fact, the minister has met with Health Canada officials, who have had multiple stakeholder meetings over the last month or more to explain Bill C-51 and hear suggestions for change.

I should mention that I myself have received hundreds of emails, as many members have, but I have also sent out hundreds of letters and have made phone calls to many of the natural health product stores in my riding. I have sent letters to every single chiropractor, naturopath, dietician, herbalist, medical doctor, and physiotherapist, I believe, all of whom would have access to patients who may wish to have advice on products.

I congratulate all of the folks in my riding who have written back. It is indeed an honour to have a constructive, bilateral conversation with constituents and hear their concerns, but that is only the first half of it. There is then the ability to bring those concerns to Ottawa, to this place, and sit down with the Minister of Health and his team. I have to tell members that I have done so on no less than six occasions.

It has been an absolute honour to be able to bring forth the concerns from my riding of Cambridge and North Dumfries and have the minister listen to those concerns, knowing full well that the minister and his team have listened to the concerns of all members in the House who, in totality, have heard the concerns of the manufacturers, the people who use these products, Canadians, and professionals abroad.

On behalf of the Minister of Health and in response to this government's concern for the opinions of Canadians and manufacturers, I believe we should in fact refer Bill C-51 to committee. It is the government's intention as a result of all of these consultations to introduce amendments for the committee's consideration.

If I may, I would like to share some of the results of those conversations, some of the end points, so to speak, of a minister who has listened to stakeholders and has discussed with a number of members of the House some of the proposed amendments that we would make to Bill C-51.

First, we fully accept and agree with what we have heard from natural health products stakeholders. This very important amendment is to create legislatively a third category for natural health products. I want to say that existing now is a sort of regulatory third category, but the government wants to make it a legislative third category. This is a very important step in protecting natural health products from ever being lumped into foods or drugs, neither of which they are.

I think that takes into consideration all of the fears that Canadians have expressed, because it will protect natural health products. It will be impossible to silently change the way health products will be treated when they are in a third and separate category.

We understand that natural health products should be recognized in legislation as different from drugs. We recognize that they are unique within an overall umbrella of therapeutic products.

To do this, we propose to bring into Bill C-51 a definition of natural health products which is actually consistent with the current definition under the regulatory regime that now exists and has existed since 2004. The reason we want to do that is reasonably simple: we feel it would be appropriate given that this definition has already been subjected to extensive consultation.

Bill C-51 will thus support the existing NHP regulations, which reflect the unique nature of NHPs and recognize that these are generally lower risk products. In regard to this separate and legislated third category, this amendment would also make clear that regulations relating to drugs would not apply to natural health products.

We have also heard great concern that in defining NHPs care should be taken to avoid lumping them, as I am sure NDP members will continue to say, into the regulatory standards for foods. Foods are outlined in Codex Alimentarius.

We agree with that. Therefore, it is the government's view that our proposed approach to defining NHPs separate from drugs, but within an overall umbrella of therapeutic products, will prevent the application of Codex to NHPs.

Second, we have listened to many people and professionals who say the same level of scientific evidence that Health Canada requires for drugs should not apply to NHPs. This is a very good amendment by the government. It is our intention to propose an amendment which would make it clear that the type and amount of information required for NHPs shall include traditional knowledge, knowledge of first nations, knowledge of the 5,000 year history of the Chinese on their types of medicine, and history of use, with history of use being safe use, or as has been used for decades by chiropractors, naturopaths and so on.

In addition, given the wide range of therapeutic products, we proposed an amendment which would make it clear that the type and amount of information required to obtain a licence depends on the nature of the product and its intended use. In other words, a new product may require more information. Or if a product claims to cure cancer, versus the common cold, then certain things would be different. We will underline this in the preamble of the bill: that the use of history and traditional knowledge are valuable and important sources of information.

Third, we want to talk about compliance and enforcement provisions. The government's intention is that the powers of Health Canada should be exercised in a very reasonable way and only for good purpose. Amendments to the bill and as suggested at committee will be that an inspector must carry out his or her duties in a reasonable fashion, having regard to risk of injury. As well, if any product is seized, it has to be dealt with in a timely manner so as not to impact small businesses.

I see my time is up. Perhaps I will have the opportunity during questions and answer to get a couple of these other points out.

[Susan Kadis, Liberal, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, many of my Thornhill constituents have also raised concerns with me about the impact that Bill C-51 will potentially have on natural health products. Among other concerns, Thornhill residents have suggested that Bill C-51 will place unfair regulations on vitamins, limit their access to natural health products, restrict their ability to grow herbs, and will potentially hurt small business owners.

I would like to ask my colleague to elaborate a bit more on the impact that Bill C-51 will have on natural health products and what response he would like to give to these concerns raised by residents of Thornhill.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise today to speak to Bill C-51, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts. I have had a lot of input from constituents. I want to discuss some of the aspects of the bill and to put on the record some of the input from constituents, mostly to identify concerns that need to be looked at during the detailed analysis of the bill at committee and the testimony of expert witnesses.

The bill would amend the Food and Drugs Act to modernize the regulatory system for foods and therapeutic products, such as contact lenses, breast implants or pharmaceuticals, for example, to improve the surveillance of benefits and risks of therapeutic products through their life cycle, to improve the compliance and enforcement measures by corporations to encourage them to report adverse reactions or potential health threats associated with market products and to give substantial regulatory powers to the minister.

The bill would also create new offences relating to food therapeutic products. It is a new term in the bill, which includes drugs and cosmetics. It would require licences for importing food, in interprovincial trade in food, make amendments to the therapeutic product listing, expand the powers of inspectors, add new administration enforcement measures, including mandatory recalls of therapeutic products and cosmetics, substantially increase the penalties related to offences and provide for the disclosure of confidential business information in certain circumstances.

I have had a lot of input on the bill. I will state some of the concerns at the outset before I go through them in some detail. I do not think anyone in Canada would be against making products safer. Many products have gone as far as to cause the deaths of Canadians. I do not imagine anyone would argue against aspects of the bill that would make products safer for Canadians. A number of elements in the bill are beneficial.

I have reviewed the Debates and have not seen one MP who spoke against the items in the bill, which would make products safer. However, people have many concerns about the bill. These concerns have to be looked at in great detail in committee stage to ensure they are addressed.

One of the biggest concerns is that natural health products would be targeted. At least one company has suggested there would be a huge reduction in health food products or naturopathic cures available to Canadians. Independent analysts at the Library of Parliament and other references have suggested that is not in the wording of the bill, that there is no targeting of natural products. All products would have the same types of controls.

I was quite relieved about that, but nevertheless, I want to find out why there is a problem with the license timing success rates for natural products. Apparently right now there is a backlog of 33,000 to 40,000 products, including food products, natural health products, consumer products and drugs. Many MPs agree that we need to put the resources in to get these approvals done. No matter what products, whether drugs or natural products, if they have proven to be safe for Canadians, why would we have this huge backlog of 30,000 products when they could help to improve the lives of Canadians?

You are doing a great job, Mr. Speaker. You have been in the House for a long time. I know you are retiring soon, so I congratulate you on your excellence work as interim Speaker.

For a particular constituent, I want to ensure the Empowerplus remains available to Canadians. If not, I want to know why. This is very important. She is a professional and suggests in her email, which if I get a chance I will read later, that it keeps her out of the health care system. It keeps her healthy and able to work as a valuable contributor to society.

If some result of this bill would prevent Empowerplus from being available to Canadians, I would certainly want to know why. I would want to investigate that in committee.

There is the relieving of a regulation that could allow big drug companies to advertise directly to consumers. I am a little worried about this. There are all sorts of funds available to do this type of product advertising. I am not sure this is a good step forward. People should be getting recommendations from their doctors or health practitioners, not basing their decisions on whichever company has the most money to advertise.

There are a number of changes in regulations. I mentioned this at the beginning. A number of things in regulating foods, drugs, health food products, natural products, everything covered in this bill are done by regulation. I want to ensure that the committee looks at that in great detail, that the items deferred to regulation are ones that should be done at an administrative level and not come back to Parliament. That is our system.

One of the natural food companies suggested that this bill would allow the bypassing of Parliament in making laws. Obviously that is not true. We can never bypass Parliament, but regulations do not come before Parliament. I would want to ensure there is a reasonable level of administrative items that are allowed to go through under regulations and that they are not at a level of law making but of Parliament. I hope the committee will review that in great detail because a number of people have raised that concern.

As I said earlier, some people suggest there is going to be a massive reduction in products available to them, natural products, health food products, other types of products, because the bill does not target specific types of products but targets everything equally. I want to ensure when the expert witnesses appear before the committee that committee members ask questions and get confirmation that would not be the case, especially in light of the evidence I mentioned earlier about the backlog in analyses of products for licensing. Hopefully, resources will be put forward by the government to make sure that backlog disappears.

One of the benefits of the bill are larger fines. There used to be tiny fines, which for big drug companies were no more than mosquito bites. Drug companies are very professional and do an excellent job, but every once in a while there is a rogue company. We have heard examples of cases where people died. We want to make sure that if this had been done knowingly, a judge would have access to imposing fines and penalties at a level that would be reasonable in those situations.

The government would have the ability to recall unsafe products when discovered. Right now it is up to the companies. Companies by and large have cooperated. It is in their best interests to cooperate, but it should not be left up to them. What if a company becomes insolvent? The government needs the power to recall products. I do not imagine anyone would disagree with that.

It is an offence to give the minister false information about products. I cannot imagine any Canadian objecting to that. Similarly, tampering with products or their labels to make them injurious to people's health would be an offence. I believe everyone would agree that is an improvement.

We do not want people telling consumers something that is not true and tampering with the label to suggest people are getting something they are not. There are provisions regarding false or reckless alarms and prohibiting the importation of food that is injurious to human health. Obviously, Canadians would not want products that were injurious to their health to be imported. Canadians want the controls on imported foods, drugs and other types of products that are dangerous to be as strong as the controls on locally produced foods, drugs or other types of products that are dangerous.

I am curious about why the regulations relating to crossing provincial borders are in the bill, considering the efforts to which the federal government has gone to leave interprovincial matters to the provinces and not create interprovincial border problems. I wonder why that is in the bill.

Bill C-51 would require hospitals and health care institutions to report adverse reactions. I cannot imagine anyone objecting to that. Canadians certainly want to know if some drug or other product is causing adverse reactions. If that provision was not in the bill, an institution might report the adverse reactions and no one would take notice of it. When there is mandatory reporting and officials see the same problem occurring in several places in Canada, they would know it is something that has to be looked into.

The legislation also allows for life cycle testing and monitoring of a product. Sometimes new products come out, are tested and approved and then their use is changed. People use them in different ways or as a remedy for something else. There is no testing down the road. Bill C-51 would allow testing and life cycle monitoring of a product to ensure that it and its uses continued to be safe for Canadians down the road.

During the debate previously on this bill, some members mentioned products that had been a problem in the past and why Canada needs such a bill. I am quoting from Hansard the names of drugs that were mentioned by other MPs. Heparin was mentioned. There was mention of a contaminated drug from China, Vioxx, which led to many deaths. Evra is a birth control drug which leads to clotting. Singulair is an asthma drug which causes suicidal ideation. Champix is an anti-smoking drug which causes suicidal ideation and depression. There are also some anti-psychotic drugs for children that apparently cause obesity. People are worried about the vast majority of drugs and products coming on the market.

The Minister of Health said when he introduced the bill that he issued warnings practically every week about this or that dangerous product, some of which are natural products which have an impact on cardiac arrest, strokes or liver damage. If drugs or whatever products happen to cause those problems and the minister is giving a lot of warnings, obviously Canadians want that type of danger to their health dealt with.

The minister also said that he wants to ensure that natural health products are available to Canadians. Indeed, the government wants more natural health products in the marketplace in order to provide more choice. It is good if that is true, but the minister has not necessarily convinced Canadians yet. From the many concerns that I have heard about, a number of people have not been convinced.

I want to go through some of the emails that I have received regarding concerns that have to be dealt with at second reading before the bill can proceed. The first email is very cogent to my riding:

My limited understanding to this Act may impose restrictions on the collection, preservation and use of, in our case, traditional medicines etc. I don't think anyone is sure at this point the impact on First Nations, Self-Governing or otherwise. What I do know is that there has to be meaningful consultation if legislation is developed that could potentially diminish or impact on our rights under our Self-Government and Final Agreements.

As you know, First Nations gather, preserve and use all kinds of traditional medicines and this activity is protected under our agreements.

Others including our Health & Social Director are also raising this as an issue, and it is certainly has potential to impact on our culture and lifestyle.

As a citizen of the Little Salmon Carmacks First Nation, this concerns me greatly--

As she says, it is mandatory by law to have consultation. Certainly, I hope that such first nation witnesses are called and that there is an analysis and consultation to the effects on their products that they have used since time immemorial.

Someone named Carole states:

I am opposed to the Police State Powers in Bill C-51. I want my access to natural health products protected and there is something wrong with the State making Personal and health decisions...health decisions are fundamental to our personal Autonomy...

There has been more than one comment on the types of powers in the bill. The committee definitely has to review those to ensure they are not out of line with the standard types of enforcement. In particular, search and seizure powers have been raised by a number of people, and that certainly has to be cleared up by the committee.

A person by the name of Shawn states:

--I do not support bill C-51...I prefer to have access to natural products “free and clear”.

The next one is from Elizabeth. I will pass that one for now because this is the one I was talking about where the person has bipolar disorder and definitely needs this particular drug I was talking about, Empowerplus, a vitamin supplement, to keep her healthy and she does not want to be denied this important medicine.

The next one is from a person who distributes these types of natural products. It states:

Many Canadians rely upon natural health products for their health. These products are endangered and consumers need to act now to save them.

Since 2004, when the Natural Health Product Regulations were introduced, natural health products have been increasingly threatened. The new Regulations were Health Canada's response to consumer demands for the government to protect their access to natural health products. The Regulations have had the opposite effect. To “legally” sell a health product, the new Regulations impose a licensing requirement. The problem is that 60% of licence applications have failed. These have been the “easy” applications. Expectations are that 70-75% of applications will fail. For the [natural health product] Community this means 75% of [natural health products] we rely upon for our health will become illegal.

I certainly think this person has experience in the field. I certainly think those answers have to be given by the committee as to what is purported that this bill would do and the results on the ground, not only of this bill but the regulations of 2004 and the effects they are having.

I also have all sorts of concerns from a chap named Werner. I will not go into them now because they are so long. Also, as he is not one of my constituents, I am sure his MP will bring them up. However, he has a lot of concerns about, first, the minister's past history related to the drug companies. He has a whole bunch of detailed information that I am sure he sent to many MPs and they can bring out those concerns related to the bill.

Another one from my riding, though, is from Bryan. He states:

I'm afraid [this] will eliminate our choices. I find [the] assurances to the contrary empty promises. They say the bill doesn't target natural products, practitioners and consumers, but there is nothing in the wording of the bill that says that. Big Pharma can afford to do the testing, pay fines and market their products. This bill will help them consolidate control of the market by eliminating what little competition they have now - alternative medicines and suppliers.

He, too, talks about individuals who need to deal with diabetes, arthritis and bipolar depression with diet and supplements. We want to make sure that we do not lose those.

I have another practitioner of herbal medicine, named Andrew, who thinks that a huge number of the products, 75%, will be eliminated. Unfortunately, I do not have time to go over all of these because I can see my time is up, yet I wanted to present many more.

I commend people to read a Globe and Mail article of May 23, 2008, that goes into this in more detail. I urge the committee to deal with a number of the questions raised by my constituents, the final one being the fact that the inspectors who have the ability to do these inspections and recalls will hopefully not be forced to do a lot of them.

The House resumed from May 1 consideration of the motion that Bill C-51, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, this week we have focused on the economy by debating and passing at report stage the budget implementation bill as part of our focused on the economy week.

The bill guarantees a balanced budget, controls spending and keeps taxes low without imposing a carbon and heating tax on Canadian families.

It also sets out much-needed changes to the immigration system in order to maintain our competitive economy.

It will also include the new tax-free savings account, TFSA, an innovative device for individuals and families to save money. That bill is now at third reading and we hope to wrap up debate tomorrow on the important budget implementation bill to maintain the health and competitiveness of our economy.

Next week will be we have work to do week. Since the Speech from the Throne we have introduced 59 bills in Parliament.

These bills focus on fighting crime, sustaining our prosperous and dynamic economy, improving Canadians' environment and their health, strengthening the federation, and securing Canada's place in the world.

To date, 20 of these bills have received royal assent, which leaves a lot of work to do on the 39 that have yet to receive royal assent. I know the Liberal House leader suggests perhaps we should work on only three, but we believe in working a bit harder than that.

To ensure that we have the time necessary to move forward on our remaining legislative priorities, I will seek the consent of the House on Monday to extend the sitting hours for the remaining two weeks of the spring sitting, as the rules contemplate. I am sure all members will welcome the opportunity to get to work to advance the priorities of Canadians and get things done.

I will seek in the future the consent of the opposition to have next Wednesday be a special sitting of the House of Commons. This is to accommodate the special event about which the Liberal House leader was speaking. The day would start at 3 p.m. with an apology from the Prime Minister regarding the residential schools experience. I will also be asking the House and its committees to adjourn that day until 5:30 p.m. to allow for solemn observance of the events surrounding the residential schools apology. Residential school survivors and the chief of the Assembly of First Nations will be offered a place of prominence in our gallery to observe these very important formal ceremonies in the House of Commons.

Tomorrow and continuing next week, we will get started on the other important work remaining by debating the budget implementation bill. After we finish the budget bill, we will debate Bill C-29, to modernize the Canada Elections Act with respect to loans made to political parties, associations and candidates to ensure that wealthy individuals are not able to exert undue influence in the political process, as we have seen even in the recent past.

We will also discuss Bill C-51, to ensure that food and products available in Canada are safe for consumers; Bill C-53, to get tough on criminals who steal cars and traffic in stolen property; Bill S-3, to combat terrorism; Bill C-7, to modernize our aeronautics sector; Bill C-5, dealing with nuclear liability; Bill C-54, to ensure safety and security with respect to pathogens and toxins; Bill C-56, to ensure public protection with respect to the transportation of dangerous goods; Bill C-19, to limit the terms of senators to eight years from the current maximum of 45; Bill C-43, to modernize our customs rules; Bill C-14, to allow enterprises choice for communicating with customers; Bill C-32, to modernize our fisheries sector; Bill C-45, regarding our military justice system; Bill C-46, to give farmers more choice in marketing grain; Bill C-39, to modernize the grain act for farmers; Bill C-57, to modernize the election process of the Canadian Wheat Board; and Bill C-22, to provide fairness in representation in the House of Commons.

I know all Canadians think these are important bills. We in the government think they are important and we hope and expect that all members of the House of Commons will roll up their sleeves to work hard in the next two weeks to see that these bills pass.

Family Homes on Reserves and Matrimonial Interests or Rights Act

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-47. In the debate on this bill yesterday, there were a number of very good points raised by the member for Nunavut.

This bill is an act respecting family homes situated on first nation reserves and matrimonial interests or rights in or to structures and lands situated on those reserves.

The debate has brought a lot of very important dimensions to the crisis that exists on first nations reserves. This legislation is necessary because there is no legislation now to which people can turn. These are the representations of the member for Nunavut, who has been one of the most stellar champions of aboriginal affairs, of first nations peoples, Métis and the Inuit. During her speech, she referred to a couple of stakeholder representations, which I want to review simply to provide a context as to why I have risen to speak.

The Native Women's Association of Canada expressed its views in a press release criticizing this legislation. It expressed its frustration with what it refers to as the government's unilateral action on the bill. The discussion has to do with legislative initiatives and unlegislated initiatives. It is the unlegislated initiatives part that is the source of some of the concern expressed by the Native Women's Association of Canada.

Bev Jacobs, the president of the NWAC, stated in her press release of March 4, 2008:

There is nothing in the legislation that addresses the systemic issues of violence many women face that lead to the dissolution of marriages nor is there any money available for implementation. In the end, we end up with a more worthless piece of paper.

That is a very strong statement.

We just dealt with a report from the Standing Committee on the Status of Women relating to some of the issues, particularly with regard to the violence against many women and also some of the other areas, such as housing, poverty, governance, access to justice and general violence. It is very important to ensure that Canadians understand and our first nations also understand that we are sensitive to this. I have not seen that in regard to the representations of the government. As I listen to the questions asked by government members on Bill C-47, the government seems to be fairly dismissive. The attitude of the government is that we should just pass the bill, that it is a good bill and the government does not have to do anything else.

The government must listen to the stakeholders, those who are seeking some relief in dealing with a serious crisis within the first nations communities.

Also, there is a very significant letter dated April 8, 2008 from the office of the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Phil Fontaine. When I read it, I was somewhat concerned about the allegations that were made in the letter. The position generally is that this bill is flawed in both process and substance and that while its assessment of the bill is not finalized, the Assembly of First Nations will want to make further representations. This letter is extremely important. It was very helpful to me in understanding the view of the stakeholders, and it does include the preliminary analysis of the Assembly of First Nations.

Even in the text of the letter, with regard to Bill C-47, Mr. Fontaine said:

While it was a positive and practical step forward to engage in dialogue with the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) and the Native Women's Association of Canada in the development of this legislation, the approach falls far short of First Nations' direction that the Crown should fully engage with First Nations in developing policy and legislation that affects First Nations.

The substantive foundation of the concerns that they have has to do with the consultation process. I recall that in her speech to the House, the member for Nunavut commented on that aspect. She said:

--if we want to see real solutions in our aboriginal communities, there has to be real partnership and collaboration, and that they not be token gestures.

The concern is if there is a perception of tokenism, of consultations which are going through the motions but which are not really sincere, it is a recipe for disagreement and maybe discontent. Parliament has a serious responsibility to consult with stakeholders regardless of which piece of legislation with which we are dealing. When we make laws, we are affecting people in one way or another and those people need to be heard.

According to the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, it appears that has been a problem not only with regard to Bill C-47, but generally with regard to many of the issues that have come before Parliament.

Mr. Fontaine went on to say:

Furthermore, the fact that direction provided through this dialogue does not appear reflected in the tabled Bill, leaves us to conclude that the dialogue was of limited value in promoting and implementing a reconciliation approach regarding First Nations aboriginal and treaty rights and Crown sovereignty.

I take this as a very serious alert for parliamentarians and for the government with regard to Bill C-47. We have to step up and take this a lot more seriously and determine whether or not there are appropriate steps to address these legitimate concerns that have been raised by Chief Fontaine.

He went on to say:

In regards to the process of engagement, the AFN has clearly stated, on numerous occasions, and in formal correspondence, the position of First Nations in this regard. In addition, the AFN and First Nations through the dialogue process, detailed alternative approaches and measures to address the issues arising in relation to matrimonial real property on reserve. Indeed, the federal government had many, many opportunities to address these matters properly and effectively.

He went on to say:

Unfortunately, the advice and direction of AFN and First Nations has not been heeded and I must point out that the First Nations assessment of the proposed legislation will likely be that it is unconstitutional in law and of no value to First Nations individuals or governments in practice.

When I read that it made me want to know more. I want to hear more. Should the bill go to committee for review, the questions that were raised in the consultation process and which apparently were not heeded by the government in proposing the legislation, need to be considered. We need to remediate that situation. We need to make sure that the stakeholders, regardless of their basis, are heard and that the issues raised are frontally and effectively addressed so that all understand. Regardless of which side one is on on a particular issue, there is always room for due respect for the opinions of others, but that does not seem to have been the case in this regard.

The bill contemplates an approach that will not provide any effective remedies for individuals seeking redress. That was the intent of the bill and is the intent of the bill. It is why the member for Nunavut, when she spoke before the House yesterday, made this argument over and over again. Yet when the parliamentary secretary rose on questions, he was dismissive of her question and made the assertion that the bill should be passed, that we should move forward because there were other things to do.

We have things to do. We have to get Bill C-47 right. The objectives of this place are to have full debate and to properly identify those issues which should be addressed.

The first nations wanted to articulate, as laid out in Chief Fontaine's letter, the principles that should guide the search for solutions and the standard upon which proposed solutions should be evaluated. He went on the list about a dozen. He lists strengthening first nations, families and communities, fairness, respect for traditional values, protection of aboriginal and treaty rights, no abrogation or derogation of first nations' collective rights, protection and preservation of first nations' land for future generations, recognition and implementation of first nations' jurisdiction and community based solutions.

I had the opportunity to be a member of the Standing Committee on Health when we dealt with aboriginal health issues. The committee travelled to a number of reserves to consult with stakeholders and to determine some of the non-legislative areas of which we should also be cognizant.

It was clear to me that there were substantive differences between reserves. Some are in much better shape than others. One thing I noticed was some of the fundamentals, like clean water and a sewage system, were not present.

There were a number of health issues in program areas. I remember I went into a modest community centre on one reserve. In the basement was a large lineup of people and I wanted to know why. I found out that people were lining up to buy cases of cigarettes for resale. However, next to that was the jail. It is hard for Canadians to understand the realities of the lives of first nations and the challenges they face.

As a consequence of that review, we found that the problems which existed on first nations reserves, which exist throughout Canadian society, were multiple times more in terms of severity as well as the occurrence levels, whether it be substance abuse, or domestic violence, or problems with children or social problems, et cetera. These are areas which Canadians demand that Parliament address in an appropriate fashion.

I thank Chief Fontaine for his letter of April 8 and the preliminary analysis. I will not go through this, but it is available and if members do not have a copy, I would be happy to provide it for them.

I want to comment generally on the bill. The Liberal Party supports the bill to go to committee. Like many bills where second reading occurs, we are often approached by stakeholders and constituents who suggest the bill should simply be defeated at second reading. This happened with regard to animal cruelty legislation. It is happening with regard to Bill C-51, which has to do with natural health products.

Canadians and all interested parties should understand that when a bill comes before the House at second reading, we have representations in an informal way from those who are interested parties. We have our own knowledge, some of our own research and some historic research.

What we do not have at second reading is the present assessment and the current input of the experts. We do not have the formal position of the stakeholders on both sides or all sides of the argument. What we do at second reading is debate, in principle, the aspects of the bill and whether there are any major problems.

Members know that when we pass a bill at second reading, we pass it in principle and get it to committee where there can be, as necessary, full consultation and public hearings to allow the stakeholders to come before the committee to articulate very clearly the positions and concerns they have to proposed amendments, et cetera. Some of the best work in Parliament happens at committee, where it is not just a handful or 12 members of Parliament who make the decisions. They are there participating in a consultation process with the necessary expertise, not only from the government and the officials of the department, who will answer the questions of the members and explain the bill in great detail, but also with those stakeholders, which is extremely important.

I am quite sure the bill will pass at second reading. However, I am also quite sure throughout this place there will be a strong representation that we should have very comprehensive public hearings and hear from the stakeholders to identify how we can deal with those matters which may not have been reflected in the bill, even though they may have been raised under preliminary consultation with the principal stakeholders.

There are many stakeholders in regard to the bill. We can never forget that this is a matter of human rights for women and children living on reserves. The whole objective of the bill is so they can have safer and healthier lives and therefore happier lives. Those are fundamental objectives. Who is against that?

How we deliver that will be the issue. Legislating certain things will help for those matters which require a legislative solution because we need a law to guide it. We cannot achieve the full impact and the benefit of the law without having the non-legislative component and the initiatives, the support and the funding necessary to provide an environment in which those laws can operate in a fair manner.

While we support the intent of the bill, we do not support the unilateral process the government has taken in introducing the legislation. We were instrumental in making critical changes to Bill C-21 to ensure that aboriginal Canadians would have the time and the capacity they needed to deal with changes. We continue to push the government to address issues such as the human rights needs of aboriginal Canadians, education, jobs, poverty, water and health, which are much the same kinds of conclusions that we reached in the health committee I back in 1994, which was when the new Parliament started.

It was an education for me, as an urban Canadian with very little exposure prior to coming to Parliament, about the challenges faced by our first nations and their people, the Métis and the Inuit.

The bill itself establishes a federal matrimonial real property regime, combined with the mechanisms for first nations to develop their own matrimonial real property laws.

By way of background, in 1986 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that when a conjugal relationship broke down on reserve, courts could not apply provincial or territorial family law because reserve lands fell under federal jurisdiction. We can see the need to address that condition.

As a result, aboriginal women living on reserves have not enjoyed the same rights as women living off reserves. That is an important matter to be resolved. They are not entitled to an equal share of matrimonial property at the time of the marriage break down. Matrimonial real property refers to the house and the land that the couple lives on while they are married or in a common law relationship.

The government began preliminary consultations on this matter, but it focused on recommendations made by committees. The next step was to move to the legislation solution. As I had indicated, this is not simply a matter to be addressed by legislative proscriptions. It also requires a non-legislative approach.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lui Temelkovski]

I'm sure the minister doesn't have much to say about Bill C-51 right now.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, Bill C-51 will come to this committee at another time. This is about the estimates.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Minister of Health]

Thank you very much, Chair, and welcome as well to members of the committee. It's always nice to be here.

I'm addressing the health portfolio's main estimates for 2008-2009, of course, and I have with me and am pleased to introduce our deputy minister of Health Canada, Morris Rosenberg; Alfred Tsang, who's the chief financial officer for Health Canada; and on the Public Health Agency of Canada side we have Dr. David Butler-Jones, who's the chief public health officer, and James Libbey, who is our chief financial officer. I may from to time, if it pleases the committee, turn to them to assist me with any technical matters that might arise in answering your questions.

To begin, I'm happy to be appearing before this committee during what has been a very active time for the portfolio.

We're taking action and making good on commitments for a healthier environment, safer communities, safer food, health and consumer products, along with more patient-centred health care. In doing so, we're building from the expertise of our officials as well as provinces and territories, health care stakeholders, first nations and Inuit community leaders, patients and industries.

Our range of partners needs to be broad because our policy spectrum is wide. Health policy is not only about working with doctors and nurses on dealing with illness, but working with all sectors of society on promoting health.

As written in the Ottawa charter, signed at the first international conference on health promotion on November 21, 1986,

Health promotion goes beyond health care. Health promotion policy combines diverse but complementary approaches including legislation....

It is characterized by action that

...contributes to ensuring safer and healthier goods and services, healthier public services and cleaner, more enjoyable environments.

Mr. Chair, as you can see, those words do well at defining and explaining the approach of today's federal health portfolio, and therefore, I would put it to you and the committee, these main estimates.

For instance, we know that more than two-thirds of deaths in Canada are the result of chronic diseases. These estimates thus contain an incremental funding increase of $8.6 million, for instance, for our integrated strategy on healthy living and chronic disease, which encourages healthy living and includes disease-specific strategies for diabetes, for cancer, and for cardiovascular disease.

These estimates also include an increase of $2.7 million for new and ongoing public health information programs, including our healthy pregnancy initiative and the children's fitness tax credit campaign, which of course raises awareness of the credit and encourages families with children under the age of 16 to be more active.

In addition, I want to highlight that these estimates refer to $10.65 million annually to renew our response to hepatitis C. This will be spearheaded by the Public Health Agency as it works closely with community and provincial and territorial partners to implement a renewed prevention, support, and research program.

Planning our preparedness and response to a pandemic also remains a priority. We are implementing a balanced, multi-faceted approach that includes securing a domestic vaccine supply, as well as a comprehensive pandemic influenza plan. Stockpiling of antivirals, of course, and other public health measures are included to minimize the impact of a pandemic. Indeed, we have now reached our target for the purchase of 55.7 million doses of antivirals for the national antiviral stockpile, the number of doses estimated to treat all Canadians who become ill in a pandemic and who require and seek medical attention.

On top of this, the main estimates contain a $28.3 million increase for a cleaner, healthier environment. This includes a $17.4 million increase for the chemicals management plan. Through this plan we've committed to assessing chemical substances used by industry that are of potential concern. We are challenging industry to show they're using them safely and we're taking decisive action to protect the public.

Health Canada's assessment of bisphenol A is a great example of how we have moved forward, because as long as no new compelling information arises during the current public comment period, we will be moving to ban the importing, selling, and advertising of polycarbonate baby bottles. The assessment found that when it comes to its use of producing items like hockey helmets and DVDs, BPA is not a concern, but when it comes to polycarbonate baby bottles, there is a risk that very hot liquids may cause the chemical to leach into the formula, be ingested by newborns and infants, and possibly have negative effects on their development. As a result, we're acting promptly on our knowledge and taking action to best protect our kids' health.

Mr. Chair, our estimates also include a very important investment to protect the health and safety of our youth and communities. On April 29 I had the pleasure of joining the Minister of Justice and Minister of Public Safety in announcing $111 million for critical drug treatment and prevention initiatives for provinces and territories under the national anti-drug strategy.

Under this strategy, we're strengthening enforcement as well as treatment—and providing help to parents in talking to their kids and protecting them against the threat of illicit drugs.

I'm proud to say that these main estimates also include a contribution of more than $27 million to support our awareness-building efforts and implement our treatment actions. With the recent announcement of a $230 million investment over five years, our government is investing more than any previous government in order to safeguard Canadian families from illicit drugs.

Alongside this unprecedented action for safer communities, we're also moving forward with action for safer products. As you know, the Prime Minister announced Canada's food and consumer safety action plan last December. Although it is not covered in the main estimates and will be discussed later this year during supplementary estimates, budget 2008 backed this plan with a two-year investment of $113 million. On April 8 we moved this plan forward by tabling Bill C-51 and Bill C-52.

Respectively, they seek to modernize the Food and Drugs Act, which has not been upgraded for some 40 years, and replace Part I of the Hazardous Products Act, which was written in the late 60s.

Together, they propose important tools to strengthen Canada's approach to safety.

These bills represent important action--the important action we need to take to better protect Canadians in a modern world. I look forward to discussing them in greater depth with you in the weeks to come, as those bills come before committee.

However, right now I want to address our proposed approach to strengthening drug safety under Bill C-51. There are some who are maintaining that this bill will in some way weaken our drug approval process. I want to say right here and now that this is not the case--in fact far from it. The current process calls for a vigorous assessment of health products before they gain access to market, and under Bill C-51 that won't change.

[Dr. Jeff Poston, Executive Director, Canadian Pharmacists Association]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

The Canadian Pharmacists Association very much welcomes this opportunity to present to you today during your review of the 10-year plan to strengthen health care.

While medication use is an integral component of Canadian health care, adverse drug events and medication misuse remain a serious issue. In a recent Canadian study, 24% of patients were admitted to a hospital's internal medicine service for drug-related causes, and over 70% of these admissions were deemed preventable. Similarly, another recent study in Vancouver found that one out of every nine emergency department visits was due to a drug-related cause, and over two-thirds of these were preventable. It's against this background and concerns about appropriate use and access to care that we want to base some of our remarks to you today.

Since the announcement of the 10-year plan in 2004, some progress has been made; however, there are many challenges that remain unmet. I'm going to focus on four areas.

First is the national pharmaceutical strategy. Progress has been slow to date. There's been a relative lack of progress in overall strategy. The process has not been very transparent, consultation with stakeholders took place relatively late in the day, and we still don't know what's happening in many of the key areas, if indeed any progress has been made on issues such as expensive drugs for rare diseases or the development of a common national formulary. We're concerned that many of the issues identified as priorities in the NPS are being addressed in isolation, and we see the need for more focus on a comprehensive strategy to address the issues.

Appropriate use of pharmaceuticals needs to be a key focus of the national pharmaceutical strategy. In September 2006, over 20 months ago, the progress report on the national pharmaceutical strategy identified further work to be done. We've seen little activity, and the process seems stalled.

There have been a few initiatives in the NPS that have resulted in meaningful benefits for Canadians: some provinces have announced catastrophic drug coverage programs; the recently announced Bill C-51 should modernize the drug approval process; the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board has been analyzing non-patented drug prices; and some provinces have announced new regulations and policies concerning pharmaceuticals. There needs to be a sustained effort by federal, provincial, and territorial governments to continue to develop and implement a truly national pharmaceutical strategy.

With respect to health human resources, the 10-year plan recognized the need to increase the supply of health care professionals in Canada, including doctors, nurses, and pharmacists. There has been progress in health human resources planning. Health Canada has invested in interprofessional education and collaboration, support for integration of internationally educated health care professionals, and generation of data for the seven priority health care providers identified in the 10-year plan.

The approval of an FPT framework for pan-Canadian planning and progress in provincial plans to manage health human resources have been positive developments; however, there is much more that remains to be done. Areas of focus need to include planning based on population needs; addressing shortages, particularly of doctors, nurses, and pharmacists, and of other health care professionals; and healthy workplace issues. We also still need better data collection.

Thirdly, I want to comment on primary health care reform. This is critical to the sustainability of the health care system as we move forward. Much more work is needed to address issues of timely access to care, interprofessional collaboration, and optimizing the scopes of practice of health care professionals. As medication experts and the most accessible health care providers, pharmacists need to be further integrated into primary health care and primary health care teams.

Finally, I want to comment on electronic health records. EHR and telehealth are key technologies to enable health system renewal. Adoption of computer technology and electronic health records by clinicians remains a challenge. Progress has been slow. Most provinces are developing a drug information system that will include a complete drug profile and enable e-prescribing applications. We believe the electronic health record will enable primary health care reform and allow health care practitioners to better care for their patients.

Better information will lead to better health care decisions, and DIS applications will lead to enhanced drug safety. To this end, funding for Canada Health Infoway needs to be increased in order to realize the vision of the electronic health record.

In conclusion, while progress has been made on some elements of the 10-year plan, significant challenges and opportunities remain. More funding and more work will be required to address the issues that were identified by the first ministers four years ago.

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lui Temelkovski]

We've had discussions about that, and we'd prefer not to ask questions on Bill C-51.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I appreciate the submissions you made here today. It's clear that there's a real tension between effective regulation and efficient regulation. I also recognize that we're talking about these issues at a particular point in time.

Bill C-51 is just around the corner. None of you has mentioned it today. I know that you're probably going to be back here chatting about it some more. I wonder if I could lead you there now, though, in light of some of the concerns you've been raising.

I've heard from a lot of people in my community and across the country who are worried about the impact of Bill C-51 on natural health products. In that bill, it seems to me that what we're doing—

[Darren Praznik, President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee.

On behalf of the CCTFA and our more than 160 member companies, which represent about a $5.4 billion industry in Canada, we'd like to thank you for the opportunity to speak to you on this very important particular matter. We have already forwarded copies of our brief, I understand, in both official languages to your office and staff, and we have distributed copies here as well.

First, let me just say that the member companies of our association continue to be and always have been supportive of Health Canada in its efforts to ensure the health of Canadian consumers. We know that Health Canada takes its job very seriously and strives to make decisions on the basis of sound science. We as an association also very much share the belief that regulation should be both effective in achieving its health outcomes and efficient as well in its operation. That's why as an association we support the amendments to the Food and Drugs Act that are being proposed by Bill C-51.

It is in the area of efficiency of operation, however, that we have our particular issues with the natural health products directorate. The first one I want to address, and it's been talked about already, is the backlog.

I very much appreciate the position Mr. Waddington is in. I know they work very hard at addressing that backlog. He keeps us well informed. We know as well that earlier this year we were looking actually at more applications coming in for non-compendial products than were being processed every day, so the backlog was expanding. We're glad to hear that you may have turned that corner.

But it really is unacceptable. Although they're trying very hard, they need to be sufficiently resourced and supported to be able to manage this particular backlog. We have member companies who don't even bother now bringing products in, if they have to wait a year or two to go through the process. We very much share the views that were expressed by the Direct Sellers Association of Canada.

Our recommendation to you today is that you don't want to get in their way to ensure that they're spending more time answering for what they're doing than addressing the backlog; that would be an unintended consequence of this committee's interest. But we think they need to be brought back on a regular basis to this committee to report on their progress and be able to get that backlog eliminated in as short a time as possible. That's enough said, I think, on that particular issue.

The other issue we would like to address is what we view as the unintended consequence of creating a third branch of regulation for what in essence are personal care products. When the NHP branch or division was set up under drugs, it was intended to address what were lower-risk products within the drug category.

All of the products that were in personal care products had traditionally been regulated under cosmetic regs or drug regs. When NHP's were created, the drug regs created a further subcategory. Our products were already regulated under drugs; they included antiperspirants, fluoridated toothpaste, anti-dandruff products, medicated skin care products, antiseptic skin cleansers, acne products, and primary sun screens, including makeup that had an SPF. These products were regulated under drug regs but were moved, because of their composition, under the NHP regs, which were intended really for a lower category of risk.

Because our products are generally very low-risk, I don't think enough attention was paid to the detail in similar regulatory regimes. The result is that we ended up with two very odd—I would argue unexplainable—and costly differences in regulation.

One, of course, was tamper-proof or tamper-evidence security packaging. I want to illustrate with the two products I have with me. I didn't bring them today because Phil and I thought it would be a hot debate and we needed extra antiperspirant, but these are antiperspirants. One is a drug; the other is a natural health product.

When the regs for the natural health products were set up, they followed pretty similarly the packaging requirements for drugs, except that they didn't include...the technical term, I guess is the “exclusion for topical products”. The result is, if you buy a drug antiperspirant in Canada, you do not need tamper-evidence packaging, but if you buy an antiperspirant that is a natural health product, with supposedly a lesser degree of risk, you need to put on a tamper-evident package.

I don't think anyone ever intended that to happen, but it was an unintended result of not matching the same level of regulation.

Manufacturers both in Canada and abroad who ship antiperspirants that are NHPs into Canada spend literally millions of dollars putting tamper-evident protection on your antiperspirant that adds really no value but that costs the companies and consumers millions of bucks.

Is that really what we're intending to do: have an unintended consequence of not making sure regulations match?

The second area that we just flagged is heavy-metal testing. Again, for NHPs, heavy-metal testing is required for our level of low-risk products. Nowhere in the world has that yet been required, but for drugs, supposedly a higher-risk heavy-metal testing is not required. Again, we have two sets of regulations applicable to drugs, which are supposedly higher-risk, and NHPs, which are supposedly lower-risk, and they don't match. The consequence to Canadian industry and Canadian consumers is having to pay a lot of extra money for, I would argue, no additional value. Again, there are unintended consequences and some oversight. We've been raising this issue for four years. I think there's some progress on addressing the antiperspirants issue, but we raise it and bring it to your attention again.

Thank you for your time, Mr. Chair.

[Carla Barry]

Thank you.

Section 7 of the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act has the general prohibition against false and misleading labelling advertising, but further on in that particular section what is misleading is also described. Several words in there are used to clarify what the intent of “misleading” applies to, and “origin” is one of those.

With regard to Bill C-51, it was felt that it was important that the two false and misleading prohibitions be the same in both pieces of legislation, as the CFIA is responsible for the administration in relation to non-health and safety for both pieces of legislation with respect to food.

[Carol Skelton, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Okay. Thank you. It was just a comment that was made during testimony from one of our people who was testifying.

With regard to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Bill C-51 is before the House right now. When you look at that bill and look at what it's doing, it's going to have effects on labelling, I'm assuming, because in one area it says, “...regarding its character, value, quantity, composition, merit, safety or origin”.

If we apply that to what we're dealing with nowadays, and we have a jar of pickles, for example, that is imported from China or India, it can be labelled “Product of Canada” with the 51% rule. Does the word “origin”, if it goes through, apply to the finished product, namely the pickles, or to the imported ingredients, the cucumbers? That's another thing.

Are you watching Bill C-51? Can you talk to us about that?

[Ronald Doering]

I'll just say that I've done a varying cost of analysis of it for more than one client. The next “Food in Canada” article is on this point.

All they've really done to section 5 is clean it up and add “and import”, so now it's going to be much harder to import food. There will be a much higher onus on food importers than there formerly was, because now it's a criminal offence to import food that doesn't comply with the mislabelled, misbranded one. So companies are going to be far more careful. Most companies are. Most companies I act for, for example, actually have people out there determining where the 32 ingredients in a frozen pizza actually come from and getting supplier warranty agreements. This has been working its way through the system on the tracking side. So Bill C-51 is not going to change this significantly, but it could affect importers principally.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

I think your time has actually expired. I'm so sorry.

Before I turn it over to Mr. Miller, I just want to ask a question. If any of the witnesses are familiar with Bill C-51, they will know that in the amendments to the Food and Drug Act, section 5 is looking at truth in labelling, particularly making it more specific to food and talking about origin of food.

Are there any comments on unintended consequences, as you've already talked about, Mr. Doering, and how they might impact upon the industry? I think Madame Cruikshank has some comments on that as well.

Mr. Doering.

Food and Drugs Act

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his two questions, which do not necessarily deal with the same issue.

My speech dealt primarily with food. As the hon. member may know, I am the Bloc Québécois critic on agriculture and agri-food. However, I will be pleased to answer his question on drug advertising.

As for the first question, unfortunately, I cannot answer it. I would have liked him to ask me the question that was put to him. If he wants to send me the questions that he received from the industry and to which he referred in the context of Bill C-51, I will be pleased to look at them. As for me, I have not yet received any correspondence on this bill and on the concerns that it may raise.

As for advertising, it is clear that it is not something that is prohibited. However, when it comes to drugs, the situation is totally different than with cars or clothes. Even that type of advertising must be regulated. Some things that were tolerated many years ago can no longer be done. The hon. members for Laval and Victoria provided examples of companies that used totally unacceptable forms of advertisement. Under current rules, companies cannot necessarily promote their product the way they would like to, by explaining exactly what it is. So what these companies do is they promote it in a way that is sometimes almost funny. However, the underlying message is very important, and this is where we have to be very careful.

The hon. member for Victoria mentioned the advertisement of a drug to control cholesterol. It shows a person dying of that condition on television. This is like telling people that they must take that drug or die. That is basically the message conveyed.

Some things are unacceptable and cannot be done. We must regulate this, while also allowing merchants to survive.

In conclusion, we can have advertising, but it must be very closely regulated to ensure that it is not disturbing to people, and also that it is not pernicious.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate on Bill C-51, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

My hon. colleagues from Laval and Victoria, who spoke earlier, focused on the health aspect and on advertising. Other aspects of this bill also drew my attention. In an effort to keep our viewers at home from losing interest—although the members' presentations were far from boring—I will change the subject somewhat. I will branch off and address the new powers that will be given to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Since I am the agriculture critic for my party, I know it is something that concerns us deeply. People from the Union des producteurs agricoles have also stated their position on the matter.

As we were saying earlier, we in the Bloc Québécois feel it is important that this bill move forward through the legislative process to the committee. This bill raises a number of questions. We have tried to touch on many aspects, but we must ensure that everything is done correctly. That is why we will be very vigilant in committee. I am convinced that my colleague from Laval, as well as my colleague from Québec, who takes care of the health file, will be able to give this bill, if it ever passes, a thorough analysis that will address the concerns of most people.

This bill was introduced at the same time as Bill C-52, which I also spoke to here in this House. We had the opportunity to talk about it earlier this week.

These two bills have to do with health, but they also touch on the agrifood aspect. While Bill C-52 has to do with the safety of consumer products, Bill C-51 could introduce certain measures that I will describe here. During my presentation, I will also explain the traceability system and the recall management system. We are talking about a framework to eliminate damaging effects on health, as well as other areas, but I will focus primarily on those aspects of Bill C-51.

The bill deals with the advertising of drugs, their marketing, approval and traceability. Since we have already had an opportunity to hear about advertising, I will concentrate on traceability, as well as the new powers assigned to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency under the provisions of this bill, which was announced some time ago, at the same time Bill C-52 was announced.

According to a spokesperson for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, that agency could intervene as soon as a potential health risk became known concerning food imported into Canada. The CFIA could obtain a more precise evaluation of the risk from the country concerned. It could also ask that country for additional evidence of inspection, and standards equivalent to those imposed on our own manufacturers or producers, and of course, not more stringent because of international agreements. We cannot require other countries to impose standards that are more severe than those we apply to our own producers or manufacturers for the very simple reason that we would be contravening the laws and regulations of the World Trade Organization.

However, it is very important that people should know that at present there are still no reciprocal standards. We have said that for a long time and I will have more to say in that regard.

Therefore, unfortunately, under the rules, there are still some products or foods that come into Canada, for example, fruit and vegetables that may come from China—we are always talking about that country—or from India, but also from the United States, on which pesticides, insecticides or certain chemical fertilizers that are forbidden in Canada and in Quebec have been used. In fact, those products are allowed in those countries. It is their choice. I do not necessarily dispute that. They have the right to use the pesticides they want.

Nevertheless, one thing certain is that, here in Canada, there is a very large and well-developed awareness of food safety. We want to use fewer of these products, even though, sometimes, we do not really have a choice. However, we must ensure that where fruit and vegetables are treated in other countries with products that are forbidden in Canada, they cannot cross our border and be sold on the shelves of our grocery stores.

I am very anxious to see that in the application of the law. Undoubtedly, we will look at that issue in committee. Bill C-51 should correct a weakness that we have pointed out many times here in the House, in debate or through questions.

Every time that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency comes to speak to the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, we discuss this. It would be great news if we were able to make these improvements to the inspections.

According to Canadian Food Inspection Agency spokesperson Robert Charlebois—not to be confused with the singer—who was quoted in the April 24 edition of La Terre de chez nous, the Agency will even be able to test products believed to be at risk before they clear customs. That would be a solution to the problem I mentioned earlier. If that were the case, it would be very good.

The Agency currently intervenes when a problem arises, but not before. A number of foods have been recalled from store shelves. When the Agency knows, it does a good job. It issues the recall and the product is removed from the shelves. Nevertheless, there is always room for improvement.

We cannot wait until someone gets sick to take action, although it must be done, since bad things can happen. However, if the Agency had the power, the possibility or the means to intervene before the product even hits the shelves, imagine how many illnesses we could prevent. Cross your fingers. We have not had any deaths, as they have in other countries when a person ingests some of these products, but it happens. We cannot kid ourselves; it happens. There are people in poor health who may ingest foods contaminated with salmonella or what have you, and can die.

It is important to do everything we can to ban these products and ensure that they will not be sold before they hit the shelves, and certainly before they end up on our tables and in our mouths.

The Bloc Québécois is calling on the government to intervene if products enter Quebec and Canada that do not meet our health standards. We have been demanding this for a long time and we will continue to do so.

We also denounced this lack of control over food and other imported goods, and we demanded that the government clean up its legislation in order to eliminate shortcomings that subject the health of Canadians to the goodwill of importers. In this regard, I recently read an article in the April 2 edition of the newspaper Le Soleil. It is very short but nonetheless very revealing. It says:

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) admits that unsafe food from other countries may be made available to consumers, which is a concern for the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

The article is referring to the Quebec minister. It continues:

In the past three years, Canada has had to recall dozens of foods that may have been contaminated.

Michel Labrosse, the Agency's national import operations manager, remarks that people have the impression that the government controls everything, but that is not the case. He noted that unlike meat and eggs, which have a good tracing system, vegetables or processed goods may only have a seal of goodwill from importers and their business partners.

Safety is left primarily up to the importers who, according to Mr. Labrosse, act in good faith 98% of the time.

I do not know whether this is a statistic that Mr. Labrosse truly obtained from the department or if that was his approximation. Nonetheless, if 2% of importers are not doing their job, whether intentionally or not—naturally we hope that it is not intentional but the thought of the money may result in goods not suitable for consumption being put on the market—that is 2% too much.

I will continue with the article from Le Soleil:

Marion Nestlé, a professor at the University of New York, believes that there are holes in the food systems of Canada and the United States that may let in bacteria and other harmful substances. Two years ago, three Americans died and almost 200 others became ill after eating spinach contaminated with E. coli.

I was talking about this earlier. You will remember that American spinach was also removed from our grocery stores.

According to Michel Labrosse, perfectly shaped and blemish free products sought after by consumers have a greater risk of having pesticide or herbicide residues.

I believe that consumers increasingly want good quality products. Regarding appearance, if people notice that a product's appearance is perhaps less shiny because no pesticides or herbicides were used, they may well choose that fruit or vegetable that does not look as great as the bright, shiny ones next to it. They will wonder whether the better looking product was sprayed with all sorts of substances. Consumers are increasingly aware of that kind of thing and they make informed decisions concerning their health and that of their families.

In my speech on Bill C-52 this week, I gave examples of such tainted products: cantaloupe, spinach, which was just mentioned, melamine-tainted pork, pear juice, and carrot juice, all in recent months alone. As we can imagine, there have been many recalls over the past few years. That is why I also called for enhanced inspection powers and, more importantly, the hiring of additional inspectors at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

We should make it clear that it is not up to farm producers to pay for the increased inspections and inspection staff. I think that the government's budget can handle the cost of developing an appropriate inspection system. I also pointed out earlier this week that the government had lacked judgment, which prompted a reaction from the Minister of Labour. Perhaps what I meant to say was that the government had been remiss. Considering how long it has been aware of the problem, it should have acted much sooner. I am not going back on what I said, far from it. It is never too late to do the right thing.

All those who were made sick by food they ate that should never have passed inspection here must be telling themselves that they might have been spared the inconvenience had there been more inspections and more inspectors. I think that any parent who has seen his or her child get sick after eating something knows what I am talking about.

So the existing law has to be modernized to reflect new approaches when it comes to safety and traceability. We are told that this is what Bill C-51 does. We intend to send this bill to committee so we can be sure that this will actually be the case. For example, we are told that all importers will have to have a licence. Today, that is only required for importers of meat and fish. The requirement will be expanded to have licences for all food importers, and that is a good thing.

This brings me to the importance of traceability. In Quebec, Agri-Traçabilité Québec was set up in 2001. The mission of Agri-Traçabilité Québec is to contribute to improving food safety and the competitive capacity of Quebec producers. That institution is responsible for developing, implementing and operating a permanent identification system for agricultural product traceability, and covers both animal and plant products. This is what is called the tracking principle, from field to table.

Quebec is well ahead of many countries and also the other provinces, and I am not saying that to pat ourselves on the back. That is what we must be aiming for. It is a good thing that it was developed in Quebec. We are very proud of it, and now it has to serve as an example for the rest of Canada. Whether we like it or not, interprovincial trade means that we are obviously going to be getting food that also comes from the other provinces, and this has to be expanded to other countries as well.

Agricultural producers in Quebec are the first in America to have access to such a highly developed traceability system. It allows for accurate identification of the source of a problem and makes it possible to contain it in order to avoid it becoming endemic or spreading throughout the processing and distribution chain all the way to consumers.

Consumers therefore have greater confidence in our products, in an era when we are affected by irreparable harms, when we think about what happened during the mad cow crisis or the avian flu. We think it does not affect us, but in British Columbia there were poultry destroyed because of a pandemic.

So we are not immune to it. I am also thinking about foot and mouth disease. But I will not list every disease and problem that might arise in cattle, poultry or other livestock. Clearly food safety is a matter of great concern.

Consumers, producers and the entire agri-food industry cannot help but rejoice in the idea that stricter measures and additional resources to enforce them will soon be in place. We will ensure that this happens. And that is what Food & Consumer Products of Canada said in their announcement about Bills C-51 and C-52 in a press release on April 8, from which I will quote a few lines.

The legislation’s focus on risk-based inspection, accountability for importers and strengthening recall provisions for quick intervention when problems arise, would significantly improve Canada’s ability to detect contaminated food and consumer products...Focusing on imported goods from countries or companies with a history of problems just makes sense. Increasing our ability to scrutinize and oversee imports based on risk greatly enhances our ability to detect threats to public health without crippling commerce or violating our trade commitments.

That shows that there are positives to consider in this bill. That is what my colleague from Québec, health critic for the Bloc Québécois, and I conveyed in this House on April 1 when we questioned the government about food inspections. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency's failure to monitor imported products is resulting in a lower level of compliance for foodstuffs, thereby threatening food safety for consumers. We demanded food security measures, and we have no intention of letting up simply because this bill has been introduced.

We have already mentioned that the Quebec government and a number of experts have denounced the failure to monitor imported food. This situation not only threatens consumers, but also producers because the imported products do not meet the same standards as local products, as Christian Lacasse, president of UPA, said.

I think that I have gone into enough detail about this issue over the past few minutes for the people to understand how important it is to us that there be reciprocity with respect to standards for pesticides, insecticides and herbicides in the countries with which we trade. It is unacceptable that chemical products banned here, such as pesticides, insecticides, herbicides and some fertilizers, can be used on foods produced in other countries that end up on our grocery store shelves.

I look forward to seeing if Bill C-51 will bring about any real changes to this state of affairs. It is time for the government to demand trade reciprocity. That is why the committee will be especially vigilant in its work to ensure that the necessary resources to enforce the new rules are clearly provided for in the bill.

I see the time, and I get the feeling that I do not have much left, but I want to say that some of the objectives in this bill need to be emphasized, such as avoiding problems by instituting broader targets for potentially unsafe food imports, increasing the government's power to prevent problems by requiring the industry to implement monitoring for unsafe foods, and expressly forbidding the modification of foods. We also want to improve targeted monitoring by increasing the government's power to verify food safety at all points along the supply chain, including before they are imported into Canada.

I have often said that it is important to go to the source to see exactly how foods are grown. We need to know that. We need to do that. If foods are not produced in accordance with our environmental standards, even if it is just a problem with the water used to grow the food, we should simply tell those countries that their products cannot come here.

In conclusion, we also want to support rapid intervention by creating a new power that requires those modifying foods to keep files, by improving access to the information needed to follow up efficiently on problems that arise, and by modernizing and simplifying inspection systems. If we achieve that, it will be a step in the right direction.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for her questions. The two issues she raised are indeed of great concern to me.

First, there is the issue of advertising. We can already see some television ads. Under the current legislation, the reasons behind such ads cannot be discussed. Under Bill C-51, however, exemptions or special permission may be sought.

Earlier, I gave the example of an absolutely appalling ad promoting a certain drug whose name escapes me, but the ad basically gives you a choice between keeping your cholesterol in check with that drug or dying. That is so far-fetched that it makes no sense.

What Canadians need is more awareness-raising, real information provided in a transparent fashion.

Currently, our physicians across the country are provided information by the pharmaceutical companies. Where does the government stand on protecting the health of Canadians? Do doctors have the time to look after that? We are all aware of the shortage of doctors. They are already rushed. Will they have the time to read up on all these new drugs, each new one being advertised as better than the last? Do they have enough time for that?

The proposed amendments should really include an objective way to provide this kind of information first to our doctors, and then to the general public.

As for the second question, I really have not looked into the matter much. Nonetheless, it is important that Parliament, this House, the elected representatives maintain authority over that aspect. From the moment that we forfeit the responsibility we have been given by the people of Canada, we limit the information the minister will take into consideration. So, it is important that, as elected representatives, we continue to ensure that this responsibility is maintained.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for delivering such an eloquent speech on Bill C-51.

She explained very clearly a number of problems that are found in this legislation. I wonder if she could tell us more on the issue of drug advertising which, under the bill, would be authorized to a much greater extent than is currently the case. The fact is that this already creates a problem.

I would also like her to tell us a bit about the fact that the minister would really have a great deal of latitude to decide by himself whether he wants to change the thrust of the bill, or whether he is prepared to keep it as reviewed and probably amended by the Standing Committee on Health,.

I wonder if the hon. member could give us her thoughts on this.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to Bill C-51, which is being presented in tandem with Bill C-52, which I spoke to earlier.

Bill C-51 seeks to amend the Food and Drugs Act. It has some positive aspects. A bill to better protect consumers is long overdue. Canadians have suffered harm from recalled products and death from drugs that were approved for sale too quickly.

The Food and Drugs Act has been eroded over long years of the former government. Canadians, it seems to me, have lost confidence in the government's ability to protect their health. Perhaps it has to do with the former government's big love affair with large pharmaceutical firms, but whatever the cause, Canadians feel that their health is not being protected, and this is what we must address.

In its present form, the bill is hugely inadequate and there is much that is worrisome about it. I have received literally hundreds of emails and letters about the bill. I would like to read some of them because they provide some interesting insights on how Canadians feel right now.

The official intent of Bill C-51 is to fill in gaps in health protection and to ensure the safety of Canadians. To that end, the bill proposes to implement sweeping changes in how Health Canada will regulate drug products.

As I have said, there are fundamental aspects that are problematic and that will keep the bill from doing what it purports to do, which is protecting Canadians. Instead, some of what is in the bill could likely have an adverse effect on Canadians' health.

I would like to touch on a few subjects that the bill addresses. The first one relates to advertising. In the modification that the bill proposes, it would likely have the effect of providing an opportunity for drug manufacturers to bypass the advertising bans by applying for exemptions. This simple change is disturbing in that it would render the government vulnerable to lobby pressure by large pharmaceutical multinationals.

It is important for Canadians to have clear information about the health product they take. We should not reasonably expect companies to advertise their products and expect that they will do so to educate Canadians.

I want to refer to some testimony that was given at committee by an independent drug policy researcher from my city of Victoria. I stress “independent” because often when presentations are made at committee they are made by people who either have ties to pharmaceutical companies or push for policies that improve the profits of the companies. It is important to mention that this researcher, whose name is Alan Cassels, is an independent researcher. He made the following comments at committee recently:

The pharmaceutical industry spokespeople will tell you that they should be involved in the education of consumers about drugs, but let me show you how they choose to educate consumers. This “toe tag” ad appeared in many magazines and major newspapers across Canada. This one came from the National Post of February 20, 2004. It shows a toe tag hanging off a corpse with the headline, “What would you rather have, a cholesterol test or a final exam?” Here's another example, from Maclean's magazine, of the same ad.

These ads are probably the most egregious example of disease-mongering that this country has ever seen. The ads, which ran in both France and Canada, were the subject of a letter from the World Health Organization to the medical journal The Lancet, complaining that this kind of advertising is undoubtedly driving the inappropriate use of cholesterol-lowering drugs around the world.

This proposed policy would be a policy basically on disease-mongering. It is important to maintain our current ban on direct to consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals but we need to go further than that. We actually need more strict control on the advertising of diseases. The industry might call it disease awareness but it may be closer to the truth to call it disease-mongering.

One place to start would be to ask Health Canada some hard questions. What is our policy around this so-called industry advertising? Do we collect data if this kind of advertising is driving the inappropriate use of pharmaceuticals? What research into this kind of approach has been commissioned? What other steps is Health Canada taking to control it? Instead of trying to deal with patients who may be dying from prescription drugs, how can we stop people from taking drugs they do not need in the first place?

The last question, a question that Mr. Cassels raised in committee, is very important. This is an aspect of proactive health, which we just do not do in Canada, that is inadequately funded and has not received enough resources, energy and thought.

We should not be allowing any shortcuts to advertising. Instead, we should be providing better information for patients. There is a dire need for Canadians to receive approved and regulated information provided by an independent, objective source that is free from profit driven industries that sell drugs. This bill would not do that.

At committee, the NDP will be seeking to ensure that there is no direct to consumer advertising and that it will be completely removed from the bill. We cannot allow that to happen.

Another aspect of the bill that is of concern is that it takes a radically different expedited approach to the drug approval process, which the government calls progressive licensing. Progressive licensing would have the effect of speeding up the process of new drugs to the Canadian marketplace. It sets up an ongoing life cycle approach without any new improvement to the pre-market testing of new drugs.

This is the first time a bill of this sort codifies the trade agreements, like NAFTA, for grounds for refusing to release information about safety and efficacy that companies submit in order to get their products approved. This clause is absolutely objectionable and needs to be removed and replaced by making transparency the default option.

If we want Canadians to take responsibility for their health, they must be able to make better informed decisions and that comes about with more awareness about what particular drugs do and having some choices in the drugs they are allowed to take.

One needs to ask whether this new provision would prevent similar recalls as occurred under Vioxx. Will it prevent another Vioxx type of recall? It appears highly unlikely. Therefore, my colleagues and I will be looking for dramatic changes on this aspect at committee as well.

Bill C-51 also raises the question about the speed with which drugs will be moved through the approval process. This really relates to parliamentary oversight and the kind of parliamentary oversight we should be requiring. The provisions in the bill would make it possible to grant conditional approvals, thereby getting new drugs to market faster than is possible under the current regulations. Pre-market safety requirements may be less stringent or even be bypassed all together according to the stipulations of the bill.

There also is no commitment in the bill to making the results of post-marketing studies public, which is another concern.

Another troubling aspect of the bill is that it would provide the Minister of Health and Health Canada with considerable discretionary authority that falls outside the purview of Parliament. In other words, Bill C-51 could effectively remove democratic oversight, bypassing elected officials in favour of allowing bureaucrats to enforce regulations that fall short of the standards Canadians deserve.

I spoke a little about the kind of information that is really important for Canadians to access in order to make crucial health decisions on the safety of the products they are taking. Perhaps the most onerous change that is being proposed in the bill relating to the Food and Drugs Act involves the provisions regarding natural health products. Many Canadians prefer to look for complementary strategies to stay healthy. I myself benefit from such products and it does help me to stay much healthier.

The provisions in the bill are worrisome because among the modifications proposed by the bill are radical changes to key terminology, for example, replacing the word “drug” with “therapeutic products” throughout the bill and therefore bringing the natural health industry under the scope of the Food and Drugs Act and Health Canada. This far-reaching change would give the Minister of Health broad powers to regulate all natural health and plant derived products and, in the process, restrict access to these products for Canadians.

Up to 60% of the natural health products currently on the market would be outlawed as a direct result of the enactment of Bill C-51. This would remove a lot of choices for Canadians.

From some of the many letters I have received, there is one from a medical doctor who says, “I'm a medical doctor and a doctor of Chinese medicine living and working in Victoria. I'm becoming concerned that the new Bill C-51 introduced by the health minister might affect the public's and my patients' access to natural health products in Canada”.

Indeed, the clauses in this bill would have a serious limiting effect.

It is not by succumbing to the big pharma lobby that we will achieve balance in better regulating natural health products. That is an important piece: we must have a better balance. Perhaps we can do it by creating a third category. This something that the natural health industry has been calling for. Instead of buckling under to the big pharmaceutical lobby, it would simply have its own category, by itself, and regulations that do achieve that balance.

Another comment I have received which has concerned me is the following: “I and my family are opposed to Bill C-51 as it will restrict access and increase prices of natural health products we use regularly”. I think we are all aware that right now Canadians are having a more difficult time. Our economy is in decline. Many people are struggling to make ends meet and are using natural health products to stay healthy. Increasing the prices at this time would certainly not be helpful.

Another comment from one of my constituents states: “Regulations of natural health products should be separate from pharmaceuticals”. This is something that I think we will be asking the committee to look at.

Another comment that has been made is in regard to concern about how quickly this bill is being pushed through the process, disregarding recommendations made by many consumer public forums, health coalitions, and so on.

For the many people who suffer from chronic illnesses of various kinds, I think access to natural health products really keeps them functioning and protects their quality of life. This is what they are asking us to do. I will be asking members of the committee to look at this aspect of the bill very seriously to see if the draconian measures being proposed really warrant what is being asked. Merely selling garlic to someone would make it a drug product under this new definition. Does that make any sense? There are many other examples like that.

I see that I am running out of time, so I will conclude simply by saying that Canadians want to be able to use natural products to keep their families in good health as one of the many ways used to maintain health. Being forced to use a pharmaceutical option is not the way to go. That is something I am going to oppose.

I hope the committee will look at making these much needed amendments while protecting the overall purpose of the bill, which is to ensure that products sold to Canadians are safe.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise again in this House to discuss another health bill. Health is a very important subject to me. I am particularly interested in it because I know just how important and necessary health is to living with dignity.

Although Bill C-51 is very important and long overdue, although we have been calling on the government to review the whole issue of medicines, drugs and therapeutic devices for a long time, and although we have called on the government to do so a number of times, we will vote to send this bill to committee to be thoroughly examined. As my colleague said earlier, and as our other colleague who worked on the health file a long time said, this is much too important to let a few people decide the fate of thousands of human beings, Canadians and Quebeckers, who will rely on our decisions to keep them in good health.

A few things in this bill, or at least the draft we received, worry me. I am almost positive that some things worry a number of my colleagues as well. For example, the bill states that the Minister of Health would have the authority to pre-approve health products that have not yet received final approval. That worries me. It gives a lot of power to a minister, to one individual.

Bill C-28, which was passed a few years ago, had the same provisions for other products, such as pesticides. I do not know what became of that act, if the Minister of Health has had the opportunity to grant special permission to companies to put pesticides on the market before they should be. However, recently, pesticides have been found to be very hazardous to our health, to the health of our children and young people, whom we thought were safe playing outside during the summer. We thought that Health Canada had taken all the precautions to ensure the products were healthy, safe, and harmless.

If we are going to give the Minister of Health that much power, we have to make sure that we provide a strong framework for exercising that power in this bill. We have been hearing about amending the terms. These days, with so many advances in biotechnology and life sciences, we agree that we need to ensure that our health and health products legislation reflects these new realities. People with specific needs, such as those with HIV, might benefit from new experimental drugs. These drugs should be made available to them as quickly as possible, because in many cases, it is a matter of life or death.

Although we recognize the importance of reviewing the entire Food and Drugs Act, we want to be absolutely sure that the act contains provisions to ensure that the health of our fellow citizens will be taken into account responsibly.

There are some other things about this bill that bother me, and once again, I am sure that my colleagues from Québec and Verchères—Les Patriotes will see to it that these things are considered and debated by the Standing Committee on Health and that the people who have something to say about it will be invited to testify before the committee.

There is more to this than inviting experts in pharmaceuticals, doctors, parliamentarians, and departmental officials to debate this bill. The people this will affect—groups representing patients, hospitals and pharmacists—must be involved and consulted to develop the most comprehensive bill possible for health and therapeutic products.

There is something else in this bill that I am worried about. As my colleague said earlier, “therapeutic product” means

(a) a drug,

(b) a device,

(c) cells, tissues or organs that are distributed or represented for use in

(i) the diagnosis, treatment, mitigation or prevention of a disease, disorder or abnormal physical state, or its symptoms, in human beings or animals, or

(ii) restoring, correcting or modifying the body structure of human beings or animals or the functioning of parts of the bodies of human beings or animals, or

(d) a combination of two or more of the things referred to in paragraphs (a) to (c);

A few years ago, there was an epic battle over breast implants. At the time, breast implants fell into the category of specialized medical devices. Now they are in with therapeutic products. It was already very complicated and we did not have much information on the ingredients and the safety of breast implants. Now they are being put in with all therapeutic products or devices.

When they talk about cells, are they talking about stem cells? What are they talking about? When they talk about tissue, are they talking about the new grafts that can be made with one’s own tissue? There clearly need to be a lot of very apposite, very transparent rules on this.

I think that the health minister would have far too much power. The bill says that the health minister would have the power to modify the regulations. That is saying a lot because all the definitions in this bill are basically regulations. The health minister would have the ability, therefore, to change the regulations without coming before Parliament. That is very serious and we should be very worried about it.

There are also things that the minister could change not just in the regulations but also in regard to product labelling, purity standards, the way in which clinical trials are conducted, and the exemption of various products from the legislation.

I think that this means giving a tremendous amount of power to the man or woman holding the position of health minister. It means giving an awful lot of power to someone when we know we do not presently have a health minister who is very far to the left or very suited to making such decisions. After all, what is at stake here are the lives of our fellow citizens.

I am very concerned when I see a Minister of Health rise to vote against a motion asking Canada to recognize and abide by its commitment, as it has always done, to people sentenced to death in other countries. I am still very concerned about that. I thought that health ministers were supposed to be worried about the health of people and their survival.

It makes me wonder when I see that and then see a bill giving these people so much power. As a citizen, first of all, and as a user of medications and therapeutic products, I have a right and duty to wonder about these things. Do we really want to give one person the authority to approve a medication that has not been proven so that it can be marketed more quickly because it supposedly has more benefits than adverse side effects?

We saw this with Celebrex. It is still on the market because it supposedly has a greater upside than downside. However, people died of it before we knew why. We often see that. We did not use to see any advertising for drugs in Quebec and Canada. Under this legislation, though, there are some grey areas, some aspects that are incredibly hazy, and we could see more and more advertising. I am also very concerned about that.

To relax, we probably all watch television in the evening when we get home. In the course of the evening—in the space of maybe two hours—we will see at least two or three ads for Viagra or Cialis. That is what we see. To my way of thinking, these are drugs. Why is it that we see these ads when they are supposed to be prohibited? Various television stations agree to run them because Health Canada does not do any monitoring to determine whether various companies' and pharmaceutical firms' ads meet the criteria, which are, or were, clearly set out.

Now, with this new bill, the criteria would be much less clear. Pharmaceutical firms would have much more freedom and latitude to promote their products. This worries me. Many people are influenced by advertising messages. Our Conservative friends keep telling us that we are wrong, we are crazy, we are not listening, we do not understand, we will never accomplish anything, we are impotent. They know that repeating a message drives it home. In the same way, people who watch television are influenced by repeated messages: “Cialis will make you happy”, “Alesse will make you happy”, “This will make you happy”. We come to believe these statements and we ask our doctor for a prescription, even if we do not need the drug. We ask for the drug because it looks so wonderful to be able to skip down the street singing and arrive home to be greeted by our smiling wife. We want the same treatment.

We will have to be very careful about the decisions we make regarding this bill. While we agree that it should be referred to committee, I can assure the House that we will do our duty responsibly and make every effort to amend the clauses that could result in harm to the health of Quebeckers and Canadians.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak this afternoon to Bill C-51.

As always, the Liberal Party aims to improve the safety and health of Canadians.

We support measures that strengthen the regulatory process so that Canadians can have access to the safest and best foods and therapeutic products.

The drugs on the market are not a great risk for the health and safety of Canadians.

That being said, we see this bill and the other bill as a huge missed opportunity. As often happens with the government, it is what is not in the bill that is remarkable, including just taking out the whole section of the bill on the pride of Canadian health policy, which is the interdiction against directed consumer advertising.

We look again to a government that seems to be more interested in business than in patients. Although we believe there is a need for the minister to have the ability to take unsafe health and consumer products off the market if the companies are unwilling to do so, the powers given to the minister in this bill are unbelievably unreasonable. It is not putting in place the kind of scientific advice that would be very important in terms of a minister being able to administer the Food and Drugs Act based on evidence in science and not ideology, and the way the government's friends in business are behaving on just about everything else.

It is important that the Food and Drugs Act be updated. Up until now, as everyone knows, the product safety system has functioned purely on a voluntary basis. If a product is dangerous or poses a health risk, corporations can issue a recall.

This bill would grant the minister the power to enforce the recalls rather than depend on the voluntary system. Certainly, those of us in the health committee have heard this from many witnesses, including the department itself, that these are powers that the minister must have in the event of a recalcitrant company.

The bill would also grant the minister the power to seek an injunction, to enforce regulatory compliance through the Federal Court. This is a faster avenue for enforcement rather than the current system which fills up the courts by addressing each non-compliance matter at trial.

As well, the bill would improve the surveillance of therapeutic products both before and after they reach the market. This could have the effect of helping critical drugs, such as cancer therapies, get to the market quicker and yet remove them just as quickly if significant adverse reactions or incidents are reported. This has been very much the wish of a number of the groups, from cancer to HIV-AIDS, to both the providers as well as the patients.

As we have heard in committee many times, people are very concerned about hurrying and having less safeguards because we are now going to commit to doing a much better job post-market. We need to be very clear and it is the reason for the kind of scrutiny this bill would require, to make sure there is absolutely no less safe drugs coming on to the market because of this hurry up approach that is important in these very special drugs.

Because of the substantial regulatory powers the minister would have, it is obviously going to be important to study these powers to ensure transparency, effectiveness and accountability. We will see, in some aspects of this, that it seems a bit remarkable that the minister would be able to stop a clinical trial midway through without having information from the very people running the trial. There are things that just do not make a great deal of sense unless we in committee find out exactly how the government expects to carry this out.

The idea is that the Minister of Health can suspend a clinical trial authorization or the terms and conditions other than a prescribed term or condition or the suspension to prevent injury after giving the holder of the authorization an opportunity to make representation, and to suspend a clinical trial authorization if the minister is of the opinion that an immediate suspension is necessary.

My experience is that this only comes to the minister from the people supervising the trial, who are scientists. I hope we will hear in committee exactly how the minister is planning to carry this out.

It is interesting that time and time again these powers to the minister do not seem to have any provisions within the act to find out what science or which scientists the minister would be relying on in order to exercise these substantial new powers as given to him in the bill.

From licences to the discontinuing of clinical trials, to the disclosure of personal information to a person or government that carries out functions related to the protection or promotion of human health without the consent of the individual to whom the personal information relates, if the disclosure is necessary, is worrying. We will need to know from both privacy experts and from many other witnesses, particularly, I would hope, patient groups, what they think of that, as well as what they think about disclosing confidential business information to a government or to the following persons without the consent of persons to whose business or affairs the information relates without notifying that person. This is something the committee will have to look at very seriously.

Even in clause 24, it says that the minister can recall a therapeutic product or cosmetic. It also says that the minister may authorize a person to sell a therapeutic product or cosmetic even if the minister has directed a person to recall it. This will somehow need a great deal of explanation at the committee. I look forward to that.

We are prepared to allow the bill to go to the committee, but it is extraordinarily important, yet again, that the stakeholder reaction to the bill is very much around the elimination of the prohibition on direct to consumer advertising.

Barbara Mintzes, the health policy expert and professor at UBC Centre for Health Services and Policy Research, has stated clearly on the website, straight.com, that the amendment would introduce a loophole that could allow pharmaceutical companies to directly advertise drugs to consumers, a practice that is currently illegal in Canada. The proposed new wording of the bill tabled in Parliament on April 8 says:

No person shall advertise a prescription therapeutic product to a person other than a practitioner unless they are authorized by the regulations to do so.

In the bill there is a general prohibition that covers direct to consumer advertising for drugs. That prohibition is now gone, which means the barrier of introduction of direct to consumer advertising through the regulations, because there is a sort of general prohibition in the bill, is gone, according to Barbara Mintzes.

Direct to consumer advertising and that prohibition has set Canada apart from our neighbours to the south in a very proud way. I am not sure why the minister is now trying to turn this around. Anyone who accidentally watches American television sees that barrage of advertising. It means people go to their doctors thinking that a certain drug will have a certain benefit, and we know that this increases the likelihood of harm as we learned the hard way with the Vioxx case.

Vioxx was brought on to the market for a very special group of patients, patients who had arthritis, but also had serious problems with their stomachs. The drug was to be just a boutique drug to deal with the patients with serious arthritis, but also for whom those drugs were too hard on their gastrointestinal tract. Instead, the drug was marketed widely to the whole population and people with arthritis thought they should be on that drug. That is when we found the drug had serious cardiac effects.

This would be a risk that one would take based on perhaps an equally serious gastrointestinal side effect for people whose ability to function would be improved by Vioxx. However, this was not the intent of the drug when it was put on the market in the first place. Now because of the serious increased risk of heart attack and stroke, it ended up causing much concern in terms of both life and disability.

It is so clear that the newer, better drug can have an effect on patients when there are cheaper, older drugs that are better, safer and have the same effect. From antibiotics to antidepressants to the kinds of drugs that are used around cholesterol, we want to ensure that physicians and patients have a real conversion about what really is the best and are not unduly influenced by television advertising. This is evidence based practice. Yet, again, we are finding the government preferring ideology and business over evidence. The evidence is that direct to consumer advertising is wrong and bad for patients. The bill would eliminate this serious prohibition on the evidence based policy and evidence based practice.

It is important therefore that we look to what other structures need to be placed around these undo powers to the minister. We need to look very seriously at the kind of advice the minister gets in order to do his best job. I have long been a believer in the fact that ministerial advisory committees need to give transparent advice to the minister. Whether it is the scientists that list endangered species, it is very important that politicians do the politics, scientists do the science and that the transmission of information from the scientists to the politician must be done in a transparent way such as the citizens of Canada can understand.

I believe people can understand why a minister might not list all 11 species on an endangered species list or species at risk list because of the politics, the economy and the reality in a certain community. However, politicians have to do their job and explain why they have made that decision when the scientists have said X and the politician or the minister has decided to do a version of X or even Y.

It is really important that we look to the models like NICE, the National Institute of Clinical Excellence in Britain, and the way in which it has involved citizens in the decisions. The bill very definitely needs resources to explain how the minister will do this.

As a family physician who did obstetrics, I quite often was at the hospital waiting for a baby to arrive during the national news. It would be quite clear that a drug would be recalled while I was not watching the news. The patients would arrive the next morning and tell me they were on whatever drug had just been recalled. I would have no information about it. A letter would arrive from Health Canada three days later telling me the drug had been recalled.

We have to get into the 21st century. If the minister is to have the powers to recall a drug or product, then the minister has to be able to communicate with the people who prescribe the drugs, not three days later after someone has lost his or her life because in that 72 hour window the doctor accidentally prescribed the recalled drug.

It will be extraordinarily important that the databases and the kind of two way communication between provinces and the federal government exist. Who actually is in charge of speaking to the doctors of the country about these products at risk? How do we get in touch with them? Until we have the resources for the infostructure, how will we get the minister and the ministry into this century to communicate with the people who count on him for timely advice on things as important as this?

It will be extremely important for the government to look at what the federal drug agency does in the United States and why that is a free-standing agency. The health protection of our country is half the people at Health Canada now. We have to decide whether we want to put a science based and a real structure in place for the drug evaluation post-market surveillance, working toward a common formulary.

Our national pharmaceutical strategy is in disarray. There are a few working groups, but there is really very little action toward the part of the 10 year commitment for health, which was in a national pharmaceutical strategy in the 2004 accord with the provinces.

The health minister has cancelled the next meeting of his counterparts supposedly for June. I do not know how we can do any of these things unless the provinces, territories and their health ministers feel they have a partner with the federal government. It will be extraordinarily important that we look at this, like we did in the very sensitive bill on reproductive technology, to ensure that any regulation must come back to the health committee so we understand the nuances and the decisions taken in the regulations, which can be so important to people's lives. It must come back the committee that has studied the bill and has now done this important study.

It is a bit rich, in the middle of a study on post-market surveillance, that the government has decided to table the bill without the information, without the recommendations of the very committee that has studied this. It was a bit shocking to hear that even the working group on the national pharmaceutical strategy, the working group on real world drug safety, was not even consulted in what should be in the bill. Yet again we have this top-down, “father knows best, take it or leave it, trust us you will like it” approach from the government. It is extraordinary that when all of the witnesses came, when all the provinces and territories and working groups existed, that the government would not take counsel from these people who study this and who know it.

Also, almost every member of Parliament over these last weeks, since the bill was tabled, have been inundated by calls to their constituency offices on the natural health product risk. People using these products are worried again that their products are not understood because of the issue around health claims. We need to seriously look again at what the minister is considering in terms of natural health products and how we regulate these things. Some products have been used for thousands of years, but without a clinical trial. It is not evidence based, but Canadians have the right to be wrong on these things. They also have the right to be right in terms of the products that work for them. In studying the bill we want to ensure people have patient and client freedom.

These changes are just not good enough. Canada needs a national food policy. At the same time as we get this tinkering around the edges, we have from melamine in dog food, to re-labelled snap peas from China, to mushrooms from China called “product of Canada” because they have been sliced here. We have orange juice called “product of Canada” because Canadian water was added to it.

The government needs to sit down with all government departments that deal with food in this country, such as agriculture, fisheries, industry and international trade, and with the producers and the food security people.

We need a national food policy. We cannot even tinker with things in this bill unless we can actually have a commitment from the government to get on with it and protect the health and safety of all Canadians.

The House resumed from April 30 consideration of the motion that Bill C-51, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, our week devoted to action on the environment and health of Canadians is proving to be a success. We just passed Bill C-33 at report stage with the support of two of the other three parties. This is our bill requiring that by 2010 5% of gasoline and by 2012 2% of diesel fuel and home heating oil be comprised of renewable fuels. It represents an important part of our plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020. Debate of this bill at third reading will now be able to commence tomorrow.

We have also started to debate two bills to improve the safety of food, consumer products and medical products in Canada.

On Monday we debated Bill C-52, to create the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act and yesterday we debated Bill C-51, to modernize the Food and Drugs Act.

We also introduced Bill C-54, to promote safety and security with respect to human pathogens and toxins. We will continue to debate these bills today and tomorrow.

During these uncertain economic times to the south, our government has led the way on the economy by taking decisive and early action over the past six months to pay down debt, reduce taxes to stimulate the economy and create jobs, and provide targeted support to key industries. In keeping with our strong leadership on the economy, next week will be maintaining a competitive economy week.

We plan to debate the following bills intended to enhance the competitiveness of certain sectors of the Canadian economy: our Bill C-23, at third reading stage, to amend the Canada Marine Act; our Bill C-5, at report stage, on liability in case of a nuclear incident; and our Bill C-14, at second reading stage, to amend the Canada Post Corporation Act.

We will also debate at second reading Bill C-32, which modernizes the Fisheries Act, Bill C-43, which amends the Customs Act, and Bill C-39, which amends the Canada Grain Act. We will also begin to debate Bill C-46. This is our bill to free western barley producers from the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly by giving them the freedom to market their own products. We will debate at third reading our bill to amend the Aeronautics Act, Bill C-7.

My friend, the member for Wascana, the Liberal House leader, said that government business and the doing of business in the House of Commons appeared to end on Tuesday. That is because next Wednesday and Thursday will be opposition days, and I would like to allot them as such at this time.

In terms of the question he raised with regard to Bill C-293, which is a private member's bill, I understand it is scheduled to come before the House in early May. At that time the House will have an opportunity to deal with the matter.

In terms of estimates and witnesses appearing before committee of the whole, the government does have to designate those to occur before May 31. Late last night I finally received notice of which two departments were identified and we will soon be advising the House of the dates that will be scheduled for consideration of those matters in committee of the whole.

Canada Consumer Product Safety Act

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad the hon. member raised the tobacco issue again in her comments. I was curious as to whether she has any idea why the exemption is there. However, that is not my main question.

As the member knows, Bills C-51 and C-52 are linked and we have had input from people relating to both bills.

The member talked about stronger enforcement, with which I generally agree, but I wonder if she has had concerns raised by her constituents about the enforcements in these bills being overbearing.

It seems to me that the people who produce natural health food products are worried that 70% of their products would be removed in an almost police state type of environment, which were the words they used. Police could go on private property without a warrant, dispose of people's property without reimbursement for their losses and seize their bank accounts.

Those were some of the concerns my constituents were raising and I was wondering if the member's constituents were putting forward similar concerns.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I did not have time to delve into that important question as much as I would have liked, but my colleague from Winnipeg North, our party's health critic, certainly will be raising the lack of resources for inspection because the 2008 budget provided $113 million over two years for both food and drug, and product safety as well as $33 million to regulate natural health products.

There are two bills before the House, Bill C-52 which we are presently debating, as well as Bill C-51. Concerns have been raised by those who are fearful that perhaps they will no longer be able to get access to many natural health products they currently are enjoying. That is an area we will want to investigate. There is real concern that the $500 million over the next five years that is being put toward the enforcement of both these pieces of legislation is simply not going to be adequate to provide the kind of consumer protection that Canadians need for their consumer products and for their pharmaceutical and natural health products. That is something we will be probing into further at the health committee. My colleague from Winnipeg North will be asking many questions about that.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to participate in this long overdue debate on Bill C-52 regarding the safety of consumer products.

I say it is long overdue because it is an issue that has been front and centre for many Canadians and for families right across the country. We have seen many high profile recalls of products in Canada. That has very much worried Canadians and they have been calling for government action.

Ninety consumer products, many used by children, were recalled just last year, and there are already 37 more this year. These are products that were on the market, that consumers were purchasing, such as toys, for example, that children were playing with. They were circulating in our economy, in our homes and within our families and had to be recalled after the fact.

Many of these products were not made in Canada. Many of them were imported. Certainly many were identified as originating in China, where increasingly our manufactured products are coming from.

The current Hazardous Products Act, which dates back all the way to 1969, certainly has not been effective in identifying and removing dangerous products from our homes and communities. In the majority of cases, it has left Canadians dependent on product alerts and recalls by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission instead of Health Canada.

In 2005-06 more than 40% of the recalls were U.S. initiated. In other words, they were alerts and recalls that were coming from south of the border rather than from our own government through our own regulations protecting Canadians here in Canada.

In fact, the recalls here in Canada have been company initiated recalls. It has been the companies themselves, based on incidents of harm to consumers, that have prompted those companies to recall their products. Of course, they would want to recall their products to protect themselves from legal action when they are actually harming the consumers who are using their product.

I think many consumers believe that the government is recalling products on their behalf, but that has not been the case. These have been manufacturers' recalls. The best that Health Canada has done is post these company initiated recalls on its website.

Consumers believe they are protected by laws in this country, that we are a developed country. We have had parliamentarians at all levels of government debating and passing laws for decades and for centuries. Consumers believe they are protected when they purchase food and consumer goods, yet the reality is that they are not necessarily protected.

That is particularly true with imported products, because there are certain standards for the manufacture of goods here in Canada. However, when goods are imported from Asia, Europe or wherever, there is no mechanism for ensuring that those goods meet the regulations and the standards that we have set here in Canada.

I will give a good example, which is that of lead. Lead has been banned from use in consumer products in Canada. One would like to think that if one is buying a toddler a toy at a neighbourhood store, the toddler will be protected from exposure to lead.

We no longer paint our houses with lead paint. We no longer make our toys with lead contaminated products. Yet products that are available for purchase in Canadian stores and have been imported from other countries have been found to be contaminated with lead.

My kids played with the Thomas the Tank Engine, a very popular children's figure. There are many toys made in the image of it, yet, Thomas the Tank Engine trains imported from China have been found to be contaminated with lead paint.

Clearly, consumers have not been protected and the laws designed to protect consumers have not been enforced when it comes to consumer products, especially, imported consumer products.

We have called for tougher regulations, tougher laws, when it comes to consumer products. In fact, I had a news conference in Ottawa not too long ago. I joined an Ottawa area family and we used lead testers to test the toys of the young children in that family. A toy we purchased, which is available in Canadian stores, was contaminated with lead paint, which was easily identifiable with the lead testing device we brought with us. I think for the reporters at the news conference, and through them Canadians at home, it was a very chilling experience to find a very commonly available toy, with which a toddler would quite easily play, could damage a child significantly because it was contaminated with lead.

First, my colleagues have called, very fundamentally, for the government to be empowered to order the recall of dangerous products. It seems like a very basic obligation on the part of the government. I think most Canadians believe their government is already empowered to do that, but it is not. We have also called for an increase in the authority of government to require information and action from manufacturers and importers. When goods are imported into Canada, because they are not manufactured here and they may not meet the standards required for domestically produced products, there should be an additional obligation on manufacturers to offer information about the content of those products. There should be mandatory reporting by manufacturers and importers of incidents involving death or injury from a product's use and violators should be heavily penalized.

While we will be examining Bill C-52 in more detail, it seems many of these goals have been addressed by the bill, and we see that as a positive thing. However, other areas of the bill do concern us, and I will spend a couple of minutes going over them.

I want to return to the issue concerning the safety of imported goods. Sixty-five per cent of Canadian consumer goods are imported into Canada and Bill C-52 lacks a comprehensive system to ensure that these goods, when they are brought into Canada, are safe. It is not simply a question of allowing the goods into the community and waiting to see who gets sick or injured by these products. It is about putting some obligation on the manufacturers of these products, or at least the retailers of these products, to ensure that before these products reach consumers, they are safe. We need a better system for identifying risks. To react after the fact is to put too many Canadians at risk.

There is an approach used in occupational health and safety, which is control at the source. In other words, one wants to do the maximum to prevent injury, illness or death by controlling a hazard at the source rather than at the person or individual who could be affected. This is needed with respect to the importation of consumer goods.

We have seen many imported consumer goods with counterfeited CSA approved labels. It is another reason why we need to ensure that when goods are imported, they do not just have a counterfeited label but that they are CSA approved and that they pose no risk to consumers.

In Bill C-52 there is too much discretion for inspectors. While they have been empowered with a greater authority, many of their actions are optional, even when they believe human health to be at risk. The government is not required to inform consumers of safety issues that have been identified. This needs to be tightened up. Amendments need to be made to the bill to remove that discretion. If an inspector believes a consumer is risk, how can the inspector in good conscience allow the risk to continue?

My colleague from Winnipeg North, who is the NDP health critic, is very eloquent in speaking against a buyer beware approach when it comes to our health. She advocates, instead, a do no harm principle. We believe Canadians elect their government to ensure that when it comes to their health and safety, that we do no harm. This should certainly govern the approach of the inspectors who are implementing the rules for our safety.

Also, more resources are needed to enforce the bill. If we look at the inspection process, more resources need to be made available to ensure the inspection and enforcement process is not just something written on paper, but that we have the resources to make the enforcement a reality. It does take resources. It takes people and people power to carry out the inspections. We need to ensure we are not just reacting, but that we are preventing problems before they occur.

We know certain hazards have a disproportionate impact on women. Bisphenol A for example, the plastic baby bottle material, is a hormone disrupter affecting reproduction later in life. There are health implications, primarily for women, and other safety differentials of products based on gender. This is not mentioned in the bill and it needs to be considered. Women are disproportionately impacted by the health effects of not only consumer products, but health products as well. This has been an issue of debate and discussion under another government bill, Bill C-51.

Another aspect not addressed at all are the issues of product origin and manufacturing jobs. The government has ignored the manufacturing crisis across Canada. It is especially devastating in the province of Ontario, my home province. Hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs are going out the door. As I said earlier, there has been a flood of imported products. We have seen a growing number of product recalls, a growing danger to public safety and a growing disregard for the public welfare of Canadians.

Canadians should really think about the cost benefit analysis of allowing much of our production to go offshore to other countries and then face the growing risk of unsafe consumer products here in Canada. Is the cost benefit analysis a risk benefit analysis that we are prepared to accept? Does it not make more sense to support and help our manufacturing sector through the crisis it is currently experiencing and to do our best to ensure we continue to manufacture products in Canada rather than throwing open our market to the world, increasing the likelihood that products will be imported into Canada that pose health and safety risks?

Just this week a plant closed in Listowel, Ontario. The Campbell Soup company has, for decades, processed what Canadians do so well, which is create food. This was yet another example of raw agricultural materials, which have been produced in Canada very effectively, that through the manufacturing process added value. We were able to use those manufactured products to supply our own market and export abroad. Now, with the closure of that plant, we will have to find a source for the processing of those agricultural products elsewhere. Again, there is always the danger that with imported products, we are courting a greater public risk.

We cannot have enough inspectors to inspect every product that is or could be imported into our country. Therefore, we abandon our manufacturing sector at our peril as consumers and at the peril of our children because we do not have control over the quality of those products, whether it is consumer goods, toys, food, or whatever.

The manufacturing process is not something that happens elsewhere, something that other people do and that has no impact on our daily lives. It is about the products we use, the food we eat, the pharmaceutical products we use in our health care system and it has a great effect on our daily lives.

While I appreciate the bill is a response to the public outcry about the lack of government action and the hazardous products that have been recalled voluntarily by manufacturers, it is one small step and it certainly is not the answer to the crisis we face because of the loss of our manufacturing sector.

I know there have been other initiatives, such as private members' bills, and attempts by other members of Parliament over the last several years, prior to my being elected as a member of Parliament, to try to bring in legislation to tighten up the laws around consumer products. All have failed and we have been left with archaic legislation dating from 1969. Canadians believe action is long overdue.

I have received a letter from Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, which has raised with me the issue of the exemption of tobacco manufacturers and cigarettes under this law. Its belief is that all products should be covered under the bill, should it become law. That is another aspect that we need to look at.

The government has prided itself on getting tough on crime. I know there are many vulnerable people in my community in Toronto who are disproportionately negatively affected with some of that tough talk, but I would like to see the government get tough on the crime of losing our manufacturing jobs, allowing Canadians to be subjected to hazardous products, and to back up that tough talk with tough action.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to speak to Bill C-52, the Canadian consumer product safety act. I will touch on some points that others have briefly mentioned.

The bill would modernize consumer protection in Canada and deals with prohibitions related to manufacturing, importing, selling advertising, packaging and labelling consumer products, including those that are a danger to human health and safety. This would make it easier to identify safe products.

On the surface, everyone would agree with that particular philosophy. However, the devil is in the detail and we need to talk about the details of a fairly complex act. I look forward to hearing some of the government members who have not yet spoken to the bill.

This area has not been revised since 1969. However, as the previous member from the Bloc mentioned, a number of crises have occurred and the government needed to act.

Before I begin my remarks, I must disagree with a comment made by an NDP member when he said that he could not find products labelled “made in Canada”. Sometimes there is the opposite problem. In agriculture, in particular, we can buy a bottle of olives that says “product of Canada” but olives are not grown here. The big problem in the agricultural industry and other industries is that, depending on the number of components, it appears to Canadians that they are buying something that was fully produced in Canada when it was not. Separate from this initiative, we need to take a close look at labelling to ensure that Canadian agriculture and business are protected by labelling.

A number of problems with products have occurred recently in Canada that are good examples of the necessity for this act. We had the toothpaste from South Africa that contained substances that were a danger to human health. We also had Fisher-Price products containing materials that were dangerous and toxic to children. Mattel, the American toy manufacturer, had to recall several million toys in the U.S. that were made in China. Some of the toys contained too much lead, such as the Barbie dolls and Geo Tracks toys. Fortunately, all these products have been recalled because they were dangerous to children.

The Auditor General looked into this in 2006 and pointed out all the problems with Health Canada and its ability to control dangerous products. She said that many of the managers of the product safety program were unable to fill their mandate because they lacked the tools. She said that they did not have enough human resources, that the resources they had were not used very well, and that the legislation was not very effective in protecting Canadians. The government has known about this since 2006.

Obviously, there have been problems with a number of products in Canada, and later in my speech I will talk about some more products, but there is also the issue of human resources. A number of members in the committee have raised the concern that it is fine to put in all sorts of new regulations and have inspections at every level of the process but if there are no inspectors and no funds to do that it does not change anything. There will be a lot of questions asked as to how the government plans to implement this because it has not really provided that detail yet.

In relation to inspectors, we want to ensure they are not overridden because they caused a problem. In the case of nuclear safety, an inspector found there was something wrong and the government simply proposed legislation to overrule the chief inspector and, in fact, eventually fired her. Therefore, that regime would not work if that is the type of attitude the government would bring to this bill.

A lot of regulations are involved. I am not against regulations but the bill I was talking about earlier today, Bill C-33, would have allowed the government to legislate certain things by regulations.

I have a constituent in my riding, Tony, who often approaches me and says that Canada is very dangerous because it rules by regulations, unlike Europe where everything has to be done by law. Regulations of course can be done by governor in council. Fortunately, we do have a committee, chaired by a very able chair right now from Scarborough, on the scrutiny of regulations, that has parliamentary overview in that respect, but it does not make policy decisions and regulations can be made out of public oversight as far as policies go.

That is why in relation to all the bills we are discussing today and any bills that have regulations, members would like to see what the government is planning, what the general plans are related to those regulations and when they are coming. If the whole bill, like the last one, depends on regulations, then once again nothing will happen if they are not coming forward. They can have such a dramatic effect, as we talked about in the last bill related to a world food shortage. Members of Parliament would really like to know what those regulations are.

In this particular bill there are a number of things that will be decided by regulation. Certainly in committee, I am sure the three opposition parties will be asking the minister and government officials more questions about that. This will give them a head's up to be prepared in committee to explain the implementation of this, because it is a fairly complex and lengthy bill, and has a number of resources attached to it but there is no outline in the plan. I think it is $113 million, but there is no outlined plan on how those resources would be used.

Would it be deployed on inspection resources? As I was saying earlier, this certainly needs a number of new resources to allow this bill to have any effect. How much money is there for that? I am sure the officials will be able to give us more information on that.

This bill would also reverse the burden of proof and impose that on the manufacturers, and of course it should be the duty of manufacturers to make sure that what they produce is safe for Canadians. I do not think anyone would disagree with that and I look forward to the agriculture committee to hearing from the Canadian Manufacturers Association on these types of conditions.

The legislation will also force manufacturers and importers of consumer products to test the safety of products regularly, and most importantly to disclose the test results. Once again, if dealt with effectively and efficiently, this will increase consumer protection for Canadians while still allowing the products to be available.

It is a bit of a question or a concern though, and once again we will want to see how the plan will work. A positive aspect of the bill is that it deals with inspections through the entire chain of production: advertising, shipping, assembly, labelling, and putting the product out. There are all these different stages and they have to be traceable. They must be documented. Of course, I hope there is not too much bureaucracy there for the business, but all this has to be documented and it is good that these stages can be traced.

We will have to discuss this more at committee, but my question is, how will there be a level playing field between Canadian products and products from overseas?

This would not always be the case, and often is not the case, but if all the components of a particular product were made in Canada and all the stages occurred in Canada, then it would be much easier for us to inspect and regulate that process. However, in this internationally competitive world, where everything is crossing borders and components are crossing borders with just in time production, there are all sorts of components and processes that are not in Canada.

How does the government plan to ensure that those parts of the processes can be dealt with so that the products that are coming from overseas have the same type of scrutiny as the ones in Canada at the various levels? If that is not possible, because of individual sovereignties, would there be inspections coming into the country with an increased enhancement in that respect? I would like an outline of how that would all work.

Another item that the bill allows is increased fines. I do not think anyone would disagree with that. I think $5,000 was the limit before and that could just be considered as a cost of doing business. Some huge manufacturers could accept that as just a cost of business, just a charge that they have to pay. Now the fines have been increased up to $5 million and two years in jail. If they are putting lives of Canadians at risk, putting the health of Canadians or their children at risk, obviously we want severe penalties for that.

These types of deterrents in other countries are higher at this point, until the bill passes, if it is to pass. They are higher in many places other than Canada. Deterrents in the United States and the European Union are much tougher. In Europe the fines can be as high as 5% of the company's annual revenue. At this time the United States imposes fines that go as high as several million dollars.

There will also be safety reports regarding all supply sources and components of a product. The system has all the features of a traceability system. Once again, I think this is good and important as long as it does not get into the hands of overzealous officials who were to make it a huge impediment to the business surviving.

We want to be able to trace it. If a product is determined to be dangerous and the company were then to go out of business because it was a shady-type of company, maybe organized crime, a gang, or an organized type of operation, that brought in a whole bunch of cheap, dangerous products and then just vanished, then the government would have these traceability documents. It would be able to do the effective recall and find out where the products are. In fact, with the voluntary recalls that are occurring, how are we to know that everything has been recalled? If we have the traceability elements, then we know where the product is, so we know it has all been recalled.

I have just a couple of examples about the cost of making these conditions and why it has to be effective and efficient. We have an issue right now with fertilizer retailers in Canada. Fertilizers can be dangerous, they can be explosive. Fortunately, there are very good regulations, some that the industry is imposing on itself which is excellent, to ensure safety. Of course, to put in these provisions, these increase huge prices for farmers and retailers. We have a program in the Canadian ports to put those provisions in to help to pay for those. We could also have similar government provisions to help put in the provisions to protect fertilizers and those types of chemicals. I encourage the government to review that issue.

Another example we have in my riding pertains to an international product coming in from the United States related to housing. It needs the Canadian safety standards approval, which is good. It should be done thoroughly, efficiently and effectively. In the north we only have a several month building season, and this is during a housing crisis where people are without homes. If it is not done in a timely fashion, if it is not done quickly and effectively, as I hope it will be in this particular case, this could result in people being left homeless for another year until construction could start.

Above all in our considerations, and I do not think anyone would disagree, we have to make absolutely sure that products are safe for our children. Some of the examples I will give later on are related to children. Children are not always underfoot of their parents, and they do things that adults would not necessarily do, like chewing everything under the sun, or putting everything in their mouths. We have to ensure that things are absolutely safe for children, and that this law will be used to that particular effect.

There are millions of products on the market produced in Canada or imported. In modern times the manufacturers would not want to produce anything that is dangerous. Nevertheless, products do slip through the cracks or there is the rare criminal element or a person who is not caring. Therefore, there are products that show a need for this bill.

Since 2005 there have been 34 products that contained lead risk, 26 products were a risk in terms of choking, 5 products led to head injuries, 5 that led to the risk of laceration, 3 that could have meant internal damage from magnets, 3 that put people at risk of being burned, 3 that put people at risk in terms of entrapment, 2 that put people in danger in terms of puncture or impalement, 2 that could have caused strangulations, 2 that led to bacterial risk, and 1 toxic chemical risk. That is why it is important that we put the bill in place and that it is done in a realistic and effective manner.

The bill is somewhat intertwined with Bill C-51 which we will be discussing next. I will be bringing comments forward in more detail when we get to Bill C-51, but we have given some feedback about the onerousness of the controls in these bills. That is something we will be looking at in committee.

A couple of my constituents have sent me emails that they think these bills are targetting at substantially reducing or putting huge barriers on natural health products; that they give almost police state-like powers to the government; that they have huge fines; that there can be seizing authority without warrant which is actually in Bill C-51; that the government wants to bypass Parliament approval, which is what I was talking about earlier with regard to regulation; that it can seize one's property, charge storing and shipping charges; and that it can do these things by entering one's property without warrant and so on.

I will be bringing forward those concerns from my constituents. They will be more related to Bill C-51 but these bills are connected.

Similarly, other feedback I have received is from a corporation called Truehope which has products related to people with mental illness. Once again, it wants to raise the alarm related to gross changes to the Food and Drugs Act as outlined in Bill C-51 and as referenced in Bill C-52. I will not go into all the details, but I have them available if someone would like to read them. These are things that should be discussed at committee.

I also want to give some input on the bill from the Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada. This organization is certainly in support of the bill but it wants it amended to remove the proposed statutory exemption for tobacco companies. It states:

The era of special deals for tobacco companies is I hope long behind us. Yet this bill proposes a unique concession for tobacco manufacturers, one which would not be extended to any other manufacturing sector.

The Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada certainly wants this amendment put in the bill and we hope it will be called as a witness and we can explore that particular item. I hope the members of the health committee will ask the government officials when they appear before the committee with the minister as to the purpose of that exemption.

In closing, I would like to summarize three of my issues that need to be dealt with. One is the type of inspection and the number of inspections. The second is how we are going to protect the various chain of processes for products that come from overseas. The last issue is that right now, with the system of voluntary recalls, the government negotiates and the products are voluntarily recalled, and that has never been a problem.

I do not have a problem with the government having this authority, in that it should be able to act quickly, but often when people have the power to do something and do not do it they will be taken to court and will be involved in all sorts of litigation. I would not want inspectors constantly doing recalls for protection.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

On a point of order here, Ms. Wasylycia-Leis, are you talking about Bill C-51 in terms of the “shall”?

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

But were you consulted on Bill C-51, for example?

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Madam Chair, are we debating Bill C-51 today?

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you, Madam Chairperson.

Thanks to all of you.

I want to start by dealing with the issue of reporting of adverse reactions, since it has been a dominant theme here at this committee.

Bill C-51 says that a health care institution “shall” provide the minister with information about adverse reactions. My first question is that in the past, when we've tried to suggest a role for the federal government in coordinating information and strategies across the country, we have been told that the federal government can't do that because of jurisdictional issues. Why or how is this possible now? Has there been a legal interpretation of this? On what basis is this going to be possible?

[Carol Skelton, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Thank you very much.

I'm very sorry we couldn't have had this debate for the full two hours today. I know you've all come a long way.

We talk about clarity and truth in labelling. Professor Hobbs and Mr. Johnston, it sounds like you're fairly happy with what's happening right now in terms of what you see going on with, let's say, Bill C-51. Am I right in saying that?

[Blake Johnston]

On your first point, Canada has some of the most progressive food labelling rules in the world. The nutrition facts panel we have on food in Canada is only very recent; it came into place just a few years ago, and the rest of the world looks at it.

The health committee was looking at food labelling under their child obesity study not too long ago. They were looking at the United Kingdom and a stoplight or traffic light front-of-package label. During their review, they realized that the reason the British have this is that they don't have the nutrition facts panel we have in Canada, which gives the recommended daily percentage of intake of all the ingredients that are important.

I would say that on the issue of nutrition, Canada is a standard-bearer in terms of the information it provides consumers. That was really carefully tested, and it's in place for the vast majority of food products.

Concerning the subsection of the food group you raised, there were some logistical difficulties with some meat categories, and I believe some vegetable categories as well don't have the nutrition facts panel. I think at the time the government decided, or there was some consensus at that point, that the logistical difficulties of putting those on certain items—how do you put it on a head of broccoli, if you will—presented enough problems that they didn't do it at that stage. But the vast majority of products in the grocery store have that facts panel, which make us a world leader.

On your second point, there are two different issues: we're talking about nutrition labelling versus origin. They're very important to differentiate.

In my opinion, Health Canada is very good at what they're telling consumers about food on food labelling, and it's very carefully managed. They don't do anything half-cocked. They do efficacy studies on everything they do to make sure it's interpreted properly by the consumer, and it's very evidence-based and very good.

I think we really have to separate the two and see the difference between that and what we're talking about here, between the labelling of products as to origin and the labelling around nutrition and health and safety.

Concerning all imports playing by the same rule, that's something we've supported very much, mostly in the context recently of Bill C-51, which is the legislation the government has tabled to amend the Food and Drugs Act in relation to the import safety issue.

We're firm believers that imported products and importers need to comply with all the same rules as domestic producers and that the food industry needs to essentially own their value chain and be accountable for things they bring into the country. I think this legislation accounts for that by requiring importers to register with the federal government and be a bit more accountable than perhaps they are now.

On your final point, about misleading statements, I'm not certain about the administrative monetary penalties that are open to CFIA, but the Food and Drugs Act is a criminal statute, so it's my understanding that companies that are seen to be making these mistakes are open to criminal prosecution in some instances and fines in others.

Perhaps Joe could correct me on that one, if that's—

Food and Drugs Act

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to Bill C-51, an act proposing amendments to the Food and Drugs Act.

First, this proposed legislation is but one element of our government's action for meeting an important commitment.

In October's throne speech we committed to taking action on food and product safety to ensure Canadians had confidence in the quality and safety of what they buy.

Following this, the Prime Minister announced the food and consumer safety action plan last December. This is a comprehensive plan with the goal of modernizing and strengthening Canada's safety system for food, health and consumer products.

In February, budget 2008 invested $113 million for two years to support the plan in meeting its purpose. Now we are taking the next steps by introducing important legislation.

Along with introducing the proposed new Canada consumer product safety act, we have also brought in Bill C-51 to amend the Food and Drugs Act. Taken together, these two complementary pieces of proposed legislation include measures that will further protect the health and safety of Canadians, and this bill is all about that.

They propose to do this by stressing: first, active prevention to stop as many problems as possible before they occur, second, targeted oversight so the government can keep a closer watch over products that pose a higher risk to health and safety; and third, rapid response so we can take action more quickly and effectively to problems that do occur.

I want to begin by noting upfront that despite the need to update it, how durable our Food and Drugs Act has been over many years. Let me provide a bit of history.

Although certain food laws were in place before Confederation, the first federal legislation dealing with the issue of food safety was enacted in 1874. It is interesting to note that the United States did not pass similar legislation until 1906.

Canada's 1874 law did not receive its main impetus from adulterated food. What apparently forced the legislation were the large quantities of grossly adulterated liquor being consumed. Parliament was besieged with requests to do something about the situation. Hence in January 1875 an Act to Prevent the Adulteration of Food, Drink and Drugs came into effect. In 1920, just in time for America's prohibition act and the roaring 20's, it was superseded by our Food and Drugs Act.

That the world has changed since the 1920s is certainly an understatement. In fact, it has changed a great deal since the 1950s when the act was last updated. While the act has proven resilient, it is now 50 years old and definitely in need of updating.

Our foods and health products now come from the four corners of the earth. Moreover, new technologies and production practices have radically changed the industry. It is also the case that consumers today are more health conscious and have higher expectations about the food and drugs they purchase.

While on the whole food quality has increased, incidents of contamination are by no means rare. Furthermore, production and technological advances have created new risks and challenges for food inspection and oversight mechanisms.

Today, however, modernizing our food safety system means adopting a more integrated and proactive approach. Moreover, any improvements made today should lead to more extensive information on food and drug risks being provided to the Canadian public. They should involve the food industry and the consumer as well as government in addressing risk. This only makes for greater safety. The proposed amendments should help streamline and provide more consistent regulatory mechanisms across all sectors.

Bill C-51 would do all of these things and more, and I will elaborate.

The government's proposed amendments will make the Food and Drugs Act much more proactive. Let us look, for example, at the amendments in the bill, focusing on the food regulatory system. They will permit us to focus on identifying where potential risks may be introduced in the food system and on taking more active steps to prevent food safety issues. Moreover, the amended act would extend its coverage prior to the point where food is actually sold. In fact, the amended act would apply to food from the moment it arrived in Canada to the point of sale. With these—

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have just started debating this bill and I have received many emails from constituents and organizations that represent natural health products.

Because Bill C-51 would amend the Food and Drugs Act, and one really has to look at the Food and Drugs Act while looking through the bill, I want to raise just one of the concerns, which is that many natural health products that have been sold in Canada for decades would become unavailable and remaining products would cost much more under clauses 13 and 18.7 of the bill.

Clause 8 replaces sections 17 to 21 of the act, but clause 13 states:

No person shall conduct a controlled activity unless they are authorized by an establishment licence to do so.

It creates now, I believe, a licensing requirement. I do not see the details on licensing. I assume that licensing is either included under the Food and Drugs Act, in the appendices or regulations, but the member will appreciate when someone makes that assertion, there must be an answer. If the allegation is that these products will not be available because they will require a licence, and the provisions of getting a licence may be so onerous, lengthy or specific, that it may in fact result in there not being the availability of certain natural health products.

I wonder if the parliamentary secretary is aware of that issue and whether he can provide an answer to the concerns of those who rely on these products.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary for Health]

I want to assure you, Mr. Speaker, that when I was referring to the loony left, I was only referring to the members I sit beside on my right. I note that you are not one of those members, Mr. Speaker.

Canadians want their government to do the best job possible to ensure the safety of foods, health and consumer products. We committed to meeting this expectation in the Speech from the Throne. The bill that we are now debating is an important part of meeting that commitment. It is a major component of the food and consumer safety action plan, which the Prime Minister announced in December.

The plan seeks to modernize and strengthen our food, consumer and health products safety system. It is a plan that is now supported by a two year funding commitment of $113 million, announced in budget 2008. It is a plan which shows that the government is taking product safety seriously and is taking action.

Our plan takes a new approach to food and product safety, based on active prevention to stop as many problems as possible before they occur, targeted oversight so the government can keep a closer watch over the products that pose a higher risk to health and safety, and a rapid response so that we can take action more quickly and effectively to the problems that do occur.

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Kildonan—St. Paul.

The next step in the plan is updating our product safety legislation. As a result, Bill C-51, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act , is now before the House. It has become very clear to the government that the Food and Drugs Act needs to be modernized. The act is now more than 50 years old and it has simply not kept pace with modern expectations or standards.

Given the significance of the task, our effort has required discussions with stakeholders. We have heard that it is not good enough for our laws to focus largely on one stage in the health products life cycle. Yes, it certainly makes sense to assess health products carefully before they reach market, and today we are doing that vigorously. Bill C-51 does not propose to change that.

Instead, it seeks tools to conduct ongoing assessments of risks and benefits, even after the product is in use by Canadians. Instead of only focusing on products before they reach Canadians, we want to require companies to provide information throughout a health products' full life cycle.

Under the bill, and every step of the way, we will be able to ask whether a product's risks outweigh the benefits. This means that consumers and health professionals will have access to more and better information. They will be able to make better informed decisions about the safety and the use of the products.

Second, it seeks to anchor the safety planning in law. The reality is that the vast majority of companies already do plan for safety. They know it is just good, responsible business to do so, and with more information made available, it will be possible to update plans for improving safety to reflect new data or emerging concerns.

With Bill C-51, the government will have greater information. With greater knowledge we can work with companies and health professionals to better protect the safety of all Canadians.

With provisions that support greater openness and transparency in the regulatory system, Canadians can access the information they need about a product, the risks and the benefits, to ensure that they are making informed choices for themselves and their families.

We can use greater knowledge to target our oversight and we can use it to learn about problems as early as possible to respond more rapidly to better safeguard the health of Canadians.

This bill also accounts for the fact that today we receive many products from abroad. As a result, it would provide for modern inspection authorities and new strategies to oversee the safety of imported products. This focus on prevention is critical. Our focus on information is also essential to supporting rapid responses by the government when problems do occur.

Through Bill C-51 we are seeking the power to order a recall of a product that poses a safety threat. I want to mention one example of safety risks, what experts call “adverse drug reactions”. That is the health system term for people reacting negatively to a drug.

Under Bill C-51 we are seeking the authority to work with the provinces and territories to enhance the reporting of adverse drug reactions from hospitals. This would go a long way in helping detect safety problems earlier and the sooner we know, the more rapidly we can respond and better protect Canadians from unsafe health products.

I do not want to suggest that the modernization of the Food and Drugs Act will mean a night and day kind of change for most health products or companies. They do a good and reasonable job now. The vast majority of industry takes consumer safety very seriously. It is only a small percentage that acts irresponsibly and this is who we seek to protect Canadians from. In the process, we will allow law-abiding Canadian businesses to compete on a more level playing field and we will also target those who act irresponsibly with steep penalties.

Today, a serious incident under the Food and Drugs Act can just receive a $5,000 fine. Under Bill C-51, we are seeking to raise that up to $5 million because the health of Canadians is worth it.

The Government of Canada is taking consumer safety seriously and taking action. Many partners across the health system share our commitment to this direction, including consumer representatives. We believe all parties should support the direction set out in Bill C-51. I urge all of my colleagues on both sides of the House to support Bill C-51, so we can modernize the health and food product safety for Canadians.

We have all listened to the debate today and the health committee will have another opportunity to listen. The government will listen and, there is no doubt about it, the government will act to protect the health and safety of all Canadians.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, another one upon whom the Conservatives could have cast aspersions is one of my constituents who asked questions. I wanted to ask the government, but it is not putting up any speakers, just the minister who introduced the bill, so I cannot ask the questions. Maybe the member could answer just three concerns that this constituent put forward.

Will this new law be used to abuse and punish special interest groups, minorities, religious groups or others? Why do the bureaucrats want seizure warrants without judge approval? With fines being increased a thousand times and seizing authority without a warrant, is Bill C-51 meant to bankrupt and silence its target audience?

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join in the first round of debate on Bill C-51, a bill to amend, in large measure, the Food and Drugs Act.

I bring to this debate a lot of skepticism but it is a healthy dose of skepticism based on the history of this whole aspect of Health Canada and our regulatory regime in Canada.

It will be no surprise to the House to learn that this is the fifth attempt by government in the last decade to overhaul the Food and Drugs Act. Four times before the Liberals attempted to do so and each time they failed. Why? They failed because the community spoke up and demanded more accountability from government and much clearer answers around accountability and regulatory authority.

Members will recall Bill C-80, a draft piece of legislation that was supposed to do much of what we have before us today. That bill was supposedly attempting to modernize our food and drug provisions, bring us into the 21st century and bring our rules and our regulations in line with modern day science.

It did not take too long for Canadians to quickly figure out that this was a ruse. It was an attempt to make Canadians believe the government would be on their side but was in fact loosening its hold over regulations, minimizing its role and moving us away from what has been an entrenched part of our history, and that is a bill that regulates the safety of food and drugs in such a serious manner that it is part of the Criminal Code.

That legislation operated on the basis of the do no harm principle, the precautionary principle, which means that we do not allow products on the market unless there is evidence that they are safe beyond a reasonable doubt. That is the do no harm principle. It is not the buyer beware principle. It is not the risk management model that we have seen with the Liberals before and with the Conservatives today.

There is a marked difference between the do no harm principle and the risk management model. Do no harm means that we put people and safety first. The risk management model means that we can only go so far in ensuring Canadians' safety so we will allow the products on the market and then we will see what happens. It will be up to individual Canadians to determine whether or not it is worth taking the risk. It will be up to the corporations that produce the products to regulate themselves and decide if they are in line with the standards on paper.

The risk management model is not a proactive regulatory model that puts the needs and concerns of Canadians first. It is a model that puts the needs of big pharma, large corporations and global capital forces ahead of ordinary citizens. It is a model that makes guinea pigs out of Canadians.

We have had our share of offering up people as guinea pigs for large pharmaceutical corporations. I do not need to tell the House about the incidents in our past, especially when women were treated as guinea pigs. Thalidomide comes to mind as does Depo-Provera, breast implants and the list goes on.

We need to ask ourselves some questions. If we cut through all the rhetoric and tough talk about putting safety first and modernizing our system, are we better off? Are we any closer to the kind of system that Canadians thought we had and expected to have, which was abandoned by the Liberals?

It was abandoned when, in 1997, the former minister of health, Allan Rock, in his first gesture as minister of health, killed the federal drug laboratory, the only independent federal research lab in this country for testing on a post-market surveillance basis. It tested whether drugs that were on the market were safe and whether there were any negative consequences when that drug was combined with certain foods, other drugs or natural health products. It was a lab that performed a very important safety function in our country.

That was the beginning of a whole string of actions taken by the then minister of health, Allan Rock, and subsequent Liberal ministers of health to dismantle our regulatory system and move us away from the do no harm model toward a system where corporations pay for their drug approval processes. The bulk of the fees for our drug approval process comes from the corporations themselves.

Scientists at Health Canada have seen numerous incidents and they said that enough was enough. I think of Dr. Michèle Brill-Edwards who spoke up about being cornered to approve something she thought was not safe. She had to leave Health Canada to have any sense of integrity intact.

There were many others. Who can forget the whole group of veterinary scientists who stood tall about the tampering with food products and the adulteration and modification of veterinarian drugs? They were chastised, disciplined and lambasted by the Liberal government.

Whatever happened to the government being a bastion of independent, objective science that operated on the basis of the constituents it is supposed to serve? Whatever happened to government for the people, by the people and of the people? Nowhere is this more important than when it comes to the food we eat, the drugs we take because of medical conditions and the water we drink to sustain us and yet in those areas the government has abandoned us in large measure.

Today we are supposed to believe that the Conservative Government of Canada has such integrity, courage and vision that it is offering us a blueprint for a do no harm precautionary model around drugs and food. I bring to this debate a dose of healthy skepticism because I have seen nothing from the Conservatives to date that leads me to believe that the government is on the side of ordinary Canadian families and is not on the side, first and foremost, of the big corporations and their profit margins.

I have not seen that when it comes to housing, education, health care, women's equality, people with disabilities, the environment, jobs and child care. I have not yet seen the government stand up for Canadians

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary for Health]

Mr. Speaker, I assure the member that there are no shortcuts when it comes to clinical trials. In fact, the bill, through the life cycle approach, is much more effective in ensuring the safety of Canadians because it would allow the government to monitor the products after they reach the market.

I will also address a concern raised by the Bloc. Proactive measures have been taken by the minister and the government. It has been demonstrated with the presentation of Bills C-51 and C-52. It has been demonstrated again in budget 2008 in which $113 million has been invested to ensure that we will have a food and consumer safety action plan that is well funded.

Will the member agree that a life cycle approach is the right way to go and that it is important for the Minister of Health to have the ability, in rare but extreme cases, to remove a product off the shelf? Those are really the main points of the bill. I hope the member will be open to accepting that the government is on the right track without predetermining, what is so often the case, negativity.

Does the member agree with the life cycle approach and mandatory recall, if necessary?

[Christiane Gagnon, Bloc, Québec, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to second reading stage of Bill C-51 to amend the Food and Drugs Act. We know this act has been around for 40 years and that not too many changes have been made to it with respect to food and drug safety.

Bill C-51 bears a strong resemblance and is closely related to Bill C-52, which seeks to better monitor products on the market and reassure the public about product safety.

Here the government is taking things a bit further. It wants to cover other products, including pharmacological products, and look at pharmacovigilance.

Why does the government want to modernize this act? Because the public is quite worried. In the past few months and years, it has come to our attention that some products are harmful to our health. Certain drugs have adverse effects causing death.

For example, there is Singulair produced by Merck Frosst. This is an asthma drug that causes suicidal ideation. Champix, an anti-smoking drug produced by Pfizer, also causes suicidal ideation and depression. What is more, anti-psychotic drugs for children apparently cause obesity. These are some of the harmful effects of taking those drugs.

More and more people are worried about some of the drugs on the market. Some consumer products, such as children's toys or toothpaste from South Africa, also contain toxic substances. Other products contain mercury. The government is introducing this bill, which it was asked to do, to reassure the public about drug safety.

The minister has been asked about this a number of times. In 2006, the Auditor General issued a scathing report saying the government should make some changes. The lack of control by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency was among the Auditor General's many criticisms. Even that agency admits that unsafe products may be found on the shelves and that the public has cause for concern.

Will the bill properly respond to this situation and ensure food and drug safety?

The minister probably wants to reassure citizens with his bill. The purpose of Bill C-52 is to increase the industry's accountability with regard to the food supply. The government may also require that food safety monitoring be implemented. To that end, it gives the minister the authority to conduct inspections at any time. It will also require the industry to report the adverse effects of consuming certain foods. It also provides for a tracing system not just for foods but also for cosmetics and therapeutic products.

Is this the right approach? The objectives are laudable. How will it be done? We know that a whole set of regulations will come after the bill. However, today, we cannot discuss the regulations because they are not available. We hope that they will be provided when the bill is studied in committee. With regard to the Assisted Human Reproduction Act, passed in 2004, only one regulation was submitted to committee review and we are still waiting for the regulations. We hope that the regulations will follow on the heels of the bill so that they may be debated in committee.

Will the government meet the expectations of Canadians?

In response to the fears surrounding the safety of food and therapeutic products, the Auditor General was headed in the right direction when she sounded the alarm for the government by asking it to increase human resources and particularly to provide funding for inspections.

We need only think of natural products, for example. We know that there are between 33,000 and 40,000 products waiting for inspection in order to be licensed because of the shortage of inspectors. This applies not just to natural products but in particular to foods and consumer products. The inspectors quite often do not have the requisite training to properly inspect all these products.

There was a call for better training for staff and better human resources. I am afraid that this objective is not met by this bill. We can see that resources are lacking, as I was saying. Concerns about these shortcomings were expressed not only by the Auditor General but also by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Today, Bill C-51 goes one step further. In committee, we are studying aspects of post-market monitoring and pharmacovigilance. Over the past few months, we have met with experts and witnesses. We would have hoped to see Bill C-51 drafted along the lines that the committee suggested to the minister after it received recommendations from experts. However, he got a little ahead of the committee's work, and there was some duplication.

We are now considering this bill at second reading. We will vote in favour of the bill because we want it to be referred to committee for further study. That means that we will have to invite the same number of people, the same experts, to come tell us what they think about this bill. We would have hoped that the minister would have waited for our amendments and recommendations.

That is not what happened, so we hope that the minister will be open to some amendments to the bill in areas where he did not take into account all the concerns of the witnesses who appeared before the committee. We hope that the government will be open to these amendments. I am sure that amendments will be proposed, because the bill does not adequately address the issue of food and therapeutic product safety.

I would also like to talk about adverse drug reactions, which the bill addresses. Various experts commented on this and clarified things for us. That is what we would have liked to pass on to the minister before this bill was introduced. For example, consider hospitals' obligation to report on adverse drug effects, as set out in the bill. Many witnesses told us that that might not be the best way to go. Currently, between 1% and 10% of adverse effects are reported. Is the government hoping that by introducing this measure, that incidence will go up? Probably.

We would like to see greater interest in the reporting of adverse effects, but not just any old way. Some witnesses told us that hospitals may not have appropriate structures in place to fulfill this obligation. It might be too much red tape.

I do not know what kind of clarification the minister will provide on this issue. Regardless, we would have hoped to have had an opportunity to submit our recommendations after analyzing all of the testimony.

As I was saying, the bill also seeks to create a register of adverse reations.

We wonder about the reporting of serious and rare adverse reactions, but especially about how this information will be passed on so that health professionals are kept abreast of information from the adverse reaction register. The frequency of common adverse reactions is already known because of clinical trials. According to some witnesses, what is important is what we do not know, the unknown reactions.

With regard to mandatory reporting by hospitals, as I said, since all adverse reactions will have to be reported, not just unknown and more serious reactions, hospital pharmacists are afraid their workload will increase significantly. Should the emphasis be on the quantity or the quality of adverse reaction reports? An increase in the number of reports could dilute the most valuable information.

A number of witnesses told us that the focus should be on unexpected adverse reactions. Is the frequency of an adverse reaction important? These are questions we are still asking ourselves in committee. We believe that this issue has not yet been resolved. That is why we are going to question the government about this in committee.

For example, one witness, Bruce Carleton, a senior clinician scientist from the University of British Columbia and B.C. Children's Hospital, suggests looking at human genetics and drug biotransformation. According to Dr. Carleton, drug reactions have a genetic basis. If further genetic research were conducted, it would be possible to predict and avoid adverse drug reactions.

This is an indication of the complexity of detecting adverse reactions. We would have liked to see a more innovative, proactive approach that goes beyond just adverse drug reaction reporting. As I said, this is known as pharmacogenomics.

One of the major concerns we had in committee about the creation of a register of adverse effects and adverse reaction reporting by hospitals pertains to the method of post-market monitoring. As I said earlier, the effectiveness of post-market monitoring will depend on how the register of adverse drug effects is structured and on the effectiveness of feedback from health professionals, including pharmacists and physicians.

It is not enough to simply create registers and collect data. In her testimony on April 10, the Auditor General said that there were weaknesses in the analysis and interpretation of adverse events, and there was no proactive system to identify patterns that could signal a serious safety concern.

The committee's work could have enlightened the minister about this bill. As I was saying earlier, we would have liked for him to wait for our reactions and our recommendations after our three-month-long analysis on pharmacovigilance. Some witnesses also suggested that an independent evaluation board be created.

What about that? Will the bill cover that? We know that clinical trials are done by the manufacturers, and that often, a number of adverse effects are known, but are not revealed and the drug is put on the market. We would have liked to see an independent evaluation board, and a number of witnesses agreed.

The life cycle of a drug will supposedly be extended, but we would like this to be done not only by manufacturers, but also by an independent evaluation board throughout the life cycle of the drug. We know that drugs are often tested on certain patients, but other groups of people have not been tested—for example children and seniors—and often, these drugs have serious adverse effects if they are used.

The creation of a research centre of excellence, in partnership with our universities, has also been suggested. This centre could engage in pharmacoepidemiology studies that would be required by law and funded by the industry, but not conducted by the industry, which is currently the case. Another guide was suggested, one that would be much more proactive and independent in relation to the pharmaceutical industry.

Any mandatory adverse reaction report will be ineffective if not dealt with properly. That is more or less the conclusion reached by several witnesses who want the government to do something about this. Will Bill C-51 address all those concerns?

For now, as I said earlier, some drugs have been taken off the market, but they could have been not put on the market right away in the first place. The industry could have waited for further clinical trials to be done.

There are also fears that there is an attempt to shorten the process before a drug is put on the market. There are some fears about the life cycle of the drug and following it after it goes on the market. That is a step in the right direction, but there is also a fear that this would shorten the period before the certification of clinical trials. We heard this from several witnesses. Thus, the life cycle of a drug should not be an excuse for premarketing studies to be reduced nor for the door to be opened to such a possibility.

A number of witnesses have told us that they would like the minister to be open to certain amendments they would like to see made to this bill. It is hoped that the minister and this government will be open to the decision made during clause by clause consideration of the bill.

As I was saying earlier, the regulations are not yet available. Will they be satisfactory? It is hard to say. It is rather a blank cheque right now. We know that the regulation will give life to the bill.

The vote here in Parliament will send the bill to committee, as I think all hon. members want to address it. Work will be done in committee.

Nonetheless, we hope—I am saying this again because I do not want anyone to forget it—that the minister will be open to the various voices that have been heard. For three months, we have been studying the drug monitoring program and the new life cycle for drugs, which takes a different approach, namely that trials continue after the drug is put on the market, in the interest of human safety.

For example, we know that some people have died after taking certain drugs. We also know that often, for genetic reasons, some drugs should not be given to certain patients. There needs to be openness in order to better address this whole issue. We have to take into account all the problems we have in properly understanding the effects of drugs on patients, those who use these drugs.

Labelling was also discussed. Warnings have to be issued, for example, if a person is sick and there is a contraindication to taking a certain drug. We would hope that the minister is open to that and that this will address the entire problem.

We are in the process of reviewing this approach. Given the openness of the parliamentary secretary, who sits on our committee, he can relay the questions to the minister. We are counting on his openness in this matter and we hope he will be proactive and sympathetic to our demands.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-51. In fact, as my colleague from West Nova said earlier in his remarks, these are two bills in a row, Bill C-51 and Bill C-52, that we are certainly most interested in moving forward to committee for further technical analysis and more research, but we do believe the bills in principle need to be carried forward.

The section of the bill with which I really want to deal is on the food side of it. I think there is strong interest in ensuring that products are indeed safe. I would say there is an almost public wave for stronger action in this regard. There has been the recent incidence of unsafe food. Health and consumer products have underscored the need to modernize the Food and Drugs Act. The fact of the matter is that the act was developed in 1953 and these amendments certainly update the bill.

Basically, the bill would amend the Food and Drugs Act and modernize the regulatory system for foods and therapeutic products. It would improve the surveillance of benefits and risks of therapeutic products through their life cycle. It is designed to increase compliance and enforcement measures by corporations to encourage them to report adverse reactions or potential health threats associated with market products. It would, I will admit, give substantial regulatory power to the minister.

I know there are some concerns about that. We have a number of letters already. That is why it is so important for the bill to go to committee relatively quickly, so that the witness lists can be prepared and those concerns can be addressed. We certainly support the idea of improving the safety and health of Canadians. We are committed to improving the safety and health of Canadians. We support measures to strengthen the regulatory system to ensure that Canadians are able to access the safest and most effective food in the world as well as with therapeutic products.

I want to turn mainly to the food area of the bill and that is in clauses 4 through to 6. The bill would create new offences relating to food, therapeutic products and cosmetics. It would require licensing for importing food and for the interprovincial trade in food.

In a previous Parliament there was Bill C-27. We in fact looked fairly extensively at the regulations surrounding the importing of food and the interprovincial trade in food. In all seriousness, there had to be improvements made in that area to ensure that imported food was safe and met the same kind of regulatory requirements as indeed Canadian food had to meet.

This bill in all areas would expand the regulatory authority, but in the food area it would expand the power of inspectors. I want to point out that it is not our intent nor do I believe it is the government's intent or even the bureaucracy's intent that the expansion of the powers of inspectors is to be overbearing. It is to ensure that the human resources and the authority are there to deal with some of the incidences that can happen on grocery store shelves or that imported food can face.

I would put a caveat in. Those of us who are on the agriculture committee know that certainly more human resources must be added to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency for it to do its job. The government did indicate the other day that there are some budgetary measures in that regard, but there do need to be the human and financial resources for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to do its job and the additional authorities granted to it through this bill.

I also want to underline the fact that one of the concerns that we raised at our committee level was that these costs should not be passed on to primary producers. We have had enough of that. Primary producers should not be the ones bearing the costs for food inspections in this country. That is a public safety and health and safety issue. It is a public responsibility and we would hope that the government takes that seriously and funds the Canadian Food Inspection Agency appropriately to do its job.

The new prohibited activity in the bill really gives the government the authority to take action if someone knowingly provides the minister with false or misleading information relating to any matter in this bill, whether someone knowingly is tampering with a food, therapeutic product or a cosmetic, including tampering with a label or package.

A number of years ago, we heard about a substantial number of those where people, as a hoax or a threat or an act of terrorism really, had sent out the word over the media or email, or by other means, that they had in fact tampered with a food product on a grocery store shelf. That creates tremendous concern among the consuming public. It certainly creates difficulties for the businesses so affected. Under this bill, I do believe there is more authority for the authorities themselves to deal with those matters where there are hoaxes or threats, or indeed actual tampering with food itself.

The other area in clause 4 will also prohibit the importing of food that is injurious to human health. That is an important aspect of the bill that was not there previously in terms of the trade that goes on. It is very important that imported food be treated in the same way as domestic food on the grocery store shelves, and that action be taken against companies or individuals who may have both exported into this country or the company that imported the food that is injurious to human health. That is a very important measure.

We tend, in this country, to take our food system for granted. Canadian farmers provide the safest food in the world. The problem is they are certainly not paid well enough for it. Canadians only pay 13.5% of their income and by early February, their food bills are paid for the year. We do not want anything to happen on those grocery store shelves that will reflect badly on the Canadian primary producers.

The last point that I would make, as I see I am running out of time, is a point I made the other day, but I will make it again. Canadian farmers do face a double standard from their own government regulations. We must be on a level playing field with the rest of the world. We cannot add another regulatory burden.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I forgot to raise a further issue with the minister.

In the communications I have received from a number of the groups, they have asked whether they can get some assurance that they will be able to appear before committee and that the government will support their appearance before committee to ask questions, if necessary, and to provide information which would help the committee assess whether any appropriate amendments could be made to Bill C-51 to make it even a better bill.

Could the minister give the assurance that the government will support these groups being able to come before the Standing Committee on Health?

[Christiane Gagnon, Bloc, Québec, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a few questions for the minister about Bills C-51 and C-52. We know that the bill will require more human resources and also a training budget. We are all anxious to see how the minister will meet expectations in implementing his bill.

In 2006, the Auditor General noted the lack of human resources, especially in the areas of training and the safety of therapeutic products, foods and cosmetics. There is a shortage of resources.

The minister mentioned natural products. He is certainly aware that there are delays in granting authorizations to sell natural products. That is my first question.

As for my second question, the minister knows that these two bills rely on regulations. Since the regulations do not yet exist, we will have a bill but will not know what sort of regulations will be made. These regulations could give us an idea of how the bill will be interpreted. Can the minister tell me when the regulations will be ready—

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-51 is a long bill of some 75 clauses and it affects a number of other acts.

Members are already receiving correspondence from their constituents concerning natural therapeutic products. It will be a very significant issue for the government and Parliament to address with regard to the implications of the bill to these natural therapeutic products.

One of my constituents specifically wrote about her son who suffers from Lyme disease and requires certain drugs. It is not that these drugs would cure the problem, but they help in terms of quality of life or in the ability to control the effects of the disease. It is a very serious situation, and I know the minister is aware of that.

At the outset, there must be a declaration of the government that the implications of Bill C-51 will not be draconian in regard to the pricing or availability of natural therapeutic products so those who believe that those products are necessary for themselves or their family members will continue to have reasonable and appropriate access with appropriate health safeguards.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Minister of Health and Minister for the Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario]

moved that Bill C-51, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to speak to Bill C-51.

Overseeing food and health product safety is one of the most fundamental roles the federal government plays in Canadian society. Today there are so many health products available already and so many more are coming to market. We are in a time when Canadians are taking a deep interest in the safety of the foods they eat and the products they use. We are most certainly in a time when Canadians want to know that their government is taking safety seriously.

We know that the trust of Canadians needs to be won daily. Past performance is not enough.

That is why, in the Speech from the Throne last October, the government committed to introduce “measures on food and product safety to ensure that families have confidence in the quality and safety of what they buy.”

In December the measures started taking form as the Prime Minister announced Canada's new food and consumer safety action plan. Its goal is to modernize and strengthen Canada's safety system for food, health and consumer products. To support this goal, budget 2008 has invested $113 million for the next two years alone.

The next step is to update our legislation to give us the tools we need to better protect Canadians. This is why Bill C-51 is before the House today. The Food and Drugs Act is 50 years old and many of its provisions no longer reflect today's reality. Bill C-51 seeks to modernize it through a new approach updated for the global economy. This new approach is based on preventing problems in the first place, targeting the highest risks and responding rapidly to problems as they arise.

Let me take a few moments to describe some key elements of Bill C-51. This bill enhances our legal framework to protect and promote the health and safety of Canadians in the areas of health products and food. While it covers many activities in a very diverse field, among the most important is the fact that Bill C-51 seeks to change much of how health product licensing takes place in Canada.

Currently under Canadian law, no one can simply start to manufacture or sell the kinds of health products covered by this bill. No one can simply start a clinical trial designed to test a new health product. A Government of Canada licence is needed, which is only issued after important conditions are met. When it comes to health products, the basic test for licensing is this: Do the product's potential benefits outweigh the potential risks?

The problem with the old approach under the Food and Drugs Act is that once a company has that licence, there are few measures to require ongoing confirmation that a drug or some other product meets this safety test, even if new or greater risks become known. As a result, Canadian requirements for companies to track the safety of their marketed therapeutic products are out of step with other leading regulators.

Of course, the vast majority of companies live up their obligations to consumers, but the absence of a framework that compels them to does not meet the expectations of Canadians or of this government. Bill C-51 addresses that gap between what we have and what we want.

Our rigorous approach to health product licensing will continue. However, the bill aims to provide the government with the tools that will allow it to require ongoing assurances that health products meet standards once they are on the market. These tools will also allow the government to intervene and order a recall, if necessary.

It establishes what we call a life cycle approach, a continuous system for monitoring the safety, the efficacy and the quality of drugs and other therapeutic products. It starts with the clinical trials that a company has to conduct before being permitted to bring its product into Canada's market. That stage normally provides information needed to spot and prevent possible safety issues.

At every step of the way, throughout the entire life cycle of a product, our government's scientists will use the latest evidence to assess whether the product's benefits continue to outweigh its potential risks.

By taking this life cycle approach, our oversight will target the highest risks and give us the information we need to respond rapidly as soon as we identify a problem. The constant flow of information will make it more likely that threats to safety and to health are identified promptly and acted on much more effectively.

The proposed bill also advances safety by authorizing the development of regulations to require more reporting of adverse drug reactions. It paves the way to work with the provinces and territories to make it mandatory for hospitals to report these adverse drug reactions. That step will generate more information for improved drug safety. As a result, problems can be caught earlier and responded to faster to better protect Canadians.

Similarly, Bill C-51 seeks to ensure that Canadians will generally have easier access to pertinent information about health products.

This bill contains provisions that will make the regulatory system more open and more transparent so that Canadians can obtain the information they need about the risks and benefits associated with products and make informed choices.

Industry generally takes consumer safety very seriously and cooperates with governments to address consumer safety concerns when they arise. However, for those few suppliers that do not cooperate, the proposed legislation includes measures to help ensure that corrective action is taken.

This includes the ability to order the recall of a health product from the Canadian market, when appropriate, to protect the health and safety of Canadians. We need this power if we are to respond as rapidly as possible to problems as soon as we learn about them to better safeguard the health of Canadians.

Under the bill, those few companies that are insufficiently concerned with the health and safety of the people who use their products would also experience significantly higher penalties for their actions.

For a very long time the maximum fine for health products under the Food and Drugs Act had been just $5,000. The bill proposes stiffer fines of up to $5 million for serious contraventions and will leave the ceiling open to the court's discretion when a supplier is found to act wilfully or recklessly. With greater deterrents in place, manufacturers will have even greater incentive to prevent problems from happening in the first place.

Together, the bill, and all of the work under the food and consumer safety action plan, sends an important message to Canadians and to the organizations that produce, import, distribute, and use the health products covered by the legislation.

The Government of Canada is taking consumer protection seriously and we are taking action. We are doing so in part through modernizing the Food and Drugs Act to prevent as many problems as possible, to target the highest risks and to ensure rapid response to problems as they arise. We are doing that by taking a health and food products safety system, which works well now, and making improvements so it works much better for Canadians.

I urge all parties to support Bill C-51 so that we can offer Canadians the system they want and need in order to ensure the safety of food and health products.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

With Bill C-51, with the progressive licensing, do you see an opportunity to improve the off-label situation? I don't want to stop off-label use. I understand that it's a necessity, but it seems that it has become almost systematic—most of the new pharmaceutical products used for children haven't been tested for children. They all end up being off-label, and you wonder if the proper information is getting around. Do you see some possibilities for improvement?

[Susan Kadis, Liberal, Thornhill, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Welcome to our guests.

To Mr. Ménard, are you familiar with the new proposed government legislation, Bill C-51, regarding life-cycle approach and progressive licensing? What is your position on this? Do you feel it will increase or decrease product safety for Canadians?

[Carol Skelton, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Mr. Jarvis, you mentioned Bill C-51. I didn't hear exactly what you said about it. You felt that there were some new regulations that were going to be helpful in Bill C-51, the new health bill. Is that correct, or did I hear you wrong?

[Don Jarvis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Dairy Processors Association of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I will respect the patience of the committee members, and I'll certainly stick to eight or nine minutes with my introductory remarks.

Mr. Chairman and committee members, the dairy processors welcome the opportunity of assisting your committee in its study of “Product of Canada” labelling. Our members support the objective of ensuring Canadian consumers get as much information as is practical on their food labels and that only foods, including dairy products, that are of Canadian origin should carry “Product of Canada” declarations.

Here's a little bit about the Canadian dairy processing sector. After the meat industry, we are the second largest employer in the food processing industry, with about 26,000 employees. There are almost 300 federally registered plants across Canada producing fluid milk, cheese, yogourt, ice cream, sour cream, and other standardized and non-standardized dairy products.

DPAC's members include Saputo, a public company; Agropur, the largest cooperative in the country; and Parmalat, an international company with a very successful Canadian operation. These three companies process 75% of all the milk produced in the country. Our other members include Gay Lea, a large Ontario-based co-op; Kraft Canada; the major Atlantic provinces co-ops, Scotsburn and Farmers; ice cream manufacturers like Unilever Good Humor; the two major yogourt manufacturers, Danone and Ultima; and other domestic and international cheese manufacturers.

Together these businesses take just over $4 billion worth of milk produced by Canada's dairy farmers and transform that milk into dairy products worth in excess of $12 billion in the Canadian market. Our customers include, of course, all the major retail, food service, industrial, and further food processors across Canada.

Mr. Chair and committee members, when it comes to the “Product of Canada” designation on dairy products, the dairy product regulations are very clear, and there are very detailed information requirements regarding the ingredients, the place of manufacture, and other information prescribed for all Canadian dairy products. The Canadian dairy processing industry goes to great lengths to display that information on its labels. Let me very briefly describe those requirements:

...every prepackaged dairy product shall be labelled on the principal display panel of the container—

—that's the front of the label—

—with (a) the common name of the dairy product; (b) a declaration of the process of manufacture shown in close proximity to the common name...; (c) a declaration of net contents as required by the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Regulations; (d) a percentage declaration of moisture and milk fat in cheddar cheese; (e) a percentage declaration of milk fat in the case of partly skimmed milk powder, dairy spread, and calorie-reduced butter; (f) a percentage declaration of skim milk powder and whey powder in the case of blended skim milk and whey powder and blended whey and skim milk powder; (g) a statement as to the source of the milk—

—what the dairy product consists of and whether it came from a cow, a ewe, or a goat.

There are four or five specifications required on the front panel of every Canadian dairy product, and

(k) the words “Product of” followed by the name of the country of origin, in the case of cheddar cheese prepackaged in Canada from imported bulk.

On the other part of the label, not the principal display panel or the front of the package:

...every prepackaged dairy product shall be labelled on any other surface, other than the bottom of the container, with (a) the list of ingredients and components—

—according to the food and drug regulations and the dairy product regulations—

...(b) the durable life date and instructions for proper storage of the dairy product...; (c) the words “Product of” followed by the name of the country of origin in the case of an imported dairy product; and (d) the words “Product of Canada” when packed for export from Canada.

...every prepackaged dairy product shall be labelled on any surface of the container....

There's another list of very prescriptive requirements: the registration number, for example, the establishment, where the dairy product was prepared; and the registration number of the establishment in which the dairy product was prepared, with some other specifications, plus a batch number, code number, and lot number identifying exactly the production of that product.

Finally, it reads:

The labelling requirements of this section do not apply in respect of prepackaged individual portions of dairy products that are for sale from automatic vending machines or mobile canteens, or that are served by a restaurant or other commercial enterprise [...].

As you can see, dairy products in Canada provide an immense amount of information already to the consumer. As well, DPAC and its members believe that when it comes to dairy products and the misuse of “Product of Canada” statements and labels, or in advertising, this is already covered by subsection 5(1) of the Food and Drugs Act, and that Bill C-51, which is before the House now, and the changes there clarify and strengthen that important legislation--especially since the word “origin” has been added.

In conclusion, we agree with this study and its objectives and the need to perhaps clarify the guidelines that will ensure consistency of use of “Product of Canada” statements across all food products.

Those are my introductory remarks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Canada Consumer Product Safety Act

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-52, An Act respecting the safety of consumer products. My colleague from the Bloc Québécois who is our critic for health issues made a speech earlier today. She confirmed that the Bloc Québécois approved the principle of the bill since the Bloc had already asked the government to make its safety rules concerning dangerous products more stringent to prohibit the fabrication, promotion and marketing of any product that present an unacceptable risk to health. I will come back to that.

Unfortunately, we know that some people succeed in selling toys, food and other products containing dangerous substances. They end up in Canadian markets, on our grocery shelves, and in our children's hands. That should not happen in 2008. One can understand that a few, rare cases may happen, but it seems that the problem has now reached alarming proportions.

The Bloc also called on the government to require manufacturers to inspect their products and show they do not pose a danger to consumers. This burden of proof did not exist—and still does not exist, because the bill has not yet been passed—but it is change we called for some time ago.

I should point out that consumer groups reacted fairly positively to the announcement of this bill, but remain cautious. We always say that no government should be given a blank cheque, especially not this one. We do not know what is going on behind the scenes, and it is always disturbing when we do not know all the ins and outs of a bill. One thing is certain: we can give the government the benefit of the doubt for the time being. Consumers remain cautious, as I said, just as we do.

That is why we will refer this bill to the committee, so that we can hear testimony and examine everything this bill encompasses, just like the related bill, Bill C-51. We will look at the regulations to see how serious the government is in its approach.

Geneviève Reid of the consumer group Option consommateurs stated that it is a step in the right direction, provided there are resources to back it up, the regulations are solid and there is good communication with the public. She was quoted in La Presse on April 9, 2008, after the government announced that it was going to introduce these bills.

As for the obligation for companies to declare any major incident involving one of their products, Ms. Reid says that there will also need to be an incident register where consumers can report incidents. It makes a difference if there is such a mechanism for consumers who have bought items containing dangerous substances or foods unfit for human consumption that have made those consumers ill. People need an easily accessible way to let the government know that there was a problem with a product.

Clearly, this information will not necessarily be released immediately. The necessary checks will be made to determine whether this product did in fact pose a problem. If consumers are involved in the process, the result could be even more information about certain incidents that might happen.

I do not question the relevancy of the bill. With all those recalls in recent months and years, whether they involve toys or food, there is reason to be concerned. It was time the government did something about this issue.

Earlier, I had a discussion with the hon. member for Malpeque, because we both sit on the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food. We are very concerned about food recalls. These recalls always target food that comes from other countries. This was the case with spinach, cantaloupe, carrot juice, pear juice, and pork that came from abroad and contained melamine.

It was not intended for human consumption, at least I hope, but animal feed was contaminated. As regards this specific issue, there is still a void in the legislation. No one is responsible for ensuring that we feed safe food to our pets.

The result is that some pets have died. And we know how people are attached to their animals. Personally, I have always lived with a cat. I have always had a cat since I was born. I still have a female cat that is almost 15 years old now. I feed her well and she weighs 17 pounds. She is a little overweight.

All this to say that pet owners expressed their concerns when that happened. I would like the government to take note of it, so that we can fill this void in the legislation when we have the opportunity to examine these things in committee, whether it is through this bill, or another one.

Food safety has been seriously challenged in recent years. In a few moments, I will share some numbers with those who are listening. As I was saying earlier, during questions and comments, whenever officials from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency appear before the committee, we always ask them questions about food inspection, not only once it is in Canada, but also at the border, and even abroad.

Earlier, the reciprocity in standards was mentioned. That is important. Some pesticides, insecticides and other chemicals used in producing the fruits and vegetables we eat are forbidden for use in Canada. In some cases, it is a good thing. There are too many products that have been used without their safety being truly established. Measures are being taken to make sure that some products are used under surveillance and some products are prohibited.

Unfortunately, some products come from China, India and even the United States. I do not want to single out only developing countries. The United States also made the political and social choice to authorize the use of some pesticides and some chemical products. That is their decision.

In Canada, we do not allow these products. Unfortunately, foods grown in those countries can get through all testing and end up in our stores. That is an issue we raise every time the Canadian Food Inspection Agency appears before us. We are told that the issue is under scrutiny and that the products sold here are up to our standards and that inspections are done.

However, we know that there is a lack of inspectors. The hon. member for Malpeque was right when he said earlier that every time there are talks about increasing the number of inspections and inspectors and raising the budget the agency has to do the job, we must not make the farm producers pay for it. It is the government's responsibility to make sure that all food and other products entering Canada are safe.

We too often see that foods produced using pesticides that are forbidden in Canada can find their way into our grocery stores.

Earlier, I spoke about the lack of inspectors. I wonder if Bill C-51 solves this problem. They say they want to increase the number of inspectors or improve the chances of having an inspection. However, upon reading the bill, I have serious doubts about the government's willingness to actually conduct more inspections.

Knowing that we import goods from China, India or even the United States—they come from all over—and the source of a product, why do the inspectors not go there to see what is happening? In terms of the environment, you do not need to watch TV for long or read about what is happening to know that in China, for example, environmental standards are quite lax. Personally, I would not even drink the water used to grow these products, these fruits and vegetables. Some concerns expressed by consumers are certainly understandable. We could do an on-site check of what is used to grow crops. It would be an advantage to have more inspectors to do that.

Therefore, it is not the relevance of the bill that concerns me, but the lack of resources allocated to the front lines. It is one thing to increase fines for guilty parties, but the priority should be given to inspections and reciprocity of health standards. We spoke about reciprocity earlier. It goes without saying that our beef producers, for example, have to deal with unfair competition. We know that, in the United States, beef producers are not required to dispose of specified risk materials, as are our beef producers, who presently absorb the costs. That is a serious problem.

Earlier today we debated Bill C-33 on biofuels. We think there may be an interesting opportunity for biodiesel, but nothing is officially in place yet. It is not yet possible for our producers to make money with specified risk materials. Right now these represent an additional expense for them. Consequently there is unfair competition from American producers. We need to examine reciprocity.

I also wonder about the Conservatives' lack of judgment with respect to the safety of toys and foods.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Malpeque for his speech. We sit together on the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food. The hon. member mentioned the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Like me, he meets the representatives of the agency quite regularly in committee.

I was wondering about something—and I would like the opinion of the hon. member for Malpeque, who was once the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food. In Bill C-52 specifically—and Bill C-51 as well—it is a matter of having more power for inspections. When representatives of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency come to committee—and the hon. member for Malpeque can certainly confirm this—we always ask them whether they have the means to conduct enough inspections.

The hon. member spoke of the reciprocity problems the beef producers were experiencing in terms of specified risk material. There was also talk of the problems related to the pesticides and insecticides used on imported fruit and vegetables. Those products are banned here. However, we end up with fruit and vegetables from countries where those products are still being used. I have always felt that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency does not have enough inspectors or resources to do its work properly.

Does the hon. member see any improvement to that problem in this bill? Having greater power of inspection is one thing, but we probably need to provide more inspectors and more money to the agency for it to do its work properly.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-52, the Canada consumer product safety act.

I was here earlier and I listened closely to the minister's remarks. He did go to some considerable length to make it sound like the government was taking strong action where maybe previous governments had not taken the kind of action necessary. I do think it is important that I set the record straight in that regard. It was several times that we recognized in the previous government that greater consumer protection was necessary and that there needed to be new authorities implemented in terms of the protection for consumers and consumer products and, in particular, in the area of food.

In the previous Parliament, there was the introduction of Bill C-27 which would have moved forward in a lot of those areas, taking strong measures, especially in the area of labelling, of bringing up to date quite a number of bills that required modernization and giving greater authorities for CFIA and other agencies to deal with imported product, hoaxes and threats of putting foreign products into food or threatening that on the grocery store shelves. It was really the Conservative opposition of the day that prevented that from happening.

I am glad the Conservatives have now seen the light and are bringing forward a bill that we very much believe is a step in the right direction.

I agree with many colleagues who have previously spoken that this does need to go to committee. We need to look at the details to ensure there is nothing in the fine print that we should be concerned about. As a party we will be moving this forward to committee. We see it at this stage as a step in the right direction. It is an issue that exploded after, basically, the lead scare on toys from one nation that exports those products to Canada.

In reality, we have to look at both bills. We are here to speak to Bill C-52, but we have to look at both Bills C-51 and C-52 because they are intertwined and both have to move forward to committee.

As I indicated, we are committed as a party to improving the safety and health of Canadians. We believe this debate should occur at committee. We believe it is important to strengthen the regulatory process to ensure that Canadians have access to the safest consumer products that can be made available and to ensure that the products are labelled properly so that consumers do in fact know what they are buying.

As I indicated, we also think it is necessary for these bills to have a proper review and also necessary to ensure that witnesses on both sides of the question, people with the technical and the legislative expertise, be invited to committee to go through the bill in detail.

Currently a lot of the information about consumer products is done on a voluntary basis. I think we know that this is just not as adequate as it should be.

This new bill, then, will prohibit the sale, import, manufacture, packaging, labelling and advertising of consumer products that may pose a risk to consumers. While voluntary recalls will continue to happen, inspectors named under the act or by the minister will now be able to order the recall of a consumer product.

In the past, I have expressed in the House some concerns about the way some of the ministers in the government use their authority. I have just a note of caution. These authorities are there for a purpose, not for an ideological agenda. They are there to protect consumers and to ensure that consumers have the safest products available. They are not there for purposes other than that. I want to point that out at the beginning.

On the area of labelling, we read about it in the press almost daily now, and it relates mainly to food products. With the intertwining of the bills, I think it is important to mention this. I did have the opportunity in December and January, with a colleague, to meet consumers and the farm community on the whole issue of our regulatory system in Canada as it applies to, yes, consumer products, but certainly and mainly to food products that are on grocery store shelves.

One area that Canadian farmers are really concerned about is that a double standard applies to them. They face a tougher regulatory regime than do their competitors, yet their competitors' products end up on Canadian grocery store shelves in competition to those of our farmers, who face that tougher regulatory regime.

Canadian farmers face double standards from their own government regulations by taking on costs to meet high food safety and environmental standards only to watch imports that do not meet the same standards price them out of the supermarkets. There are a lot of examples in that regard.

We have to ensure that with this bill coming in, and with tougher regulations and more inspections, Canadians who are meeting these standards are not disadvantaged. We cannot allow that to happen. I will use a couple of examples that I know well from the agricultural arena.

For the health of Canadians, Canada has established rules to eliminate feeds using specified risk materials from cattle in order to eradicate BSE, yet the United States has not imposed those same rules, and Canadians continue to import and consume those beef products from the United States. We cannot allow that situation to continue.

Gencor, a plant in western Ontario, closed about five or six weeks ago. It was killing 700 older cows a week. The reason it closed was that its cost regime for removing specified risk materials put it at a disadvantage with U.S. plants. It went out of business, with the loss of 120 jobs and a processing plant for Canadian product.

With these new regulations on consumer protection and under Bill C-51 on food protection and labelling, et cetera, we have to ensure that at the end of the day our industry is not put at a disadvantage. We have to be on a level playing field with the United States.

As well in the farm sector, although this bill does not specifically relate to the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, the bill does relate to Health Canada. It has authority over the PMRA, which is responsible for pesticides in this country. Some pesticides are banned in Canada because they are deemed unsafe for the health of farm workers applying the product, yet Canada allows imports using these pesticides because they meet Canadian food residue limits.

Here is what we have. We do not allow the use of this pesticide or herbicide because it may have an impact on workers. Therefore, even though it may be a cheaper product, a producer is not allowed to use it in this country because of its impact, as I say, on workers. Yet we will allow the product produced with that herbicide and by foreign workers onto our grocery store shelves, and again our farmers are not competitive.

I make this point. As Canadians consume these imported products, Canada is no longer protecting the safety of farm workers. We are simply exporting the problem to foreign workers in exchange for cheaper foods and undermining the potential of Canadian farmers. It is another example of how Canadians are disadvantaged. They are important measures, yes, and they are measures that need to be taken in terms of workers. We should not be exporting--we can, I guess, but we should not be--our moral responsibility to other countries and disadvantaging our own in the process.

What I am saying is that Canada cannot have it both ways. Imported products that do not meet or do not even have to meet Canada's domestic production standards undermine Canada's high domestic standards for food safety. Canadian farmers are not only competing in a regulatory system that impedes them in the international markets, but they are operating in a regulatory environment that gives their international competitors the advantage in domestic markets.

I have to make that point, because with these new bills and these new regulatory authorities, with greater authority for the minister, all of which are important, we have to ensure consumer product safety but we also have to ensure that Canadian producers and, indeed, Canadian importers are not disadvantaged as a result.

The last point I would make is one that we have heard a lot about recently. In fact, the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food is holding hearings in this area. The Prime Minister, along with the Minister of Health and the Minister of Agriculture, mentioned this issue when they announced the introduction of these bills. It is the whole issue of product of Canada labelling.

I raised this question earlier with the Minister of Health. The fact of the matter is that one can buy product of Canada olives in Canada. One can buy product of Canada grapefruit juice. One can buy product of Canada orange juice. I do not know of anywhere in this country where we grow olives. I do not know of too many grapefruits or oranges being grown in Canada, so why would such a package on a grocery store shelf read “product of Canada” when those products are being sold here?

The fact is that the definition is wrong. When Canadian consumers go to the grocery store shelf, they should feel confident that what they are buying is indeed a product of Canada. Under the current definition, that is not the case. The current definition is that 51% of the total package costs occurred in Canada. It really has nothing to do with what is in the package.

That has to change. As the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, we are looking at it. It has to change and relate to the product that is in the package itself, because I firmly believe that if Canadians are given the choice, they will veer toward buying the product that is indeed produced by Canadians, knowing the kind of regulatory and environmental regime we are under and knowing that it is supporting other Canadians in their economic activities.

Certainly I want to emphasize to the minister and to the government as a whole the absolute urgency of dealing with product of Canada labelling. It is a very serious matter. It has to be dealt with in a comprehensive way.

There has been some suggestion that we could go to voluntary labelling as well and that may be a possibility. The bottom line is that Canadians need a strong regime to define what indeed is a product of Canada and what is not.

We do see Bill C-51 and Bill C-52 as important in that they modernize our regulatory regime for consumer products in Canada. The government has to go further than what is currently stated in these bills. We must get a definition of product of Canada. The bottom line is that there has to be truth in labelling. That is what consumers want and it does not matter whether it is a widget, a computer, an apple, an orange or a piece of steak. People want absolute certainty that there is truth in the labelling on what they are buying. There has to be a regulatory and enforcement regime around that to make it stick.

Our party is committed to improving the safety and health of Canadians. We have attempted to do that in the past. As I mentioned earlier, there was some opposition from members in the Conservative government. We support measures which strengthen the regulatory process to ensure that Canadians do have access to the safest consumer products.

We look forward to reviewing the details in the legislation at committee to ensure that it is as accountable, transparent and effective as possible for Canadians. We do see this as a step forward. We look forward to the discussions in committee, some of the technical briefings, and some of the witnesses who will come forward with information that will be useful to all of us in the House to ensure that at the end of the day this is the best legislation possible for the interests of Canadians and for Canada as a whole.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join in this first debate on Bill C-52, which is long overdue, long awaited legislation dealing with protecting consumers from dangerous toxic products. I say long overdue because this matter has been before the House on a repeated basis, year after year, for as long as I have been in this place, which is some 13 years, and I am sure long before that.

On the one hand, we welcome the Conservatives' move to bring forward legislation that on the surface appears to be concrete, proactive and significant. I say on the surface because as we start to pore through this very detailed legislation, many questions come to mind. We will be carefully scrutinizing the legislation to ensure that all this tough talk about standing up and protecting consumers and getting tough with the industry is going to matter and is going to mean something.

To this point it is hard to fathom that a Conservative government is prepared to stand up to the big toy manufacturers in our country and to the big producers around the world, which are actively bringing their goods into our country as quickly and as expeditiously as possible. It is hard to imagine that the Conservative government is prepared to stand up to this industry and say that Canadians come first, that the safety of people comes first.

However, I will give Conservatives the benefit of the doubt. My colleagues and I will be very interested in seeing how the bill measures up to the tough talk. When I say tough talk, I point out that the government is very good at using the language the health protection movement has been advancing for many years and for which the Canadian Health Coalition has called and for which the New Democratic Party has called for many years. They talk about strengthening and modernizing Canada's safety system. It certainly sounds good on the surface. If there is anything behind those words, it will make a big difference to Canadians who have waited a long time for something to finally happen at the federal level of government around safety of consumer products.

We went through this for so long with the Liberals. It is impossible to recount how many attempts we made to try to move the Liberals, when they were in the government, to the point where they would take some action. Year after year we presented private members' bills. We raised serious incidents, yet we could not bring the Liberals to practise what they preached, which was supposedly believing in the do no harm principle, the precautionary principle, the belief that products on this market should be safe beyond a reasonable doubt, that people, especially young children, should not be exposed to dangerous toxins and that we had to be very careful about testing products and ensuring industry was responsible.

Canadians, after all these years, are getting a little tired of all the talk and no action. When I was first elected in 1999, we heard then about the dangerous toys on the market. We heard about lead or cadmium being in many children's products. We tried to get the government to move. It would not, so we brought forward private members' legislation.

I want to refer to March 10, 1999 when I introduced Bill C-482, an act to amend the Hazardous Products Act. This was very specifically to deal with the fact that toys for young children and babies contained phthalates. There was substantive scientific evidence to show that exposure to phthalates was very dangerous to the health and well-being of children.

Since then, other colleagues have pursued legislation. My colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley has introduced similar legislation dealing with exposure to phthalates and other dangerous substances. My colleague from Ottawa Centre has been raising the issue of bisphenol A, just as I and others in the House have done. Repeatedly over the years we have tried to get government, Liberal or Conservative, to act in the face of this dangerous exposure to our children and young people and adults in our society today.

We have something of a possibility today. We have a sign of legislation that could in fact do the job. Listening to the dialogue between the Liberals and the Conservatives, I get the feeling that I am at some sort of board of directors meeting where people are weighing the question of how far we should go to protect consumers without disturbing the profit margins of these companies. It seems like we are talking about bottom lines in terms of corporate survival and corporate health and profit margins as opposed to human health and safety.

Let us not forget that today is a special day for all of Canada. This is a day of mourning for workers in this country who have been injured or have died on the job. When we are talking about exposure to toxic substances, whether it is in terms of workers who are producing the products or consumers who are buying and being exposed to these products, we have to take action in a substantive concrete way. We can no longer simply afford to say nice words and pleasantries around this issue. It is time to actually make a real difference.

We need more than legislative change. We need more than what the Conservatives have brought forward today, even if it is a flawed piece of legislation. We need a cultural change. We need a philosophical change. We need an understanding from government that all processes have to be in place to protect Canadians from dangerous products and toxic toys.

The Conservatives say that they really believe in law enforcement. We hear it all the time. We hear it in terms of crime on our streets and neighbourhood safety. We hear a lot of tough talk. Do we ever hear that kind of tough talk when it comes to producers of toys and consumer products? I do not think we have. The minister will try to say that in this bill the government is getting tough, that there are going to be big fines, that the government will have the power to recall and it is going to send a strong message.

If we look closely at this legislation, we will realize that it is very open-ended and without obligation. There is no requirement on the part of the government to be tough. It says it may be tough, it may recall products, it may fine corporations, it may take action, but there is absolutely nothing explicit in this legislation that says when a toxic product gets on to our shelves and consumers are exposed to that product, the government must and will take firm action. There is nothing that explicit, nothing that definitive in this legislation.

The Conservatives have generated so little trust among Canadians on every front, especially when it comes to the health and well-being of Canadians, especially when it comes to health protection in the face of dangerous drugs, toys, food, exposure to all kinds of toxic chemicals in our environment today. The government has not taken the kind of action that would warrant Canadians believing that it is prepared to go all out, to be tough when it comes to the health and well-being of Canadians.

We have to devote today to talking about the importance of being tough, the importance of doing what we say we are going to do. We have to devote today to the importance of standing up for workers who are killed or injured on the job, and the importance of standing up for Canadians who are exposed to dangerous products and who suffer serious consequences as a result, something that lasts a lifetime. All the talk in the world around recall and tough regulations will not fix the problem, unless we are prepared to make sure that the products coming into this country are as safe as possible.

Unless we apply the do no harm principle, we are no further ahead. If we simply say we are going to continue this buyer beware model that the Liberals started and the Conservatives seem so endeared about, wrap it up with a few little bells and whistles around recall and around big fines, it will not matter, because the products will stay on the market, the danger will be done, and it will be too late.

Sure, it is great to get tough after the fact, but what does that do for the Canadian who is exposed? What does it to for the little baby whose health is ruined for life? What does it do for a whole population whose quality of life has been jeopardized because of this attitude of buyer beware, survival of the fittest, let the market forces prevail when it comes to health and consumer products? That is the challenge we face today.

Our job today is not like the Liberals want to do, to simply give a blanket statement of approval to the Conservatives and say, “Yes, this is good, let us get it to committee. We support it but we just want to fine tune it”. The onus on us today is to really question and dig deep around what it means and what impact it will have.

What good is this legislation if the government does not put in place the resources that are required at the borders to make sure that potentially toxic products do not enter this country? What guarantees do we have from the government that it is so serious about this issue it will put in place the kind of inspection labour force that will do the job?

There was a bit of money in the last budget. By all accounts, if we put it all together and look at the requirements for Bill C-52 in terms of toys and consumer products, and Bill C-51 in terms of food and drugs, the money the government is promising to expend in this area is probably a drop in the bucket when we look at the requirements and the kind of framework that the government has presented to Canadians.

In fact, if the government is that serious about a proactive piece of legislation, then it has to have resources in the field. It has to have inspectors at the border. It has to have the determination to actually test and label and be absolutely rigorous in this field if it is to make any difference.

It is hard to mesh the tough talk from the Conservatives with their wide open, easy as it goes talk around trade. Many of the problems we are facing today have to do with governments that have failed to understand the importance of putting in place fair trade practices. Our borders have been opened up to all kinds of products about which we know very little or have done little in terms of testing and scientific research. It is time, as so many have already said, to take that seriously.

Let us look at the number of products over the last three or four years that have appeared on the market, but which should have been recalled. Since 2005 there have been 34 products that contained a lead risk, 26 products that were a risk in terms of choking, 5 products that led to head injuries, 5 that led to risk of laceration, 3 that could have meant internal damage from magnets, 3 that put people at risk of being burned, 3 that put people at risk in terms of entrapment, 2 that put people in danger in terms of puncture or impalement risk, 2 that could have caused strangulation, 2 that led to bacteria risk, and 1 a toxic chemical risk. That is an incredibly long list of products that we know about, where there has been some documentation, where consumers raised concerns and where government was forced to react.

How in the world is the government prepared to actually get a handle on this area and apply this bill to make a real difference? Is it going to put a ban on any product that consumers identify as dangerous, which has been backed up by scientific evidence? Do we have a government that is prepared to get that tough? Will it ban a product?

Let us look at the example of bisphenol A. That plastic has been around for a long time. We have been talking about it in the House for many months. There are 150 peer reviewed studies on bisphenol A which talk about the dangerous complications for people's health and well-being, about hormonal imbalance and problems in terms of young kids. There are all kinds of scientific studies showing that that plastic is toxic and dangerous to people's health and well-being. Was there a ban on the products right off the bat? No. What we got last week was a statement from the Minister of Health that the government might ban it, but it was going to give it 60 more days of study. The minister went on to tell parents that the government was going to ban baby bottles made out of bisphenol A but parents should not worry, they should not pull the products off their kitchen shelves, they should just avoid putting boiling water in them.

Is that a proactive approach that guarantees people's safety first? Is that health protection, or is it simply another variation of buyer beware? Consumers have to check out these products and do their own tests. They have to go down to the hardware store and get the tests that tell them whether there is lead in a product. They have to go to a lab to have products tested for other toxic chemicals. They have to take it upon themselves because the government is all talk and no action. Is that what it is all about, or is the bill really going to make a difference?

As I said at the outset, I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the government and I look forward to a very serious study of this bill at committee, but I can say that there are some serious problems with the bill as we look at it today. One is the question of the power to ban when products are presented as dangerous. What in the bill will require the government to take very quick, prompt action to ensure that the bad experience of one person does not have to mean a horrible experience for a whole lot of other people?

What in this bill will actually ensure that toy producers, manufacturers of products overseas are being watched closely and required to live up to certain standards? We will never under the present government have the kind of inspection requirements that are needed at the borders to make sure that every product is safe. What is the government doing to indicate to producers overseas that there are certain standards that must be met, or are we simply following a country like China that says it is up to the country receiving the products to make those determinations? How in the world can we continue to operate on that basis?

We have raised many questions over the last few months about the importation of toys in particular, because for young kids and babies, exposure to these toxics is that much more serious at the early stages of life when compared to adults who can tolerate a greater risk.

We have to be very careful if we are serious about preserving and protecting the health and well-being of Canadians. We have actually said in the House that we cannot simply stand back and act tough when big companies like Mattel suddenly decide that government means nothing when it comes to health protection. We are talking about companies that make huge profits. It is up to us and the government of the day to actually stand up and make a difference.

My time is coming to an end in this first round of the debate. I want to conclude by saying that there are many parts of the bill that cause questions and concerns. We will be proposing amendments. We will be looking for some positive response from the government to those amendments. We will be looking forward to working with the Conservatives to make this bill live up to its name of being very tough legislation when it comes to the health and well-being of Canadians, one that is firmly grounded in the do no harm principle as opposed to the buyer beware risk management model. I look forward to the ongoing debate and discussion.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to speak to this bill. I think it is an important bill. It is a welcome action from the Government of Canada. As an opposition party, we look forward to playing our role within Parliament to improve this bill: to ask the proper questions and to hear from Canadians who may have concerns. They may or may not be supportive and may wish to suggest amendments that can be brought to the committee or to the House to ensure that this bill achieves what it attempts to do, which is to protect Canadians.

I am sure the minister will recognize, as will every member in the House, that it is easy enough to protect Canadians. We can make every commercial activity in this country so restrictive that nobody will ever get hurt, but ensuring the protection of Canadians while permitting trade and business to happen, and allowing farmers, producers and manufacturers to do their work, requires a balancing act. As we look at the implementation of this bill, we are going to have to look at whether we can achieve both of those things and make sure that in the future they continue to happen properly and that we do not go too far one way down the slippery slope.

There is a case in my riding right now with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency risking the ongoing success of a long term employer because of an issue of product safety. It is an issue of perceived product safety and how we deal with it. In this case, it has been shown that the product is quite safe, while we cannot give the same level of assurance to the products we buy off the shelf that compete with it. That creates great concern. I look forward to examining how we will do it.

As the member for Malpeque has brought out, we are dealing with two bills. I do not think we can look at these two bills in isolation. That is probably one of the reasons why the government brought forward Bills C-51 and C-52 at the same time. While in the House today we are dealing with Bill C-52, I am looking forward to dealing with Bill C-51.

Bill C-51 has been in the discussion stage for a long time. It has been in the consultation stage and there has been work with industry to bring it forward, but it is a lot less so for Bill C-52, which seems to involve more knee-jerk reactions because of problems that arose, especially in the fall. When we do things quickly or on that basis, there is always risk. As a Parliament and a committee, we are going to have to ensure that we study this properly and make the necessary modifications so that it achieves what it wants to do, which is to protect Canadians.

The principle of the bill, as I suggested, would be difficult to argue with. I think everybody would agree with it. If I were to term it in any one way, it would be to say that it makes people become responsible for their actions and puts some serious financial penalties on people who do not. If people are trying to profit from legitimate activity, they have some responsibility for that. The first responsibility would be the safety of their consumers and customers, as well as their workers and anybody who comes in contact with their products. I think everyone would agree with that principle.

We have to be careful, because here we are talking about the importer, manufacturer, retailer, distributor or whatever person possible being inspected by Health Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency or the Canada Border Services Agency at any time. In my mind, under this law they would all bear the same responsibility.

What we are telling them is that they have to keep a registry and have knowledge of the chain of supply. That is easy enough to do as a distributor who brings into the country a number of products and distributes them. It is easy enough to do as a manufacturer bringing in the inputs, doing some manufacturing changes, transformation, alteration, repackaging and whatnot and putting them out on the market. Then it is easy enough.

It gets a bit more difficult for a retailer who is not part of a large chain. An independent or a smaller operation may have similar products that it buys from a few places. When it is selling from its business it might be difficult to know exactly where each and every product was sold. It might not able to track them.

I am looking forward to seeing what is meant by this and how this tracking would be applied. Are we creating a system that would be very expensive to operate, so expensive that small entrepreneurs will be forced out of the market, especially at the smaller retail level, those that we would typically call “mom and pop” operations?

We have seen it in the feed store industry already. Out of our concern for BSE and our requirements to label and track all the feeds and all the inputs into those feeds, we have come to those sorts of problems.

If we do not do this correctly, we could bring that type of a problem into where it is not warranted. I will agree that where we have risks to human health, we have to take the appropriate action. If it means that under certain conditions certain individuals or businesses should not be in possession of certain products, then that would be understandable. However, we can very easily throw the baby out with the bathwater if we do not do it properly and if we do not have the proper safeguards.

I have a bit of concern with one of the areas. I had the opportunity to raise it with the minister. I agree with the principle, and I think we all should, that there should be a power to order a recall. I think we understand that. However, if we look at the situation where we are now, we do effect those recalls by negotiations and by discussions. I have not been advised of any situation where the current practices have not worked and where an unsafe product has remained on the market because a distributor, a manufacturer or a retailer refused to remove it from the market. I do not know of any situation like that in Canada. However, it could happen, so the power to recall makes sense.

Sometimes if we give a minister or a department the power to do something, over time it evolves into an obligation to do things, because people test it in the courts or suggest that if that operation had not been done and the minister had effected his power to recall in such and such a case, then we would not have had this operation. Then what happens is that the next time there is a case that looks remotely similar, the minister's inspectors, to protect the Canadian public, as they should, effect or force a recall. That is the risk.

I am not saying that this is what would happen in this instance or in this case, but I would want to be sure that our first actions at all times are negotiations, that they are on the lines of where they are going now, where the inspectors of Health Canada or CFIA are working with the importer or the manufacturer on the Canadian side to see if there is a way to do it without effecting a recall. What happens is that quite often we are able to resolve the situation without human risk, without risk and without bankrupting Canadian corporations. If we effect or force a recall, we could create undue market fears, loss of shelf space for companies and those types of activities, which could become very dangerous. Those are things we absolutely want to avoid.

Let us remember also that we do not have the same sort of power over the people our Canadian manufacturers, distributors, entrepreneurs or importers are competing against, because the regimes in the domestic markets of our competitors might not be the same. I think we have to remember that.

We also have to look at the way it would be administered. Would we be doing this in a way that maximizes the use of the current bureaucracy? Or would we have to replicate everything else and therefore make it more complicated? Are we going to have an importer working with multiple departments to do the same process? Would we have some coordination?

When the finance committee looked at counterfeit products coming into the country, we saw that the Canada Border Services Agency was unable to inspect these products because it was understaffed. There is no way it can do an active inspection so it needs some sort of system that triggers a look at certain imports, stocks or lots. If we expand the requirements without creating a coordinated administration of it, we run the risk of having an overly bureaucratic process.

We have said over and again that we want smart regulations in this country, that we want to streamline red tape and administration processes. This is an excellent opportunity to do it from the onset as we are establishing a new program.

On the question of the penalties being higher, I do not think anybody would argue with that. I think it is a good idea but what people question is whether this has any effect because the penalties are never applied. As there are never charges under the current system, would it be meaningful to increase the penalties? I would suggest that it would be but we need to look at why they are not applied now and whether there are other ways, other than the court process, that we can use.

I was very pleased to see that in the bill the administrative sanction route is being considered where the minister and his inspectors would be able to apply monetary and administrative sanctions on the importer or manufacturer outside the court process a lot faster and more efficiently. I think that is a good idea.

The other thing is the use of injunctions rather than having to charge an entrepreneur, that an injunction can be applied for in court to cease an import, the distribution or certain manufacturing processes or procedures. I think it is a lot better way to go than having to charge and having a long, drawn out court battle that is unsure in all cases and certainly would lead, not necessarily to the protection of an individual's well-being, but certainly would have a negative impact on our capacity to compete.

The question on the effect on competitiveness is important. In that respect, I would like to see the bill dealt with not only by the Standing Committee on Health but also by the industry committee. I have a feeling that at the health committee we will be able to accommodate the people who want to give us that perspective.

How do we implement these principles and not reduce the competitiveness of Canadian business? I think that is what we should be seeking. Our first responsibility is the protection of human health and we cannot for any reason abdicate on that responsibility but we must look to do it in a way that protects our competitiveness in our domestic market, as well as in our exports. I am looking forward at the committee to be able to do these things.

I am pleased that the bill has been brought forward for debate and I believe our party will be supporting the bill going to committee. I look forward to having these discussions at committee, seeing the specifics of the bill, seeing how the implementation will happen and having the opportunity to present amendments at the committee or in the House. I hope officials of the Government of Canada will be prepared to indicate to the committee the order and types of regulations that are called for and what they would look.

We do take a bit of a leap of faith in the House of Commons as members of Parliament when we give powers to the minister or to the government to enact regulations to affect the intent of a bill that is passed by the House because we do not see those regulations again. They are done, in most cases, by order in council and, in very few cases, are they ever brought before Parliament again, either directly or through one of these committees. I think it would be quite useful if government officials could give us an indication or an idea of the type of regulations that will be required in this case.

I look forward to having a more fulsome discussion of the matter at committee.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member raises some very good points. I can say a couple of things about them.

First of all, obviously Bill C-51 also will be debated in this chamber. I would have liked to do so tomorrow, but we have an opposition day tomorrow. We defer to our friends in the opposition, but the hon. member can expect debate on that bill at some time in the near future.

I share the hon. member's concern about resources. I can assure the hon. member that this is budgeted for in budget 2008, with more inspectors and more assistance for CFIA. I think it is important that we also move forward on the product of Canada issues. My friend, the Minister of Agriculture, is taking the lead on that file, but I am encouraging him, as the member is, to move forward. He will indeed move forward.

I agree with the hon. member. Certainly in my riding of Parry Sound—Muskoka we do not grow olives. It must be the same in Malpeque. Perhaps in Pelee Island there is an opportunity to do so, but that might be the only place in Canada where it is the case.

In all seriousness, these issues do have to be addressed. It is certainly our intention to do so.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, further to my colleague's remarks, we certainly are looking forward to this bill and to seeing it go to committee where it can be discussed in detail. It is certainly a positive step forward.

I look at the two bills, Bill C-52, which we are dealing with here today, and Bill C-51, as intertwined. A lot of the concerns we hear on the agricultural side of the equation are about the definition of “product of Canada” and the requirement for truth in labelling in terms of food and so on. One can buy product of Canada olives, but we do not grow too many olives in this country. I think that shows the fallacy of the current definitions.

In the intertwining of the two bills and the requirement for Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which falls under Agriculture Canada, to work together and be properly resourced, is the financial ability going to be there to resource both sides of the component? Also, looking at the two bills together, are we going to get to truth in labelling so that when Canadians buy a product they can be sure that the definition applies to the products they are buying?

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, in last fall's throne speech, our government presented five clear truths to Canadians.

We said we would get tough on crime, maintain our prosperous and vibrant economy, improve the environment and health of Canadians, strengthen our federation and restore Canada's place in the world. Over the past few months we have made significant progress in all of these areas with lowering taxes and debt, extending the military mission in Afghanistan, and passing the Tackling Violent Crime Act to get tough on crime.

This week is indeed stronger justice system week. We have been successful so far in moving forward on our plan to tackle violent crime with Bill C-31, a bill to amend the Judges Act which has been sent to the Senate, and Bill C-26, our anti-drug law which passed second reading.

However, we will not rest on our laurels. Today and tomorrow we will wrap up our stronger justice system week by hopefully returning our bill on criminal procedure, Bill C-13, to the Senate. We also hope to debate our bill to reinstate modified provisions of the Anti-terrorism Act, Bill S-3, as well as Bill C-45, dealing with our military justice system.

Next week's theme is “putting voters first” because MPs will be returning to their ridings to consult Canadians in their communities.

The following week, we will be examining another priority: “improving the environment and health of Canadians”.

As members already know, our environmental plan announced in the throne speech was adopted by the House last fall.

There is, however, more to be done. We will start by debating Bill C-33. This bill requires that by 2010, 5% of gasoline, and by 2012, 2% of diesel and home heating oil be comprised of renewable fuels. This bill will help reduce greenhouse gases and represents an important part of our legislative plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020.

In addition, we will begin debate on two very important bills concerning food safety and consumer and health products in Canada, namely Bill C-51 to modernize the Food and Drugs Act and Bill C-52to establish An Act respecting the safety of consumer products.

Taking together, these two bills represent an extraordinarily tough and thoroughly new approach to consumer safety. I hope that the opposition will work with the government to ensure these pass through the legislative process in a quick and timely fashion.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Thank you for your presence here today.

In earlier testimony, we heard that there are very few adverse reactions reported and that the figure varied somewhere between 5 and 10%.

I am simply wondering whether the proposed clause 20.7 in Bill C-51, compelling health establishments to advise the minister of adverse reactions to drugs, may have a positive effect on the fact that few events are reported.

At the end of the day, will this provision make the process more effective and will the drugs that are available on the market have less of a chance of causing adverse reactions?

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to all of you for being here. It's a very informative panel.

I want to start with you, Alan Cassels. I've just been skimming through your book, Selling Sickness, and you make an observation that I think we've heard supported at other testimony, that the pharmaceutical industry is working very hard behind the scenes to define and design the latest disorders and dysfunctions in order to create and expand markets. You talk about that with the words “disease-mongering”.

I know we don't have time to get into that whole issue here today, but I would like you to relate that to what we're dealing with in terms of post-market surveillance and with respect to Bill C-51, which is actually about post-market surveillance, supposedly.

The fact that the drug companies that you refer to have been very supportive of Bill C-51 raises all kinds of alarm bells for me, but I don't want to just be subjective about it. I want to know if in fact there is some legitimacy to the argument we have made that the progressive licensing framework will in effect facilitate speedier approval of drugs into the market, and hence cause more safety concerns down the road, as opposed to being a neutral scheme, as the government claims it is.

[Alan Cassels, Pharmaceutical Policy Researcher, School of Health Information Sciences, University of Victoria]

Thank you very much for having me here. I'm surprised there's no snow here. Usually when I come to Ottawa, I like to gloat about how difficult it is back in Victoria, where we're wading through the cherry blossoms and the daffodils.

My name is Alan Cassels. When I told my family last week that I was coming to Ottawa, my 11-year-old daughter, a budding environmentalist, said to me, “Dad, are you going to be increasing greenhouse gases to travel all the way to Ottawa for a ten-minute speech?” I had to explain to her that every day in our country people are being harmed or die because they are taking perfectly legal prescribed drugs. I told her that I didn't want her or her brother, or anyone, for that matter, to die because they or their doctors didn't learn of the potential dangers of prescription drugs. I told her the story of Terence Young, who lost his own daughter when she took a drug they thought would help her. So my daughter said to me, “Okay, Dad, you can go to Ottawa.”

I've been doing drug policy research in British Columbia for 14 years. My research at the University of Victoria is funded by the Canadian taxpayer, mostly through grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Ministry of Health. I've never held any stocks or shares in pharmaceutical companies, nor have I ever done any work for the pharmaceutical industry. I mention this specifically because I think it's important. As a researcher, I like to base my assertions on data, and my reading of the data tells me that most of the time, when patient groups—many of those groups, by the way, do vital and important work—have ties to the pharmaceutical industry, they will push for policies to improve the profits of the companies that fund them.

My reading of the data also tells me that the people you've heard from before who demand better transparency of drug information, better regulation, more careful safety screening of drugs, and better warnings are not receiving funding by corporations whose interests are in profits. Those who have gone before me, specifically Michelle Brille-Edwards, Terence Young, and those from the Canadian Women's Health Network, have made some very good suggestions. I support those suggestions, and I hope this committee acts on them.

I also want to tell you that I went to school not too far from here, in Kingston. I went to the Royal Military College of Canada. As an officer in the Canadian Forces, I was a parachutist, a military diver, and a ship's watch-keeping officer. I have two United Nations missions under my belt. I've faced the business end of an AK-47 assault rifle. I've faced minefields in Cambodia, and other sorts of near-death experiences on the high seas. I have two medals for my peacekeeping and one medal for 12 years of service in the Canadian Forces.

I only mention my military experience for one reason. It's because I've come to understand fear and how it tends to motivate people. Let me explain.

This drug that I hold up right now is the most prescribed drug in the history of the world. It's a drug to lower cholesterol, called atorvastatin. It also goes by the trade name Lipitor. Globally, the manufacturer sold $14 billion worth of this drug last year, and in Canada about 14 million scrips for atorvastatin were written for Canadians. In total, more than 20 million prescriptions for cholesterol-lowering drugs, or statins, get consumed in Canada every year, at a cost of over $1.5 billion. That's an awful lot of money for one class of drugs.

Let me tell you three things about high cholesterol.

First of all, high cholesterol is not a disease. It is a risk factor for a disease, but it is treated as a disease in and of itself.

Secondly, taking a drug to lower your cholesterol may save your life. If you are a man and have had a heart attack, it can help prevent another one. The benefit of the drug in these high-risk men is about 3%, which is to say that even in high-risk men, over 90% of the men who swallow these drugs every day for five years will see no benefit in terms of living longer. There's evidence that the drug will not provide any benefits for women, and these drugs provide no benefit for the elderly.

The third thing I want to tell you is that taking a drug to lower your cholesterol could kill you. I don't want to be dramatic about this, because many people who take these drugs don't have any problem with them, but some people who do will experience terrible, severe, and sometimes intolerable adverse effects. The most well-known adverse effect is a disease called rhabdomyolysis. It's a muscle-weakening disease that can cause kidney failure and death.

Cerivastatin, a drug that went under the name Baycol, was very, very good at lowering cholesterol, but it also killed people. It was removed from the Canadian market on August 8, 2001.

Five years after Baycol went off the market, Health Canada issued a public advisory about the risks of rhabdomyolysis. That was on July 12, 2006. Did Canadian doctors read the warning? Did they even see it? Did consumers become concerned and stop taking their statin drugs? Not the way I read it; Canadians swallowed 22 million scrips for statins last year, and the number has risen steadily over the last decade.

Yesterday I searched the Canada Vigilance online database and found 1,173 adverse reports for this drug, atorvastatin. How many people are actually being hurt by this and other statins? The simple answer is that we don't know. Those 1,173 reports could represent between 1% and 10% of people injured by atorvastatin, which means to say that there could be between 11,000 and 111,000 Canadians injured by that one drug alone. There are seven statin drugs on the market in Canada right now.

The pharmaceutical industry spokespeople will tell you that they should be involved in the education of consumers about drugs, but let me show you how they choose to educate consumers. This “toe tag” ad appeared in many magazines and major newspapers across Canada. This one came from the National Post of February 20, 2004. It shows a toe tag hanging off a corpse with the headline, “What would you rather have, a cholesterol test or a final exam?” Here's another example, from Maclean's magazine, of the same ad.

These ads are probably the most egregious example of disease-mongering that this country has ever seen. The ads, which ran in both France and Canada, were the subject of a letter from the World Health Organization to the medical journal The Lancet, complaining that this kind of advertising is undoubtedly driving the inappropriate use of cholesterol-lowering drugs around the world.

How many of the 22 millions scrips for statins in Canada this year are prescribed for men at high risk? Probably three-quarters of those drugs are taken by women, the elderly, and low-risk men who would see no benefit.

The point I want to make is that in Canada we don't control the advertising and promotion of diseases, we don't control the definitions of disease, and we don't provide adequate impartial health or drug information to Canadians or to our physicians. We allow conflicted experts to sit on committees that decide the definitions of disease, and we allow our physicians to be educated by the pharmaceutical industry. This is an industry that spends in excess of $3 billion a year marketing their products directly to Canadian physicians.

So where does the poor patient end up in all of this? In my estimation, Canadians are naked in the pharmaceutical marketplace.

My recommendations for post-market surveillance revolve around stopping bad and misleading information from getting to patients and physicians, and ensuring that we have adequate data before drugs are released in the wider population. I have four recommendations.

First, I think we need a policy on disease-mongering. We need to maintain our current ban on the direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals, but we need to go a bit further than that. We actually need more strict control of the advertising of diseases. I call it “disease-mongering” and the industry calls it “disease awareness”.

One place to start is to ask Health Canada some hard questions: What is your policy around disease-mongering? Can you collect data to see if disease-mongering is driving the inappropriate use of pharmaceuticals? What research into disease-mongering have you commissioned? What other steps is Health Canada taking to control it? Instead of trying to deal with patients who may be dying from prescription drugs, how can we stop people from taking drugs they don't need in the first place?

Secondly, we need better information for patients. After all, it's the patients who put drugs like this in their mouths every day. There's a dire need for Canadians to receive approved and regulated information about diseases and drugs provided by an independent, objective source that's free from profit-driven industries.

The Government of Canada recently showed its interest in objective consumer health information by killing funding for the Canadian Health Network, one source of quality, publicly funded information on the Internet. In terms of medical treatments, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews is one of the best sources of independent research behind common health treatment.

A site licence for the Cochrane database, which the Canadian government currently won't fund, would cost about $500,000 per year, so that all Canadians--and not just people like me who work at universities--could access these reviews.

Other groups, like the Common Drug Review and the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health, need our full support and stable, long-term public funding.

The third thing is that we need better objective information and education for physicians. It's not just the patients who need independent information. It's time we recognize that leaving the education of our physicians to the pharmaceutical industry has some downsides. We need better education on prescribing, education that comes from an objective source, preferably one with public funding.

Australia has a national organization called the National Prescribing Service that does probably one of the best jobs in the world of providing physicians with useful, up-to-date, and unbiased information about drugs. Why can't we replicate that here on a national level and with input from the provinces? It would make a great first step in moving towards a national pharmacare plan in Canada.

The last thing is a point about progressive licensing. My suggestion would be that we should learn about drug safety from looking at how other industries operate. I personally think that post-market surveillance needs to be done and it needs to be done better. But to me, it's largely a sad, after-the-fact proposition. We have to do post-market surveillance because we do all the pre-market stuff so poorly.

Could you imagine another industry, say the nuclear industry or the airline industry, where we allow the manufacturer to rely on post-market surveillance for the safety of their airplanes or their nuclear plants? No one would accept the proposition of having the job of the regulator be to count the bodies afterwards and then decide if this is a good technology to expose to a wider population. We would never accept allowing the airline manufacturers to use people as test subjects in terms of the safety and effectiveness of its planes. We demand the nuclear and airline industries to take a zero-risk approach to their products, so why do we accept a lesser standard for products that people consume every day?

In terms of progressive licensing--and this is connected to Bill C-51--I have no idea where this will lead. But I'm left with one question about these current attempts to “modernize” the regulatory environment around drugs. How would a more modern drug licensing regime prevent another Vioxx, another Propulsid--the drug that killed Vanessa Young--or otherwise stop the thousands of Canadians who may be suffering adverse effects of cholesterol-lowering drugs?

Thank you.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

There is a section in Bill C-51 on clinical trials, which I would like you to look at. It's on pages 19 and 20. It would be helpful to have your written comments on that, along with the other request we made to you today.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you, Madam Chairperson, and thanks to all of you for your excellent presentations.

Patrick, you are right. The government has just tabled two new pieces of legislation that clearly impact on our deliberations today. One is An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts. The second is An Act respecting the safety of consumer products. It will be important for us to hear your reactions to these bills, because that clearly has an impact on anything to do with post-market surveillance. I'm wondering if I can maybe ask all of you, for the benefit of our study on post-market surveillance, if you would be willing to give us a written critique of these two bills from the point of view of this committee's study so that it might enhance our work and our final report. Would all of you be willing to do that?

I have a couple of copies of each of them with me now, so at the end I could leave them with you.

I am concerned that under the guise of modernization we are actually witnessing a legislative approach that might weaken the capacity of government to ensure drugs, foods, and consumer products are put on the market after all precaution has been taken. I'm worried about that because of the focus on progressive licensing. There are pros and cons, but I'd like to ask you what we should look for in terms of this bill to ensure that any focus on progressive licensing doesn't mean we are lowering the bar—as you, Steve and Patrick, said—in terms of what is acceptable, what can be allowed on the market. What should we look for in that regard?

Second, could you tell me just what this might mean? There is a huge set of “whereases” in this bill:

Whereas the Parliament of Canada recognizes that a lack of full scientific certainty is not to be used as a reason for postponing measures that prevent adverse effects on human health if those affects could be serious or irreversible

I am wondering if all three of you could give me a bit of a perspective on that end of the question of progressive licensing in this whole context of what we know has been happening in the department.

Does anybody want to start?

Food and Drugs Act

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Minister of Health and Minister for the Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-51, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)