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

[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?