Bill C-368

An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (natural health products)

This enactment amends the Food and Drugs Act to provide that certain natural health products are not therapeutic products within the meaning of that Act and therefore not subject to the same monitoring regime as other drugs.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is too bad the hecklers were not listening.

Corruption and decay go hand in hand. As such, when we say that everything feels broken, we say it because we mean it. The country is in decay, and the government's rotten influence is running rampant, spoiling every single thing it touches, including even those programs and services for which there is consensus in all corners of the House. The consensus regarding immigration is another great example of something that this Prime Minister has now destroyed.

My colleague, the member for South Shore—St. Margarets, said in one of his speeches that this is corruption like we have never seen in Canada. I believe that he is correct in his assessment of the situation, with one exception: There is probably one other prime minister who could rival the current profligate spending and graft, and that is the Prime Minister's father. It seems like every time we have a prime minister with that last name, the country ends up on edge. This Liberal rot extends far beyond the SDTC. It now touches every facet of Canadian society and its institutions.

Members can take the natural health product industry, for instance, and I will tie that in. The government took a world-leading regulatory regime, implemented by the previous Harper government, and ripped it up as if it meant nothing. It did not bother to consult with the industry, either. That would have obviously been beneath it. Instead of continuing with the existing framework, the government, led by the inept Minister of Health, decided to move natural health products into the same regime as therapeutic drugs, contrary to previous parliamentary studies and general consensus that vitamins and supplements are not the same things as doctor-prescribed medications. These changes would devastate the natural health product industry. The IADSA, the International Alliance of Dietary Food Supplement Associations, had this to say about the changes that are being proposed by the current government here in Canada:

We are writing today to express our concerns about the regulatory changes being proposed in Canada, which, if implemented, could impact not only the competitive position of the dietary supplement industry within your country but also Canada's position as a global reference point in this area.

Up to now, Canada has been a world leader in the regulation of dietary supplements. We fear that the proposed changes to Canada’s regulatory framework for natural health products risk creating an environment that could stifle the industry and limit Canadians' access to high-quality supplements.

IADSA has always promoted the Canadian model as a global reference point for governments across the world who are creating or redeveloping their regulatory systems. This Canadian model is recognized as providing consumers access to products which are safe and beneficial while fostering innovation and supporting investment in the sector.

Those are probably the most glowing words we could hear from an international organization, touting the regime created by the Harper administration for natural health products as being the gold standard against which every other country is measured. Now it is writing to our committee and to members of Parliament saying that if we pursue the current agenda of the Liberal government, with the support of the NDP, through Bill C-47 and the self-care framework that the regulatory framework entails, we will actually destroy the gold standard, the gold star, the institution that the rest of the world should be modelling itself after and designing itself after.

As a response to the illogical and unwarranted attack on the natural health product industry, I did introduce my private member's bill, Bill C-368, to bring the industry back to the old regulatory regime, yet the government is not done with its attacks. Let me explain to the people at home why an election is so important.

In early spring, the government plans to implement its cost recovery framework through the gazetting process. Bill C-368 may have passed second reading in this place and it may have passed the committee stage, but it is yet to be debated at third reading in the House and passed. It would then have to go to the Senate to go through that same set of steps and processes all over again, all before the next election.

Given that the timeline is probably getting to be fairly unlikely, the government is still free, then, and still has the old legislation it passed in Bill C-47 and Bill C-69, to pursue the regulatory environment to implement the self-care framework. This is a self-funding model that is behind the changes to begin with.

It is a tax grab on the industry to get the people in the small and medium-sized mom-and-pop shops, which are small businesses that create, innovate and develop all the supplements, such as vitamins, protein powders and things of this nature, under the same cost recovery framework that companies like Pfizer or Purdue Pharma would have to actually be under. Nobody in the industry has this kind of money. It is a death sentence for the natural health product industry.

Every day that the government has care and control of the Governor in Council, the ability to pass regulatory changes, it is still allowed, notwithstanding Bill C-368, to pursue this framework. The Minister of Health has said very clearly that he is hell-bent on destroying this institution as well. The government will implement the self-care framework.

For the Canadians who are watching, this is very important. There are two parties so far in the House that have voted non-confidence in the government so we could have an election. An election would kill the ability of the government to pursue the regulatory change to the natural health product industry. It would not be able to gazette anything during an election. At the outcome of the next election, hopefully there is a government that will cease destroying the natural health product industry in Canada.

This is why it is very important that the one party that continues to support the government be held accountable. It is continuing to support the government, even though it may have supported my bill in some bizarre manners. I might add that a member on the health committee actually tried to move a wrecking motion to destroy the bill at committee. Luckily he was granted a time out, heard from tens of thousands of Canadians and changed his ways, and we managed to salvage Bill C-368 at committee.

However, every day that the New Democratic Party continues to prop up the government brings us one day closer to a gazetting process for the self-care framework, which will put the cost recovery model burden on the natural health product industry. That is what will destroy the innovation and growth and destroy the gold standard model that the IADSA says is the best one in the world. That is what is at stake.

We need an election, not just because of all of the other corruption but also because of all the bad ideas. I said that earlier in my speech. Never has there been such a collection of bad ideas, bad judgment and bad leadership in one human being as there is in the current Prime Minister.

I use this example because it is a microcosm of what is wrong with the government. The Liberals cannot work collaboratively anymore. They have no friends left. No one is defending them. I cannot imagine why they are staying the course, because nothing is getting passed in this place. It is only to pursue the regulatory power and authority that they still have that they are clutching on to government. Who is the enabler? It is the New Democratic Party.

One can only conclude that that is the true agenda, even though others might not say so publicly. There is no doubt in my mind that that is what is going on. For those who are watching, what is at risk for the natural health product industry if we do not have an election sooner rather than later is that another gold standard institution will be ruined by the incompetence of the government.

To get back to SDTC, the crux of the matter is document production. Without documents, how are we to hold the government accountable for anything? We in the Conservative Party have asked for documents numerous times, and not just in this particular example. We have asked for them constantly, in every committee.

I happen to be a member of the procedure and House affairs committee at this time. We have asked for document productions many times. We were denied access to documents that members of the media had access to during the foreign interference scandal, for example. Members of the media can see documents that I as an elected member of Parliament have never been able to see, because the Liberal government, propped up by the NDP, whether it is in the House or at committee, always denies Parliament getting access to unredacted documents. It does not matter what the issue is.

In this particular case, it just happens to be the documents surrounding Sustainable Development Technology Canada. If Canadians are wondering why we are making such a big fuss about it, it is because this is the line in the sand. It has been crossed so many times. It was even crossed in the previous Parliament to the point that an election was called to prevent documents for the Winnipeg labs from being tabled in this place. We had someone summoned to the bar, which I do not think had happened for 113 years, who refused to bring documents when he was here. He was admonished by the Speaker of this place.

Also, the government, so self-righteous in its determination to keep things secret, actually took the previous Speaker to court. Everybody knows courts have always said that Parliament is supreme in the matters of its own governance, but that did not stop the government from pursuing that matter, so desperate it was to hide what it had done and to keep it from Canadians.

Here we are at an impasse. We are several months into it, and there is only one political party in this place that does not want to turn over the documents. It is that of the government. All the other parties to date are allowing this debate to continue until the government does what it is supposed to do and what the Speaker has asked it to do. As the Speaker has said, “The House has the undoubted right to order the production of any and all documents from any entity or individual it deems necessary to carry out its duties.”

Some $400 million of taxpayers' money was inappropriately spent, and 186 conflicts of interest were identified by the Auditor General. This is taxpayers' money. This is a government program. If this is not a textbook case of documents that Parliament should be able to see, then, frankly, I do not know what else would be.

I will wrap up my comments by saying this. A number of us in this place tonight have been here for a long time. As I said at the beginning of my remarks, if I am not on my feet again by the time I return, I will have eclipsed the 19th anniversary of my first election to this place. I have never seen a House of Commons in this much disarray, and I have never seen a government that has lost complete and utter control of the finances of the country and of law and order on the streets. It has lost control of itself and the ability to follow the rules of this place. Shame on them.

Health

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 22nd report of the Standing Committee on Health in relation to Bill C‑368, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (natural health products).

The committee has decided to report the bill back to the House with amendments.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

To better understand the change proposed by amendment BQ-3, see paragraph 30(1.2)(f) on page 40 of the Food and Drugs Act.

Additionally, to provide some clear context, I'm going to read subsection 30(1.2), which appears under the heading “Regulations — therapeutic products”.

30(1.2) Without limiting the power conferred by any other subsection of this section, the Governor in Council may make regulations

Now going back to amendment BQ-3, I move that Bill C-368 be amended by adding after line 13 on page 1 the following new clause:

3.1 Subsection 30(1.2) of the Act is amended by adding the following after paragraph (f): (f.01) respecting the recall of natural health products within the meaning of the Natural Health Products Regulations; (f.02) prescribing penalties for the contravention of subsection 21.3(3) in respect of a natural health product within the meaning of the Natural Health Products Regulations or of the regulations made under paragraph (f.01);

The industry and Health Canada people will have to discuss this amendment before the fines are determined. We will have to do things properly. As I've said from the outset, the fines imposed must be proportionate to the offences committed within the industry. We've discussed this at length and observed that the fines are disproportionate, which, incidentally, is why Bill C-368 was proposed.

Amendment BQ-3 would therefore make it possible to put regulations in place, and the current provisions would apply in the meantime.

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I'm not going to take too long. I have no intent of belabouring this debate, but there are a few important issues that came up that are important to address.

What I've been hearing clearly from the officials is that we cannot use other laws on precursors since this is a health product. In other cases, we would have to take the product off the shelves and regulate it as a controlled substance.

In the current context, this problem doesn't exist because we have Vanessa's Law. This gap only comes into play because of the bill that Mr. Calkins has presented. Otherwise, there's no issue because we do have a law on the books that gives Health Canada the appropriate authority to deal with this matter.

Now we find ourselves at a juncture with the amendments that are being suggested by Mr. Thériault that create that gap. The purpose behind the subamendment that I have proposed is to narrow that gap so that we don't run into it. It's a remedial step that I'm taking.

I'd rather not have Bill C-368, as we've stated before, because we think it's a bad law. It creates precisely the kind of issues that we are trying to address now by way of a band-aid mechanism.

Now, Mr. Ellis loves to throw insults left, right and centre at all of his colleagues without any parliamentary respect. He's entitled to do whatever. He'll be judged by them or his loved ones on the manner in which he treats them. I won't stoop to his level.

He often talks about lack of preparation. Perhaps he should have done his homework. The interim order he says is not available is on Health Canada's website. He can find it. He can read it. It has lots of footnotes. I've read it. I don't know why he did not do his homework, but I leave it to him as to how he manages his time.

I'll just put this on the record. In the interim order it says:

Canadian law enforcement agencies have brought to Health Canada’s attention that they have found single-ingredient ephedrine NHPs, in particular authorized 8 mg ephedrine formulations, in clandestine laboratories that manufacture methamphetamine.

That information is available.

To Mr. Thériault, I'm not trying to be too cute by half here or trying to do a run-in. I'm merely trying to strengthen his amendment.

If Mr. Julian had not withdrawn his amendment, NDP-1, this problem would not exist, because that had actually managed that particular gap. Now that is gone. That's why I'm forced to present this subamendment for consideration, so that we can further bolster and strengthen Mr. Thériault's amendment.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll try to be brief.

It seems to me the precursors issue could be resolved under the precursor control regulations or the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

The only reason this issue is suddenly being raised, as the minister has done, is to counteract the dynamic of Bill C-368, since he knows the Standing Committee on Health is studying the overdose issue.

If Health Canada does a proper job, I'd like to think it might suggest a way to address that issue within another legislative framework, such as the two I just mentioned. I don't think this subamendment would solve the problem. It's inadmissible because it's a substantive, not formal, amendment. All the explanations that have been provided prove that. We can also solve the problem in a different way.

I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, but I'm looking forward to the vote.

I know that Mr. Naqvi can keep on talking, but it seems to me that a problem that can be solved in a different way and that should have been solved before now shouldn't necessarily prevent us from moving forward. You can't include all the concerns that anyone may have in a single amendment simply because the bill under study doesn't currently cover a certain aspect. And by the way, the subamendment isn't very clear for the moment.

This aspect is already covered by other pieces of legislation such as the precursor control regulations and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. That act clearly provides that it covers every substance that can be used to manufacture drugs. If something's missing, we need only amend it.

If my understanding is correct, an interim order made to address this problem must be renewed. I therefore propose that it be renewed and that Bill C‑368 be adopted. If the government is seeking a long-term solution, it will amend the related acts and regulations.

I encourage Mr. Naqvi to withdraw his amendment.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Again, just for clarity, is there another way, besides interfering with the passage of Bill C-368, that the department could deal with the issue of unintended diversion of ephedrine or pseudoephedrine from prescription, over-the-counter or natural health product sources?

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Mr. Lee, again, I'll interrupt you. We understand that portion of it.

My point is if Bill C-368 did not exist.... I'm sorry. You've known that Bill C-368 has existed for some time, and I'm supposed to believe today that a substantive amendment brought forward by Mr. Naqvi with respect to this very specific but important problem would not have been able to be addressed anywhere else.

I'm also supposed to believe that he thought this up between Tuesday and today and that it shouldn't have been brought forward as an amendment on its own. Is that what I'm supposed to believe? I don't believe it.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Through you, Chair, what you're telling this committee is if Bill C-368, which was brought forward by my colleague, didn't exist, there would be no other way for your department to address pseudoephedrine or ephedrine getting into the wrong hands. Is that what you're telling me?

I'm sorry. I don't believe that, but if that's what you're telling me, that's what you're telling me.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Once again, here we are. We've been down this road with respect to natural health products many times.

Sir, this is not directed to be specifically negative toward you, but what we hear are these thinly veiled ideas that say, “Yes, this has happened,” but not one person has been able to give specific evidence or table it with this committee, nor has there been a desire, sadly, among the other members of this committee to have that information tabled for consideration. I think that's irresponsible of everybody who's raised a concern here.

We heard another group that said it had 700 adverse events. One of the adverse events it named was somebody reading a label wrongly and being dissatisfied with the product they had. Is that an adverse event? I don't think so.

Again, as I've said previously, 13,000 Canadian seniors are hospitalized every year because of prescription products. Does that mean they're bad? No. Does that mean we need to gut the regulations related to prescription drugs? I don't think so, but it might.

Now, here we are again. We're left with somebody saying, “I think there's been a report, or maybe there has been, and I don't know what the report is.” Nobody's showing it to me. Do you have it with you? Can you bring it up on your phone? Can you distribute it to the committee?

If you have that, it's appropriate here because once again, Mr. Naqvi, in his lack of preparedness, has foisted upon the committee a substantive amendment, which might be important for the safety of Canadians, but it might not be.

How could we possibly be expected to make a decision? If this is that important an amendment—once again, Mr. Naqvi should have done his homework—he should have submitted an amendment like everybody else around this table did. What do we have once again? Oh, this is a subamendment.

Chair, there is another thing I would ask you to consider. If this is that substantive a subamendment that it changes the original intent of the amendment, is it really admissible? That's a very significant thing to consider here, because we have not had any evidence provided to the committee to make an appropriate decision with respect to pseudoephedrine.

There's a difficulty for us as good legislators sitting around the table, especially given the fact that we're in the midst of a study here at the health committee on drugs and drug use within this country. We understand the difficulties associated therein. Certainly, we want to be cautious. I understand that. We can't reduce the risk to zero. The difficulty here, though, is we have a substantive amendment that's unsubstantiated.

The other part we need to understand clearly is that if this amendment fails to pass, do you have the ability under the Food and Drugs Act to make amendments outside of this particular bill, Bill C-368? Is there an ability to make amendments outside of Bill C-368 to protect Canadians from the potential diversion of ephedrine or pseudoephedrine, whether it be from prescription, over-the-counter or natural health products?

Do you have that ability? Answer yes or no, but you don't have to just answer yes or no; you can expand on it, if you so desire.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Yes, I'll introduce it.

Amendment BQ‑2 is to allow the minister's right of recall. Industry people told us that there was no problem in this area and that only bad actors would be affected. In addition, Health Canada told us that very few bad actors didn't co‑operate.

It's important to know that recalls are voluntary and that this isn't a problem. However, we were also told that the industry values its reputation and that it wanted to ensure that bad actors were punished. That's why I'm adding this element, which aims to maintain the current regulations and to restore a certain number of sections of the Food and Drugs Act.

This is amendment BQ‑2.

I move that Bill C‑368 be amended by adding after line 10 on page 1 the following new clause:

1.1 The Act is amended by adding the following after section 2.2: 2.21 Despite the definition of therapeutic product in section 2, sections 21.3 to 21.303 and regulations made under paragraphs 30(1.2)(f.01) and (f.02) apply to a in section 2, subsections 21.3 to 21.303 and regulations made under subsections 30(1.2)(f.01) and (f.02) apply to a natural health product within the meaning of the Natural Health Products Regulations.

I would like to clarify that subsections 30(1.2)(f.01) and (f.02) are part of amendment BQ‑3, which amends the penalties.

As I was saying, the minister's right to recall is guaranteed. We were asked whether there was a risk of serious harm to health. Subsection 21.3 responds to that. If there's no doubt that a health risk exists, which minister wouldn't want that authority?

This amendment takes nothing away from Bill C‑368 since it clarifies that under the natural health products regulations the minister will have a certain right of recall.

I have two pages of explanations, but I'll stop here, unless there's a problem.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

I'll echo some of those comments. We are watering down Bill C-368 by these amendments because we learned here in committee very clearly that the current administration, the NDP-Liberal government, is unable or unwilling to amend the TVPA, the Tobacco and Vaping Products Act.

I think it's a shame that we have to water down a bill based upon the fact that the minister, whom we've had here at committee before, doesn't have a clue on how to amend the TVPA. We heard that from witnesses. We heard them say that this bill needs to be amended, because it would take too long for the NDP-Liberal government to figure out how to amend the TVPA. That's the job of a parliamentarian. However, that's obviously lost on the current federal Minister of Health, who is unable to do that, and clearly unable to do his job.

Therefore we're left with disappointing those stakeholders and those thousands and thousands of Canadians whom I know Mr. Thériault referred to, from whom he received emails, as did we on this side of the House, to say watering down this bill is not a great idea. They are very concerned about their access and very concerned about the collapse of the Canadian natural health product industry, as we heard from multiple testimonies.

Thank you, Chair.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We are currently discussing Mr. Naqvi's motion, and I find it very galling for the Liberals to introduce such an amendment.

We wouldn't be discussing Bill C‑368 if the government had been transparent in the first place, and if it hadn't hidden Bill C‑47 in an omnibus bill, a mammoth bill, without partnering with industry. That isn't how we get things done in politics. We're here because there's been an attempt to give the industry a raw deal.

However, there was an intention behind that. It was to tighten up the rules and the legislative framework to ensure that bad actors or bad apples would be pushed out of the industry or that they paid for their bad reputations and actions that don't meet industry standards. That's why we need to get it right.

Remember, Mr. Chairman, that at one point, we had to have the minister and Health Canada officials appear before our committee to explain what was going on with the regulations. It wasn't even a study; it was a request. They came to give us explanations, and we realized that, with respect to the regulatory framework they wanted to create, particularly with regard to recovery costs, they were completely wrong. In fact, this meant that the model established for pharmaceutical products would be transposed into a natural health products model.

Whether the Liberals like Bill C‑368 or not, it's necessary. The basis of Bill C‑368 is necessary to create another legislative and regulatory environment for natural health products. That's what we're trying to do here, and that's what my amendments are trying to achieve, which is to strike a balance with respect to the interests of an industry. We don't want to destroy this industry because of a few bad actors. This pertains much more to small or medium-sized businesses than very large ones.

It was illogical and inconsistent to simply transpose the pharmaceutical model to another for natural health products. But we were good sports and we proposed amendments. People told us that they didn't want to question the basis of Bill C‑368, but they maintained that we were contravening the ministerial order, which had allowed us to replace nicotine products that aren't properly regulated, once again, because Health Canada did a bad job. We were told that there was a legal vacuum and that we shouldn't do that because it would give free rein to bad actors.

Those people came to warn us about the unintended consequence of Bill C‑368, and we listened to them. We proposed an amendment. I'm going to correct it again today, because people think we need to distinguish between nicotine-based products that are used as nicotine replacement therapy and tomatoes, cauliflower and eggplants. We received thousands and thousands of emails telling us to be careful when we say that a product contains nicotine. Vegetables and fruits contain nicotine. I'd have had to eat 10 kilos of eggplant today to reach the nicotine content of one cigarette.

Still in the spirit of calming things down and listening to everyone's comments, we changed the amendment in question to add clarification and ensure that Parliament's intent wasn't misunderstood.

What we're doing here today is paying attention to what people told us.

Industry representatives told us that they wanted to preserve its reputation. However, it doesn't make sense to impose fines of $5 million on the pharmaceutical industry, as planned. This explains our third amendment to Bill C‑368. This amendment will allow for discussions to establish the regulatory framework for appropriate fines.

That's what the government should have done. It should have had a proper discussion with people instead of trying to pull the wool over their eyes with an omnibus bill. That's not the way to do politics. Today, we're proposing a motion to, supposedly, amend Bill C‑368, on which there is a consensus on this side of the table, so that it can be passed in the House of Commons. However, this is a dilatory measure, but not in the way you understand it. The intent is to delay passage of Bill C‑368. We'll end up with a bill that we know full well won't pass the House in its current version.

For those reasons, I agree with Mr. Ellis. If the Liberals are acting in good faith, if they really listened to the people who came to testify and if they saw the turpitude of Health Canada, they'd do things differently. Witnesses told us they had evidence that the methodologies used are totally biased. Saying that 88% of an industry and over 900 companies aren't compliant is an aberration. They would fail a methodology 101 university course.

Personally, I'm not here to waste my time, but to find points of convergence and a balance so that everyone can benefit. Consumers need to regain their confidence in natural health products, and imposing an established pharmaceutical model isn't going to do that.

I hope that I've convinced my colleagues opposite to proceed with the study of Bill C‑368.

Finally, if I may, I move adjournment of the debate on the motion.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

I want to thank my colleague, Dr. Ellis, for his accurate assessment. I wish I could say I found it passing strange, Mr. Chair, but I've been in this place for a long time, as have you and as has the member for the New Democratic Party. I guess I shouldn't be surprised at this point by anything at all.

You would think, Mr. Chair, that a member of a political party that found itself in a situation where it accepted carte blanche everything that the minority government was going to do would be a little more gracious when offered a path to redemption on the issue of being able to rescind the clauses in Bill C-47, which Bill C-368 seeks to do. You would think that a member for the NDP would be gracious in accepting a path to redemption for his proposed amendment to this bill, which would have changed this bill in its entirety. Instead of accusing people of filibustering, you'd think he would have been gracious and said thank you for buying him the time to figure out that he was once again wrong, as he, I would argue, Mr. Chair, often is.

I appreciate the fact that he is now going to need unanimous consent, I believe, Mr. Chair, in order to withdraw his amendment. I'm just musing publicly on whether I should be as gracious as he has been to me in giving him that or whether I should actually say no and make him vote against his own amendment. That would be the fun thing to do, Mr. Chair, but I'll be the bigger person in this.

Hopefully, we will get to the point where we can withdraw NDP-1 and do the right thing on behalf of the industry that relies on getting this legislation and these regulations right and the 80% of Canadians who rely on natural health products.

I will enjoy taking the higher road.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting 142 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health.

In accordance with our routine motion, I'm informing the committee that all remote participants have completed the required connection tests in advance of the meeting.

Pursuant to an order of reference adopted by the House of Commons on Wednesday, May 29, the committee is resuming its clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-368, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act in relation to natural health products.

I'd like to welcome our witnesses, who are available as experts for any questions related to the legislation that members may have. From the Department of Health, we have David Lee, chief regulatory officer of the health products and food branch; and Kim Godard, director general of the health product compliance directorate.

I recognize Mr. Naqvi and then Mr. Julian.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thanks very much, Chair.

Certainly, I think the difficulty that my colleagues are having is, again, a lack of understanding of the industry. As we begin to look at safety, I think it is important that people have an idea that in taking some of these medications—even if they were to take them in inappropriate dosages, although that's not the idea—much of the time they are not harmful to folks. Not having that data to enable us to see that and to take that data, parse it out, look at it closely and say that this is a really important event, and this is a recurrent event....

We did not hear that from our friends at Health Canada—that there were recurrent events with certain substances—because I would suggest to you that they already have that ability to recall. I think we heard here previously in testimony from the officials who were here that even when a particular manufacturing facility had some struggles, when they were given the appropriate guidance, they actually made the appropriate choices and changed the difficulties they were having.

We heard very inflammatory language from the minister in attempting to say that there were difficulties. To repeat his words exactly, there was a factory “full of [rat] feces and urine”. I don't know why my colleagues want to present these disparaging remarks, whether they be from Mr. Julian or Minister Holland, with respect to the natural health product industry. I don't know why they would. For me, that doesn't really make any sense.

I'll go back to looking at other minerals, such as calcium and magnesium. Certainly we know that magnesium is a very safe mineral as well. People are often deficient in magnesium and don't realize it. They have to take significant and repeated doses of magnesium to attempt to get their levels back to a physiologic amount. We know, though, that taking significant amounts of magnesium could cause loose bowel movements. Are loose bowel movements a side effect of magnesium? When we're attempting to give you significant amounts to boost your levels, that makes it very difficult, but again, we don't know that, because we don't know what the data is.

If we'd had that data beforehand, I might be more inclined to say that one or another of these amendments makes perfect sense, or doesn't. Are there known side effects? Again, if we had the ability to understand what the data said, then that would give us a much more informed discussion.

I think the other thing we heard about a lot in this committee was related to nicotine-containing products. I find it fascinating that this committee is now in a grave hurry without enough data to push this Bill C-368 forward. We also know that we also heard the exact contrary opinion with respect to nicotine-containing products. We heard from officials, who sat over there, that this NDP-Liberal government cannot enact legislation quickly enough to keep up with the changes in nicotine-containing products. We also know about the sloppiness in how nicotine pouches were delivered to this country, and about how Health Canada officials, in collusion with Minister of Health number one, were unable to actually prevent this product from coming to Canadian shores.

Then when we suggested that legislation should be drafted specifically to deal with Canadian nicotine products, we heard about the sloppy nature of health minister number two in trying to clean up the mess of health minister number one. They were unable to do that in a timely fashion to be able to keep up with the industry.

Now, as we begin to look at nicotine-containing products, the other difficulty is related to contraband cigarettes. These are obviously manufactured in a factory as well. That raises the question of why the CFIA is not out there inspecting those factories and getting contraband cigarettes out of the mouths and hands of Canadians.

I find it fascinating that we are required to fast-track Bill C-368 at the behest of Mr. Julian and that this is taking too much of his time when the NDP-Liberal coalition finds it impossible to create legislation with respect to nicotine-containing products.

What we do know, though, is that more youth are turning to vapes and flavoured vapes, which they are actually purchasing online and which are something that a future government—a future Conservative government—must actually tackle.

We also know that they do not have the ability to look at nicotine-containing products such as nicotine pouches and how that actually fits into the legislation. When we look at the nicotine-containing pouches, I find it distressing, because they were actually brought in under the natural health product regulation, which directly relates to their being a smoking cessation aid.

Now, I hope that all of my colleagues did their background research. I suspect that Dr. Powlowski and perhaps Dr. Hanley did, not to be disparaging to others. When you look at nicotine pouches as a smoking cessation aid, you see that the likelihood of having evidence to support them as a smoking cessation aid is almost zero. There have been no studies done. There's no ability to say how many milligrams of nicotine in a pouch or if x amount of nicotine in a vape product is equivalent to x number of cigarettes, and how long you would stay at a certain milligram level of nicotine and then move down to the next lower amount of nicotine. Those studies do not exist.

Sadly, on behalf of Canadians, that is exactly how minister number two, also known as Holland, decided to deal with nicotine pouches. It was to say that these are a smoking cessation aid and, with much fanfare, bombast and foolishness, he said that they must be sold only in pharmacies because they're a smoking cessation aid.

The problem with that, of course, is that there is absolutely no evidence to say that these are a smoking cessation aid, and there's no pathway forward for pharmacists to be able to prescribe or guide prospective patients to use nicotine pouches to stop smoking. If that doesn't exist and if these are only being sold in pharmacies, the difficulty then is that pharmacists have not developed the ability to identify and ID folks who may be underage and purchasing these products.

As we start to look at that, where does some of that expertise exist? Well, I find it absolutely fascinating that nicotine-containing pouches are sold—and again, I'm not meaning to be disparaging to my pharmacist colleagues—in an environment that does not have expertise in identifying folks but are not being sold in an environment also known as a “convenience store”, which does have the ability to ID folks. They have a long history there, and whether we all around this table like it or not, convenience stores are the places that do sell cigarettes and other tobacco-containing products.

In some instances, they also sell alcohol, which is precisely why I would suggest that when we look at regulations with respect to nicotine-containing products, convenience stores may be a very reasonable place to sell nicotine pouches, since the regulations that were brought forward by health minister number two are wholly untrue and inadequate to deal with nicotine-containing products such as pouches.

As we sit here in committee and say that we should push forward without the data that would make us a much better-informed committee on behalf of Canadians with respect to natural health products, I think it is a shame that those around this table from the NDP and the Liberals have allowed shade to be cast upon an incredible industry employing thousands of Canadians to the tune of $13 billion.

As we begin to look at that and understand the economic consequences, Joel Thuna was another great witness who was here and has been in this business. I believe, colleagues—correct me if I'm wrong—that he has been in the natural health product business for more than 50 years. He is also a proponent of teaching others how to grow natural health products. I can't remember exactly; perhaps they were herbs like oregano and other spices that some folks may believe help to maintain your health.

He also made it very clear that he is not just a proponent of the industry but is also a resource within the industry and will take on newcomers to the industry so that they understand what good manufacturing practices are and where to look inside Canada for growers who have the ability to produce substances that Canadians want to use that don't have contaminants in them. He presented a very collegial attitude that exists inside the natural health product industry. He has, of course, as I said, been in this country doing this business for 50 years, and I think that would certainly qualify him as an expert.

I would also go on to say that he made it clear that recommitting natural health products to therapeutic products would pose a difficulty to folks in this industry, in the sense that most of those businesses would be forced to move all of their business ventures to the United States.

As we start to look at the anti-business environment that the NDP-Liberal government has created, we also know that many business interests have already moved south of the border and that investment in Canadian industry has gone down, and that's creating a significant problem with respect to Canada's GDP. We also look at the unfortunate case of the Canadian dollar, which sits now at less than 70 cents. That creates a difficulty as well.

One of the other things I think would be important and is a question that I would have to ask....

Perhaps, Chair, I might pause for a second. Obviously, it's Thursday. There are folks who don't live here. If there are folks who have flights and they would like to consider an adjournment, I would be okay with that, but if not, I would be quite happy to continue.

I'm trying to be collegial. If you would allow me not to cede the floor but to simply ask that question, I'd be quite happy to do that, sir.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Once again, I find it fascinating that for the benefit of Canadians out there watching, it is important to understand why a wrecking motion, as we call it colloquially here in the Ottawa bubble, cannot be allowed to continue forward.

Is this a Conservative-proposed bill? Yes, it is a Conservative-proposed bill, absolutely. In the original format that was proposed, it was to say that a natural health product cannot be considered a therapeutic product.

What we have seen from Mr. Julian is that clearly he wants natural health products to be considered therapeutic products, which is in direct contravention of the drafter of the bill.

As we look at some of the products that will be affected by this, we see that we had a great testimony from a practitioner of Chinese medicine named Pierre Chen, who was here at the last meeting. He has a school in Mississauga where he teaches traditional Chinese medicine. He is also a Harvard graduate. His father has been a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine for decades and provides care to thousands of individuals in the Mississauga area.

Maybe Mr. Julian hasn't taken the time to actually visit businesses that will be directly impacted by this bill. What I heard when I took the time to go visit Mr. Chen is that for the vast majority of his products, even if the definition of therapeutic product were applied to natural health products, it might not make that much of a change to the overall cost of the actual natural health products because they were frequently used and prescribed by traditional Chinese medicine practitioners.

What he did make clear, though, was that a smaller fraction of substances would be significantly impacted because they were not prescribed or used often. The cost of these would go from approximately $30 to $50 for a large-sized supply to $1,500 for a large-sized supply. That would mean that for those folks who have the opportunity to use those products, it would certainly have a significantly negative effect on their ability to pay for those products.

As that difficulty continued and the labelling requirements also were then applied to natural health products, what we also know is that the labelling requirements would become unnecessarily burdensome. Indeed, I liken it to when I went to visit a distribution centre for McKesson, which is one of the largest medication distributors in Canada. I had an opportunity to visit their facility as well.

You clearly see that when these bottles of medication are picked and these large, floppy, accordion-style plastic-laden labels are stuck to the side of a bottle by glue, two things will happen.

First of all, the accordion-style label will “unaccordion” itself. That's perhaps not a word, but it's descriptive of what will happen. It unravels, becomes floppy and will gum up the machines because a bottle of product with a label with a long floppy tail of plastic hanging off of it is not designed to be picked up.

The other very negative thing that will happen is that when it has unravelled, it will come off the bottle. Not only then do you have a large floppy tail with glue on it flopping around inside machinery, but then you have the glue there as well. Of course, that will, in the vernacular, gum up the system and everything then comes to a crashing halt.

These large, accordion-style plastic labels start to have this downward effect when you require companies to put this labelling on.

I think the other sad thing is that inside the natural health product industry, there is an obvious ability to begin to use novel ways of labelling, such as QR codes.

QR codes, especially in an industry that has a very low likelihood of harm.... I'll come to the products that are mainly prescribed and used by individuals in Canada soon, but when you have an industry that has a low degree of harm, it's an obvious move to move away from printed labels with tiny, tiny print. I know that certainly as I reach a certain age, it becomes more difficult to read that tiny print. It would make only good sense to ask if this industry would be interested in trialing those low-risk medications with QR codes. What would that enable?

Now, there will be people out there who will argue that not everybody has a phone to scan a QR code. I understand that; however, that being said, this is an opportunity to begin to trial QR codes in unique, low-risk environments that would allow those who have the technological ability to scan a QR code to begin to ask about transitioning prescription products to a QR code as an ultimate goal?

Now, again, as many of you know, the Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties, the CPS, is a large dictionary-like tome with tiny print that lists all the known side effects of prescription medications, not just those that are common or that those are serious. Generally speaking, the CPS is not available to the general public but is often accessed by health care professionals. Wouldn't it be interesting to be able to take that amount of information, add it to a QR code and allow people to access it so they could be better informed? I would suggest that a better-informed populace is able to make even better decisions on behalf of themselves and their family members to say what is going to suit their needs.

I think the other huge benefit with QR codes, as we are a varied nation with varied backgrounds, cultural practices and languages, is that QR codes would be not only easy to update with respect to the information that is available to the consumer, to the patient, but also with respect to the language in which it is presented. We did hear, whether it's true or not, from the ISMP group that reading labels presented a challenge to people, and that this was one of the reasons for a potential adverse event.

I don't know, because I don't have that information. It would appear that ISMP doesn't want to provide it until Mr. Julian has attempted to gut Bill C-368.

Once we receive that information, we will be able to clarify whether it's a language disability or an inability to read English, for instance, or perhaps French. I don't know, because I don't have that data, but that would be interesting to know.

Again, if we had the data to make our decisions upon, it would be interesting to know if a new and unique solution on a trial basis was able to take not only English but any language and provide it to folks who had the ability to access it, such that practitioners who sold natural health products had that ability to say, “Hey, you know what? I understand that English is not your first language, but if you were able to scan a QR code or find a family member who is able to scan this for you, you could read the indications, the potential side effects, whether they are serious or whether they are minor but frequent, and you could then access those in your native language.”

I believe that it would be an incredibly unique and useful situation to be able to look at it and, again, I will say that it's an incredibly low-risk segment of the market for Canadians to be able to say that this is what they would like to see on a moving forward basis.

Why do we say it's low risk? We believe it's low risk because even though the data is scant, the data that we have been able to receive in the low-risk environment is related to comparisons with other difficult environments, such as prescription drugs.

What we could understand from the fairly recent data is that every single year, approximately 13,000 seniors are admitted to hospital because of prescription drugs. Does that mean that we should tighten up the regulations around prescription drugs? That's not what I'm saying here, but what we need is a significant context with respect to natural health products so that we can understand the safety that is associated with natural health products, and we do understand that 13,000 seniors alone—and as we all know, the definition by Health Canada with this particular study is age 65 and older—have been hospitalized due to the side effects of the prescription medications they are taking.

When we hear this number thrown about of 700 individuals who may have had an adverse effect attributable to a natural health product, without the context it's impossible to know whether this is a serious adverse event or whether it is simply a problem—and again I'll go back to what I heard them say—with reading the label and they got the product that they didn't want and they couldn't get a refund on it. That's certainly not serious, and I'm not convinced that it's an adverse event that is related to a natural health product.

That is why it's incredibly important to have the data that we will not have to be able to complete the study on Bill C-368. It's to say that there's no reason for Mr. Julian to want to have his NDP-1 amendment, which then moves natural health products back into the realm of being a therapeutic product. That is what presents the difficulties here. I think that for Canadians to have that ability to choose what they want is an incredibly important part of society here in Canada.

Whether or not I understand traditional Chinese medicine or somebody else doesn't understand it, that's okay. I don't need to understand it. What I do need to understand is whether it is a sector of the Canadian economy and Canadian health care that people choose to improve or maintain their own health, and whether it is safe. Because of the numbers—even the numbers that we've heard thrown around and the report that Deloitte was able to do on behalf of the natural health product industry—I believe that this is a very safe sector of the health care industry.

One of the things that we did here, Chair, as well, is related to vitamin D and vitamin D overdose. Again, without the substantiation of that particular case, I find it difficult to believe. Why do I find it difficult to believe? It's difficult to believe because many folks would take vitamin D in the dose of a 1,000 international units a day, and that happens very commonly. However, when you look at the science of vitamin D and exposure to sun, if you're out in the sun.... Again, this is not me giving advice to get you out in the sun, but I note, as an important indicator of not having data with respect to this bill, that when you are out there in the sun on a great sunny summer day, you could achieve a level dose of 25,000 international units of vitamin D just from the sun alone on a one-day basis.

Again, we heard Minister Holland here making an egregious claim, without substantiation, that there was an overdose on vitamin D. Minister Holland is not a health care professional. Does he know if it was vitamin D from vitamin C or vitamin B1 or B12? I would suggest to you that he probably does not know that.

Not having the data to substantiate this egregious claim—which was unsubstantiated and unwarranted and cast a shadow and a pall over an entire industry—I think directly points to the need to have data to understand the implications of changing any legislation with respect to natural health products.

We can look at vitamin B12. A long time ago, when I started to practise medicine in Truro, Nova Scotia, we often injected people with vitamin B12 on a weekly basis. What we now know is that if folks who have a B12 deficiency take enough of it orally, by mouth, they don't need to come every week for a vitamin B12 injection. This is if you're B12-deficient.

As we began testing folks for a B12 deficiency, we also realized that many of them were having supraphysiological doses of B12. Getting B12 at the frequency with which it was originally administered was not a requirement.

There are many different vitamins that we know are very safe. When you look at the fat-soluble vitamins, for instance, like vitamins A, D, E and K, that is one particular—

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Before I was so rudely interrupted, I was saying that the interesting point here is that we have heard from Canadians on two major points with respect to primary health care, and most importantly, they say that they cannot access it. In a system of universal accessibility, they sadly cannot access the system. Therefore, they are required—because they must live—to look after their own health needs. What they have found is that by using natural health products, they are able to promote and to maintain their health, which they freely choose to do in a country based on freedom.

I think the other important point here is that once again Mr. Julian would have us believe that his wrecking motion does not have the intent to wreck this bill. We have clearly heard from the person who created the bill that it does, which creates a significant impasse at the current time.

I think it bears explaining why this is so incredibly important. That's especially in light of the fact that I would directly quote the Prime Minister saying back in 2021 that they were going to bring “7,500...doctors, nurses, and nurse practitioners” to practise here in this country. What we do know, which flies in the face of the misinformed Minister of Health, is that the access to primary care is getting worse.

We heard that testimony here at this committee from the Minister of Health when he was questioned on this very topic, relating to Bill C-368. We heard the minister say very specifically that “access to [primary care] is improving” across this country. It's not funny, but laughable. If you actually talk to the Canadians who have the ability to vote, they know this.

In our offices, we receive messages every single day from Canadians who say that they can't find a family doctor or that their daughter can't find a family doctor. In fact, I had an email today from a constituent who said that this is an appalling situation. It is not only the mother who does not have access to a primary care provider; her daughter, who just had a baby, also does not have a primary care provider, nor does the newborn baby.

As we begin to look at the dastardly situation created by the ineptitude and, unfortunately, the clueless attitude that has been demonstrated here over and over again by the Minister of Health, Canadians have had to turn to looking after themselves because they don't have the support of primary care physicians. I would say it's very likely that many of the claims, which again are unsubstantiated by ISMP, could have been simply mitigated if those individuals were able to speak to a primary care provider.

also I find it interesting, as we resume debate on the motion for that particular group of individuals to bring their data to this forum, this committee, that once again—and I can't understand why—Mr. Julian had to have his own way in defeating the motion. We could have had 20 more minutes to talk about this bill, but he had to have his own way to move a unanimous consent motion to bring forward the exact same motion that he voted against in the original context when it was brought forward at the last meeting. To me, that actually points towards his—

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you, Chair.

Just because Mr. Julian doesn't like what I'm saying doesn't mean that it's not true or that he needs to attempt to impugn my character to say that I didn't read it or understand it. I read it and I do understand it, and the sad fact for you, Mr. Julian, is that there are folks who want to hold you to account because we do understand the underhanded nature with which you want to gut Bill C-368 and drive—

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thanks very much, Chair.

Certainly, as we begin to look at this, the sad part is hearing what you've just said, given the fact that Mr. Julian is quite prepared to gut a $13-billion industry, which he so wrongly says he supports. We know, as I said previously, that Bill C-368 will remove labelling changes, it will remove cost recovery and it will remove many other burdensome legislative policies with respect to the Food and Drugs Act as it respects natural health products.

As we begin to look at that, Mr. Julian himself referred back to how things happened in the House of Commons, as all of us are able to do. You can go back and you can look at who agreed to send this bill here to this committee. The yeas were 171 and the nays were 146. Clearly it was the will of the House at that time to accept the fact that Bill C-368 undid the negative changes of the omnibus bill put forward by the NDP-Liberal coalition.

I think the difficulty that exists today is that we hear the NDP saying they support this industry because they know they need those voters to agree with them when they introduce a wrecking motion, a wrecking amendment, to the actual spirit of Bill C-368. It's important that we attempt to put into context for Canadians what we have heard. Let's be honest: This amendment, NDP-1, will return the landscape of natural health products back to where we were before Bill C-368 existed.

When Bill C-368 didn't exist, what we heard very clearly from every representative of the natural health product industry who came forward was, “You are going to ruin our business; you are going to put us out of business; you are going to drive our business to the United States; you are going to drive Canadians to buying products online from sources that have absolutely no testing of their facilities, no ability to recall, no need to be careful with the ingredients that are on the list and no safety requirements.”

As we begin to understand that this is the case that existed after the deadly bill was proposed and, sadly, passed in the House of Commons by the NDP-Liberal coalition, now we know that marriage of the woke NDP-Liberal leaders is back in full force. We heard it today in the House of Commons with their tricky—

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thanks very much, Chair.

Certainly I have a difference of opinion with respect to Mr. Julian. I suspect we will need a ruling from you on this, Chair.

The thing I will agree with Mr. Julian on is that during the testimony, we heard about the powers of recall and the importance thereof, and I will also agree with him—I know you will find this shocking, but I will agree with him again—that we heard great acceptance of this within the industry.

What I would like to point out to you, though, Chair, with respect to admissibility is that, in essence, Bill C-368 changes the definition of a therapeutic product, meaning that a natural health product is not considered a therapeutic product by the overall scope of this bill. When you look at the Food and Drugs Act cited in Mr. Julian's amendment, you see that it goes on to talk about a therapeutic product.

In my mind, those two things are diametrically opposed. It becomes very difficult to exclude natural health products from being a therapeutic product but then cite regulations inside the Food and Drugs Act that call it a therapeutic product. That is, in my mind, as I said, a binary decision. You can't be and not be a therapeutic product at the same time.

That would be the difficulty that I would have, and I would go on to suggest that there perhaps are—again, directly contradicting Dr. Powlowski—more elegant ways proposed by Mr. Thériault to allow the minister to have those abilities of recall, etc., that we talked about.

In essence, the amendments would specifically come back to two things: the ability to recall products—which, again, we heard already exists—and strengthening that ability. I don't think there's going to be any argument against that.

The second part of it, of course, is the removal of nicotine-containing products from the definition of natural health products.

I think that when we begin to muddy the waters of the definition of a therapeutic product by allowing it to be a therapeutic product in one sense but not in another, it is going to create significant difficulties with the original omnibus bill that was presented by the NDP-Liberal government back in the spring, because the definition of a therapeutic product, a natural health product, becoming in essence a therapeutic product would then allow all of the other changes that come about thereafter, meaning the cost recovery program and the labelling changes as well.

As I said, in my mind, those two things are diametrically opposed. Given that the principle of the bill is to move natural health products out of the therapeutic product realm, the admissibility rules would state that the most common rules of admissibility are related to the principle of the bill and:

The principle of the bill is the object or purpose which the bill seeks to achieve. The principle of the bill is fixed when the bill is adopted at second reading. Any amendment contrary to the principle of the bill is inadmissible.

I think that if the real principle of the bill is unclear, we have a unique situation here. If it's unclear in writing, we could ask the drafter of the bill what the principle of the bill is, and I think it would be very clear that moving all natural health products away from the definition of a therapeutic product is really the principle of this bill and therefore makes NDP-1 inadmissible as an amendment.

I'll say it one more time. That doesn't mean that we don't support that type of movement, just that the NDP-1 amendment has to be deemed inadmissible by you.

Thank you, Chair.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The point I want to make is that just because I voted earlier against resuming debate on the motion to obtain additional documents does not necessarily mean that I voted against the principle of the motion. However, I don't think we need to have this debate, and I don't think we need this information to do our job today. Let me explain why.

First, I'd like to point out that we've tabled three amendments in relation to Bill C‑368. I may not have enough parliamentary experience, but in nine years, I've never worked as hard as I did on these three amendments. We had to study Bill C‑368, Bill C‑47, Vanessa's Law and the Food and Drugs Act. We also had to study another piece of legislation—the elephant in the room no one is talking about—the Natural Health Products Regulations, which are linked to Bill C‑368, our amendments and all the laws I've just mentioned. These regulations are a key element in their own right, and are already designed to protect consumers. I've looked into this. It's the centrepiece.

If we were to write a new regulation on natural health products or a new law on food and drugs, I would agree with the proposal that we wait 30 days in order to have time to receive the requested documents. However, this is not the case.

I will now share my preliminary remarks.

It is important to understand the concerns of the public, that is, those of the organizations whose representatives have come to testify before us, and the concerns of the minister in relation to Bill C‑368. I'll summarize the six main concerns.

First, we were told that nicotine products are extremely dangerous and that the provisions of Vanessa's Law should therefore be maintained, as well as the ministerial order issued in August. The latter concerned additional rules for nicotine replacement therapies. We will be proposing an amendment to this effect.

Secondly, we were told that the minister must retain his right to order a recall.

Third, we were told that the minister must have the ability to require changes to labels and packaging.

Fourth, we were told that poisoning from natural health products is dangerous. We agree that all intoxication is dangerous. We are aware of this.

Fifth, we've been told that we need the capacity to carry out inspections and post-marketing monitoring. We are aware of this, and there are already provisions for this in the Natural Health Products Regulations.

Sixth, with regard to new products, such as the new drugs mentioned by the minister, we were told that, if Bill C‑368 were passed, there would be a problem in relation to precursor chemicals.

I will now address these six concerns.

With regard to the first concern, we do indeed find it important to maintain in law the existing provisions concerning nicotine-based products. That's why we'll be proposing an amendment to keep the provisions affecting these products in Vanessa's Law and in the government's emergency order.

As for the second, we'll be proposing amendment BQ‑2 to retain the minister's right to order a recall when there are risks of serious harm to health, as well as his right to impose coercive measures in the event of serious risks to the environment.

As for the third, I would emphasize the following. Where there is a risk of harm to health, the minister can already impose a label change without going through the provisions of Vanessa's Law. He can simply apply the Natural Health Products Regulations. Indeed, under sections 16 and 17 of the Natural Health Products Regulations, found on page 13, Health Canada can require a company to modify its labelling, including the addition of new warnings. According to section 16, the minister may do so if he or she has “reasonable grounds to believe that a natural health product may no longer be safe when used under the recommended conditions of use.”

In fact, Health Canada recently used this same power to require companies to add a warning to products containing chasteberry. Companies had the option of adding the warning to the label, discontinuing the sale of the product, or presenting evidence that the warning was unnecessary. The minister already has this power under the regulations, and does not need to go through the provisions of Vanessa's Law.

The fourth concern is that poisoning from natural health products is dangerous. This is indeed the case. However, the provisions of Vanessa's Law do not necessarily come into play here.

It's about two things. The first is to ensure enforcement of the Natural Health Products Regulations. Health Canada must verify the recommended dosage indications and enforce other labelling requirements. This is its duty, Mr. Chair. This power was not acquired as a result of Vanessa's Law. Health Canada already has this power. In fact, that's what the Auditor General mentioned in one of her reports, which gave rise to Bill C‑47.

The second thing is that Health Canada really must do its duty. This organization absolutely must provide health information to help Canadians and Quebeckers make informed decisions. It must launch an awareness campaign on the dangers of natural health products and their interactions with other natural health products or medications. It must also stress the importance of adhering to the recommended dosage, as has been done with regard to the same risk of harm posed by medications. Health Canada has conducted successful medication awareness campaigns. That's Health Canada's role. It's their job to do it, but they're not doing it. Health Canada representatives admitted as much to the committee.

This authority, to conduct such awareness campaigns, does not derive from Vanessa's Law. It's Health Canada's job. The problem is that, for years, Health Canada has not adequately or sufficiently fulfilled its monitoring duties, even though the Natural Health Products Regulations legitimately entitle it to do so. Health Canada is not fulfilling its duties, and this is what the Auditor General denounced in her report.

I now turn to the fifth concern, which is that we must have the capacity to carry out inspections and post-market monitoring of products. Post-market monitoring is not included in Vanessa's Law. However, it is provided for in the Natural Health Products Regulations, notably in section 17(1), page 13. Section 16, page 13, deals with pre-marketing requirements. Subsection 17(1) deals with post-marketing requirements. It states in particular:

17(1) The minister may direct the licensee, manufacturer, importer and distributor to stop their sale of a natural health product if (a) the licensee does not, within the required period, provide the minister with the information and documents requested under section 16;

In other words, he has failed to provide the information requested by the minister.

(b) the information and documents provided by the licensee in accordance with section 16 do not demonstrate that the natural health product is safe when used under the recommended conditions of use;

(c) in the case of a natural health product that is imported, the minister has reasonable grounds to believe that the natural health product is not manufactured, packaged, labelled, imported, distributed or stored in accordance with the requirements set out in part 3 or in accordance with requirements that are equivalent to those set out in part 3;

Part 3, which begins on page 24 of the regulations, defines good manufacturing and inspection practices.

I'm almost done, Mr. Chair.

(d) in the case of a natural health product that is not imported, the minister has reasonable grounds to believe that the natural health product is not manufactured, packaged, labelled, distributed or stored in accordance with the requirements set out in part 3; or

(e) the minister has reasonable grounds to believe that the natural health product is not packaged or labelled in accordance with the requirements set out in part 5.

Part 5 of the regulations, entitled “General”, begins on page 48 of the regulations, and includes requirements related to labelling and packaging.

What about the new hazardous products, such as drug precursors, mentioned by the minister?

I've already answered that in committee, but I want to say it again here, since we have the health of citizens at heart. Precursors are provided for in subsection 7.1(1) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. This subsection provides as follows:

7.1(1) No person shall possess, produce, sell, import or transport anything intending that it will be used: (a) to produce a controlled substance [...]

Offences and penalties are already provided for in cases of violation of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and the Precursor Control Regulations, and these precursors are set out in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

In addition, drug precursors, also known as “precursor chemicals” or simply “precursors”, are substances used to manufacture illicit drugs.

Most precursors also have legitimate commercial uses, and are used within the law in a variety of industrial processes related to consumer products, such as medicines, flavours and fragrances. We can therefore add drug precursors to the prohibited precursors.

Mr. Chair, I hope I have made the case that we cannot make amendments to Bill C‑368.

What exactly does this bill do? It simply says that natural health products cannot be left in the legislative environment of Vanessa's Law. We have to get them out of there.

We need to make the necessary amendments to the Natural Health Products Regulations. This fully addresses consumers' concerns, insofar as recalls will no longer be strictly voluntary, but mandatory. The minister will absolutely have the power to do this, and it won't be done at the will of the company.

The amendments we will soon be studying will ensure that we are well equipped to continue our study of the bill. We have the necessary documents at our disposal to do the work we have to do this afternoon. I'll also be able to explain the rationale behind these amendments.

Thank you.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thanks very much, Chair.

I think this is worthwhile pointing out. I know it's painful to Mr. Julian, but the sad part is that Mr. Julian was the.... We knew that the Liberals were going to vote against this because, of course, they moved the original bill to gut the natural health product industry.

I think it's shameful for Mr. Julian to have been the one to adjourn debate on bringing forward data that is specifically related to this bill and to the natural health product industry, of which he claims he's a huge supporter.

That's not to mention the fact that one of the amendments he has brought forward is basically a wrecking amendment toward Bill C-368. As we begin to consider his amendment, I think we'll find that we'll ask you, Chair, to rule against the admissibility of his ridiculous amendment as we go forward.

With that, I think it's incredibly important that we resume debate with respect to the data that we requested at the last meeting related to the natural health product industry because it provides important context for Canadians to understand that, by and large, this industry is safe, effective and proudly Canadian.

If the NDP-Liberals are allowed to have their way, they will wreck the industry, drive businesses out of Canada and force Canadians to purchase products online, which will never be tested up to Canadian standards because there's no law requiring that. They'll be able to access products from any jurisdiction they wish.

We have an opportunity specifically to ensure an industry.... We've heard multiple testimonies related to the safety and the interest of those involved in the industry of how safe it is. They're willing and open to have changes. We've talked to them, and they're willing and open to have changes with respect to removing products that contain nicotine from the category of natural health products. We also know that the concept of recall.... I know that our colleague from the Bloc has submitted an amendment specifically with respect to recall that we certainly would support, which makes perfect sense.

We heard clearly from inside the industry that moving amendments related to those two things would make perfect sense.

Very specifically, Chair, with those things in mind, I move that we resume debate on the motion I proposed at the last committee meeting, which was adjourned by the NDP and the Liberals, to demand that ISMP bring forward data that they cited at that last meeting with respect to natural health products.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 140 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health.

In accordance with our routine motion, I'm informing the committee that all remote participants have completed the required connection tests in advance of the meeting.

Pursuant to an order of reference adopted by the House of Commons on Wednesday, May 29, 2024, the committee is commencing its clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-368, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act regarding natural health products.

I would like to welcome our witnesses, who are available to us as experts for any questions members might have that are related to the legislation.

From the Department of Health, we have David K. Lee, chief regulatory officer, health products and food branch, and Kim Godard, director general, health product compliance directorate. From the office of the legislative counsel, we have Alexie Labelle and Jean-François Pagé for any procedural questions.

I'd like to provide members with some instructions and a few comments on how the committee will proceed with clause-by-clause consideration on Bill C-368.

As the name indicates, this is an examination of all the clauses in the order in which they appear in the bill. I will call each clause successively. Each clause is subject to debate and a vote. If there are amendments to the clause in question, I will recognize the member proposing it, who may explain it. The amendment will then be open for debate. When no further members wish to intervene, the amendment will be voted on. Amendments will be considered in the order in which they appear in the bill or in the package each member received from the clerk. Members should note that amendments must be submitted in writing to the clerk of the committee.

Amendments have been given a number in the top right corner to indicate which party submitted them. There's no need for a seconder to move an amendment. Once it is moved, you will need unanimous consent to withdraw it.

During debate on an amendment, members are permitted to move subamendments. These subamendments must be submitted in writing. They do not require the approval of the mover of the amendment. Only one subamendment may be considered at a time, and the subamendment cannot be amended.

When a subamendment is moved to an amendment, it is voted on first. Then another subamendment may be moved or the committee may consider the main amendment and vote on it.

Once every clause has been voted on, the committee will vote on the title and the bill itself. An order to reprint the bill may be required if amendments are adopted so that the House has a proper copy for use at report stage.

Finally, the committee will have to order the chair to report the bill to the House. That report contains only the text of any adopted amendments as well as an indication of any deleted clauses.

Go ahead, Dr. Ellis.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you.

Ms. Doucas, would your organization be open to an amendment to Bill C-368 removing nicotine-containing products?

[Carolyn Hoffman]

Today we speak about the concerns that we have with Bill C-368—a number of concerns—and so we are silent on any proposed amendments today.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Hoffman, I'll ask you the same question. Would your organization be open to removing nicotine products from Bill C-368?

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thanks very much, Chair.

When we begin to look at the difficulties with this bill.... I guess I'll ask some very pointed questions.

Ms. Callard, would your organization be open to an amendment removing nicotine-containing products from Bill C-368?

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Yes. Thank you.

We heard recently from a small business owner who testified on Bill C-368. He said that if the legislation doesn't pass, Health Canada's new regulations on natural health products will cost his natural supplement business $500,000.

What are your thoughts on the cost? You used the expression “mom-and-pop”, and that certainly characterizes many of these businesses in my own riding. These are small businesses serving our communities. When I hear of a compliance cost at that level, it is a cause for concern, especially hearing you speak about the ability to move elsewhere and to conduct your business differently.

Can you speak a bit to the cost aspect?

[Carolyn Hoffman]

We can speak to our position today on Bill C-368 and be clear that, to our understanding—it's what we can speak to—if the bill does go through, the important, very focused provisions under Vanessa's Law will be reversed. One of them is to compel. Wording is very important with all these legislative mechanisms, and in this case, we understand and believe, and it's our position, that this would be lost—a “compel” provision around labelling. Although there is a regulatory framework, these regulatory provisions under Vanessa's Law are at risk.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Okay.

I personally appreciate hearing your points of view, ladies. They are important. Earlier, we talked about the fact that we need to have a serious discussion about a $13‑billion industry. The global tobacco industry was worth $694 billion in 2021, but that did not stop us from introducing regulations and controls for the industry. It took a lot of energy and a lot of litigation to get there.

When it comes to natural health products in the broadest sense of the term, it became clear that the industry itself did not want to side with the bad actors. It wanted to protect its reputation.

With that in mind, we could make two other amendments, which would give the minister the authority to recall and ensure that the fines were appropriate, as permitted by the natural health products regulations. The legislative context is completely different from that of pharmaceutical products. As it happens, natural health product companies are not multinationals with 20-year patents whose products are not taxed. We're not talking about the same industry. However, we have to make sure that these products are safe for the public.

In short, the minister would have the authority to recall; there would be appropriate fines based on the legislative framework that we are trying to define; and the industry would be more strictly regulated, not harmed.

In fact, the reason we are here—and no one has said this—is that Health Canada didn't do its work until 2018.

The industry is already regulated. There are already voluntary recalls. The minister will be given the authority to recall, but that authority does not relieve Health Canada of its obligation to carry out the necessary inspections and checks, which the industry was not subject to for a long time. There should be no confusing those things or thinking that bringing in a law necessarily means we're protecting the public.

Health Canada has a duty to educate. It will be the duty of Health Canada to talk about the interactions between natural health products and pharmaceutical products, as well as between pharmaceutical products themselves.

Ladies, your comments are relevant. We heard you, and we are going to propose amendments to Bill C‑368 to lessen the adverse consequences and respect everyone's interests including those of consumers. They must have easy access to products and be assured of their safety when they buy them.

[Flory Doucas]

I want to make sure I understand. Are you talking about excluding nicotine products from the scope of Bill C‑368 ?

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Okay. It's important to clarify that, because you know we're going to make an amendment to Bill C‑368.

My understanding is that you haven't explored all the problems surrounding the intent of the bill. Based on what you're telling us today, the current wording of the bill has the adverse consequence of cancelling the ministerial order, which made it possible to better control nicotine products.

Did I understand you correctly?

[Flory Doucas]

Sure, it would be great if we had a framework, but we don't, and we just can't afford to wait for a framework. Nicotine is highly addictive, and that's what the ministerial order tried to tackle in a prompt way.

I think the idea here, should BillC-368 go ahead, is just to carve out nicotine products.

[Pierre Chen, Registered Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioner and Registered Acupuncturist, Traditional Chinese Medicine Association of Canada]

Thank you so much for having me. Today we're talking about Bill C-368.

I am an importer of Chinese medicine. I'm also the founder of the Canadian College of Traditional Chinese Medicine. I have a master's in Chinese and integrative medicine. I'm also a Harvard medical educator. In non-profit, I set the standard at the Standards Council of Canada for TC 215 and TC 249 in Chinese medicine.

What we're looking at today is a regulatory mismatch for natural health products—putting them into a drug model and into Vanessa's Law, and treating food items and herb items as pharmaceutical items, which they are not. Do you have the package I sent out on food safety in Chinese medicine? If you go to see a Chinese medicine practitioner with kidney problems, they might prescribe you kelp or seaweed. If you have lung problems, they'll prescribe cinnamon, ginger, onions, etc. These are the natural health products we are using.

In Ontario, there are 2,700 Chinese medicine practitioners and acupuncturists. In Quebec, there are about 1,000. In B.C., there are 2,000. If you move down through the slides, out of these practitioners in Ontario, 65% are female. On direct job impact, the Job Bank of Canada record for 2021 shows that there are 66,000 Chinese medicine and acupuncturist natural practitioners in Canada. On indirect job impact, we have herbal farmers in Canada. There are over 2,000 individuals under the Good Agricultural Collection Practice. In Saskatchewan alone, there are 30,000 acres. In Ontario, there are about 150 ginseng growers. We are the purchasers and users of these natural health products, so all of those farmers would be out of business if we didn't support them.

We need something tailor-designed for natural health products. Right now, what we have works. It's going to affect us greatly if we don't pass Bill C-368.

Under the 60,000 practitioners, most patients are women, seniors and minorities. Most of us have hundreds, if not thousands, of patients. All of these patients would be affected without access to natural health products.

If you move down, there's the proposed amended fee. These are some of the companies we're looking at. Most of these companies annually renew. It's very common for us to have around 1,000 licences. We don't use all of the licences simultaneously—only if we need them. We need the licence to have access to herbs. For upkeep, you're looking at $130,000 to $200,000 annually just to keep the licence. That's not including the application fee, which is another $100,000 to $200,000.

This means that most households, especially lower-income households, would not have access. It would push us, as importers, into the black market. To avoid the $100,000 to $200,000 fee, people will sell online. They would not apply. That means the food items we want to have health claims for.... We're trying to do the right thing. We're going to be forced to sell them as food items, and we're going to say, “It has no effect.” All these practitioners would not have health claims on the items they're prescribing.

On the next slide, you'll see the example of Jia Wei Xiao Yao Wan. It's a pretty standard formula. Right now, on the market in Canada, it's about $9 or $10. With the proposed fee, we're looking at close to a $50 to $100 increase per product, because we use a lot of these licences. To keep those licences, we're going to look at $50, plus the $10. It would make it hard for people to purchase and use these products.

The purpose of natural health products is so food items and herbs that we're prescribing, as practitioners, have a health claim. It's not so drug items can escape responsibility as a drug. I saw previous experts talking about nicotine. I totally agree with them. Nicotine is highly addictive, and in a lot of countries—Australia, Japan and Thailand—it is considered a drug. They have a separate regulation, like our tobacco act in Canada. We use it to protect our public. A natural health product is not an escape to avoid the necessary law.

We also talked about evidence-based medicine. We want to have that in natural medicine, too. We hope to have grants and research funding, which we don't have. However, adding an additional law—Vanessa's Law—to this would only push us to the black market, to the other side of the border. We're going to have to sell from the U.S. where these $10,000 to $100,000 regulation fees are not realistic, and we're going to have to sell from other countries to Canada where people can have access from illegal markets, avoiding these costs.

Thank you so much.

[Cynthia Callard]

I apologize.

I will just tell you that there are other products on the market that are sold at convenience stores beside the candy counter. They don't look like a pill. They don't look like a treatment. They look like something interesting. The other products that are on the market, the gums, do not seem to be a problem, and we have not called for new precision regulations to be placed on them, but we need the power to intervene if they were, if children were experimenting with them or if they became an on-road to nicotine addiction instead of people using them in the bar or somewhere instead of smoking. If there were reasons to have concerns about them, we would like the government to have the authority to come in.

In the U.S., the same product made by the same company is sold with the disclaimer that it is not an FDA-approved smoking cessation aid and it's not intended to be used to quit smoking, but, in Canada, the same product is sold as a smoking cessation aid. In the United States, it's sold as a way to enhance focus, boost your energy or relax.

Other tobacco companies that are licensed to sell NHP nicotine in Canada include Swisher Sweets Cigar Company and a Philip Morris International subsidiary. Turning Point Brands is a cannabis-focused company that has a licence also to sell NHP nicotine in Canada.

The ingredients of a drug product are only part of the risk. From a clinical perspective, nicotine replacement is a well-established treatment for tobacco addiction. It doesn't seem to make much difference how that nicotine is delivered to the body but, from a public health perspective, it makes a world of difference how the product is delivered to the market. The business model of those who make it and distribute it, how it's advertised, who sees the advertisements, whether influencers are promoting it, etc. are the aspects that make the product risky. The supplementary rules that were adopted for Zonnic are mostly about marketing; they're not about the product itself.

One reason these supplementary rules took months to prepare is that new legislative powers were required. These powers were part of the spring budget. Bill C-368 would take those legislative powers away, not only for Zonnic but for all the other smoking cessation products manufactured by tobacco companies or others for whom the clinical benefits risk being overshadowed by the overall health risks to Canadians.

The Food and Drugs Act was not designed to manage tobacco companies. Last week, I heard other witnesses being asked about consultation on the authorization. There is no consultation with any outside group when the department decides on whether to authorize an NHP. As I understand it, each application is confidentially reviewed against established clinical criteria, not public health criteria, and is decided on without input from other stakeholders or any public health impact analysis.

Canada is lacking an overall nicotine regulatory framework. The regulation and management of tobacco products and vaping products are in one branch of the department under one law and under a different minister than is NHP nicotine. This is a problem.

I think it would be wonderful if the committee could suggest to Health Canada that they start working on an integrated nicotine framework. The precision regulation was a bit of a band-aid solution, but it's a band-aid solution we urgently needed. It's a band-aid solution we continue to need. Until there's a more permanent solution in place, we implore you to not remove that and put Canadian children at additional risk.

Thank you.

[Cynthia Callard, Executive Director, Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada]

Thank you very much for the invitation to appear.

For those of you who are not familiar with us, our organization is a small health charity with a 39-year history of providing information and advice on tobacco policy. Our members are all physicians, but I am not. My comments today are based on a policy analysis, not on the clinical use or on the overall implications of this bill for the NHP category. For those more general perspectives, I refer you to the brief submitted by the Canadian Medical Association.

I want to say that Bill C-368 has implications for tobacco control that go beyond the Zonnic or nicotine pouch issue. That's because most stop-smoking medications are licensed as natural health products. There are two categories of drugs, bupropion and varenicline, which are prescription-only drugs, that are licensed under the drug product regime. There are about 100 authorizations for stop-smoking medications under NHPs. The largest category are nicotine replacement products. This can be gums, patches, pouches or inhalers. There's a large category and there are more on the horizon, like nicotine pearls.

Another category is cytisine, which is a drug that's derived from laburnum trees. It has a proven efficacy and is a new drug in Canada with largely an unknown impact in terms of its overall use.

Then there are homeopathic and herbal medicines that are licensed, even though they're not considered to be a particularly effective treatment.

One thing that's important to consider is how the NHP smoking cessation market is changing. There are new products and new players, and these are posing new regulatory challenges. Stop-smoking medications are no longer manufactured and sold by consumer health companies. They're sold by tobacco companies, nicotine companies and even cannabis companies. Zonnic is the most recent entry, but it's certainly not the only one.

This package of Sesh nicotine gum I picked up at a Circle K last week was sitting on the counter right beside Reese's Peanut Butter Cups—

[Sylvia Hyland, Vice-President, Operations and Privacy Officer, Institute for Safe Medication Practices Canada]

The second key concern regarding Bill C-368 is the negative impact on the precision regulatory powers that are in place to address serious risks related to NHPs. These powers also depend on NHPs being defined as “therapeutic products” in the Food and Drugs Act.

An example is, as we heard just now, the recent ministerial order for requirements regarding the sale of nicotine pouches and the risk to kids. The order requires that nicotine pouches be kept behind the counter in a pharmacy and not sold in convenience stores.

To provide another example, serious risks related to pseudoephedrine were addressed by the May 2024 interim ministerial order. However, it will expire.

To be clear, these are only examples of where the ministerial order may be required to address emerging serious risks related to NHPs. Precision regulatory powers are needed when risks arise after a product has been approved to be marketed for an intended purpose and the product is being used in ways other than was intended and approved. We can anticipate that other serious risks related to NHPs will arise in the future.

Health Canada must have the authorities to conduct the post-market regulatory activities that will identify serious risks with NHPs and be able to take timely action to address these risks when needed in urgent situations.

In conclusion, the Vanessa's Law authorities and the precision regulatory powers that we have highlighted today should remain in place. Bill C-368 would reverse regulatory changes that are needed to protect the health and safety of Canadians.

Thank you.

[Carolyn Hoffman, Chief Executive Officer, Institute for Safe Medication Practices Canada]

Thank you, Chair.

On behalf of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices Canada, we appreciate the opportunity to provide our perspective regarding Bill C-368.

ISMP Canada is a pan-Canadian, not-for-profit and independent organization established in 2000 to improve the safety of drugs and health products for Canadians. Our key activities include expert analysis of error reports from consumers, providers and health care organizations to learn about the risks related to these products; to share evidence-informed recommendations for improved safety; and to work with consumers, care providers and other health system partners to reduce preventable harm.

We recognize that access to safe natural health products is important to Canadians. Through our work and that of others, we know that the manufacturing of NHPs and the use of NHP products are not without risk.

Many Canadians may not be aware that NHPs are a broad category and include more than vitamins, herbal remedies, traditional medicines and homeopathic medicines. For example, acceptable medicinal ingredients also include scopolamine, pseudoephedrine and methyl salicylate.

Consumers have shared with us that they believe that Health Canada has rigorously checked and approved all NHPs for safety. They also assume retailers will sell them only if they're approved by Health Canada and that they are safe for sale. Consumers said, “I trust what is on the shelf is good for you”, and that they are “safe since they are on the shelf.”

Over 700 incident reports related to NHPs have been reported to us, including 400 since 2019. Of these 400 reports, over 15% indicated some level of harm. Most were mild harm; however, two were reported as contributing to a death. Importantly, there is under-reporting of incidents to us.

We have two key areas of concern regarding Bill C-368. The first is that natural health products will be exempted from the important regulatory provisions under Vanessa's Law. We provide four specific examples of the impact.

Health Canada would no longer have the authority to recall a product from retail settings if there is an identified serious risk.

Health Canada would no longer have the authority to compel a label change if there is an identified serious risk.

Health Canada would no longer be able to advance new regulations that require licence-holders to conduct additional tests to help inform Health Canada's risk assessments.

Health Canada would no longer be able to advance new regulations that require that serious NHP adverse reactions be reported when a patient is seen in hospital. Reversing this capability is concerning because this information is essential to better understanding the magnitude and impact of the risks related to NHPs.

[Flory Doucas, Co-Director and Spokesperson, Coalition québécoise pour le contrôle du tabac]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, everyone.

I am Flory Doucas, co-director and spokesperson for the Coalition québécoise pour le contrôle du tabac. The mandate of the Quebec coalition for tobacco control is centred on reducing smoking and nicotine addiction. We therefore do not have a position on Bill C‑368 as a whole.

However, if the bill were to be adopted as is, it would severely undermine current federal efforts to protect youth from nicotine addiction. Bill C‑368 would cancel the supplementary rules respecting nicotine replacement therapies order, authorized last August under section 30.01 of the Food and Drugs Act, under which the Minister of Health can impose additional rules on therapeutic products by means of a ministerial order. This authority is what enabled the precise and tailored regulatory rules that address the potential harms resulting from the irresponsible promotion of nicotine-based therapeutic products that glamorizes and promotes their recreational use.

These measures were in response to the introduction to the Canadian market, in October 2023, of Zonnic, a nicotine pouch that was commercialized by Imperial Tobacco Canada and that was approved for sale by Health Canada as a natural product in July 2023. The promotion of Zonnic, with its brazen lifestyle advertising, bright colours and exotic flavours, such as Tropic Breeze and Berry Frost, clearly evoked themes like pleasure, lifestyle and youth. Images of young people in social settings populated these promotions, clearly painting aspirational lifestyles for youth.

Since the ministerial order issued last August, these nicotine replacement therapies, NRTs, remain available for smokers across the country, but across all provinces, they must be sold by a pharmacist and be kept behind the counter. They cannot be sold with flavours other than mint and menthol. They cannot be advertised in a way that is appealing to youth. They require a warning on addiction, and they cannot come in packaging that has youth appeal.

By amending the definition of therapeutic products in the Food and Drugs Act to exclude natural health products, Bill C-368 would eliminate the effect of these new regulations. The lack of federal measures would also serve to undermine stricter provincial regulations, such as those that exist in Quebec and in B.C., by creating enforcement challenges resulting from online interprovincial sales and promotions.

Should Bill C-368 be adopted without an amendment to carve out NRTs from its scope, Health Canada's current ability to enact mandatory recalls of NRT products when deemed necessary to prevent against injury would be eliminated. Health Canada would be prevented from vetting promotional materials before new products hit the market. Industry could roll out new NRTs with all kinds of flavours that could be enticing to youth.

The effects of adopting an unamended Bill C-368 would be felt beyond Zonnic pouches. There is actually a global corporate campaign to reframe nicotine as a more benign and ordinary consumer product akin to caffeine, with beneficial effects such as “helping adults to relax”, as Imperial Tobacco Canada states on its website.

Tobacco industry documents reveal that the introduction of novel nicotine products aims to compensate for decreasing smoking rates around the globe by creating addicts to new nicotine products. We've seen this with vaping. For this reason, the Quebec coalition, without endorsing either the adoption or the rejection of the proposed legislation, respectfully asks that, should Bill C-368 go forward, the Standing Committee on Health amend it to carve out nicotine products from its scope, as provided by the legislative text found on the first page of our written submission.

Nicotine is a drug that causes harm, not only through addiction, but also in terms of physical and mental health, especially among youth.

In a January 2024 policy brief, the World Heart Federation wrote, “For decades, the tobacco industry has promoted the myth that nicotine is as harmless as caffeine. Nonetheless, evidence shows that nicotine is far from innocuous, even on its own. In fact, numerous studies have demonstrated that nicotine can harm multiple organs, including the respiratory and cardiovascular systems.”

Meanwhile, numerous other scientific publications have confirmed how because their brain is still maturing, nicotine exposure during adolescence alters cognitive function and attention performance in youth.

Should Bill C‑368 go forward, it should be amended so as to carve out nicotine products.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

I call this meeting to order. Welcome to meeting 139 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health.

Before we begin, I ask all in-person participants to read the guidelines written on the cards on the table. These measures are in place to help prevent audio and feedback incidents and to protect the health and safety of all participants, including the interpreters.

In accordance with our routine motion, I'm informing the committee that all remote participants, with the exception of Dr. Powlowski, have completed the required connection tests. We're going to proceed with the opening statements and check in with Dr. Powlowski at the end of that, just to try to move things along.

Pursuant to the order of reference of May 29, the committee will resume its study of Bill C-368, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (natural health products). Before we begin, I remind members that clause-by-clause consideration of the bill is this Thursday. The deadline to submit amendments is in 53 minutes from now. The amendment package will be circulated as soon as possible after the deadline.

I would now like to welcome our panel of witnesses.

From the Coalition québécoise pour le contrôle du tabac, we have Flory Doucas, co-director and spokesperson.

Representing the Institute for Safe Medication Practices Canada are Carolyn Hoffman, CEO, and Sylvia Hyland, vice-president, operations and privacy officer. On behalf of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada we have Cynthia Callard, executive director. Representing the Traditional Chinese Medicine Association of Canada is Pierre Chen, registered traditional Chinese medicine practitioner and registered acupuncturist. Mr. Chen is joining us via video conference. Thank you all for being with us.

We're going to begin with opening statements of up to five minutes in length.

We'll start with the Coalition québécoise pour le contrôle du tabac.

Welcome, Ms. Doucas. The floor is yours.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Ms. Patel, what are the risks associated with Bill C-368 if it's passed?

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

The Auditor General's report noted that Health Canada was not doing its job. According to that report, there were audits of certain companies, but it wasn't the companies that were problematic. The problem was that Health Canada was unable to do its job to ensure the safety of products and carry out the necessary inspections to ensure that there would not be any problems related to natural health products.

In addition, the methodology was flawed. After 30 years without inspections, the government wanted a way to pay for inspections, so it implemented cost recovery, which is not at all appropriate for the industry. That's another issue.

Bill C‑368 would change the environment. It creates some distance from the pharmaceutical sector and considers natural health products on their own terms by imposing appropriate fines, appropriate labelling, and so on.

You haven't been inspected once in 30 years. That's hard to believe. That suggests the problem isn't you; it's Health Canada.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

So the answer to my question would be yes. You would be reassured if we made an amendment to retain the minister's recall powers, while ensuring an appropriate regime for natural health products in terms of fines, and so on.

That's what Bill C‑368 does. It makes it possible to remove natural health products from the pharmaceutical products environment, while creating strict guidelines to ensure the safe sale and consumption of these products. Natural product companies value their reputation.

I understand that the answer to my question is yes in terms of the amendments I intend to make.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Yes, that was my understanding.

Even before the ministerial order, you were making those recommendations and using those products. Essentially, you trusted those products.

If we amended Bill C‑368 to maintain the minister's recall powers, would the bill be valid from your perspective?

What I'm trying to do is bring these different strands together to find commonalities. Vanessa's Law would not have been passed if there hadn't been issues with pharmaceutical products. You've been using those forever. There is no such thing as no risk. Pharmaceutical companies' products have many more side effects, which can be more serious and undesirable.

Why should an industry be considered on the same footing as pharmaceutical companies?

Would this amendment deal with this issue, in your opinion? The minister would retain recall powers, and we would make an amendment for nicotine products.

Would the parents you're talking about find that reassuring?

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for their informative testimony.

We move forward as we work in committee and study a bill. What I heard from all the witnesses, except perhaps Ms. Hepburn, is that, in its current state, the bill is unacceptable from the standpoint of health, specifically children's health, because of nicotine products. I've already announced that we will be moving an amendment to exclude nicotine products from Bill C‑368.

However, I heard an additional concern from Ms. Hepburn. I heard that you've been using natural health products and recommending them since long before Vanessa's Law was implemented, which was not that long ago.

Now, all of a sudden, you would have a problem recommending natural products. Why is that, knowing that the current regulations could wipe out several companies and have the unintended consequence of allowing foreign products entering the country to bypass regulations and inspections altogether?

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I want to come to you, Mr. Thuna.

You spoke about enforcement. You said that regulations are important—I appreciate that, as a business owner, you want those regulations—but you said that there needs to be enforcement, that without enforcement they mean nothing. As I understand, that's precisely what Vanessa's Law does. It actually gives the power to recall a product in case it's not meeting the regulation.

Is it not precisely doing what you're suggesting should happen? There are regulations in place, and there's an enforcement mechanism. If we pass Bill C-368, that enforcement mechanism then is gone.

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

You also indicated that you feel strongly that Bill C-368 would undermine the ability of government to protect young people from a number of potential health threats.

Can you, for our benefit, elaborate further on the risks of passing Bill C-368 in its current form?

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I want to thank all the witnesses for being here and for their testimony.

I also want to put on the record that we're dealing with Bill C-368 here. It deals with Vanessa's Law, which does not deal with the issue of cost recovery or labelling. I think the 20% number of businesses leaving was in relation to cost recovery and labelling.

Let me start with Dr. Moore Hepburn.

Thank you for your testimony. You said that you have serious concerns if this bill passes. You said it would undermine “provider trust and consumer trust”. I think that was your testimony.

In a brief that was submitted to the committee by the Canadian Medical Association, they took the position that “decisions regarding health care products, including NHPs, should be based on sound scientific evidence.” Do you agree with their evidence?

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

We're very concerned about keeping as many businesses—small, medium and large—as possible in Canada. In today's day and age, businesses can move. What we've heard from industry in a survey that was done is that up to 20% of businesses would consider moving in the current context.

If Bill C-368 doesn't pass, what does the business case in Canada look like versus international competitors?

[Joel Thuna]

Bill C-368 will make it so that we have an environment similar to the environment we've been living under since the creation of the natural health products directorate. That is an environment where we know what is required of us. We know essentially what the goalposts are and we know how to meet these requirements. The problem is that once you start moving the goalposts and keep moving them, it's uncertain. With uncertainty, you're virtually creating a guarantee that companies that are trying to stay in compliance will not physically be able to.

We're a small company. We're actually larger than most of the companies in our industry on a number-for-number basis, but we're still a very small company. We're very proud of that. We do an awful lot with our small staff, and we're proud of that. The biggest challenge we have is keeping up and maintaining our high level of compliance, with the number of people we have.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Thank you.

I think you mentioned that you have 10 people employed at your location, and that's certainly reflective of what we're hearing and understanding about the industry in all corners of our many communities across the country. A lot of mom-and-pop shops and small businesses are impacted by these regulations.

Could you give some of your insights, from your perspective, on how Bill C-368 will help those shops and family-owned businesses like your own?

[Dr. Charlotte Moore Hepburn, Medical Director, Child Health Policy Accelerator, Hospital for Sick Children and Associate Professor, Department of Paediatrics, University of Toronto]

Thank you so much.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for the invitation to appear.

My name is Charlotte Moore Hepburn. For the last 18 years, I've practised pediatrics at the Hospital for Sick Children, which is Canada's largest children's hospital. I'm also proud to serve as the director of medical affairs for the SickKids child health policy accelerator, where our mission is to bridge the gap between medical evidence and public policy in order to optimize health outcomes for Canadian children and youth.

As it stands, we have serious concerns about Bill C-368. We feel this bill would significantly weaken the regulatory protections over natural health products in Canada, reducing the essential safety and quality standards that are currently in place. This would fundamentally compromise both provider trust and consumer trust in all NHPs.

Since I became a physician almost 20 years ago, our understanding of and appreciation for natural health products has substantially increased. The evidence base supporting the use of NHPs has expanded over time, as has an appreciation for the importance of identifying and reporting adverse events and drug-NHP interactions. As a pediatrician, knowing that NHPs are well regulated, I'm comfortable recommending NHPs to my patients when and where appropriate. We also now actively train medical students to make sure we ask all patients, without judgment, if they are using natural health products in parallel with the therapies that we prescribe.

Should NHPs fall outside of the definition of therapeutics under the Food and Drugs Act, and should those critical regulatory standards and safeguards no longer apply, my comfort and ability to recommend NHPs to my patients would have to change.

In addition, and importantly, Bill C-368 presents a serious and immediate risk to children's health, given the current regulatory status of synthetic nicotine as a natural health product. As pediatricians, my colleagues from across the country and I see first-hand the devastating impact of nicotine addiction in our patients. We care for seventh and eighth graders who started vaping even before entering middle school, who now require professional support in their efforts to quit. We care for young people in high school with disrupted sleep, decreased appetite and poor academic performance, all of which can be attributed to their nicotine addiction.

Sadly, we've stabilized not only teenagers but also toddlers suffering from intentional or unintentional acute nicotine toxicity secondary to nicotine exposure. We failed our children so profoundly when the threat of novel nicotine delivery systems and other non-combustible nicotine-containing products first presented itself. As mentioned by others, Canada now sadly leads the world in terms of youth vaping rates.

With synthetic nicotine products like nicotine pouches now on the market regulated as NHPs, with this bill we could risk failing them again. There must be comprehensive regulatory protections in place ensuring that young people, people who have never smoked a traditional cigarette in their lifetime, never experience the harms associated with nicotine.

This bill would remove the government's current ability to keep synthetic nicotine pouches out of the hands of children, and, more broadly, it would make it more difficult for the government to regulate emerging health threats in a timely manner.

I would echo the comments from others who have testified before you. The challenges associated with the current NHP regulations, including the regulation of nicotine as an NHP, all merit robust public discussion. However, as witnesses last week pointed out, Bill C-368 doesn't solve those problems. It simply weakens our ability to ensure that NHPs are safe for use and fails the next generation of children in terms of protecting them against the well-known and well-defined harms associated with nicotine.

I'll close my remarks by asking the committee to consider the impact that this bill would have on children and their health. It's critically important that we preserve access to safe, well-regulated NHPs that serve children and families well, while at the same time restricting the sale of highly addictive substances like synthetic nicotine to our youth.

I look forward to further conversations and questions about how we can improve children's health together. Thank you.

[Foram Patel, Policy Analyst, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members.

The Heart and Stroke Foundation appreciates the opportunity to appear before this committee to discuss Bill C-368, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act regarding natural health products.

Let me be clear. The Heart and Stroke Foundation is not against improved access to natural health products. I'm here today only to address the unintended consequence that this bill would have on the regulation of nicotine pouches and on other new and emerging nicotine products that could lure children and youth into nicotine addiction.

As it stands, the bill would exclude natural health products from the definition of therapeutic products. This change would be problematic because of its implications for the government's ability to regulate nicotine pouches and other nicotine replacement products, which are currently classified as natural health products. The Food and Drugs Act applies only to therapeutic products, so if natural health products are no longer classified as therapeutic products, there would be no act under which the government could regulate all these products. This is a gap that leaves our youth especially vulnerable.

In August 2024, Health Canada adopted the supplementary rules respecting nicotine replacement therapies order. It includes many provisions intended to keep nicotine pouches out of the hands of young people, such as requiring nicotine pouches to be sold in pharmacies only and to be placed behind the counter, banning flavour descriptors that can be appealing to youth and only allowing mint and menthol flavours, adding health warnings to the nicotine pouch packaging, and banning advertising, packaging and labelling that can be appealing to young people.

Prior to this, the unregulated sale of nicotine pouches such as Zonnic posed a danger to young people in Canada. As health advocates, we are long familiar with the methods of the tobacco industry and how it uses tactics to hook young people onto its products. First, it was cigarettes and chewing tobacco. Then it was vaping. Now it's nicotine pouches that risk addicting a whole new generation.

We know that nicotine is one of the most addictive substances on earth. It affects adolescent brain development, particularly the parts of the brain that control learning, attention, mood and impulse. We now have important measures in place to protect young people from these harmful products that research has shown to be potential gateways for future use of vaping and tobacco products. However, these measures are currently being threatened by Bill C-368.

To conclude, I urge the committee members to support an amendment to the bill that would address the concerns that have been raised by health groups, especially with regard to nicotine products. We urge you to keep in place the supplementary rules respecting nicotine replacement therapies order. No one was prepared for the aggressive marketing that the tobacco industry would use to target our teens, and now we have some of the highest teen vaping rates in the world. We can't repeat this mistake with nicotine pouches. Children and youth deserve to be protected from the predatory tactics of the tobacco industry, which is now trying to skirt the rules with nicotine pouches and other nicotine replacement products.

Thank you.

[Sarah Butson, Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Lung Association]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to the committee for inviting me to speak here today. My name is Sarah Butson. I'm the CEO of the Canadian Lung Association.

Our organization has spent almost 125 years focused on helping Canadians breathe. We do this by funding research, leading advocacy and providing health information to Canadians. We have a long history in tobacco control, given its devastating impact on the health of our lungs. Still today, it remains a leading cause of preventable disease and death in Canada. In particular, it is a primary cause of lung disease.

With that context, I am pleased to speak to you today regarding Bill C-368, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act. Our concerns with this private member's bill rest primarily with the potential unintended consequences should the bill be adopted in its current form, and its potential to undo important new restrictions put in place through a ministerial order called the “supplementary rules respecting nicotine replacement therapies order”. This order restricts the availability and appeal of some orally administered forms of nicotine replacement therapies, such as nicotine pouches. This keeps them out of the hands of children and youth.

We are appearing today to urge that if Bill C-368 is adopted, it be amended so that it would not impact nicotine products.

In the fall of 2023, Imperial Tobacco Canada announced that it had begun selling nicotine pouches under the brand Zonnic. Zonnic had been approved under the natural health products regulations. Soon, these products were available at local convenience stores, sold beside candy, with enticing flavours, packaging and promotion seemingly aimed at a younger generation. It also meant that there was no minimum age of purchase, marking the first time in modern history that a nicotine product owned by a tobacco company could be sold to minors.

CLA was among a group of concerned national health organizations that immediately urged the government to take action. Swift action was indeed taken. This demonstrated the commitment by decision-makers to protect young people from the influences of the tobacco industry. These products should never have been made available in the manner that they were. As an organization that has dedicated decades to protecting lung health, we were deeply concerned and outraged about the potential for this product to hook a new generation, which may lead to a lifelong battle with nicotine addiction.

The ministerial order that I mentioned above puts in place several important measures. It ensures that nicotine pouches are available for sale only behind the counter at pharmacies, and it limits the available flavours to only mint and menthol. We know that limiting access and reducing the appeal of products are policy measures that can have an impact on the likelihood that young people will use these products.

The order also places limits on advertising and promotions, with requirements of warnings and advising statements. Importantly, this order does not negatively impact other forms of nicotine replacement therapies that are currently available—we know that the over three million Canadians who currently smoke and may want to quit may need to access those supportive cessation aids—while at the same time it ensures that a new generation is not enticed.

The ministerial order righted a wrong that should never have occurred. We want to ensure that those protective measures stay in place. As a result, we would once again urge that, if adopted, Bill C-368 contain an amendment that it would not apply to nicotine products.

I thank you for your time and consideration. I would be happy to answer any questions.

[Joel Thuna, General Manager, Pure-lē Canada, As an Individual]

Thank you for inviting me here today.

My name is Joel Thuna. I'm a fourth-generation master herbalist and the general manager of Pure-lē Canada, my family's small business. We directly employ 10 people in our building, and we indirectly help employ many more Canadians through our distributors, brokers, farmers and supplier network, which is in every province. For 135 years, my family has manufactured what are now called NHPs in Canada. We are a compliant company with over 500 product licences.

In my 50 years in the industry, I have seen the landscape change time and again. I testified before this very committee 26 years ago regarding the inappropriateness of Canada's regulations that treated NHPs as drugs. This committee consulted with Canadians and issued a report, “Natural Health Products: A New Vision”. In 1999, the Liberal government's Minister of Health, Allan Rock, announced that the report and all of its recommendations had been accepted by this House.

The report's guiding principles included the following:

...NHPs are different in nature from and must not be treated strictly as either food or pharmaceutical products....

NHP regulations must not unduly restrict access by consumers....

NHP regulations must not place inappropriate cost on industry, consumers and government....

Information regarding decisions and the regulatory system must be readily available to NHP stakeholders.

As an industry, we had high hopes that the resulting legislation and regulations would, once and for all, be appropriate to NHPs. The NHPD was set up. Through wide consultation, Canada achieved the enviable. We had laws and regulations that protected consumers and gave them access to the products they wanted, all with industry buy-in. Businesses were licensed and products required pre-market licensing. Repeatedly, we heard that Canada had regulations that were the envy of the world.

Over the past four years, multiple laws and regulations have been introduced without meaningful consultation or proper economic impact assessment. This patchwork system is causing me and my colleagues to question the viability of Canada's NHP sector. I was asked to estimate the cost to my small business. We estimated the first-year cost to exceed $500,000, with annual costs exceeding $300,000. These days, no small family business can survive with these additional costs.

Classifying NHPs as drugs is inappropriate. One complication of this is putting NHPs under Vanessa's Law. This is using a jackhammer to swat a fruit fly. Existing measures, such as inspection, stop-sale, seizure and licence suspension, are rarely used. Regulation without enforcement is meaningless. Health Canada has the power to suspend licences, if required. Industry is happy to consult on appropriate regulations for recall.

New requirements for drug labelling are to come into force. These regulations do not provide any new information to consumers, but rather make the packages confusing and increase costs that are going to be passed on to consumers. Additionally, these regulations will reduce the likelihood of package recycling, needlessly increasing our industry's carbon footprint.

Foreign actors see that the easiest and cheapest route for Canadians is through the personal use importation framework. A significant portion of Canadians now buy product not captured under Health Canada regulations, exposing themselves to unacceptable risks. In the past, I have questioned Health Canada: If a product is potentially harmful, how is it potentially harmful only when manufactured in Canada but not when imported? The big sticking point I have is that Canadian companies are investing to be compliant yet losing a lot of money and jobs. Canadians who buy NHPs outside Canada are bringing in a combination of products they can't get here and products they can. They do this to reduce their shipping costs. This is destroying Canada's retailers. Do you understand the depth of the problem? There are foreign companies with warehouses in Canada for their non-licensed products, so customers can get fast, no-border-issues shipments. This means no tax revenue and no Health Canada oversight.

In the end, Canadians want what they have today: access to safe, well-made products. Bill C-368, along with extensive and meaningful stakeholder consultation prior to new regulation and law introduction, is a good starting point to bring Canada back to the guiding principles that are supposed to guide all legislation and regulations for NHPs.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 138 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health.

In accordance with our routine motion, I'm informing the committee that all remote participants have completed the required connection tests in advance of the meeting.

Pursuant to the order of reference of May 29, 2024, the committee will resume its study of Bill C-368, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act regarding natural health products.

I'd like to welcome our panel of witnesses.

Today we have Joel Thuna, general manager, Pure-lē Canada. Representing the Canadian Lung Association is Sarah Butson, CEO. She's appearing virtually. From the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, we have Foram Patel, policy analyst. From the Hospital for Sick Children, also appearing by video conference, we have Dr. Charlotte Moore Hepburn, medical director of the child health policy accelerator, and associate professor at the department of pediatrics, University of Toronto.

Thanks to all witnesses for being here today. You will have up to five minutes for an opening statement, followed by rounds of questions from the parliamentarians here.

We're going to begin with Mr. Thuna.

You have the floor, sir.

[Gerry Harrington]

Yes. Making natural health products therapeutic products does not necessarily make them pharmaceuticals. In fact, the therapeutic products regime goes from pharmaceuticals and vaccines to medical devices. It is a broad category.

The real issues we're facing are regulatory. It has been identified from the time Vanessa's Law became law that we need to treat consumer health products differently from prescription drugs. The fact that we're spending this much time talking about labelling is one of the most obvious reasons for that, because you label a consumer product in such a way that consumers can use that product without any professional supervision.

Those kinds of issues that have developed over time—the cost recovery problem and the post-approval inspection issue, which is very real—are all things that emerged prior to the application of Vanessa's Law, and they'll still be here if Bill C-368 passes.

[Roberta Kramchynsky, Vice-President, Health Policy and Regulatory Affairs, Food, Health & Consumer Products of Canada]

Thank you.

When we're thinking about this bill—and I think from FHCP's perspective—we appreciate the attention that it's bringing to talking about the challenges in the NHP program, like labelling and cost recovery. These are all things my colleagues across the table have talked about today.

All of these actually predate Vanessa's Law, and I think Bill C-368 doesn't solve those problems. However, we really appreciate the opportunity to talk about these challenges facing our industry and to think through how we can work to solve those. As we said in our opening statement, this bill doesn't solve those problems, but by working together, we can find those solutions and bring that forward to be safe and to provide a common-sense approach for Canadians.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thanks very much.

Really, this characterization that Bill C-368 will only change Vanessa's Law is actually not true. Is that correct?

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you very much, Chair.

It's interesting, Ms. Gorham, that you mentioned six major changes to regulations in the industry, which realistically are related to the change in definition around a therapeutic product and how natural health products fit in there. That is directly addressed by Bill C-368.

We focused very much on Vanessa's Law and those kinds of things, but all of the other changes, because of the change in definition, would follow suit, which are the six major changes that you have outlined. Could you please tell us, for the benefit of those listening at home, what those six major changes are?

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you. Hopefully, I will not lose any time from that, Chair.

My questions are going to be for Mr. Harrington, from Food, Health and Consumer Products of Canada.

We heard this week from the minister that there are some benefits to industry maintaining Vanessa's Law, such as in precision regulating. Could you talk about how Vanessa's Law can benefit the NHP industry and how passing Bill C-368 could actually harm the industry instead of serving it well?

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Right now, nicotine is considered a natural health product, although I consider it a hard drug, given that it is toxic and incredibly addictive. So it has a negative effect on people's health.

Nicotine replacement products are currently subject to the Supplementary Rules Respecting Nicotine Replacement Therapies Order, adopted on August 9, 2024, as a result of their insertion into the provisions of Vanessa's Law.

I believe that, given how dangerous they are, these products shouldn't be removed from the list of products subject to the same laws and regulations as drugs.

Do you agree with the amendment I want to propose so that the provisions of Bill C‑368 do not apply to nicotine replacement products?

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

In that sense, Health Canada was more problematic than the industry.

Now, the industry surely wants to have a position of authority or prestige and protect its brand. Is the industry really against non-voluntary recalls, in other words, mandatory recalls?

What would you think if, for example, Bill C‑368 proposed to remove natural health products from the provisions brought in by Vanessa's Law, but still gave the minister the power to proceed with product recalls? Would you agree with that?

[Gerry Harrington, Senior Vice-President, Consumer Health, Food, Health & Consumer Products of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The members of Food, Health & Consumer Products of Canada produce most of the natural health products sold in Canada and the vast majority of over-the-counter medicines also used by Canadians in the practice of self-care. Self-care empowers Canadians to play a greater role in the management of their own health and, in so doing, frees up resources in our health care system to deal with more complex health issues.

Bill C-368 is about a vital Canadian industry, but it's also about a very important part of health care at a crucial time for our struggling health care system. FHCP members greatly appreciate this committee's interest in Health Canada's NHP program, and we agree with virtually all stakeholders that this program, right now, is struggling. Along with the concerns raised by the Auditor General that the committee has already heard about, NHP authorization and site licensing operations are both severely backlogged, at times threatening product launches and even expansion into foreign markets.

The committee has heard a lot about these issues, along with industry's significant concerns about the labelling regulations and cost recovery. These are the problems that are blocking access to NHPs and keeping our members up at night, but Bill C-368 addresses none of those problems.

It's impossible to frame our response to Bill C-368 without reference to Health Canada's self-care framework. The framework emerged from the original debates around Vanessa's Law in 2014. The concern at the time was that it would anchor over-the-counter medicines to the prescription drug framework while leaving natural health products in a separate legislative framework, despite the fact that both categories sit side by side on store shelves and are used by Canadians without the supervision of a health practitioner. The government of the day responded to those concerns with the consumer health products framework, which sought to create a risk-based regulatory system for both product categories separate from the prescription drug regulations.

Since then, the framework has been a source of both promise and frustration. After rebranding in 2016 as the self-care framework, and a series of cross-Canada consultations in 2017, the framework was reorganized into a three-phase project in 2018. First, it proposed new labelling rules for NHPs modelled on previously passed rules for OTC products. Second, it proposed crucial regulatory modernization for OTC medicines to simplify market authorization pathways and provide innovation incentives. Finally, the third phase of the framework would bring NHPs into this modernized framework, including the simpler product application pathways and innovation incentives; it would implement cost recovery and apply Vanessa's Law.

FHCP was alarmed by that proposed plan, because we knew that the OTC rules had been a disaster for industry and for consumers. Nonetheless, the technical discussions on regulatory modernization promised meaningful new efficiencies and innovation incentives, and industry worked hard with the department to move that crucial piece forward.

Then the pandemic hit, and progress on the framework came to a halt. In 2022, those labelling regulations were approved and implementation timelines were set. Less than a year later, the NHP cost recovery proposal was put forward, and Bill C-47 brought NHPs in under Vanessa's Law. The promised regulatory reforms originally targeted for 2019 were characterized as “to be determined” sometime in 2025, or beyond.

At that point, the idea that the self-care framework was about separating self-care products from prescription drugs was hard to defend. All measures undertaken to that point had simply moved NHPs closer to the prescription drug framework. Discussions around broader regulatory modernization had virtually disappeared.

One of the great ironies of this whole process is that the problems identified in the 2021 Auditor General report are all things that the framework would have addressed had it been completed in the original time frames. Simplified product approval pathways, originally proposed under the framework, would have improved consumer access and been much more efficient for industry. They would have also freed Health Canada resources from pre-market approvals, which the AG found robust, and allowed them to be applied to post-market enforcement, which the AG identified as lacking. That, in turn, would have permitted the development of a realistic cost recovery proposal that would generate sustainable funding for Health Canada without punitive costs to industry.

That brings us to today's debate. FHCP and its members appreciate this committee's genuine interest in the sector. However, passing Bill C-368 would not be without risks for industry and wouldn't solve the real, immediate challenges our sector faces. What both consumers and industry need is the modern consumer health product framework that was promised in 2014.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Kramchynsky and I are looking forward to your questions.

[Peter Maddox, President, Direct Sellers Association of Canada]

Thank you to the chair and the committee for providing me with the opportunity to speak today.

My name is Peter Maddox, and I'm the president of the Direct Sellers Association of Canada. DSA Canada was founded in 1954. We have over 60 direct seller and supplier member companies, including well-known brands such as Mary Kay, Arbonne, Avon, Usana, Shaklee, SoulLife and Immunotec. We represent a diverse and dynamic industry that is integral to Canadian entrepreneurship, and we care deeply about customer service and consumer safety.

Every year, the direct-selling sales channel accounts for an estimated $3.4 billion in retail sales and contributes $1.5 billion in personal revenue to the approximately one million Canadians who participate as independent sales consultants, 84% of whom are women. Many DSA Canada member companies include NHPs in their product portfolios. Around 45% of current independent sales consultants gain at least some income from selling NHPs.

Our focus today is to raise concerns about process—specifically, the process followed when Bill C-47 brought Vanessa's Law to the NHP space and, more broadly, how this is symptomatic of the imperfect process that industry has seen in the federal regulation of NHPs, which has led to a lack of transparency, clarity and certainty for all stakeholders. This is creating unnecessary economic barriers and risks for both consumers and businesses. Vanessa's Law, including mandatory recalls and label changes, was introduced to NHPs via an omnibus budget bill, without being open to significant levels of debate or consultation.

We question the value of adding these measures when existing tools, such as stop-sales and inspections, are infrequently utilized. Effective regulation must be backed by consistent and proactive enforcement. Otherwise, existing rules and the introduction of new regulation have nominal impact. With the introduction of Vanessa's Law, along with other proposed Health Canada initiatives, such as cost recovery, we were disappointed by the lack of consultation and economic impact assessments, including studies of the impact on women. Our desire is for a world-class NHP system built on best practice, co-operation among all stakeholders, the use of research and data, and an intention to balance the needs of consumers, industry and other impacted parties. Slipping a new requirement into existence via an omnibus budget bill is one piece of evidence that this is not happening.

Uncertainty and lack of clarity in regulatory processes are causing Canadian direct-selling companies to struggle with product innovation, pushing our multinational businesses to consider reducing their product offerings or exiting the Canadian market. Furthermore, international NHP direct-selling companies not yet operating in Canada are choosing to expand into other markets instead. The result is diminished investment, employment and tax contributions. Uniquely in the direct-selling industry, it also reduces earning opportunities for the many Canadians who participate in our channel as a side hustle or gig for supplementary income. A lack of consistency, timeliness and predictability in decision-making, program implementation and ongoing operations is hurting the economy, reducing consumer choice and raising costs.

One area where collective action could help improve the situation for Canadian entrepreneurs and consumers is an enforcement focus on international businesses that undertake commercial activity under the auspices of Canada's personal use exemption. If we do not invest in policing these unregulated products entering Canada, more companies will see the personal use exemption as a way to distribute products to end-consumers without having to do the right thing and go through the Canadian regulatory process. Unapproved products create potential health risks for consumers and punish companies that are deeply committed to the Canadian market while operating here in good faith and good practice.

In closing, DSA Canada supports Bill C-368 as a means of resetting and realigning the NHP regulatory environment, enabling all stakeholders to work together to create a system that prioritizes consumer safety while fostering economic growth.

Thank you, and I welcome your questions.

[Jules Gorham, Director, Regulatory Affairs and Policy, Canadian Health Food Association]

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

My name is Jules Gorham. I'm the director of regulatory affairs and policy at the Canadian Health Food Association, a trade association that represents natural, organic and wellness products. Aaron Skelton, president and CEO of the association, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today.

The central problem we're bringing to you today is the continued abuse of Health Canada's authority. In 2023 and 2024, Health Canada made significant changes to the laws governing natural health products, or NHPs, through omnibus budget bills, rather than through the parliamentary process. It has undone the hard work done by this committee and by parliamentarians on legislative studies in previous parliaments.

In budget 2023, through division 27 of part 4 of Bill C-47, Health Canada redefined NHPs within the Food and Drugs Act. This redefinition is not just semantics. The passing of that bill fundamentally changed how NHPs are regulated, placing them closer to the likes of pharmaceuticals than the lower-risk products they inherently are.

Adding a change of this magnitude to an omnibus bill was a reaction to the Auditor General's report that would bypass stakeholder consultation and questioning by this very committee, which had already stated Vanessa's Law was too complex for NHPs back in 2014. Catching an entire industry off guard and evading proper parliamentary process has left us with a mess that has severe ramifications for business, trade and public health.

It is upon this committee to remind the department that Canada has laws that compel our public service to respect international trade law and fair, transparent public engagement. In less than three years, the NHP industry has been subject to six major legislative and regulatory changes in the form of two omnibus bills, new labelling laws built on those used to manage prescription medication, a cost recovery program proposed without proper cost-benefit or gender-based analysis, and new inspection and good manufacturing practices guidance similar to that for pharmaceuticals.

The impact of such layered, unchecked powers is not hypothetical. It has already created a staggering and untenable situation for companies across the sector. It fosters an imbalance that makes being compliant an unattractive and risky business.

The Food and Drugs Act and the NHP regulations exist to give industry trust in the regulators and stability in our system. If they can be changed without scrutiny or transparency, what protection exists for the industry or Canadians?

We would like to be clear that CHFA does not represent any smoking cessation or tobacco products. The argument that NHPs must remain defined as therapeutic drugs to keep nicotine pouches behind the pharmacist counter is worthy of a debate of its own.

We would also like to clarify a commonly cited falsehood that CHFA and our members are against regulations. Since 2004, NHPs in Canada have been the most strictly regulated in the world, under a very rigorous framework. However, Health Canada's approach is increasingly focused on creating an overly complex and costly pre-market system requiring extensive resources but without offering corresponding post-market monitoring, which Vanessa's Law will not solve. This burdensome, imbalanced framework still fails to deliver the consumer protection it promises.

Misinformation about the safety of NHPs has been a common thread through multiple testimonies by Health Canada. The serious adverse reactions that Health Canada repeatedly uses to justify the need for more regulations are taken out of context and promote fearmongering to the Canadian public. NHPs have a long history of safe use. Our access to information request and two independent studies have concluded that the 700-plus cases cited by Health Canada and the minister occurred in patients who were also on other treatments. It is impossible to establish a causal relationship.

I also want to take a moment to let this committee know that the lipstick I am wearing today cannot be recalled. It is a cosmetic product, which is not subject to Vanessa's Law, despite being part of the original self-care framework.

As an industry, we continue to support regulation and legislation that protects Canadians and is developed in a transparent, responsible and appropriate manner.

Today, we're asking this committee to support Bill C-368 and demand that Health Canada respect the open government that all industries and all Canadians expect. We cannot underestimate the need to properly address legislative and regulatory changes of this magnitude.

We look forward to your questions.

[Michelle Auger, Senior Policy Analyst, National Affairs, Canadian Federation of Independent Business]

Over the past few years, we've seen a piecemeal approach to NHP policies. Instead of a coherent, forward-looking strategy, Canada has been introducing new rules bit by bit, whether it be Vanessa’s Law, increased licensing requirements, increased fees or additional labelling rules. This isolated approach leaves many small businesses scrambling to comply, often without a clear understanding of the long-term vision of the sector. This creates confusion and inconsistency.

Furthermore, our members believe Health Canada's current approach overlooks a crucial fact: NHPs are not pharmaceuticals, and they should not be regulated as such. For instance, the recent introduction of cost recovery fees being layered on top of stricter labelling requirements does not consider the unique realities of small businesses operating within the sector. One of our members imports approximately 800 different types of NHP. He has projected that the cost recovery program could add an extra $500,000 per year to his business expenses.

SMEs operate with tight budgets, and many may find it challenging to absorb these rising costs, especially all the additional costs associated with compliance. This forces many SMEs to make some tough business decisions, such as reducing investment in their operations and their employees, reducing innovations and reducing proper health and safety measures. Such a situation also creates an uneven playing field between small and large businesses. With large companies better equipped to absorb these expenses, this ultimately hinders the ability and the competitiveness of SMEs.

Bill C-368 seeks to repeal sections of Bill C-47, the budget bill. However, it is important to note that Bill C-69, another budget bill, also included further measures impacting NHP businesses.

Our members are not against the modernization of NHP regulation. However, they're concerned about Health Canada's introduction of multiple uncoordinated regulatory changes that risk overwhelming small businesses and complicating their survival in an already very tough economic landscape. As such, CFIB supports the passing of Bill C-368. It's a very important bill to a lot of our members operating within the NHP sector.

Thank you for your attention to these concerns. We look forward to answering your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 136 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health.

In accordance with our routine motion, I am informing the committee that all remote participants have completed the required connection tests in advance of the meeting.

Pursuant to an order of reference of May 29, 2024, the committee will resume its study of Bill C-368, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act with regard to natural health products.

I would like to welcome our panel of witnesses.

Representing the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, we have Jasmin Guénette, vice-president of national affairs; and Michelle Auger, senior policy analyst, national affairs.

Representing the Canadian Health Food Association, we have Aaron Skelton, president and CEO, appearing virtually; and Jules Gorham, director of regulatory affairs and policy.

On behalf of the Direct Sellers Association of Canada, we have Peter Maddox, president.

Finally, on behalf of Food, Health & Consumer Products of Canada, we have Gerry Harrington, senior vice-president, consumer health; and Roberta Kramchynsky, vice-president, health policy and regulatory affairs.

Thank you all for being with us today. We'll begin with opening statements of five minutes per organization, starting with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

I understand that Jasmin Guénette will be speaking for the CFIB.

Welcome to the committee. You have the floor.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you.

I recall Mr. Calkins saying, if I can paraphrase him, that we already have everything we need in place with existing regulations to address non-compliance or to remove contaminated or high-risk products. What are your thoughts on the potential consequences if Bill C-368 were to pass and we were to revert to existing mechanisms?

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

I'd like to introduce Aaron Skelton, the CEO of the Canadian Health Food Association, as well as two executives, Sonia Parmar and Jules Gorham, who will provide testimony later this week. They were not consulted. They are in the audience. Perhaps after this meeting, I can introduce our witnesses to them, because they were not consulted on either Bill C-368 or Vanessa's Law.

With that, I'll cede the floor to my colleague, Mrs. Goodridge.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to give our witnesses another opportunity. I want to ask Ms. Hollett and Dr. Sharma again on the record: Was the Canadian Health Food Association consulted, either for Bill C-368 or for Vanessa's Law?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

Thank you very much.

First, yes, I am angry because Bill C-368 threatens the health of everyone in this country. This is a ridiculous bill to be debating. There's a lot of misinformation. The reason I'm here today is to make it clear that this bill is a threat to our health care system.

Second, there is a difference between the bill we are currently studying and the need to protect the possibility of removing products containing contaminants. Yes, the bill raises other concerns, such as the possibility of improving the way natural products are managed. However, that's another matter, which isn't the one under consideration today.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm a bit surprised by the minister's tone and openness on this issue, since we're discussing Bill C-368 because the government included these obligations in its mammoth Bill C-47. I sincerely believe that he covered it up during his discussions with the industry to try to make it possible to distinguish natural health products from products offered under the pharmaceutical model. I'm not going to pursue this because I only have six minutes, but that's the basic argument.

Forgive me, Mr. Minister, but your attitude and comments have been quite contemptuous towards committee members. If I were a member of the pharmaceutical industry, I wouldn't be too happy. You're using fairly specific arguments so that the industry looks poorly organized.

According to Health Canada, 350 natural health products have been recalled in five years. Again, according to Health Canada, 31 public health advisories have been issued as a result of these recalls. When we issue such opinions, it's because we consider the problem to be really dangerous.

What was the reaction and collaboration of the businesses concerned following those 31 public health advisories?

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Given the very focused purpose behind this bill, Bill C-368, what concerns do you have if this were to be passed into law? How, in your view, is it going to increase the risk to the health of Canadians?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Okay.

Pursuant to the order of reference of May 29, 2024, the committee will resume its study of Bill C-368, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act with regard to natural health products.

Welcome to our panel of witnesses. Joining us today for the first hour we have the Honourable Mark Holland, Minister of Health. We also welcome the officials accompanying him today from the Department of Health: Dr. Supriya Sharma, chief medical adviser; and Linsey Hollett, assistant deputy minister, regulatory, operations and enforcement branch. Thank you all for being with us here today.

Minister Holland, this is familiar territory for you. You have five minutes for your opening statement, and you now have the floor.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

I call this meeting to order. Welcome to meeting 135 of the House of the Commons Standing Committee on Health.

Pursuant to the order of reference of May 29, 2024, the committee will resume its study of Bill C-368, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act—

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

That's a good question. Thank you, Mr. Julian, for your question. You're exactly right.

Here's how it played out: Bill C-51 was brought forward. I don't think the industry responded well to Bill C-51 back when that happened. The right thing to do when Parliament or a government in the House of Commons makes a mistake is to step back, ask “What have we done?”, and then consult with the industry, consult with stakeholders, and consult with people who are going to be affected by this.

Mr. Julian, if the claim that 80% of Canadians.... You asked me during the debate on Bill C-368 whether I take these products. You and I are part of the 80% of Canadians who take them. As a matter of fact, you and I both take magnesium, which is very understandable, considering the lifestyles and the work demands that we have.

That's how you do it. You do it by engaging. What's missing in this particular case is that the government did make a misstep with Bill C-47. The misstep is that it didn't consult with the industry and that it was tucked into a budget implementation act. It passed basically with no discussion. I don't recall anybody in the debate on Bill C-47 even raising the issue, because it was just four little lines in this great big omnibus piece of legislation, until people figured out what was actually going on with the implementation of the self-care framework. Then the industry came forward and asked the government, similar to what it did with Bill C-51 and Bill C-17, to take a step back and to consult the industry before moving forward. That's how you do things in a constructive way.

What I've seen happen here is that the government has not only dug in on Bill C-47 but has also doubled down on it in Bill C-69, the next budget implementation act, giving the power to Health Canada and to the minister to make immense changes to the industry.

To my knowledge, to this day the industry has not been consulted by the minister, who's been responsible for making those last two changes.

How can you build goodwill and get to a place where everybody is happy, where Canadian consumers are happy, where the industry is happy and where the government can provide adequate oversight? Nobody's arguing that there should be no oversight. We're simply saying, the industry is saying and Canadians are saying that there was not a really big problem with the way things were, and if there are a few small flies, we don't need to swat them with a sledgehammer. That seems to be what's happening.

My recommendations would be to pass Bill C-368 and take it back, and then, if the government does have some legitimate problems, start all over again. Start working with the industry on a broader level. Do consultations before making this kind of a misstep again, because we've riled up thousands—millions—of Canadians with this, as has been evidenced by the cards we've received, and rightly so, Mr. Julian.

Our job, as members of Parliament, is to work on behalf of Canadians, not to work on behalf of the government.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Understood.

I'll undoubtedly introduce that amendment, because it's one of the main points of contention about Bill C‑368.

There's a lobby opposing the bill. People are coming to meet with us to tell us that the bill makes no sense. They'll tell us that we're going to allow the unrestricted sale of products like Zonnic because, among other things, there's no mechanism for recalling products.

Mr. Chair, how much time do I have left?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

My point is that it accidentally ended up here. I don't know why nicotine would be here when it could be more properly regulated under the same legislation that looks after tobacco and so on.

My recommendation would be to pass this bill in its current form and find a solution elsewhere to deal with nicotine, or something to that effect.

The reality is, Mr. Thériault, that the bill was only in my care and control up until I tabled it in the House of Commons. It is now the property of the House of Commons and this committee. I would recommend that we find a different way to do it.

I'm not suggesting that your concerns are invalid, but I would suggest that there are other places and other powers that the minister has. Bogging down the progress of Bill C-368 and stopping a $5.5-billion industry simply for nicotine pouches I think might be the wrong approach. I think there's a better way or another way to do it.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Members of the committee, thank you for inviting me here to discuss my private member's bill, Bill C-368, which was passed at second reading on May 29.

Bill C-368 is, by design, a bill that is meant to undo the changes made to the definition of natural health products in Bill C-47, a budget implementation act passed by the Liberals and the NDP. The omnibus bill brings natural health products under the legislative and regulatory rubrics of Vanessa's Law, a bill that was intended to only affect therapeutic chemical drugs.

The Liberal government, supported by the NDP, snuck these changes in without consulting the industry, shrouding their actions under the cover of a budget bill, hoping no one would notice. However, Canadians did notice.

Over 80% of Canadians rely on products such as protein powders, vitamins, probiotics, electrolytes, etc., every day in their daily lives. They would like to have their say on this bill. Bill C-368 is finally their opportunity for them to have that say.

The changes introduced in Bill C-47 are unacceptable and will lead to irreparable harm to the natural health product industry and the 32 million consumers in Canada. Eighty per cent of Canadians use natural health products. Businesses will close, innovation will be stifled, investment will dry up and Canadian products will disappear from shelves. Made-in-Canada choice will be replaced with unregulated foreign mail orders.

We are talking about a $5.5-billion industry that generates over $200 million in GST. It employs 54,000 people directly, from manufacturing to retail, and this does not even include the members working indirectly in the industry's packaging and shipping and so on.

I believe that Canadians have the right to make the health choices that are best for them and their families. I also believe that businesses should not shoulder the heavy cost of an ever-growing bureaucratic empire. We know that existing regulations on health supplements already keep Canadians safe. This additional red tape is about giving more power to Ottawa, not protecting Canadians.

That's why I've introduced my bill, Bill C-368, which amends the Food and Drugs Act and takes us back to the laws and regulations prior to Bill C-47. It aims to safeguard the rights of Canadian consumers and ensure the availability of safe and beneficial natural health products that Canadians rely on.

By supporting this legislation, you will be pushing back against governmental overreach and protecting the rights of entrepreneurs and consumers in the health product market. Together we can ensure that Canadian businesses are competitive and that Canadians' access to safe supplements is protected.

Before we go to the round of questions, I would like to refute some claims that some of the detractors of my bill have stated.

The first is that the industry is not a safe one. If anything, our existing regulatory system is one of the best in the world. I would like to quote the IADSA, the global association for the food supplement sector. In a letter they submitted to this committee, they stated:

Up to now, Canada has been a world leader in the regulation of dietary supplements. We fear that the proposed changes to Canada’s regulatory framework for natural health products risk creating an environment that could stifle the industry and limit Canadians' access to high-quality supplements.

IADSA has always promoted the Canadian model as a global reference point for governments across the world who are creating or redeveloping their regulatory systems. This Canadian model is recognized as providing consumers access to products which are safe and beneficial while fostering innovation and supporting investment in the sector.

They're not talking about the Bill C-47 changes; they're talking about before Bill C-47.

Next, Health Canada has paraded out an Auditor General's report that claims that hundreds have become sick from natural health products, notwithstanding the fact that therapeutic drugs harm a magnitude more people than natural health products. This statistic is simply not true. Deloitte conducted an audit of the industry, and it shows that in fact very few people have had adverse effects from natural health products.

There's a general theme to be observed here. Health Canada makes claims they cannot support and provides no documentation to support their claims, which are quickly debunked in the absence of any real data.

Another line of attack on my bill was that the changes to the Food and Drugs Act were necessary to stop the sale of nicotine pouches. This is simply not true. Nicotine pouches should never have been categorized as a natural health product, nor did Health Canada need to give them a natural health product number. The Minister of Health already has the powers needed to fix these issues, including issuing a stop order. Why the need for these ever greater powers?

The last claim is that the self-funding model is needed to pay for the expanded bureaucracy. The directorate at Health Canada is now $50 million. This industry generates over $200 million in GST alone. One could assume then that the self-funding model is nothing more than a tax grab.

If I am to leave you with one salient point, it's that the minister has given himself unchecked power with Bill C-47 and Bill C-69 to deem many products non-compliant, even if the scientific evidence does not support that claim. When we couple this with the fact that under Vanessa's Law non-compliance can result in $5-million daily fines, natural health product small and medium-sized enterprises are understandably feeling the chill of a government with unchecked power.

This once stable, safe and renowned industry is being destroyed. As MPs, it is our duty to fix the mess that Bill C-47 has created.

I urge all of you to go through the study, pass my bill unamended and send it back to the House of Commons as quickly as possible.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

I call the meeting back to order.

Pursuant to the order of reference of May 29, 2024, the committee will start its study of Bill C-368 an act to amend the food and drugs act with regard to natural health products.

I'd like to welcome the sponsor of the bill, Mr. Blaine Calkins, member of Parliament for Red Deer—Lacombe.

I don't think we have time for other formalities, Mr. Calkins, except to give you the floor for the next five minutes to introduce your bill.

Welcome to the committee, and congratulations on getting your bill to this stage.

You have the floor, sir.

[Tu-Quynh Trinh, Committee Researcher]

[Inaudible—Editor] for opioids, and the NDP for Bill C-368.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

I see consensus. The budgets are adopted. Thank you.

There are two things. The analysts would like to be able to give you a work plan for the study of Bill C-368 and an updated work plan for the opioids study, but it's difficult for them to do that when we don't have sufficient witnesses to round out the panels, so this is a reminder. If you have submitted witnesses, please take another look at your list to see if there are more names you want to offer. If you haven't, please get them in so that we can get those work plans done.

Mrs. Goodridge.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

That brings us to the budget for Bill C-368.

Is there any discussion? Do we have consensus to adopt the budget as presented?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Ms. Breese Biagioni.

Thank you to all of our witnesses.

I think that's a good note to end on.

We very much appreciate your bringing your lived experience and expertise. We admire you for your advocacy on this topic. As you can tell by the unanimous passage of the bill to bring it to committee, you have the attention of the Parliament of Canada. As you can tell by the constructive dialogue we've had, we all seem to be aligned in what we want. This is a good day. This is a good session. It's very much appreciated.

I'm going to indicate to our panellists online that they're welcome to stay, but they're free to go.

We have some housekeeping, colleagues, so please don't run away.

Ms. Breese Biagioni and Mr. Fleiszer, I would also encourage you not to go away, because I think we're going to get through this housekeeping fairly quickly, and I suspect there are some people around the table who want to shake your hand before you go.

Thank you to all.

In terms of housekeeping, colleagues, yesterday you would have received two study budgets, one for this study and the other for the examination of Bill C-368, a private member's bill. Unless there's a willingness to deal with these jointly, we'll deal with them separately.

With respect to Bill C-277, is it the will of the committee to adopt the budget as presented? Is there any discussion?

I see no discussion. Do we have consensus to adopt the budget as presented?

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Further to that, Mr. Buckley, you may be well aware that Conservatives have put forward Bill C-368, which passed through its second reading this past May. This bill seeks to repeal sections 500 to 504 of the budget implementation act, 2023.

In your opinion, why is it so important that we see this legislation passed as quickly as possible? Can you share why it would be a priority to see Bill C-368 passed as soon as possible?

Thank you very much.

[Shawn Buckley]

First of all, you need to understand the history. This law that came to be known as Vanessa's law in 2014 was first introduced by former health minister Tony Clement in March 2008. It was called Bill C-51. The bureaucracy still remembers Bill C-51.

Basically, it brought in these $5-million-a-day fines and all of these almost God-like powers that Health Canada has. The original bill just applied to all drugs. We didn't have the therapeutic product category. That came in with Vanessa's law.

I remember a meeting I had at the Prime Minister's Office. We were being escorted out by Laurie Throness, who was number two at the ministry of health at the time. He explained to us that there was so much mail going into the minister's office that it was coming in wheelbarrows. Canadians were concerned.

Health Canada knew that Canadians did not want these powers and penalties applied to natural health products, so it waited until 2014, when Vanessa's law created the category of therapeutic products, which excluded natural health products, so the consumer was fine. The consumer was not concerned with fines, which actually are very small when you consider the money the pharmaceutical companies make, but which would absolutely destroy any natural health product producer or practitioner for that matter. The consumer was also not concerned about Health Canada's having increased powers, but about a rule of law perspective that would be inappropriate for any branch of the public, so everyone sat still.

I can tell you that everyone was absolutely surprised. Why would you put major changes to our drug regulation that you know the consumer is extremely concerned about into a budget bill? It's an affront to the parliamentary process. We were caught completely off guard. There would have been an absolute citizen rebellion. I mean, how often does a private member's bill get into committee? Bill C-368 did because Parliament understands that the Canadian citizen is concerned about it.

I gave you the figures just from our organization, but other organizations like the CHFA are also running campaigns and supporting Bill C-368.

Half a million letters through our organization alone speak broadly to Canadians' interest in this.

[Shawn Buckley, Constitutional Lawyer and President, Natural Health Products Protection Association]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think it's timely that this committee is considering the regulation of natural health products. This is the regulatory issue that is of most importance to Canadians.

By way of example, the organization I'm with, the Natural Health Products Protection Association, created over half a million citizen letters to targeted MPs for a single campaign just to support Bill C-368 concerning the regulation of NHPs.

Citizens are extremely engaged in this because they're concerned that Health Canada is going to increase the regulatory burden through the self-care framework. However, this committee needs to understand that the current regulations are far too dramatic and render us very uncompetitive in comparison with the United States.

I want to draw three major differences between how the U.S. and Canada regulate natural health products. I hope this committee understands that we arrived at these completely polar opposite regulatory approaches from consumer pressure.

In the late eighties and into the nineties, both the FDA and Health Canada were over-regulating natural health products by imposing the chemical drug regulations. The consumer rebelled with two messages: do not regulate NHPs like drugs, and we want increased access, meaning we want a reduced regulatory burden not an increase.

The citizen rebellion in the United States led to the passage of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, which does three things completely opposite to how Health Canada manoeuvred us to regulate.

The first difference is that NHPs in the United States are classed as foods, but we've been manoeuvred into classifying them as drugs.

The second major difference—and listen carefully—is that NHPs in the United States are deemed by law to be safe, but we've been manoeuvred into the drug model where our NHPs are deemed by law to be dangerous.

The third major difference is that, in the United States, you don't need government pre-approval to sell a natural health product, but in Canada, because we've been pushed into the drug model, we have to jump through all of these regulatory hoops to get Health Canada permission in the form of a license.

This has driven the cost of Canadian NHPs through the roof compared to our American competitors, and that has removed them from low-income Canadians, who now don't have the option of using NHPs. This has health consequences.

The curious thing in the sole message by Health Canada is that we need these regulations for safety, and we can safely conclude that it is not true for several reasons. First of all, we weren't having a safety issue before the regulations. The United States isn't having a safety issue with how they're regulating. The big fraud is that every Canadian is free to import the unregulated natural health products from the United States and to use them personally, and a large number of Canadians are doing that because of the price difference.

Risk is always measured. There's a risk hierarchy. How many deaths per million of the population are there per year? Health Canada refuses to tell us what that number is because there likely isn't a credible death attributed to the entire NHP industry per decade, let alone per million per year.

Finally, if you want to have an honest risk analysis, if we're really here to regulate because of safety, then everyone on the committee knows that well over 70% of Canadians are regularly using natural health products, and a large number of those are effectively managing health conditions—some of them serious—with these products. Obviously, there's going to be a health consequence to taking products away that people are effectively using to manage their health, but we never have that type of discussion. We're just told that there's risk and that we need to increase our regulations. These are the most unpopular regulations in Canadian history, and they're likely the most damaging; there are health consequences.

I'll just close, as I think I'm getting close to my five minutes, by pointing out that I'm not suggesting, in any way, that we stop products at the border. That would not survive a section 7 Charter of Rights and Freedoms challenge. That's not the answer. The answer is getting rid of this regulatory burden that has nothing to do with safety, and moving more towards a model like the U.S. has.

Report Stage

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today to debate Bill C-69.

Here we are again. Another year, another NDP-Liberal budget, and every budget it seems is worse than the one before. This year's iteration of the budget is falsely titled “Fairness for Every Generation”. The title is ironic because, after nine years of the government, virtually every generation in the country is worse off. In fact, I cannot think of a single demographic, other than the Liberal insiders, that is better off in nine years.

Our youth can only dream of affording a home after the government has allowed a housing shortfall. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, we would need to build 1.3 million homes to close the housing gap. Both renters and homeowners are struggling to pay their bills after the cost of housing has been allowed to double under the leadership of the Prime Minister.

Our seniors are seeing their pensions ravaged by inflation. Not that long ago, it used to be that their old age security, CPP and whatever other savings they might have could see them through on a monthly basis. That is no longer the case. The government has directly driven up that inflation, making life unaffordable by continuing to overspend. By piling on another $61 billion of new spending this year, piling on to our already enormous debt, it has proven that it does not plan on changing course any time soon.

Parents are struggling with affordability, and it is now difficult for many families to feed their children. We are seeing yearly inflation rates for many food products in the double digits, while a record two million Canadians had to use a food bank in a single month last year, which is incredible.

Let us not forget the pesky carbon tax that compounds through the economy, costing over $30 billion of economic activity, as recently highlighted by the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Therefore, not only is it costing us every time we make a purchase, but it is costing our economy $30 billion in output. After nine years of the government creating intergenerational poverty, that would be a more apt name for this budget.

We know things are bad for the government when former Liberal Bank of Canada governor David Dodge has called it the worst budget since 1982, when the current Prime Minister's father was the prime minister. Like father, like son, as they say.

Instead of cutting back spending, the government has continued to be irresponsible and is spending money that Canadians no longer have. This has forced the Bank of Canada to raise interest rates. The cost to service the debt is now $54.1 billion. One must wonder what $54.1 billion could have been spent on instead of servicing the debt.

Like many Liberal bills, the budget has been turned into an omnibus bill to push forward strange and unusual requests that have little to do with budgets or measures, that are so controversial that if tabled on their own would not likely get the support of this chamber.

This year's boondoggle is the new tax on capital gains, a direct attack on business owners. It is only after the Conservatives pushed back that the government relented and put the capital gains changes into a separate bill. I chalk this up to pure incompetence, as the government continues to wedge, stigmatize and divide Canadians, and has open class warfare in our tax system.

The government claims that this change will bring fairness into the tax system essentially to target the richest 0.13%. Nothing could be further from the truth. What it conveniently ignores is how this tax will likely impact, and only impact, middle-class Canadians. This includes tradesmen, farmers who are worried about the succession of their family farms and small business owners who worry that it may not be worth growing their businesses in Canada anymore after these changes. The immigration stats are proving this to be true.

This would not be the typical 1%, but in fact would not be any of the 1% at all. Rather, they are our neighbours, friends and family members, the people who put food on our table and build our homes, and those industrious small business owners who employ people in our local communities and, meanwhile, sponsor the T-shirts for our kids' soccer teams.

I would also like to focus the attention of members on another underhanded change in the budget implementation act, and that is the newest changes to the Food and Drugs Act. The NDP vacated its role as an opposition party in March 2022, and instead of holding the government to account, its members have decided to help ease the passage of budget Bill C-47, which was the budget implementation act of 2023.

The ghastly bill was a direct attack on Canada's natural health product industry, one of the safest and best regulated industries on Planet Earth. These changes came as part of a push to radically change Health Canada's regulatory framework. Health Canada claimed that the changes were necessary to safeguard public health, but we simply know, with all the powers that it has, that this simply is not true.

The major alteration to the act was to change the definition of a therapeutic product to include natural health products. A therapeutic product is essentially a synthetic drug and it has little in common with food, which is the closest commonality that natural health products actually have. This would essentially put natural health products in the same regulatory framework as pharmaceutical drugs. It would also force the industry to pay for Health Canada's costly bureaucratic overhead with expensive new licensing fees and fines.

Essentially, by putting a self-funding model in place, what the government would be doing is just taxing the industry with that self-funding regulatory model so that it could free up the $50 million a year, which it already uses to manage the natural health product space, and use that money on some other misguided priority of the government.

Previously, natural health products were exempt from much of the regulations in the Food and Drugs Act, as a common understanding is that natural health products are a much lower risk to one's health than a pharmaceutical drug. That is why I introduced my private member's Bill C-368 to repeal these changes to the Food and Drugs Act and return to the status quo, maintaining the distinction between natural health products and therapeutic products.

However, if my private member's bill fails to pass, this new budget may also have a big impact on the natural health products industry. That is because division 31 of part 4 of this new budget implementation bill has introduced new ministerial powers pertaining to therapeutic products. Once again, it would be another change to the Food and Drugs Act and Health Canada. Instead of putting it in its own bill, it is tucked into part of an omnibus budget implementation act.

The most concerning of these changes is to allow the minister to make unilateral changes on therapeutic products without any basis in science demonstrating risk. Proposed subsection 30.01(1) of the bill states:

Subject to any regulations made under paragraph 30(1)‍(j.‍1) and if the Minister believes on reasonable grounds that the use of a therapeutic product, other than the intended use, may present a risk of injury to health, the Minister may, by order, establish rules in respect of the importation, sale, conditions of sale, advertising, manufacture, preparation, preservation, packaging, labelling, storage or testing of the therapeutic product for the purpose of preventing, managing or controlling the risk of injury to health.

That might seem innocuous, however, proposed subsection 30.01(3) states, “The Minister may make the order despite any uncertainty respecting the risk of injury to health that the use of the therapeutic product, other than the intended use, may present.” It states “despite any uncertainty”, so there would be no scientific rationale needed anymore, if the bill passes, for the minister to pull any product he or she wants off of the shelf. That is uncontrolled power. The powers that would be given to the ministers are concerning, but what is even more concerning is the combined effect of both budgets on our homegrown natural health product industry. The effect would be catastrophic. Not only is the industry reeling from the changes in the last budget implementation bill, but this one has introduced the element of arbitrary power in the hands of the minister.

There is little worse in business than uncertainty, and natural health products are only a small part of what is wrong with this bill and with industries across Canada. Small businesses are closing across our country, and yet, instead of supporting our entrepreneurs, the government uses every budget it has to target them.

We need a budget that empowers small business owners instead of penalizing them. In essence, I say not to buy into the budget title. If the last eight budgets from the Prime Minister are any indication, fairness for every generation is simply a pipe dream. As Winston Churchill once noted, “The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” If by promoting fairness, the government means promoting intergenerational poverty, then in its own way, I guess it is fair, but absolutely nobody is better off.

Only the Conservatives can restore Canada's fiscal house to order. Instead of saddling Canadian families, tradesmen, small enterprise operators and entrepreneurs with ever-growing regulation and taxation, we would axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. Canada has a vast and untapped economic potential and it is time for a Conservative government to unleash that potential.

Natural Health Products

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition signed by the people of Pickering—Uxbridge, of Whitby and of the Liberal Minister of Health's riding of Ajax. They call on the House of Commons to immediately pass Bill C-368 and repeal the new regulatory constraints on natural health products passed last year that millions of Canadians rely upon that has since affected medical freedom of choice and affordability.

“Boo hoo, get over it” just does not cut it.

[Shawn Buckley]

Anyway, Bill C-368, if that passes, is not really going to have much of an effect on this. It's just going to move natural health products back to the regular drug category, where they're not subject to such strict provisions.

[Shawn Buckley]

Well, it's really not going to have a whole lot of impact.

Basically, in the last budget, Bill C-368 snuck in fundamental changes to the Food and Drugs Act that move natural health products into the therapeutic product category. The therapeutic product category was created by Vanessa's law back in 2014 to basically say that we have a class of drugs, chemical pharmaceutical drugs, with a risk profile that's extremely high, so we actually need to give the minister more powers to address that risk. The minister can actually be extremely intrusive and make orders, whether they're good orders or not, and has extraordinary power over that industry.

They then brought in a structure for fines that are more realistic, a $5-million-a-day maximum fine. Interestingly enough, there is less jail time than there is for the regular drug provisions, two years of jail. For a big pharmaceutical company like Pfizer, $5 million a day for an ongoing offence is really nothing.

In 1998, the Standing Committee on Health held the broadest consultations in Canadian history of any standing committee to ask how we should regulate natural health products—

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

On the supplementary rules under therapeutic products, right now there's a bill in the House, Bill C-368, that seeks to undo the changes that were made in Bill C-47 in relation to therapeutic products.

As the voice of the Natural Health Product Protection Association, if Bill C-368 does pass in its current form, can you tell us what impact that could have for the natural health product industry in regard to changes in Bill C-47, and now in Bill C-69, should they pass in their current form?

[Aaron Skelton, President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Health Food Association]

Good morning.

Thank you, Chair and members of this committee, for having me here today. My name is Aaron Skelton. I'm the president and CEO of the Canadian Health Food Association, a trade association representing natural health, organic and wellness products in Canada. I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak before you today on behalf of not just our member companies but also the 82% of Canadians who use natural health products as part of their health and well-being.

The core concern I am bringing to you today is regarding Health Canada’s continued abuse of the parliamentary process. Health Canada introduced significant amendments to the laws governing natural health products through budget omnibus bills in 2023 and 2024 rather than following the parliamentary process. This has undone the hard work of prior legislative reviews conducted by previous Parliaments and the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health.

In budget 2024, current amendments to the Food and Drugs Act, as included under division 31 of Bill C-69, has yet again caught an entire industry completely off guard. For the second time in as many years, Health Canada has attempted to evade proper parliamentary process, including scrutiny by the Standing Committee on Health and consultations with industry, to achieve their desired outcome with zero checks or balances. The amendments they seek as part of division 31 are extremely powerful. However altruistically the intentions behind it are framed, the implications of such broad, sweeping changes demand proper study and regulatory rigour.

As mentioned, this same approach was taken in 2023, when division 27 in part 4 of Bill C-47 shockingly changed the definition of “therapeutic products” to include natural health products—with no scrutiny, public analysis or industry consultation. The lack of transparency and the unintended consequences that came from a blatant disregard of due process resulted in a private member’s bill, Bill C-368, that just this week passed second reading with support from all opposition parties to repeal this amendment. While a step in the right direction to course-correct a sneaky tactic, once an amendment has passed, it is no easy feat to undo what was inappropriately done.

The need for industry and consumers to voice their concerns on important regulatory and legislative matters is paramount, a requirement that is crucial to the development of fair and appropriate regulations. The potential impact of unchecked powers is not a hypothetical one. The current cost recovery proposal for NHPs, the outcome of such ministerial powers, has already created a staggering and untenable situation for companies across our sector.

Today we are back to ask this committee to not let history repeat itself. To be clear, we represent the natural health products industry. We do not represent any smoking cessation or tobacco products. We are here because over the course of the past two years, our trust in Health Canada has been eroded. We have faced multiple regulatory and legislative changes that have serious consequences on an industry and on Canadians.

If Bill C-69 passes and this amendment goes through, health products, natural or otherwise, will be left to face broad, sweeping powers from a minister who will have the ability to issue orders without following the Statutory Instruments Act. As it is a first of its kind, we have no visibility into the evidence required to support an order, and we will be left in the dark as to whether or not these powers can override department-issued licences, such as those granted by the natural and non-prescription health products directorate.

As an industry, we continue to support regulation and legislation that protects Canadians and is developed in a transparent, responsible and appropriate manner. Regulatory amendments pushed through omnibus bills do not reflect this value.

Today we ask this committee to consider removing division 31 from this act. This committee amended the budget in 2017, and we urge you to consider this precedent here. The restrictions placed by division 31 on health products, including natural health products, have consequences beyond what the current Minister of Health has communicated. With the power of this and no due process, Health Canada has made itself the judge, the jury and potentially the executioner. We cannot overstate the need to approach regulatory changes of this nature and this magnitude in the proper way—with study, analysis and consultation.

I thank you again for your time and I am happy to answer any questions you may have.

Food and Drugs Act

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at second reading stage of Bill C-368 under Private Members' Business.

The House resumed from May 22 consideration of the motion that Bill C-368, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (natural health products), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank all my colleagues for their support and for speaking to Bill C-368, but I want to remind people how we arrived here.

There seem to be some forgetful folks. Even though I am thanking the NDP for its position, I would like to remind people how we arrived at this place. We are at this point with natural health products because of a budget implementation act, Bill C-47, which was passed for budget 2023. The authority for that came from a promise made by the leader of the NDP in March 2022 to form a coalition, a supply and confidence agreement, with the Liberal government, which meant carte blanche. It was going to support every budget and every budget implementation act that it had not even seen, discussed nor been party to. It gave that power to the Liberal government, and that is why we are here today.

While I appreciate the NDP's revisionist history on this, it is the reason this change happened in the first place. I am glad it is supporting this bill, which would take the legislative framework back where it was with the previous Conservative government under Stephen Harper and where we had the best natural health product regulations, framework and industry in the world. There is no need to tamper any further with the natural health product industry.

I want to talk about freedom of choice in health care, as this is a huge issue. Over 80% of Canadians, and I suspect it is even more, are using natural health products. This is about that freedom of choice and losing that choice. I believe the Canadian Health Food Association, the Natural Health Product Protection Association, the Direct Sellers Association of Canada and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business when they say that the changes being proposed by the Liberal government, through Health Canada's changes to the definition of therapeutic products to include natural health products, is going to kill and stifle business. I believe them when they say that because we have a nine-year track record of the government doing nothing but harm to the economy of this country. The government is going to continue to do it to this beautiful, wonderful industry that gives Canadians the choice they need to look after their own personal health.

Finally, I want to thank all the Canadians who have reached out to members of Parliament in a very active campaign to let MPs know how important this is to them. I want to thank the mothers out there who look after their families. I know my wife is the same way. She had a full-time job on top of her full-time job of raising the family while I was here in Ottawa. She wanted to help our kids, to help our family and to keep us healthy. She wanted to make sure we had the best possible health outcomes that we could have. I want to thank all the women who make up the largest part of the workforce and the entrepreneurship in this beautiful industry. The fact that there was not a gender-based analysis on this is striking.

I want to thank the seniors and those with chronic conditions who are scared about losing their access to these health products. When these organizations I mentioned before said that they are going to lose these products, I believe them. These seniors believe them, and these people with chronic conditions believe them. This is how they manage. This is how they cope with their ailments, and we should be enabling and empowering that, not scaring away investments, businesses and opportunities.

I want to thank the wonderful people in the industry. I want to thank the beautiful people I have met from coast to coast who are part of this industry. I have never met a group of people who are more conscientious, more thoughtful, and more creative and innovative. I want them to know that I am very thankful for the work they do.

For those who are going to be voting in favour of this, we are going to be voting on this next Wednesday night in a recorded division. I want to thank my colleagues for sending this to committee so that we can hear from the experts and from Canadians about this because this was snuck through in Bill C-47. The Liberal government is doing it again, right now, with Bill C-69 in this place. It is making even more changes to Health Canada and giving it more powers. Why are we not talking about this in a separate piece of legislation so that we can actually have a proper debate about it? Now we are, with Bill C-368.

It is time to pass Bill C-368. It is time to get back to basics. It is time to get back to making sure that Canadians have access to the health products they deserve. I want to thank my colleagues who are brave enough and who have the courage to do what their constituents want them to do, and vote for Bill C-368.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise. My colleague from Peterborough—Kawartha talked about this being Groundhog Day, and it seems as if we are talking about this particular topic over and over again.

My colleague from Ottawa Centre, who spoke just a minute ago, was talking about the safety of these products. It is interesting, because the reason any health warnings were found about these products was that inspections were already conducted by Health Canada. Therefore, by grabbing more money from the small and medium-sized businesses that are actually producing natural health products for the benefit of Canadians, these changes are not going to make those inspections any better or any more frequent. I find that a bit fascinating.

The other thing that is absolutely fascinating is what we have on the opposite side of the House. We have a government that had a crazy experiment, a wacko experiment we might say, to actually decriminalize opioids, which we know failed miserably. Without the Conservatives on this side of the House actually stopping the Liberals, they were on the path to wanting to legalize drugs like meth, crack, cocaine, amphetamines and fentanyl here in Canada, in our backyards, in our school grounds, in front of businesses and in front of residences all across this country.

Thankfully, there was an incredible intervention by team Conservative. We were able to make enough interventions so that people realized how bad of an idea this was. The crime, chaos, drugs and disorder that have happened across this great country have been unfathomable. It is certainly something that Canadians need to bear in mind when we talk about the incredible want on the NDP-Liberal side to take away natural health products.

I know that many of my colleagues spoke about this previously, but I do think it bears repeating. When we look at the multitude of issues that have come before this House in the last two and a half years since I have been here, the issue that people have written to me the most about and approached me the most about, just walking along the street, in our own backyards, is really related to natural health products. Canadians have made it incredibly clear that they do not want the government interfering, as it wants to do, with their natural health products.

I know some of this is a bit repetitive, but I think it bears repeating. We know from statistics that over 80% of Canadians use natural health products on a regular basis. I listened with great interest when my colleague from Peterborough—Kawartha talked about how the impacts of the changes the government is on the road to making, without the intervention of Bill C-368, are a harm to female entrepreneurs. That cannot be said enough in this House.

We hear that Conservatives are against women and Conservatives are against women's rights. We hear this every single day. It is actually quite nauseating. We actually understand that, on the opposite side, the NDP-Liberal coalition members are the ones who want to undermine the health, well-being and financial success of female entrepreneurs. We know that 80% of businesses in the natural health products sector are small businesses, and 50% of these businesses are managed by CEOs who are females.

There is no better way for people to ensure their success in this world than to be their own boss. When someone is the master of their own destiny, that creates a security and a need for nobody else. From my perspective, my wife and I have been married almost 34 years. She is a female entrepreneur. When I look at her success and the satisfaction it brings her to know that she certainly does not have to rely on me and that she is incredibly successful, that is the kind of thing I would want for my daughters as well, and for any entrepreneur in this great country. They should be able to say they are the master of their own destiny.

When we look at the regulations that have also been brought in, the member for Ottawa Centre went on and on about safety, etc. I know he was not at the health committee when this happened, so maybe we can cut him some slack based on that. Interestingly enough, the chief medical adviser for Health Canada was at the committee and talked about some of the disinformative statistics that the member spoke about previously. When we pressed the chief medical adviser for Health Canada on where the statistics were, the answer we were given was “Oh, you can look them up in the database.” Of course, doing our due diligence, we attempted to do so. The conflated numbers they actually presented in no way, shape, or form reflect reality.

When we begin to look at this, the safety of natural health products is beyond reproach. Are there oftentimes difficulties in manufacturing? Yes. Health Canada, to its credit, has discovered some of those things, which is important. That happens in many different industries where the manufacturing process is studied to make things better by doing this, that or the other thing. That will be important to continue, but is it necessary to attempt to kill small and medium-sized business-based enterprises in this country? When these regulations continue, if the rest of our colleagues do not realize the importance of Bill C-368, what will happen is that this industry will die. Then what will happen?

We know that 80% of Canadians use these products on a regular basis, and they will continue to use them. When they continue to use them, that means they are going to have to buy them somewhere else, other than from the great Canadian industry that we have, which we know is incredibly safe. The regulations that exist here in this country at the current time, barring the changes that the NDP-Liberal costly coalition wanted to make in the last budget, are the envy of the rest of the world. We have heard that. We did much research on this last year, when we went through all this foolishness before. Australia said it wanted to adopt what Canada is doing because it is so great. The regulations are absolutely incredible. When we tell them that the costly coalition wants to meddle with the regulations, they ask why we would want to do that, as we have a great system now.

We look at increasing the cost of products by 50% to 75%, and we see 20% of small businesses in Canada having to close. We see some of the other kind of ridiculous regulations, such as increasing the label size to put more warnings, words and cautions, etc. The anti-plastic crew over here is increasing the amount of plastic that is going to have to be used to do it, at a cost of about $200,000 per product. It has often been said that this is regulation looking for something to regulate, as well as looking for another way to fuel the Liberals' ridiculous spending.

Let us look at another industry, the prescription drug industry. I know some of my colleagues briefly talked about this. We know that the prescription drug industry harms seniors every year. The cost to the Canadian economy is about $2 billion every year due to the harm created by prescription drugs. Do we hear the NDP-Liberal coalition saying that we need to have more regulations related to that? No, we do not hear that.

I think the other thing we need to know is the reason the government is going after this. The reason, of course, is related to an easy target to get more money to fuel its spending, which is costing Canadians greatly. We know that more and more Canadians, sadly, are going to food banks. We saw Food Banks Canada's 2024 report that came out showing that 50% more Canadians feel financially worse off compared to last year and that 25% of Canadians are experiencing food insecurity.

This is a bill to fuel the government's spending habit, which is a sad commentary on a government that is out of ideas and out of time. We will continue to see these things, which will negatively affect the health of Canadians and their confidence to make the right decisions about their health care at the right time on their own terms.

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health]

Madam Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to discuss Bill C-368 with respect to natural health products, and its potential impact on the ability of Canadians to have confidence in the natural health products on their shelves.

Canadians expect the products that they buy in Canada to be safe for use and consumption.

This includes the natural health products we use every day, such as vitamins, herbal medicines, sunscreen, toothpaste and hand sanitizer.

I want to acknowledge the importance of natural health products. They are something that many of our constituents use for their own well-being. I have heard that from many of my constituents as well. There is no question that natural health products are lower-risk than prescription drugs, but the reality is they are not risk-free. They can actually cause serious harm in certain circumstances. In particular, if not manufactured properly, natural health products can contain unsafe levels of ingredients or be contaminated with other substances that can be harmful. They can also be advertised or labelled in a misleading manner.

Take, for example, probiotics. While they are low-risk and in fact beneficial in many cases, these products as a whole are not without risk. Over the last six years, there have been six reports of sepsis associated with one brand of probiotic, the majority of which were in premature infants, and five of which had an outcome of death. That is why postmarket safety surveillance is so important.

In fact, between January 1, 2022, and December 31, 2023, Health Canada received 930 adverse reaction reports where a natural health product was suspected of being responsible for the adverse reaction, with the majority, 692, reported as serious.

Consumers trust these products to contribute to their health and well-being. That is why we need to ensure that natural health products can be used safely and that they are not the subject of false claims.

However, Conservatives want to take us back to a time when we can recall a contaminated tube of lipstick or head of lettuce, but not a contaminated vitamin or supplement.

Now I want to talk a bit about the subject of the bill, Bill C-368, which is Vanessa's Law.

In June 2023, Vanessa's Law, or the Protecting Canadians from Unsafe Drugs Act, was extended to include natural health products. This action was taken to correct a gap that was left in 2014 when Vanessa's Law was initially passed for other health products. This law gives Health Canada the additional tools to take swift action if marketed products are deemed unsafe. As it stands now, Vanessa's Law gives Health Canada the authority to mandate product recalls and label revisions for unsafe natural health products where there are serious or imminent risks to the health and safety of Canadians.

The tools afforded by Vanessa's Law are important for the well-being and safety of Canadians. They protect Canadians, but not at the cost of hurting Canadian businesses. In fact, there should be no impact on businesses that are following the rules in manufacturing and selling to Canadians products that are safe. These authorities are used only if a company should refuse to co-operate in taking voluntary action to mitigate a serious health risk, as is the typical practice for other lines of health products and food.

Bill C-368 seeks to repeal the expanded powers granted by Vanessa's Law, which would prevent Health Canada from recalling dangerous products or adding warnings to labels when companies refuse to do it themselves.

The government can mandate recalls of other health products, as well as food like produce in grocery stores that is contaminated with E. coli, but with Bill C-368, Health Canada would not have the authority to require the recall of a natural health product contaminated with E. coli, which could be equally dangerous to the lives of our constituents.

Should not users of natural health products also be afforded the confidence that the products on the shelves can be used safely? Adopting Bill C-368 would leave the health of Canadians in the hands of industry to decide when it is appropriate to issue a recall or update the label with new warnings. There is just no reason for natural health products to be exempted from Vanessa's Law.

One of the main sources of problems comes from cases of deficient manufacturing practices that result in product contamination.

Before Vanessa's Law was applied to natural health products, Health Canada did not have the power to enforce recalls and had only a limited ability to remove dangerous natural health products from the market.

The concerns I am expressing today are not about theoretical risks. Since 2018, there have been over 300 voluntary recalls of licensed natural health products for safety issues. For example, during the pandemic, when hand sanitizer use was at its highest, Health Canada found toxic chemicals like methanol and benzine in these products but had to rely on voluntary action from companies to remove these products from the market. Other examples of product issues resulting from unsanitary manufacturing conditions include contamination with bacteria, fibreglass and other foreign materials.

Should we really rely solely on the goodwill of industry to recall a product contaminated with fibreglass or toxic chemicals?

In 2021, the independent commissioner of the environment and sustainable development highlighted Health Canada's lack of power to recall natural health products as an important gap. The commissioner reported that contaminated natural health products remained available to consumers on store shelves for many months because Health Canada could rely only on the goodwill of companies to undertake voluntary recalls. Between 2021 and 2022, Health Canada inspected 36 importers and manufacturers of natural health products and found high levels of non-compliance with safe manufacturing practices. Issues were identified in all 36 sites inspected, ranging in severity, with 42% requiring immediate action.

Issues requiring the Vanessa's Law authorities go beyond product quality problems. For example, in 2021, Health Canada conducted an online surveillance study of health claims made by natural health products and found that more than 1,600 authorized natural health products made illegitimate cancer-related claims in their advertising. Think of the impact this could have on a cancer patient who is looking for relief and puts their trust solely in a product that cannot back up its claims. This is unacceptable. In fact, it is dangerous.

Canadians expect better, and they deserve better. Bill C-368 would roll back the protections of Vanessa's Law, exposing Canadians to unacceptable risks. This includes potentially allowing unsafe products to remain on the market longer and subjecting natural health products to a different, less rigorous set of rules than all other health products and food. It puts the power to determine actions in the most serious cases of health risks in the hands of industry and not the regulator. Is that what we want?

I submit that Canadians would expect more from their government. They expect that the government is able to take action and remove natural health products from the market when they are deemed unsafe, just like it can remove a shipment of contaminated lettuce or cough medication.

Some members have raised concerns about how the extension of Vanessa's Law could impact the availability of natural health products. I want to stress that product availability will not change with Vanessa's Law. Unsafe products will be removed more quickly from the market, but safe products will continue to be available. Compliant companies and products will not be impacted.

It is not just about recalls. Vanessa's Law authorities also allow the court to determine a more appropriate fine or penalty should a company be convicted of an offence related to a natural health product that poses serious health and safety risks to Canadians, creating a legitimate deterrent for non-compliance. Canadians are counting on us to safeguard the marketplace from unsafe products.

We need to ensure that those who buy natural health products are able to have confidence in the safety of those products. We are talking about public health and safety here.

It is too important to leave to chance. It is too important and time-sensitive to rely on voluntary compliance. Vanessa's Law gives Health Canada the authorities it needs to take immediate action to remove unsafe natural health products from the marketplace if a company refuses to do so voluntarily. It is an important tool that strengthens the market and the reputation of the industry in Canada, as it helps ensure that these widely used products are safe.

I encourage all members to vote against this bill.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-368. I would like to thank the member for Red Deer—Lacombe for bringing it forward for the House's consideration.

The reason I am very pleased is that the issue of natural health products has garnered a lot of attention in my riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. I have had a lot of constituents and local businesses approach me concerning this issue in particular. I am pleased to be able to stand here, as their elected representative, and let my constituents know that I will be supporting the bill at second reading.

I was also very pleased to be able to add my name as a joint seconder to the bill. To fulfill the wishes of my constituents, I will be voting to send it to committee for further study.

What are we talking about when we say “natural health products”? I have always thought it a weird thing that they are regulated under a statute such as the Food and Drugs Act. They are not really a food, nor are they a drug. They occupy a special place for many people. We must face that humans have had relationships with natural health products dating back thousands of years. Many of these products have a very special place in human history, and a lot of cultures have very long relationships with them.

Today, in the modern world, natural health products often come in a variety of forms, such as tablets, capsules, tinctures, solutions, creams, ointments and drops. There is quite a large variety for people to pick and choose from. They are often made from plants, but they can also come from animals, from micro-organisms and from marine sources. They include vitamins and minerals, herbal remedies, homeopathic medicines, traditional medicines, probiotics and other products, such as amino acids and essential fatty acids. They are found in many everyday consumer products.

Let us come to the bill in question, Bill C-368. As shown in the summary, it would amend the Food and Drugs Act to provide that natural health products are not therapeutic products within the meaning of that act and, therefore, are not subject to the same monitoring regime as other drugs.

Before we get into the substance, we need to take a little history lesson on how we arrived here. I want to say that both Conservatives and Liberals have run into trouble when trying to regulate natural health products. In fact, the previous government, under Harper, learned this lesson very quickly back in 2008 when it introduced Bill C-51. That was also an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act. Under Bill C-51, the term “therapeutic products” encompassed a range of products sold for therapeutic purposes, including drugs, medical devices, biologics and natural health products. In the end, because of an election, that bill was never adopted. However, I believe the Harper government at that time learned its lesson because of the uproar that came in response to Bill C-51, and it did not attempt to change Canada's regulations for natural health products again while in government.

What the Harper government did do, in 2014, was introduce Bill C-17 to amend the Food and Drugs Act. It was also known as Vanessa's Law. This introduced a definition for the term “therapeutic product”, but what was different this time was that the definition was worded in such a way that it did not include natural health products, within the meaning of the natural health products regulations.

We then fast-forward to the present Liberal government and Bill C-47. That bill, in a clause buried deep within a budget implementation act, again amended the term “therapeutic product” to make sure that the exemption from the natural health products regulations was actually removed. This has caused much of the uproar we see today.

I want to point out, as I said in my intro, that natural health products have a long history of use in Canada as low-risk, affordable methods of promoting well-being. It is very important that I stand here today and say unequivocally that they must remain accessible to all Canadians. I am proud to be a member of a caucus, the NDP caucus, that has long supported an appropriate regulatory category for natural health products to certify their safety and efficacy based on sound evidence, as well as to ensure that they are widely available for those who use and value them.

It is unacceptable that the changes to the regulatory regime under the Food and Drugs Act was snuck into a budget omnibus bill, because it did not allow for proper study. I am glad to see that, because Bill C-368 is a stand-alone, quite simple and easy-to-read piece of legislation, from reading the room, it should have enough votes to send it to committee. We can then have the proper study; hear from Canadians and businesses that sell natural health products, the practitioners involved in this every day; and, finally, get the proper scrutiny that this issue so richly deserves.

I do not want to spend too much longer speaking to the bill, but I want to talk a bit about the people in my riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford who took the time to write to my office, phone me personally and come into my office. In particular, I want to recognize a few of the local businesses. Essential Remedies, Benoit and Associates Health Education, some holistic health practitioners, the Community Farm Store, Botanical Bliss, a certified homeopathic practitioner, a naturopathic physician and Lynn's Vitamin Gallery all took the time in the summer of 2023 to come into my office. We had a great round table discussion. It lasted well over an hour. It was really enlightening for me, as their member of Parliament, to hear their views on this subject and learn a little more about why it is so important.

Yes, my immediate family definitely uses natural health products, and I know that many friends and relatives in my immediate vicinity also use them. However, to hear from professionals who work with clients every day about why this issue is so important was particularly enlightening for me. It is also important to note that 71% of Canadians, which is a very big number, have used natural health products, such as vitamins and minerals, herbal products and homeopathic medicines. Therefore, it is important that, when the NHP community speaks to their elected representatives, it represents a very clear majority of Canadians. Based on a proper cross-sampling of the correspondence that I, like many other members, have received, I know that they want their elected representatives to treat this issue with the seriousness that it deserves and give the bill full scrutiny.

Finally, I want to congratulate the NHP community and industry, which have been very actively engaged on this issue through their work. I really want to single out the local businesses in my riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford and the constituents who live on Vancouver Island. I congratulate them for their advocacy, for stepping up to the plate and for engaging me as their elected representative, because it has worked. I am proud to say that, in this place, as their elected representative, I will be pleased to vote to send Bill C-368 to committee.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Madam Speaker, this bill amends the Food and Drugs Act to provide that natural health products are not therapeutic products within the meaning of the act and are therefore not subject to the same monitoring regime as other drugs.

First of all, I would like to announce that the Bloc Québécois will vote in favour of the bill at second reading, essentially to hear from experts in committee on the best way to regulate natural health products.

This bill follows what the government surreptitiously introduced in a schedule to the 2023 budget, through Bill C‑47. There has always been a distinction between drugs and natural health products, and that was a good thing. It seems obvious that natural health products, commonly abbreviated as NHPs, differ from drugs in many ways. We are not saying that they are all harmless; people should ask their pharmacist before consuming any such products. We also acknowledge that NHPs could interact with other medications. However, these are precisely the reasons why we need to examine these products and determine the best way to regulate them.

What the Bloc Québécois wants is to be able to verify whether the decision to subject NHPs to the Protecting Canadians from Unsafe Drugs Act, or Vanessa's Law, is definitely the best way to regulate them, or whether it places an excessive administrative burden on these products. Relatively speaking, these products present lower risks and have a different impact on health than traditional pharmaceuticals.

As the saying goes, sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Regulations could have the opposite effect to what we are trying to achieve, which is the well-being of Quebeckers and Canadians. The fact is that there are some 91,000 NHPs, 75 of which have been specifically analyzed. After checking certain sampled products, it was concluded that, since 2014, Health Canada has not been doing its job in terms of guaranteeing safe products. The government tried to gain credibility by using a bazooka to kill a fly. That is a reasonable conclusion.

The decision to subject NHPs to Vanessa's Law follows a series of recommendations set out in a report by the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development. In that report to the Parliament of Canada, the commissioner notes that the government does not have the legislative authority to compel NHP companies to identify unlicensed products and take appropriate measures to prevent them from being sold in Canada; identify unauthorized activities and take appropriate action to ensure that product labels and advertisements meet product-licence conditions; obtain the information it needs to verify and ensure that these products are no longer for sale in Canada; and force a recall or impose terms and conditions to mitigate the safety risks associated with these products.

Canada's natural health products regulations allow for licences to be cancelled to prohibit the sale of a product or to have it seized. However, there is no provision allowing the minister to force a product recall. Prior to Bill C‑47, recalls were therefore voluntary. Moreover, the environmental risks are not included, so there is some data missing.

As legislators, have we done everything we can to ensure that there is a balance in terms of access to NHPs to guarantee free choice for consumers? Have we done everything we can to ensure that when Health Canada approves products, it does its job and does the necessary inspections?

One of my colleagues, the member for Montcalm and Bloc Québécois health critic, asked whether an impact study had been done on the industry and on small and medium-sized businesses, concerning the recovery costs required. He was told that it was based on Treasury Board guidelines.

I imagine that the Treasury Board's main interest is getting its money's worth. What kind of service is it going to provide when, after all this time, and with all the taxes generated by the industry, it has not even been able to ensure products are tested or inspected throughout its mandate? These are questions that need to be asked. Where are the numbers on how many adverse reactions there have been to natural health products in 17 years? What are the numbers for adverse reactions to pharmaceutical products? We did not get an answer on that either. We know that even though they are approved by Health Canada, pharmaceuticals can sometimes have very serious side effects. However, that is no reason to disqualify them or discredit an entire industry.

It is just a matter of doing the work, carrying out tasks and responsibilities and making sure that things are done well. That seems obvious to me.

What we see here looks like a government uninterested in working to ensure the well-being of its people. Instead, it wants to pass on a hot potato before it gets burned. For a long time now, the government's inaction on many issues has been on full display. It does not know how to work the machinery of government, so a one-size-fits-all solution often seems like the easiest way around the problem. In reality, it is a very poor option.

We have to respect people's intelligence. To properly protect them, they need to be adequately informed. They do not need to have decisions constantly made for them. No one is forced to use an NHP. Consumers who buy these products have already looked into their effects. The role of legislation and regulations is to provide them with a proper framework.

My grandfather used balsam fir gum. He used it for a good part of his life and died at the age of 103. Was this natural health product approved? Probably not. Was it dangerous? Obviously not. He lived for over 100 years. It was not a dangerous drug either. To some extent, if we let the government have its way, balsam fir gum will probably fall out of use, and my grandfather would have been deprived of his traditional remedy, which had supposedly cured him of consumption. One day, after years of searching, he found it again on the shelves at his pharmacy, in capsule form. The midwife who had supplied it to him back in the day had died. This is why NHPs deserve a legal, responsible, credible and rigorous approach. People should be able to opt for a safe, natural solution with components that are recognized and identified, and whose effects are known and accessible to all doctors and practitioners.

Here, we vote on laws. We are not experts, but we need to act responsibly and with humility to put in place the proper legislative provisions. That is what must guide our decisions. That is why Bill C‑368 is now necessary. It must be sent to committee so that the parliamentary work can be done. If the government had been a bit more transparent, if it had held the necessary consultations, if we had all worked together to find a way to move forward without harming an industry that Quebeckers and Canadians have the right to access, then we would not be here today discussing this issue.

Unfortunately, the government has not held any consultations to date. The federal government has rather cavalierly dodged many debates on this topic, when the purpose of debate is to turn ambiguous questions into clearer, more appropriate directives. That is exactly why we are going to vote in favour of Bill C‑368.

The information I shared in my speech provides ample justification for Parliament to refer this bill to committee. A genuine assessment of the situation is needed given the government's claim that 88% of the 91,000 natural health products are substandard or use misleading labelling. Such a claim requires verification, since the methodology used is flawed. Indeed, the products were verified after problems were reported, and were then identified as substandard. However, this approach grossly inflates the data and raises reasonable questions concerning the methodology used. In our opinion, a randomized approach would be preferable.

Need I remind the House that we have the right to do substantive work to ensure that we are making the right decisions, voting for the right things and passing legislation in the public interest? Need I remind the House that we cannot be sloppy or try to get rid of things or hide the flaws that we did not bother to tackle, things that were swept under the rug because it is easier that way and makes us look good? It is a fairly common technique used by the current government to jump to hasty and ill-considered conclusions, only to impose drastic, rigid rules, where there are often more losers than winners in the end. The Liberals just want to be able to say that they did this, that and the other thing, that they passed this bill and that bill, and they are great. They want to say that they delivered. There was a problem with NHPs, and they passed legislation. It is not enough, but that does not matter. Fisheries are being closed. The government is not listening to those who work in fisheries. Entire villages are facing a socio-economic dead end. It does not matter, as long as the Liberals look good. They say they are going to save the biomass, but they are not saving anything. It does not matter, because announcements have been made. They pass laws and set up legislative procedures to interfere in provincial jurisdictions. It is full steam ahead. Are their solutions correct? Are they being applied consistently? No, but that does not matter.

What matters is that they passed legislation, that they spread their tentacles where they did not belong. That is the way to gain control of everything. They announce funding that is appealing to the provinces that have become so strapped for cash over the years—

The House resumed from April 29 consideration of the motion that Bill C‑368, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (natural health products), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Second reading

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Madam Speaker, there is a joke going around that says, “It's not knowing that a politician can be bought; it's knowing how little they'll let themselves go for.” For a member of the NDP caucus right now thinking that this is the misery they are suffering in the polls, the misery they are suffering nationwide, which is the same misery Canadians are suffering, this is all they managed to get out of the supply and confidence arrangement with the government today.

It is not a pharmacare program. Health care is actually a provincial jurisdiction. It should be delivered by the provinces. The bill would simply be adding contraceptives and some diabetes measures into it. I guess, on the surface of it, that is a good thing, but to the tune of $1.5 billion. If viewers watching at home actually believe this is all it is going to cost them, I will remind them that the government bought a $7 billion pipeline and built it for about $40 billion. Therefore, if history is any predictor of the future when it comes to what things cost under a Liberal-NDP coalition, then they should be looking at least to that example if not more.

To us, as Conservatives, the issue is one of provincial jurisdiction. I come from Alberta, and this is a very important issue to our province and to our premier. This is just another intrusion into provincial jurisdiction. We think that, during these financial times, when Canadians are struggling to make ends meet, pouring more fuel on the inflationary fire is certainly not going to help. It is another financial albatross in the making, which Canadians cannot afford and are not willing to pay for.

It is not just me saying this, and it is not just Conservatives saying this. John Ivison eloquently stated in a piece that he published back on February 29, when the bill or this notion first came out, that this is “the woebegone child of a loveless Liberal-NDP marriage.” This is basically what we are dealing with.

It has become clear to me that the bill before us is basically the cost of keeping the NDP support for this Parliament under supply and confidence, and the coalition partners can take this until October 2025. It was supposed to be October 20, but it is going to be extended by another week to make sure that certain people here get the financial benefits they think they are entitled to. However, it just goes to show that there is only one serious opposition in the House, and that is the Conservative Party.

The NDP is not an opposition party but a willing accomplice to everything that the Liberal government has in its agenda. Its members have been witting partners in creating a massive inflationary deficit; setting restrictive policies towards, for example, lawful gun owners and natural health products, which they signed up for two years ago without even knowing they were going to vote in favour of that in Bill C-47 last year; impeding upon provincial jurisdiction time and time again, which is, of course, front and centre with this piece of legislation; continuing to cover up for the government's scandals, covering for it at committee and also here in the House of Commons; introducing soft-on-crime legislation or supporting that soft-on-crime legislation, which has turned our justice system into a revolving door; sending Canadians to food banks en masse, at a couple of million visitors, which is up over 300%; allowing housing prices to skyrocket; and neglecting our military to the point where our soldiers are basically relying on food donations while they are in Ottawa for training. I could continue, but I think members get the gist of what I am trying to say.

It is bad enough that NDP members backed budget after budget and shut down our work to hold the government to account at committee, but they are telling Canadians that they are doing their actual work as an opposition party. Well, they cannot have it both ways. They cannot be in opposition while they support everything that the government does. I do not buy it, and neither do Canadians.

A December 2023 Leger poll indicated that only 18% of Canadians listed the establishment of a national pharmacare program as a health care priority, and the promise was not included in the 2021 Liberal platform. Canadians did not vote for a party promising pharmacare, yet here we are, thanks to an NDP party that is keeping this weak and basically lame-duck government in office. It is no wonder that some provinces are already saying publicly that they are choosing to opt out.

Let it be known that the absence of the NDP as an opposition is also keenly felt in other areas. Just last year, as I was mentioning, the NDP-Liberal coalition passed Bill C-47.

I do not suppose anybody in the NDP was told, when they signed on to this supply and confidence agreement back in March 2022, that they would be asked to regulate natural health products in the same way as therapeutics, but they did it anyway. As a matter of fact, they made that commitment a year before the bill was passed, and it is going to basically shut down our supplements and natural health product industry when they are classified and rebranded as pharmaceutical drugs.

What did the New Democrats do when this came up for debate? They backed the budget instead of forcing the government to remove those four little clauses from Bill C-47, the budget implementation act. They had a chance. They could have flexed their muscles and said they were not going to support the budget implementation act unless the government removed them, but no such request was forthcoming, and the bill passed. It has caused unforeseen chaos in the natural health products and supplements industry across this country; consumers, of course, are rightly worried. In response, I had to table my own private member's bill, Bill C-368, to reverse these changes. This is just part and parcel.

New Democrats say one thing to Canadians but actually do another. Could anyone imagine such a thing as being the House leader of the NDP, for example, standing up and saying time and time again how much one does not like omnibus legislation, and yet gleefully passing Bill C-47. The NDP House leader has said this for the 18 years that he and I have been in the House together. However, he told the government that New Democrats would continue to pass every budget and every budget implementation act henceforth after March 2022. He cannot have it both ways. He cannot stand up and say New Democrats are going to hold the government to account while continuing to give it the keys to the house to do whatever it wants.

In the case of natural health product governance and regulations, New Democrats tell Canadians they are against omnibus legislation and that they are keeping the government accountable. However, as I said, they voted for Bill C-47, threw that industry into turmoil and then criticized me for giving them an off-ramp on the Bill C-368 debate last week. I was giving them a pathway to redemption, and all they could do was basically blame Stephen Harper for the mess that the country is in. I cannot even make this stuff up.

The most common questions I get from Canadians are these: When are we going to have an election? Who believes anything anybody in the NDP has to say anymore, when their actions are completely 180° opposite from what they say with their words?

It should also be highlighted that the bill was introduced with no public consultations whatsoever, which comes as no surprise to Conservatives. This piece of legislation has been pushed from a government with a terrible record on transparency. It is a government that regularly rushes massive changes with little regard for those people the changes may impact. It talks about the intended consequences, but it never fully understands the unintended consequences of the things it does, which is why we are in the mess we are in today.

The Conservative position on Bill C-64 is that the Liberals know this project is an expensive boondoggle. That is why they abandoned it in their 2019 election promise. Even former finance minister Bill Morneau noted in his book that a single-user system would cost an additional $15 billion a year. We cannot believe the $1.5 billion number, and that is why my colleagues here on the Conservative side and I will respect provincial jurisdiction and vote against this piece of legislation. We encourage New Democrats to change their ways before their party actually fades into oblivion forever.

Food and Drugs Act

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-368, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act, natural health products.

In a time when we are seeing more businesses close than open each month and when business insolvencies are skyrocketing, the last thing we need to be doing as Parliamentarians is putting higher costs and more red tape onto the backs of small business owners in the natural health sector.

I have heard from small business owners across Canada that the government has turned its back on them. They simply cannot keep up with the higher costs and burdensome red tape that the Liberals, with the support of the NDP, keep piling on them. According to Statistics Canada, more businesses closed than opened in December, and this is the fifth time in six months that this was the case.

On January 1, the government increased payroll taxes. In February, insolvencies rose 58.1% year over year, according to the superintendent of bankruptcy. In March, the senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada called the lack of productivity in Canada's economy an emergency. On April 1, the government hiked the carbon tax by 23% and, just last week, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business reported a drastic decline in both short-term and long-term business competence, with both dropping by 5.4 points in their monthly business barometer.

What does all of that have to do with natural health products? Last spring, the NDP-Liberal government passed Bill C-47, which allowed Health Canada to regulate natural health products in the same way as therapeutic synthetic drugs.

Canadians depend on natural health products, which include vitamins, protein powders, probiotics and even fluoride-free toothpastes. Members can think of the young guy in the gym taking a supplement or the mom who uses eastern medicine and frequents the local Chinese herbal medicine shop. Those are the people Health Canada is going after.

As a British Columbian, I would be remiss if I did not mention that, at the same time the government is trying to prevent our teenagers from getting the supplement powder they want, it has legalized possession of fentanyl, which led to record deaths from illicit substances the very same year, over an argument about stigmatization in British Columbia.

After nine years, Canadians can see clearly that there is no common sense in the approach that the government is taking for natural health products. The changes made will reduce choice, increase costs for consumers and drive businesses, investment and product development out of Canada.

What is exactly changing for natural health products? First, Health Canada is implementing new regulations that treat natural health products the same as over-the-counter synthetic drugs, placing significant red tape on the small- and medium-sized businesses that produce and sell these products. This will result in fewer options for Canadians, pushing consumers to foreign online retailers, where consumers may have no idea where the product came from or what, in fact, is in it. Second, Health Canada is introducing new fees on licensing, manufacturing, labelling, importing and packaging that could cost a business more than $100,000. I looked up cost of those fees before my speech tonight. There is a licensing fee of over $20,000, a site amendment fee of close to $5,000, a class III product license application of up to $58,000 and a product license amendment of up to $23,000.

I have spoken to owners of health food and supplement stores in my riding and across Canada. They are terrified about what these changes will mean for their businesses and their customers. These new fees and regulations will mean fewer products at higher prices on their store shelves, potentially depriving consumers of the benefits they rely on for their health and well-being. For many stores, these changes could mean they close entirely.

Mike Bjørndal is a buddy of mine. We went to high school together. He left a stable job. He started a small business with a few other partners in the natural health food supplement industry. Mike told me directly that if these changes go through, they are moving their shop to America, reducing their taxes paid in Canada and shutting their doors. That is the consequence of what Health Canada is doing right now.

Then, there is the Vanderwall family. Mrs. Vanderwall runs a side business of supplements, which adds a little to her husband's income, just to get by with their seven kids. They rely on the current regulatory framework to pay their monthly bills.

The natural health product industry continues to introduce new ideas and improve products. However, higher licensing fees would discourage companies from investing in research and development, meaning fewer new products being developed or manufactured here in Canada. Natural health products play a crucial role in addressing unique health concerns that conventional medicine may not adequately address. Higher fees would invariably lead to fewer options, and consumers would be forced to turn to pharmaceutical alternatives or products that are not made in Canada.

I referenced the alarming statistics on business insolvencies earlier, and these changes are only going to make things worse in an industry that generates billions of dollars in economic growth in Canada. Given all that, I am very proud to stand and support the member for Red Deer—Lacombe's bill, Bill C-368, to repeal specifically sections 500 to 504 of Bill C-47 and to restore the status quo on natural health product regulations. As he mentioned in his speech, under the current rules, the government can already have a stop-sale order provision. It has seizure provisions and inspection provisions, and it already pre-authorizes the products on Canadian store shelves.

Health Canada's 2019 summary report, “Adverse reactions, medical device incidents and health product recalls in Canada”, highlighted that of the 96,000-plus adverse reactions filed, only 3.8% were related to the natural health sector. We know that these products are safe and that existing regulations are sufficient.

Since last spring, my office, like the member for Richmond Hill's, has heard from literally thousands of people who are concerned about what the government is doing and about the increase in red tape it is suggesting through these regulations. Instead of saying that we need these regulations because of the growth in the industry, I would point out that his constituents, like mine, are simply scared of more government overreach that is going to impact their economic well-being and the viability of their businesses.

No matter where one goes in Canada, on every main street, in practically every single shopping mall in our country, we are going to have a natural health or supplement-style store. These stores provide valuable products that keep Canadians healthy and that improve our mental and physical well-being. The last thing we should be doing right now is attacking those very businesses that millions of Canadians rely upon.

With that, I implore everyone in this chamber to support this legislation and to stand behind our small businesses and our wealth creators who provide real and adequate services for Canadians under the existing regulations.

[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.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will begin my speech this evening with two images. The first is that the cure is worse than the disease. The second is that we should not use a bazooka to kill a fly, but rather the appropriate tool, in other words, a fly swatter.

The government is being sneaky about it; that is the worst part. That is the story behind Bill C‑368. The government introduced this provision under the radar, in an annex to budget 2023, in Bill C‑47. From day one we have always made a distinction between natural health products and drugs, and rightly so. In the drug industry, in the pharmaceutical industry, people may have to bear the recovery costs, but they have 20-year patents. They are able to break even. What is more, there are no taxes on drugs.

The government makes a lot of money in taxes on natural health products so it can afford to pay for an inspection service that will guarantee the effectiveness and safety of natural health products. When we met in September, everyone agreed that consumers deserve to have effective products that are safe. Health Canada has to do its job in that respect.

What did the Auditor General's report reveal? First, in my opinion, there was a minor methodological problem. Rather than proceeding randomly, products, places and companies were targeted where problems were known to exist. Obviously, if problems are already known to exist, the audit will reveal a high percentage of problems.

There are approximately 91,000 natural health products. Of that number, 75 were analyzed in a targeted way, leading to the conclusion that Health Canada has not been doing its job to ensure product safety since 2014. That is what was found after checking the sampled products. Health Canada was caught with its pants down, so to speak. It played tough, tried to assert its credibility and brought out the big guns.

As legislators, we have always wanted to ensure that there is a balance when it comes to natural health products and access to those products, in order to guarantee free choice for consumers while also ensuring that when Health Canada approves products, it does its job after the fact and inspects those products. From 2004 to 2014, 53 recommendations were made. In September, when we heard from Health Canada representatives and the chief scientist, we realized that the answers were not credible.

I asked whether an impact study had been done on the industry, on small and medium-sized businesses, concerning the recovery costs required. I was told that it was based on Treasury Board guidelines. I imagine that the Treasury Board's main interest is getting its money's worth. What kind of service is it going to provide when, after all this time, and with all the taxes generated by the industry, it has not even been able to ensure an audit or any inspections throughout its mandate?

There are a few problems today. I asked the chief scientist how many adverse reactions there had been to natural health products in 17 years. I asked her to provide the numbers. We have yet to get an answer to that question. I also asked her what the numbers were for adverse reactions to pharmaceutical products. She replied that she had some numbers, but she still has not provided those either.

We know very well that, even though they are approved by Health Canada, pharmaceuticals can still sometimes have very serious side effects. However, that is no reason to discredit the entire industry. We are just doing our job and making sure that we do it properly. Contrary to what people might think and what the government tried to have us believe, the shell game that I am talking about, the one in Bill C‑47, happened in June, when we were voting on the March 2023 budget. Now we are getting letters and the public is starting to find out about this.

As legislators, we do not have any say over the regulations. We vote on laws. Regulations are then drafted on how the legislation should be applied. The problem is that we need Bill C‑368 to be sent to committee so that we can do our job as parliamentarians and look into the regulation that was brought in under which natural health products are now considered therapeutic products under Vanessa's Law.

It is very clear that we would not be where we are today if the government had been a little more transparent, if it had carried out the consultations it needed to and if it had worked with everyone to find some common ground to ensure that no harm would come to an industry that Quebeckers and Canadians have the right to have access to by choice. Natural health products are not forced on anyone through a prescription. No one is forced to buy them. When people choose to buy them, it is because, in a way, they have educated themselves.

It is true that they can pose risks, and it is also true that people have to follow their pharmacist's instructions. There are interactions, true. However, these interactions are between drugs prescribed by a doctor versus a pharmaceutical product that I am going to buy. We are not trying to trivialize anything, but just because there are a few bad apples in one industry does not mean that the entire industry should be discredited. That would undermine small and medium-sized businesses, which want to sell safe products. Their main motivation is people's health.

We would not be here if there had been a bit more transparency and if the people who came to testify in September had the courage to point this out to us. When they were told that their cost-recovery model was modelled on the pharmaceutical industry, they did not say one word, as if we would not figure out Bill C‑47's sleight of hand at some point. They took the entire model from the pharmaceutical industry and transposed it to the natural health products industry without allowing us to debate it. That is why there were two meetings on this. It was to get information about the problem.

There have been no more consultations so far. That is why we are going to vote in favour of Bill C‑368. We want to ensure that the legislator, who never has access to the regulations and can never review them through legislation, brings this to committee. There we will be able to work on it and find a balance regarding the government's claims that 88% of the 91,000 natural health products are deficient and have misleading labelling. This is a serious methodological bias that does not reflect reality, because in 2015, a randomized study showed that more than 90% of products were fully compliant. What happened in the meantime, then?

Maybe if the people at Health Canada did their job and carried out inspections, and maybe if they sent people their criteria, guidelines and information about where they want people to focus so that, during production, they can be certain that the product is okay, we would not be here today. The Bloc Québécois will indeed vote in favour of the bill.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am honoured to speak before the House today to discuss an issue of paramount importance to the health and safety of Canadians, which is the safety and the availability of natural health products, also known as NHPs.

In order to make the natural health products market safer for consumers and support Canadians in making informed choices, last year our government expanded Vanessa's Law to include NHPs. Doing this allows the government to act when serious health and safety risks are identified, such as the ability to require a recall if products are unsafe. Our number one priority is to keep Canadians healthy and safe. Bill C-368 would remove the government's ability to ensure the safety and the efficacy of these crucial health products. Passing this bill would mean that the government could mandate the recall of a tube of lipstick or a head of lettuce, but not a contaminated supplement. That is why the government will be opposing this bill.

I am aware that some members of the opposition may be supporting this bill. We look forward to it going to committee, if that is the case, to further cover the points I am about to cover. My remarks today will delve into the vital role that NHPs play in the lives of Canadians, the current landscape of NHPs and the need for greater oversight of NHPs to guarantee public safety.

Before proceeding further, I must highlight the exceptional engagement from the community of Richmond Hill on this matter. Our office has received over 1,200 communications, including emails, petitions, phone calls and pamphlets from constituents who are deeply concerned about the regulation and the safety of NHPs.

Since 2020, I have also met with the Canadian Health Food Association, which represents many NHP small business owners in my riding. One of those businesses is Platinum Naturals, whose team I met with this past February to hear their important feedback and their concern with respect to the impacts of the NHP regulations on their business. This overwhelming response from my constituents underscores a national discourse on the necessity of a regulatory framework that ensures the safety of NHPs and that supports small businesses operating in the industry, as well as respects the autonomy of Canadians in their health management practices.

As I delve into the implications of Bill C-368, I want to first focus on the vital role NHPs play in the lives of Canadians, followed by the current landscape of NHPs and, lastly, the need for greater oversight to guarantee public safety.

NHPs, which include vitamins, minerals, herbal remedies and daily-use products like toothpaste and sunscreen, are part of our integral health care practices. Their popularity is undeniable, with the number of authorized products in Canada skyrocketing from around 50,000 in 2004 to over 200,000 today. This demand underscores the critical importance of ensuring these products are not only effective, but also safe for Canadian families.

It is fundamental to understand that although NHPs are lower risk, they are not without risk, especially if products are contaminated, advertised in a misleading manner or used improperly. As much as NHPs offer potential health benefits, the risks associated with substandard or improperly labelled NHPs underscore the need for appropriate oversight.

I will now highlight the previous and the current legislative landscape of NHPs.

In Canada, NHPs are regulated under the Food and Drug Act, and specifically under the natural health products regulations established in 2004. A pivotal moment in Canadian legislative history was the enactment of the Protecting Canadians from Unsafe Drugs Act, also known as Vanessa's Law, in 2014. This introduced improvements in Health Canada's ability to collect post-market safety information on drugs and medical devices and to take appropriate actions, such as issuing a mandatory recall when a serious risk to health care is identified. However, NHPs were not yet incorporated under the scope of this law. As a result, for close to a decade, Health Canada's ability to take action on NHPs when health and safety issues occur has been limited.

This lack of equivalent safety power for NHPs has compelled Health Canada to depend on voluntary intervention by industry, which has not consistently worked in the past, to protect Canadians against real health and safety risks.

A significant shift in NHP regulations was marked by the adoption of Bill C-47 in 2023, which incorporated NHPs under the scope of Vanessa's Law. This empowered Health Canada with enhanced authorities to better protect consumer safety, such as by recalling unsafe products from the market and mandating label changes where serious harm to health is identified. This goes into my third point, which is the pertinent need for greater oversight of NHPs.

Between 2021 and 2022, Health Canada conducted inspections to assess the regulatory compliance of 36 NHP manufacturers and importers. All of the inspections identified compliance issues ranging in severity, with 15 of the 36 sites reporting issues serious enough to be considered non-compliance. Between 2021 and 2023 alone, there were also 100 voluntary recalls of licensed NHPs due to safety concerns, including contamination risks and the presence of harmful substances. These figures are not mere statistics. They represent potential harm to Canadian families and highlight the need to have stronger tools available to protect consumers from serious health and safety risks.

With all that said, it is important to consider the crucial need for oversight of NHPs as we consider the implications of Bill C-368, which could significantly alter the government's ability to regulate the safety and efficacy of these important products. As the NHP market has grown significantly over the years in Canada and continues to grow, we continue to support access to a safe NHP marketplace for Canadians to maintain and improve their health. The extension of Vanessa's Law to NHPs underscores this commitment.

As we navigate this conversation, let us prioritize the safety and trust of Canadians in their health product choices and ensure that the regulatory mechanisms in place are equipped to address the complexity of the NHP industry.

I am thankful for the opportunity to voice these considerations on behalf of my constituents in Richmond Hill and Canadians everywhere who rely on NHPs for their health and well-being.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

moved that Bill C-368, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (natural health products), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House today and talk about the changes that have been made to Canada's natural health product regime by the Liberals, with the support of the NDP and the Greens, in the budget implementation act, Bill C-47. For Canadians watching at home, what is Bill C-47 and what happened? Last year at about this time, Bill C-47 was passed in the House of Commons. This is a budget implementation act. It is supposed to only change the law insofar as what the budget policy of the day is talking about. However, somebody snuck a few clauses into the bill that changed the definition of “natural health products” to be the same as that of therapeutic products, such as drugs that require a prescription and have a drug identification number. That is the problem.

The underlying problem with all that, for folks watching at home, is that the industry was not consulted at all about these particular changes. As a matter of fact, I do not remember a single member of Parliament debating that during the budget implementation act debates. I do not remember it coming up at committee. Nobody from the industry was called to the committee to testify about these issues. It was only several months after the bill had passed that people began to wake up and realize that Health Canada was proceeding with its self-care framework, because it had these new-found powers under Bill C-47.

That basically goes back to Health Canada now trying to get care and control of natural health products to the same effect that it has with therapeutics. However, if we go back to 1998, the health committee in the House of Commons issued a report with 53 recommendations. It basically said, in no uncertain terms, that natural health products are not therapeutic drugs. I will remind everybody in this House that this happened under a majority Chrétien government, so there would have been a majority of Liberals on that committee at the time. That is the conclusion they drew, and that was the template going forward.

If we fast-forward to 2014, when Vanessa's Law was passed, there was a lot of debate and discussion at that particular point in time. Again it was reaffirmed that natural health products are not therapeutic products and are exempted from Vanessa's Law. Then, if we fast-forward to 2021, the Auditor General's report came out. The Auditor General was very critical of Health Canada's ability to properly manage certain aspects of the natural health product regime, particularly when it came to looking at post-market monitoring, testing samples of the products that were on the shelves and so on.

Most importantly, in that report, the Auditor General took the strange step of actually taking 75 products. These were not random products off the shelf in Canada; these were 75 products that were deemed problematic from the beginning. The Auditor General used that for a false narrative that somehow natural health products in Canada are unsafe. I can assure everyone that this is simply not true, but Health Canada, nonetheless, is using this information to claim that it needs the powers under Vanessa's Law. What would that entail? Health Canada would now have a self-funding methodology, so it could apply massive amounts of licensing fees and product registration fees to a very small industry, when we compare it to the size of the pharmaceutical industry. According to everybody in the industry, this would likely cause a massive loss of products and a lot of chaos. The primary impact, for Canadians watching at home, is cost.

For those who do not already know, people should know that Canada is already the most regulated natural health product industry in the world. As a matter of fact, Canada's brand on natural health products is better than that of the United States, Mexico and virtually anywhere in the world. Our products, manufacturers and exporters already had in place, prior to Bill C-47, the best regulatory reputation out there. We are a growing industry in this country. The industry is growing so fast, in leaps and bounds, because of the proper regulation that existed prior to Bill C-47, whether in terms of our producers, manufacturers or distributors, as I said.

However, under the new self-care framework, Health Canada started out with these new site licences. People might not know this, but manufacturers, packagers and distributors have to have something called a site licence from Health Canada. They cannot conduct business without a site licence. This was free up until Bill C-47; with the new proposed regulations coming into force, the initial site licence fee was going to be $40,000 per year. I think it has been negotiated with the industry down to $20,000 a year.

Just imagine if someone has a traditional Chinese medicine establishment, or is doing Ayurvedic medicine or homeopathy, and has to get a site licence fee of $20,000 every year. Everybody, basically, in those three parts of the natural health product industry has already said that this is going to shut them down. It is a very onerous fee. There would then be a new product fee. For any new natural health product that one wanted to bring to the market, it would be upward of $4,000 to get one's natural product number. If someone buys their vitamin C, they go to the store and there is a little natural product number on it. There are about 50,000 natural products registered in Canada right now. If someone is going to bring a new product to the market, it will cost them an additional $4,000 per product. In that particular year, if one has a site licence and a new product, one is looking at $24,000 before one even gets anything coming in for revenues.

If a person is practising traditional Chinese medicine, and if somebody needs a new remedy and the practitioner needs to import some of the ingredients from China or someplace else in the world, they are going to bring those products in and be paying thousands of dollars to get a product registered in Canada. One might be in the market to sell only 10 bottles to a client that has a need for a very specific thing. This is going to basically kill traditional Chinese medicine practice in Canada. Of course, the right-to-sell licence that Health Canada is bringing in for each product will be over $300 per product, so now one is dealing with thousands of dollars every year for this industry. It is going to kill innovation. It is going to stifle growth. It is going to basically drive the innovation and product development out of Canada.

What is the impact? The industry experts are saying that up to 70% of products that are currently on our shelves in Canada with a natural product number on them, and it is very important that they have that natural product number, will be likely disappearing in the years to come when Health Canada implements the self-care framework. Three out of five manufacturers, retailers, practitioners and distributors say that they will actually have to close their doors. We are basically losing approximately 60% of the industry if Health Canada goes ahead with implementing the cost recovery fee program for the natural product industry. The job losses are direct and indirect. People may be interested to know that right now about 54,000 people in Canada are directly employed in the natural health product industry. They figure that about 66% of those jobs will be negatively impacted once the self-care framework is brought in.

One would think that the Prime Minister, being the self-professed feminist that he is, would have actually done a gender analysis on the impact of Bill C-47 when it comes to natural health products, but there was no gender-based analysis. One might be surprised to know that over 80% of the consumers of natural health products in Canada are women, as well as 90% of practitioners, such as homeopathic doctors and so on. Well over 50% of the micro-businesses are female-owned in this particular industry, and 84% of direct-to-customer sellers are women. This is very important. It is a very important industry to women in Canada, and we are going to lose these businesses.

It is too bad, because we are already, like I said, one of the safest and most well-regulated environments around the globe when it comes to natural health products. Over 80% of Canadians, according to the most recent information that we have, are users of natural health products. Of those 80%, when one asks them how satisfied they are with their natural health products, over 99% say they are very confident that the natural health products that they acquire from the shelves in Canadian stores are safe and healthy and work for them. That is true. One will find that across the country. I have been travelling across the country and can say without any hesitation whatsoever that Canadians are very concerned about losing access to the only part of their health care system that they have care and control over, which is natural health products.

For those who are interested, Deloitte has done an audit on some of the findings that Health Canada has been using. It has claimed that over 700 people over a two-year period were adversely affected by natural health products, but if someone actually digs down into the data, and it is Government of Canada data, they will find that only 32 people over three years were actually affected. Unfortunately there were three deaths, but if one takes a look at the other factors associated with those deaths, all of those people were also taking prescription drugs at the same time. There is a lot more misinformation out there right now that is attacking the industry unnecessarily.

We certainly should not be making a hasty decision in this place by bringing legislative changes in the back door like we did with Bill C-47.

I want to talk a little about consumer protection because I think this will be the argument the government will use. Members may also not know this, but if one buys products online from outside of the country, those are not necessarily regulated in the same way. In fact, I can guarantee they are not regulated in the same way they are in the Canadian marketplace. They will not have that natural product number on them.

One can buy a 90-day supply. Right now, Health Canada allows one to buy a 90-day supply. It can be shipped in with Amazon, or any number of these direct-to-customer purchasing apps or opportunities out there, and it will all be unregulated by Health Canada. They very likely will not have a natural product number on them.

These are marketed to Canadians on social media, such as Facebook, and through other types of marketing methods, and Canadians are buying them. Umary is an example. It is made in Mexico and marketed as a natural health product to seniors. Seniors are buying this product up, but it contains diclofenac, which is a prescription drug. This is the problem, not the industry within the borders of Canada.

Health Canada, in its attempt, would do the opposite of what its intended results. It is going to drive the businesses through regulatory burden costs and overhead. Businesses are going to say they can go operate in Mexico or the United States far cheaper than they can operate in Canada. They are going to be down there in the same environment selling direct-to-customer over the border with 90-day supplies. Health Canada is going to lose care and control over the quality assurance Canadians have come to depend on. It is not good for consumers at all.

I should let people know who are watching Health Canada already has incredible powers. We are going to hear some members of Parliament stand up in this place to debate this bill and say that Health Canada has no mandatory recall when it comes to natural health products. However, I will list some of the powers one might not know Health Canada already has. It already has the ability to issue a stop sale, and it does that from time to time. A stop sale order will go out, and that means that all that product on all the shelves in all the stores in Canada has to immediately stop being sold.

Health Canada does have the power, if it chose to implement it, for personal use import at the border. If it wanted to take a look at what was coming across the border, it would be a great place for Health Canada to start looking for opportunities to keep Canadians safer. It has the ability to seize. It has seizure provisions already in the legislation and regulations, which means it can seize any product from any of the points along the line, from manufacturing through packaging through distributing at the retail stores. It already has seizure capabilities in the law and regulations.

Health Canada can revoke the site licence for any manufacturer, any packager, any labeller or any importer. It already has the power to revoke that site licence. It has the ability to mandate a label change. If there is a health concern brought up from the Canadian public, it can investigate and then can tell the manufacturer or the labeller they need to change the label to reflect some health concern or some other information. It can do that.

Health Canada can inspect any site that has a site licence. It can go automatically into a manufacturer. It can go into a producer anywhere where a site licence is required. It can go in and conduct an audit anytime it wants. It can inspect any product off the shelf. It can take it, send it to the lab and do a verification check. It approves every natural product number being sold on the shelf right now. Nothing is sold without its pre-authorized consent. As well, it can revoke a natural product number anytime it wants.

That is already an immense amount of power. It does not need more. When we hear about the mandatory recall, that is simply a red herring. Health Canada already has an immense amount of power.

When something is defined as a therapeutic drug, that also subjects them to $5-million-a-day fines. There is nobody in the natural product industry who can afford a $5-million-a-day administrative penalty fine. Health Canada would unilaterally, without an ombudsman, without any process to appeal, have the ability to basically shut this industry down at its earliest whim or convenience. It is already causing a chill in the industry. It is driving businesses away from Canada.

We need to stop this. Canadians need to call their Liberal MP, their NDP MP or their Green Party MP and tell them to change how they voted on Bill C-47. They need to get them to vote in favour of Bill C-368. Let us get this bill to committee. Let us have an actual proper consultation with the industry. If there is something that needs to be changed, we can at least have an honest conversation and Canadians can be involved in a transparent way.

Passing this bill through the back door, tucking it into a budget implementation act, is shoddy law-making and shoddy policy-making. It flies in the face of everything we have done to this point. I encourage my colleagues to vote in favour of Bill C-368.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-368, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (natural health products).

Madam Speaker, I rise today to introduce my private member's bill, which would amend the Food and Drugs Act. This bill would reverse the changes made by the NDP-Liberal government in its omnibus budget bill, Bill C-47, earlier this year. It would return natural health products to the status quo, ensuring these products are not classified as therapeutic products, like synthetic drugs, and are therefore not subject to the same regulatory regime as other drugs.

Previously, natural health products were classified separately from pharmaceuticals due to the minimal risk they pose to their users. However, after the NDP-Liberal coalition passed Bill C-47, bureaucrats in Health Canada can now implement their self-care scheme, which, according to the Natural Health Products Protection Association, will reduce choice, increase costs for consumers and drive businesses, investment and product development out of Canada.

The existing regulations already keep Canadians safe. As such, I urge all members in this House to listen to their constituents and the overwhelming amount of correspondence they receive and vote for this bill.

After eight years, enough is enough. It is time to undo the damage done by Bill C-47, kick out the gatekeepers and save our supplements and vitamins.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)