Thank you.
I want to speak just briefly to it. This is one of the few parts of the entire bill that we have concerns about.
First of all, I want to just state for the record that I was the health critic for the New Democratic Party for eight years, and in that time I was a passionate and strong proponent of tobacco-control measures. To me, the marketing to Canadians of a highly addictive carcinogen is something of first-order importance, and the propensity of the tobacco industry to find ever-more creative ways to find nicotine-delivery systems to hook the next generation of Canadian youth on their products is stunning.
Therefore, I want to state for the record that I am fully in favour of strong, robust and effective control on nicotine pouches and frankly on every kind of mechanism that big tobacco tries to utilize to continue to market their products to us.
By the way, I'm going to say again that, due to a lot of filibustering in this committee, we were not able to hear from a lot of witnesses, and I think that needs to be said for the record. I'm left to guess a little bit at the policy reasons behind this, because we never really did hear a strong, cogent argument from the government. However, what I've read in the media from the Minister of Health is that he would like these powers so that he could regulate nicotine pouches. The other example that was given, I think, for this committee was to facilitate emergency shortages of necessary products, and the example given was baby formula.
This section purports to give powers to the Minister of Health to, on his own belief, whether he or she is certain or not, basically make any decision that he or she wants to on whether or not a product is sold in Canada, including if it's used off-label or if it was originally intended for animal use. It also would allow the minister, just on his or her belief, whether or not he or she is certain, the power to exempt any product whatsoever from the provisions of Health Canada. Third, it would allow the Minister of Health to approve any product that he or she wanted to, if it had been approved by a foreign regulatory body.
To me, then, besides questions like what this has to do with dealing with medications that are targeted at animals, what mischief are we trying to get at there? I'm left guessing. However, what I will say, as I hone in on this and bring this to a close, is that these powers are too broad. The discretion of the minister is unlimited.
I was a lawyer in a different life, and I've been in Parliament for almost as long. I've never seen a section of an act that says that a minister of the Crown can act whether or not they are certain. I've never even seen that language.
Finally, I want to just comment briefly on the insertion of this in a budget bill. Now, again, I'm an equal-opportunity critic. I was here when the Harper government used omnibus bills in a very major way, and they started the practice of amending all sorts of legislation that had nothing to do with Canada's fiscal or economic issues, and they crammed them into a budget bill as a way to get quick passage.
Sometimes you can put extra things in a budget for various reasons. I think that may be used to some degree by a wise and judicious government if it has to legislate something quickly and if it's not too controversial. However, the habit has developed in this Parliament for governments to legislate, in all sorts of areas, issues that have nothing to do with this and that require further study. After criticizing the Harper government, the Liberal government came to power in 2015 saying they would not use omnibus bills. I guess being in opposition, as they were through that time, they saw the problems with those from an opposition point of view.
I'll just name a couple of the problems. I think my colleagues would agree, and some of my colleagues in the Conservative Party have commented on these. I think the Bloc Québécois and my colleague Monsieur Ste-Marie said this very well. Issues that require further study and stakeholder input at an appropriate committee are things that we are robbed of. It simply doesn't happen. We have a massive bill the size of a phone book—for anybody who can remember what a phone book was—and we didn't hear from a lot of the stakeholders about this.
In this latest budget the government amended legislation concerning natural health products with Vanessa's Law. They slipped that in the budget bill. They changed the definition of “therapeutic products” to include natural health products, which has huge ramifications for the natural health products industry, and that was done without any proper study.
In my view, while I'm extraordinarily sympathetic to the rationale behind this—I think it's well-intentioned, and I think the government is seeking powers here to do some good things—they're killing an ant with a sledgehammer. The legislation should be surgical, it should be targeted and it should amend the appropriate legislation, which, in my view, would be the Tobacco and Vaping Products Act or some other legislation. It should go to the health committee. They should hear from a broad array of stakeholders. They should study this bill, and then they should—