Thank you for giving me that opportunity. I recognize it's a little inconsistent to say, “Here, we need the regulations to support the big companies exporting, but look at all the dangers that have occurred under the regulations.”
To be quite frank—and I expect the committee members will have had this experience—Health Canada doesn't ever really give us the raw data. I don't believe it. Every risk analysis I've seen done by professional risk analysis people using government data had to go to other western nations to find actual evidence of death.
Health Canada is trying to create a safety argument—that's its sole basis for this—even though, as I said, if the committee gave me time, I could explain how our drug policy is intended to protect intellectual property rights. I'm not the only expert who says that.
If we were going to have an honest safety discussion about how we get the best health outcomes...we are going to have good manufacturing practices. We're going to have procedures in place to make sure that people are safe. However, we can't have this discussion by just saying we need ever stricter regulations without asking if there is a health consequence to taking products away. Canadians are telling MPs, yes.
Why are Canadians concerned? Canadians are quite intelligent. They know what works for them and they know what doesn't work for them, but Health Canada just says, risk, risk, risk.
When officials were in front of the Standing Committee of Health last year, I watched them use Ezekiel Stephan as an example of a death. I'm sorry. I was counsel at both of the Stephan trials, and I don't understand how his death could be attributed to a natural health product. We had Alberta Health Services take out of every ambulance...it destocked all the ambulances in southern Alberta of all the equipment you would need to get an airway for anyone under the age of 12. The ambulance attendants were weeping on the stand, saying, “We were telling management the first infant is dead.” That first infant was Ezekiel, because they couldn't get a whiff of air into him for eight minutes and 38 seconds because they didn't have the equipment.
How is that attributed to a natural health product? Was the Alberta Health Services person—who, in my opinion, was criminally negligent in making that policy decision—under the influence of an NHP?
Health Canada doesn't explain these things. Sometimes those of us who are aware of these cases are just shocked, but I don't believe the figures. If Health Canada gives us the case reports so that we can analyze them, maybe I will, but it won't.
Please, Health Canada, tell us how many deaths per million there are per year so that we can put them in a risk hierarchy like every other country and have an honest discussion.