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.