Government Operations Committee on Sept. 26th, 2024

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

There's a button in the middle of the Zoom screen for translation.

Why don't we start with Mr. Buckley while Mr. Potestio gets that done?

[Shawn Buckley]

Yes, absolutely.

John, it's right beside the participants button, if that's helpful to you. We'll be looking at the same screen.

[JohnFrank Potestio]

Yes, I have it now.

[Shawn Buckley]

The question related to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business association and Ms. Pohlmann's saying that we need clear language in compliance and regulations.

We were invited to comment on specific examples. It's interesting, because a lot of the costs in the natural product industry are in the policy and guidance documents—in how those are implemented. You go through this onerous licensing process, which can take you an exorbitant amount of time. Let's say you then want to do a change. You file for any type of change. You have to give notice of a change because something minor has been tweaked. Then, all of a sudden, you're under a full-scale review. The industry is absolutely confused, because you don't know from one time to the next what type of decision you're going to get. There's no consistency in the application. It's not a language question, except that the policy documents and the law as is are not giving the industry clarity on what to expect, going forward.

That is in every part of our regulations, which are quite detailed, right down to good manufacturing practices, standards of evidence and the like. Because we're in the drug model.... As I said, in the United States, the same products are deemed by law to be safe. The FDA needs to have actual evidence of a specific product causing harm before they take any action. However, we have to prove products are safe. I know of a company that couldn't prove that encapsulated parsley was safe, because—wouldn't you know it?—nobody's done a safety study on parsley. It would be very helpful to go back in time. Shouldn't we be clearer that, if an ingredient is in our food supply, it's been deemed safe for policy reasons?

I'll let JohnFrank go. I don't want to dominate the discussion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Mr. Potestio, I'll have Mrs. Vignola repeat the question for you now that you have the interpretation going.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

I'll be brief.

This past April, Ms. Pohlmann, vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, recommended that the government use plain language and make regulatory compliance more flexible.

Mr. Potestio, do you have any proposals or examples of what could be done to simplify regulatory language and ensure greater flexibility?

[JohnFrank Potestio]

Yes, the main example here is allowing the cannabis companies brought into this regulated space to succeed as companies. We need them to succeed today. I mean, there have been a lot of recommendations made or proposed by the government, but the government has to take action. The government has not taken any action, at all, in what's happening to these cannabis companies across Canada. We've seen hundreds of companies close their doors, and there has been no action taken in order to....

We were brought into these regulated industries saying that the cannabis industry is going to be supported by the Canadian government. There was no support at all in the industry. There were recommendations made by committees and presented to the government, but there was no action taken at all. We sit here today asking whether we can survive in this industry. Can we make sure we're keeping Canadians' health as our main concern?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

That is our time, I'm afraid.

Mr. Bachrach, please go ahead, sir.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to both of our initial witnesses.

This is an interesting study. We've heard from a lot of different areas of regulation. As much as we could talk specifically about each of your fields, there are thousands of regulations across government at different levels that affect different sectors.

I'd like to start by bumping this up to 10,000 feet and talking about the tenets of regulation—the principles that you feel are being violated in these cases and that should be applied more broadly across the regulatory environment. I take Mr. Buckley's point very well. If you don't have a safety issue or a problem, what are you fixing? I guess that is the argument being made.

Perhaps to both of you, what are the lessons that can be learned from natural health and cannabis products that should inform regulatory reforms across government?

[Shawn Buckley]

John, if you don't mind my going first, I'd love to jump in. I'll try to be quick.

I love the question, because sometimes we get caught up in the minutiae, like you say, and we forget to look at things from a broader perspective. The drug model, which came into force in all of the western world in the 1930s, basically captures everything used for a therapeutic purpose. Anything you ingest, either to prevent illness or to treat illness or injury, is a drug.

The drug model has captured the entire field. I could say to you: “You look dehydrated. Would you take some water to treat your dehydration?” I would have just broken a myriad of federal laws: I made water a drug. Literally, water is a drug, if we use it to treat dehydration.

The second part of the drug model is that we make it illegal. All drugs are illegal except that the government will grant temporary exemptions in the form of a licence, allowing us to access a drug. How did we end up in the legal philosophical situation where in Canada it is illegal to treat ourselves with anything or to prevent injury unless it's approved of by the government? That's very offensive from a legal philosophical perspective. I mean, we've been using ginger tea to treat nausea for 3,000 years, and now, all of a sudden, it is illegal and we need to seek Health Canada's permission.

I think that from a regulatory framework we always have to ask ourselves, how actually does this affect the rights of the citizen and is this justified? I mean, sometimes it will be, but we've basically lost sovereignty over our own bodies because there are whole treatment modalities that are illegal for us to access.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm going to interrupt for two seconds, Mr. Bachrach.

I see that Mr. Latimer is back. Once we're done with your round, we're going to suspend for about 30 seconds and then sound-check Mr. Latimer.

After we do that, he will be able to participate.

Go ahead, Mr. Bachrach.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Yes, I think those points that Mr. Buckley made are very interesting.

As a follow-up, I'm curious about this line between drugs and non-drugs and I'm curious about how it's defined in the United States. Maybe this shows my ignorance around the details of the issue, but where would your organization, Mr. Buckley, draw the line?

I would imagine that you would agree that pharmaceuticals—complex, sophisticated pharmaceutical drugs—should continue to be regulated as drugs. At the far extreme other end, you've used the example of water. Where should the line be drawn?

[Shawn Buckley]

First of all, it's important to understand, and I don't have...unless the committee gives me five minutes just to explain how the drug model is not designed for good health outcomes....

You have to understand that the purposes of our drug regulations are to protect intellectual property rights. They're not to get good health outcomes. You won't find in the Food and Drugs Act or regulations any legal onus on Health Canada to get good health outcomes.

The reason why we've defined drugs so broadly...and it's the same in all western nations. Everything ingested is a drug if it's used for a therapeutic purpose, in every western nation. We're all captured by this model, but that again is a fantastic situation. I mean, I would argue that we need stricter regulation of the pharmaceutical drugs, and I could explain to you how our drug approval process for the chemical drugs is a complete fraud on the Canadian populace.

I agree with you there, but how on earth do we end up in a situation where the only treatments, even if they're perfectly benign, are...we have to go through the government for that?

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Buckley, if I could interrupt, earlier you said that natural health products in the United States are classified as food—

[Shawn Buckley]

Yes—

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

—so I assume they are also for therapeutic purposes.

[Shawn Buckley]

Yes, but that's an exemption to their drug law. Their definition of “drug” is as broad as ours, and then the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 makes an exception and basically says that for this class of product—they call them “dietary supplements”, but they're the same as our natural health products, by and large—they are classifying them as foods, and then they even go further. Because foods aren't deemed unsafe, they actually put in there that, by law, they're deemed to be safe. It's because they've done a specific exception.

It's like when Vanessa's law came in and created therapeutic products: The definition excluded natural health products. That's how they've done it there. But for the dietary supplements definition exception, absolutely everything is a drug. We had that option. I mean, we didn't have to go there in Canada.

I think the real answer would be the charter of health freedom. Just go to charterofhealthfreedom.org. Basically, the industry and consumer practitioners got together and said, “How do we solve this?” It's to create a third category, different from the United States, but where the industry could compete and thrive.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I think most people....

Oh. Is that my time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

That is your time.

We're going to suspend for a very short time to sound check Mr. Latimer, and then we'll be back.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I call the meeting back to order.

We're going to Mrs. Kusie and Mrs. Atwin for five minutes each, and then Mrs. Vignola and Mr. Bachrach for two and a half minutes each to finish this off.

Go ahead, Mrs. Kusie.

[Tim Latimer, Chief Executive Officer, Business as a Force for Good Inc.]

Will you slip me back into the agenda?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

We won't have time for an opening statement, I'm afraid, because of all the delays, but you'll be able to answer questions or respond now.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.

Mr. Buckley, Mr. Kusmierczyk started very enthusiastically with an anecdote about a natural health products company in his riding, before providing you with statistics on deaths and hospitalizations, none of which, I'm sure, occurred as a result of the products made by the organization in his riding.

He also left you with no opportunity to respond, so I want to go back to you now on his comments about the necessity for balance. As I said, he started out very enthusiastically supporting this natural health product business in the riding and was very keen on it, but then he changed his tune a bit. He flipped. He did a little switcheroo, if you will, in providing these statistics.

What would you like to say in response to that argument from Mr. Kusmierczyk, please?

[Shawn Buckley]

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.

[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.