Thank you very much.
The last time I appeared here was three years ago, on Bill C-420. I think it's very important that we understand that whether we're talking about what we're not supposed to talk about, Bill C-51 as Bill C-52, or whether we're talking about Bill C-420 and the natural health products regulations, we're talking about a continuous process that I first encountered, as did more than 10,000 small businesses and the million-plus consumers whom I represent....
I think it's very important that we understand that since I started in 1972 on a holistic, spiritual lifestyle choice--I did not believe in medical doctors, did not believe in pharmacists, did not believe in synthetic drugs--I've lived a lifetime. I'm 60 now and I work 14 hours a day, seven days a week. There are a million-plus consumers who worked with our Canadian Coalition for Health Freedom in 1997 to stop the July 1, 1997, attempt to make drugs out of our nutrient-rich foods, food extracts and food concentrates, and our foods that are rich to begin with, the healthy foods.
This whole world is upside down. We want people to be eating healthy foods, we want them to be eating nutrient-dense extracts and concentrates, we want them to be going to naturopaths, chiropractors, herbalists. We don't want big pharma ruling the world; we don't want the natural health products regulations to be forced on us, in complete contradiction to the 1998 study process.
I appeared last before this committee in 1998. If you check our coalition's message then, it was quite simple. We created the largest grassroots uprising in Canadian history, by the admission of the Liberals, and started working with the Liberal government. They did a great job. The 1998 report was one of the most extensive stakeholder consensuses in the history of this country. From a consumer and a micro small business point of view, the natural health products regulations are illegal, outside of authority, were never brought to this committee, and need to be cancelled immediately. The majority of our membership in small business is ignoring them. Increasingly, the large businesses are ignoring them.
Health Canada is a set of federal criminal investigative police officers. Their actual act started in 1884. All that is in federal jurisdiction is to charge people with a crime under the Criminal Code or under the criminal powers of item 27 of section 91 of the BNA Act, if there's a serious adulteration or harm causing serious national death or adverse events. That's all there is.
Eighty per cent of what Health Canada does, including the entire work of the natural health products directorate, is outside of federal jurisdiction. Of any party in this country, the Bloc have been the greatest champion of keeping the feds out of provincial jurisdiction, and I'm surprised they would allow the natural health products regulations and/or Bill C-51 and Bill C-52 to intrude upon exclusive civil property. There are a dozen things it's intruding on.
There won't be time for me to go through our paper, but we've identified in it the 12 reasons that no party and no member should support Bill C-51 or Bill C-52. It ties into getting rid of the natural health products regulations and ties into going back to the standing committee reports and getting this committee to do an update of that wonderful report.
Dr. Grant Hill, whom I worked very closely with, is highly respected. He introduced a private member's bill to create reverse onus to try to get control of Health Canada. Judy and Grant and others who were involved with me at that time, including the Liberals, all knew that Health Canada was out of control. There's no administrative review process for Health Canada, there's no police internal affairs process, and we have documented cases of criminal activities that the RCMP will not investigate, including what was raised here.
We're requesting that this committee reconvene the same type of format as in 1998 to give the victimized small businesses, the victimized consumers who are suffering because of this bureaucratic nonsense that exists illegally in Health Canada.... We would like the opportunity to bring this out into the open again, as was done in 1998.
Thank you very much.