I want to explore the policy around this cost recovery, and I'll tell you what I'm thinking.
First of all, this idea that we're not getting money from this industry is wrong. NHPs pay sales tax. Pharmaceuticals do not. That's a policy choice. Every time a consumer goes to a store and buys a natural health product, they are sending money to the federal government, and probably the provincial government as well. They are being taxed.
Number two, it's been said repeatedly that these natural products are the only line of health products for which Health Canada does not currently charge fees. Aren't we comparing apples to oranges? Pharmaceuticals, particularly brand names, get 20 years' patent protection of monopolistic pricing power. Natural health products do not. Also, pharmaceutical products, for 80% of Canadians, are reimbursed through insurance plans. Natural health products are not. Taking one thing and saying, “We can have cost recovery for NHPs, just the same as we do for the other ones,” without taking into account the entire physical structure, strikes me as being not only unfair but financially wrong. I just want to state that.
I find myself unclear about the data. We say that the products are low-risk, but that low risk is not no risk. Well, there are no products that have no risk. A basketball, or a kleenex, or my coffee in front of me has a risk.
I'm trying to find out the actual data you have that suggests a change is required. You said 80% of the products in the sample were advertised with misleading product information and 56% were marketed with misleading label information. However, Health Canada's own compliance monitoring project from 2015 found the opposite. The label review found that 92% were compliant. How do you explain the discrepancy between those two reports?