Certainly I don't think anybody would question the fact that one of the roles of government is to protect the public, and certainly there are concerns about natural health products.
Between May 1, 2021, and April 30, 2023, the Canadian vigilance program received 772 domestic reports of serious adverse effects from natural health products. That was without Vanessa's Law, which requires hospitals to report severe adverse effects. Furthermore, between 2004 and 2023, the Canadian vigilance program had received 8,625 reports in which the suspected product was a natural health product. Over 5,000 of those 8,000 were identified as serious by the reports.
Certainly we know that a number of natural health products have potentially adverse effects. For St. John's wort, there's a whole bunch of things with that, including interactions with SSRIs, which are commonly used in the treatment of depression and can cause serotonin syndrome, which can be deadly. There are a number of drugs that are natural health products that cause hepatotoxicity—liver toxicity. For example, there are pyrrolizidine alkaloids, which include comfrey and echinacea. Ginkgo biloba has both anticoagulant and antiplatelet effects. I think there's very significant reasons for the government's wanting to protect the health of Canadians.
Now, when it comes to the cost recovery program—and I want to ask both Mr. Harrington and Mr. Skelton about this—apparently, and this goes back to between March 2021 and March 2022, there was a pilot project that looked at compliance with good manufacturing practices among natural health product manufacturers and found there were issues of compliance in 42% of those companies inspected. Does that not seem to you to be a significant number such that it would require better policing of good manufacturing practices among natural health product manufacturers?
Quickly on that, are you not impressed by those numbers? I'm certainly impressed by those numbers, and it certainly suggests to me that there ought to be more inspections.