Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our colleague.
For the purpose of this conversation, I will read again what the motion is:
That, given that the proposed cost recovery and labelling regulations on natural health products are expected to have negative impacts on both Canadian businesses and consumer choice, the committee call upon the Minister of Health to immediately revoke these changes, and that the committee report this motion to the House.
I bring this up again because, as has been mentioned, I'm not quite sure about the exact amount of correspondence we have received, but I am on record as saying that this is by far the topic that has garnered the most correspondence, messages, emails and calls to my office in my eight years of being a parliamentarian. It's unbelievable, the amount we have. I think we have a number of bankers boxes, both in my riding office and here in Ottawa at my Hill office, filled with fliers, really Canadians' feedback. That's, as I've said before, why we're here, to listen to all Canadians regardless of political stripe or political leaning.
I do want to bring us back to the first meeting we had on this, when I had my intervention with Dr. Sharma. Part of the reason we have concerns over this is testimony from Dr. Sharma and her comments. If you remember, it was Dr. Sharma's testimony that over 700 Canadians had lost their lives due to mislabelling. Again, as I've said before, I don't want to see anybody lose their life due to this, and it is deeply concerning, but some of her comments were suspect.
If you'll remember, I raised those points with her, and she used a specific case, one I was familiar with, the death of 18-month-old Ezekiel Stephan. She attributed the mislabelling of health care products in her testimony to one of the important reasons that these regulations need to take place. I believe her testimony was that we had already seen the death of an 18-month-old child. When I questioned her on this, saying, in fact, that her testimony was misleading, she gave me a verbal gymnastics explanation as to why she used that. When I pressed her on it, she refused to back down from that.
The reality of that case is that Ezekiel was fighting meningitis. He had young parents who mistakenly thought that their baby, who I believe was their first, was struggling with strep or croup. I couldn't imagine what they were going through.
I have four children, all young adults now. I have a young granddaughter, and you know, especially if it's your first child, every time that baby cries, you're wondering what the problem is, what's going on and how you can help. They were grasping, so they thought that they were doing the right thing, and they presented not necessarily natural health food products but home remedies. I believe one was a garlic and apple vinegar tonic.
When it got to the point where the baby was really struggling, they called for an ambulance. That ambulance was not equipped with breathing devices that could fit an infant, which ultimately led to that baby's passing—not natural health food products. It was a combination of terrible events.
I bring that back up, because I believe we're rushing here. Our natural health food industry is regulated. We definitely had testimony from Health Canada officials who were here. They said they did their due diligence and conducted surveys. I believe that's what Dr. Supriya Sharma said.
Going back to Dr. Supriya Sharma's comments, Mr. Davies' last question to Dr. Sharma was, “I think it would help Dr. Sharma and all of us with this. In that case, did the product that was given make a claim that it would treat the particular ailment the child had?”