Mr. Speaker, I know members on this side find it disappointing that our colleagues from the Bloc are not willing to support this initiative for a national cancer strategy.
I want to ask the member a question in another direction. He mentioned the former minister of health, Alan Rock, and the parliamentary secretary of the day, Mr. Charbonneau, who introduced a motion at the time to look at mental illness. That is a subject that a lot of us are concerned about and we are talking about that as part of a national strategy.
The member, who is a longstanding member of the health committee, is aware that the health committee has a bill before it right now dealing with the way we regulate natural health products. I know a lot of Canadians who are having trouble understanding Health Canada's response to an initiative that came out of Alberta showing great promise in treating people with mental illness, a vitamin and mineral product called Empowerplus.
It was showing such promise that four peer review studies were published. The Alberta government put over half a million dollars into that study. People were being relieved particularly from bi-polar disease when Health Canada authorities moved in to shut down the study at the University of Calgary that was producing the evidence of effectiveness.
The RCMP were sent in to raid this little company in Raymond, Alberta, steal its computers and contact 3,000 Canadians who were benefiting from the product and who had actually recovered their mental health. Those people were told to get back on their psychiatric drugs under the care of their doctors and to have proper psychiatric management when in fact they were actually doing very well, many of them with the support of their doctors.
Whether it is mental health with Empowerplus or whether it is heart disease and folic acid, which we now know is one of the main defence mechanisms against one of the highest risk factors in heart disease, the homocysteine which damages the lining of the vessels, and yet because of the antiquated sections in the Food and Drugs Act, subsections 3(1) and 3(2), and parts of schedule A, we are not allowed to tell Canadians about the benefits of simple, non-patentable, low risk products that would help them lower the risk.
In establishing a national strategy would the member agree that it is important that we look at all possible avenues of advancing health and prevention and in promoting wellness in any strategy to promote national wellness in these areas?