Mr. Speaker, I will answer the member's question in two different ways.
First, the government will propose to committee that we send another amendment, which I did not get to, and that is to set up a separate advisory committee. That committee would be an external advisory committee made up of stakeholders, manufacturers, health care professionals, the public, consumers who would have input on any changes that need to be made with respect to upcoming natural health products.
As the member will probably know, and this is the second part of how we intend to do that, under a regulatory regime, the minister and future governments would have an easier time of making changes to how natural health products would be impacted.
As we have seen over the last six or eight years, this issue has come and gone many times. The misinformation we read on the Internet is largely in part some of the past experiences we have had. By creating a separate legislated category, that will become significantly harder to do.
What we have seen in the past is folks have argued that natural health products should be food. We understand there is a regulatory regime with respect to Codex, which is very complicated. As a government, we are getting a little fed up with some of the safety factors with respect to food.
We really do not want to put natural health products there. We certainly do not want to suggest that natural health products are drugs and have them fall under the regulatory regime of the pharmaceutical industry, which would require a huge amount of investigative research before getting to the market. These are generally safe products, so we did not want that.
There seems to have been a workable regulatory category for natural health products. The government would like to propose an amendment that it is a legislated category. I do not think we will change the name, and I would not propose we do that. However, instead of the food drugs act, it would be food, drugs, natural health products act. It simply recognizes them as a separate product, which makes them safe and makes the issues permanent for Canadians. Canadians will have the same access to these products as they have had over the years past and now on into the future.